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Over Christmas I learned and then taught my nephews about the flypen I got them. It was both fascinating and discouraging, and I think on topic too.

First, let me say that I was already familiar with the principle since I worked with Anoto a little (I ran a show in Toyko where we showed the Anoto pen), they make the underlying technology. This may have contributed to unfulfilled expectations.

In case you don't know what it is, the Flypen (very heavy flash site!)is a pen-shaped device based on Anoto's technology. It is a ballpoint pen with a scanner in the tip that can detect where it is writing on specially patterned paper, and includes some gesture recognition, a sound synthesizer and speaker, and application memory.

Anyway take a look at the heavy flash site (even the light side is heavy) in particular Fly Tunes. You start that app by drawing an FT in a circle. You must follow its directions absolutely but it leads you to draw a 10 or 12 key piano which you can then play, a timbre changer for the keyboard (draw a K in a square), circles for drums, etc.

Okay here's the thing. The idea is nice, and startling even for someone who already knows the technology! Kids want to try it. You can see differences in different learning approaches even between brothers, it is quite interesting.

BUT! Kids are constantly penalized for things that should earn rewards. They can have an ah-hah! moment and rush ahead to use it, but it will silently refuse to work unless they exercise dull patience and listen to the announcer's instructions and follow them exactly. You can't draw a longer keyboard to get more notes. Young kids draw big letters, sometimes redraw them in different stroke order or draw letters on top of each other, anyway a big problem for recognition. And so on. The show-off nephew liked recording his songs and the quiet younger one (well both) were hysterical with the ability to make the piano keys produce disgusting burps, chilling screams, laughter, etc. But it just seemed like a demo for some tech and not really something educational. It might have some interest for older kids, if it had some software, but it strikes me that nobody must ever have tested this with real live children, they weren't interested in teaching them anything, they didn't really care about what happens after Christmas day, and if anything it seemed to hurt creativity. The best moment (initiated by my own idea not the kids' unfortunately) was rolling the pen up and down the keyboard and drums geometrically to make some neat tunes.

In contrast I'd much rather recommend Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS (caveat, a friend made it). Which is not only very enjoyable but also you learn to be creative with music and it has (like many of Toshio Iwai's works) hidden music composition in it. I was at an event where the head of Nintendo said they made it at a spec based on music synthesis and interactive requirements of Cyberplankton. This dual screened system (if it could be connected to the net) would seem like a better platform for education.

Anyway it just seems to me that kids who spend hours and hours on a PC with Harry Potter and Spongebob have expectations about interaction, but also they have no immune system to tell them when to stop. They learn about a mythical world and build up their British accents but these games are made by entertainers not educators. You need to have a useability check and see if it educates. To me the flypen was a waste of money and next time I'd try to spend the same money on either books or some educational software. One interesting thing is that a book on dragons (fictional of course) was hugely popular, and it seemed like it might be a neat jumpoff point to software about any kinds of animals. Maybe software that gives children a picturebook style experience, with more info they have to read in a book is more what they need? Maybe the next Harry Potter game should make them jump to the book and read a passage for a clue? etc.

I bet it's based on technology from Anoto. The whole thing sounds very much like what their technology is said to be capable of, and the "special paper" is very much in line as well. Cool application, but it does sound rather annoying, heh.

Each piece of Anoto paper is printed with a pattern that is a unique region of Anoto Pattern Space which is about the size of Europe and Asia together, and there's a lot of useful things you can do with that.

Now I'd be very interested to hear about an open source project that would add this kind of functionality and work with lots of printers and scanners so long as they are high enough quality. Kind of like steganography in the real world. Of course this might interfere with what the EFF's worried about too but not guaranteed. And you would want to have a server that keeps track of who used what paper anyway for it to be useful for business anyway. Gee what other things can be microprinted besides paper?

Each piece of Anoto paper is printed with a pattern that is a unique region of Anoto Pattern Space which is about the size of Europe and Asia together, and there's a lot of useful things you can do with that.

Now I'd be very interested to hear about an open source project that would add this kind of functionality and work with lots of printers and scanners so long as they are high enough quality. Kind of like steganography in the real world. Of course this might interfere with what the EFF's worried about too but not guaranteed. And you would want to have a server that keeps track of who used what paper anyway for it to be useful for business anyway. Gee what other things can be microprinted besides paper?

Anoto functionality underlies the Logitech io Pen (and probably Leapfrog's Fly pen).

The development guide (1 MB PDF) explains the technology: The paper is printed with a pattern of 100 um dots on a 3 mm grid. Each dot is slightly offset either up, down, left, or right, thus encoding two bits. The pen detects a 6 x 6 grid of dots, representing a 72-bit number. By varying the displacement of the dots, a large pattern space is created.

According to the pattern license, "The theoretical size of the Anoto Pattern Space is 60,000,000 km2, which is about the size of Europe and Asia combined. This area is subdivided into regions, each enabling its unique functionality. From each region, or segment, you may obtain a Pattern License for one or several pages."

Want to try it? Among the development tools, you will find a demo kit for 399 Euros. You can print your own business form on the supplied preprinted Anoto paper. The demo application captures pen strokes and merges them with your form image. A log file captures the pen id, pattern license number, pen stroke coordinates, and start time for every pen stroke.

Anoto functionality underlies the Logitech io Pen (and probably Leapfrog's Fly pen).

The development guide (1 MB PDF) explains the technology: The paper is printed with a pattern of 100 um dots on a 3 mm grid. Each dot is slightly offset either up, down, left, or right, thus encoding two bits. The pen detects a 6 x 6 grid of dots, representing a 72-bit number. By varying the displacement of the dots, a large pattern space is created.

According to the pattern license, "The theoretical size of the Anoto Pattern Space is 60,000,000 km2, which is about the size of Europe and Asia combined. This area is subdivided into regions, each enabling its unique functionality. From each region, or segment, you may obtain a Pattern License for one or several pages."

Want to try it? Among the development tools, you will find a demo kit for 399 Euros. You can print your own business form on the supplied preprinted Anoto paper. The demo application captures pen strokes and merges them with your form image. A log file captures the pen id, pattern license number, pen stroke coordinates, and start time for every pen stroke.

Anoto functionality underlies the Logitech io Pen (and probably Leapfrog's Fly pen).

The development guide (1 MB PDF) explains the technology: The paper is printed with a pattern of 100 um dots on a 3 mm grid. Each dot is slightly offset either up, down, left, or right, thus encoding two bits. The pen detects a 6 x 6 grid of dots, representing a 72-bit number. By varying the displacement of the dots, a large pattern space is created.

According to the pattern license, "The theoretical size of the Anoto Pattern Space is 60,000,000 km2, which is about the size of Europe and Asia combined. This area is subdivided into regions, each enabling its unique functionality. From each region, or segment, you may obtain a Pattern License for one or several pages."

Want to try it? Among the development tools, you will find a demo kit for 399 Euros. You can print your own business form on the supplied preprinted Anoto paper. The demo application captures pen strokes and merges them with your form image. A log file captures the pen id, pattern license number, pen stroke coordinates, and start time for every pen stroke.

Anoto functionality underlies the Logitech io Pen (and probably Leapfrog's Fly pen).

The development guide (1 MB PDF) explains the technology: The paper is printed with a pattern of 100 um dots on a 3 mm grid. Each dot is slightly offset either up, down, left, or right, thus encoding two bits. The pen detects a 6 x 6 grid of dots, representing a 72-bit number. By varying the displacement of the dots, a large pattern space is created.

According to the pattern license, "The theoretical size of the Anoto Pattern Space is 60,000,000 km2, which is about the size of Europe and Asia combined. This area is subdivided into regions, each enabling its unique functionality. From each region, or segment, you may obtain a Pattern License for one or several pages."

Want to try it? Among the development tools, you will find a demo kit for 399 Euros. You can print your own business form on the supplied preprinted Anoto paper. The demo application captures pen strokes and merges them with your form image. A log file captures the pen id, pattern license number, pen stroke coordinates, and start time for every pen stroke.

Anoto functionality underlies the Logitech io Pen (and probably Leapfrog's Fly pen).

The development guide (1 MB PDF) explains the technology: The paper is printed with a pattern of 100 um dots on a 3 mm grid. Each dot is slightly offset either up, down, left, or right, thus encoding two bits. The pen detects a 6 x 6 grid of dots, representing a 72-bit number. By varying the displacement of the dots, a large pattern space is created.

According to the pattern license, "The theoretical size of the Anoto Pattern Space is 60,000,000 km2, which is about the size of Europe and Asia combined. This area is subdivided into regions, each enabling its unique functionality. From each region, or segment, you may obtain a Pattern License for one or several pages."

Want to try it? Among the development tools, you will find a demo kit for 399 Euros. You can print your own business form on the supplied preprinted Anoto paper. The demo application captures pen strokes and merges them with your form image. A log file captures the pen id, pattern license number, pen stroke coordinates, and start time for every pen stroke.

The Logitech io Personal Digital Pen that uses Anoto's technology works mighty fine.

Here: http://www.anoto.com/

Their concept will blow your mind. Basically the best integration between traditional paper and pens, computers and the Internet.

Wired (the magazine, not the website) ran an article about them a few years ago. You can read it here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.04/anoto.html ?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=

Regards,
AIH

Another swedish product, the Anoto pens and papers!

C-pen works like this, the pen takes images of the book and reconstructs the line of text without any wheels needed. So any patents on this technology must be old by now.

However, c-pen takes this one step further and does OCR on it internally resulting in text only output.
I know they have tried to sell in their technology to mobile phone manufacturers, seeing great opportunities in the built-in cameras, though I suspect NEC could do it in software anyway and C-pen since has had better success with bluetooth connected pens that are more intutive to use together with your phone instead of trying to make the phone do something it was not meant to do.

And if you want a copy of your data on your PC, you can look at one of the Logitech io Digital Pens, which basically track what you write on paper with a special pre-printed background pattern.

They range in price from $160-200, and apparently are good for 25-40 pages before they need to be recharged (depending on battery and memory). I believe Logitech just came out with a slightly updated model, so you might want to look into their forums and find out what to be looking for before plunking down your money.

Notebooks, post-it notes and the like are available for them and while I'm sure they're more expensive than standard notebooks even if they're twice the price they're still probably less than any drink at Starbucks. One drawback of the notebooks as far as I'm concerned: every page is numbered, but every notebook has the same numbering - you tap an area on the inside of the front cover to indicate that you're starting a new notebook, but unless someone's started selling notebook identifier labels with specific background patterns there's no good way to specify that you're in the notebook for Quantum Physics vs. the notebook for Molecular Biology.

Anoto functionality derives from a proprietary pattern of very small dots printed on paper that is perceived by the eye as a slightly off-white color. The dots have a nominal spacing of 0.3 mm (0.01 inch). A minute portion of the total pattern uniquely defines its position in the full pattern, 60 000 000 square kilometres, which is equivalent to an area exceeding that of Europe and Asia combined.

The pattern of dots allows dynamic information coming from the digital camera in the pen to be processed into signals representing functionality, writing and drawing.

There is already something like this. Anoto has developed a pen with built in scanner/OCR functionality. It even has bluetooth so you can transfer it to your computer or fax it immediately. The only drawback is that it requires you to write on a special paper (with a fine grid printed upon it).

Still, for a "thank you," birthday, or other special, personal event, I will almost always hold the handwriten note in higher regard than the quick e-mail. One conveys some effort and care; the other, an afterthought (though I do get a kick out of it).

As for this technology, a company called Anoto is developing a similar technology. The pen is about the size of my larger founts, but a ballpoint (the bid downside). Under the point is a small camera. You write on paper with a special grid patern. The camera records the strokes, and transmits them to another device using bluetooth.

One of their main applciations would be to capture information on filling out a form, then uploading it to an device.

I haven't seen anyone selling it, though some big names are involved: Cross, Pilot, Sanford (who owns rotring, Parker, and Waterman) are providing the pen know-how. Others for the tehcnology, Logitech being one of them.

Really cool stuff!

Ciryon

I don't want bluetooth as a wireless standard for talking between computers, but I would love to have it for having minor accessories talk to a central hub computer, such as the Anoto pen. What with all this talk about 802.11b being so unsecure, there should be room for another standard in the mix.

The technology can be found here

This company has come up with a wacky pen/printed-code scheme that allows for all sorts of paper-to-net interaction. From the latter page:

On this paper is the "ANOTO pattern", consisting of very small dots in an imaginary grid. A minute section of the pattern will give you your exact location on the full pattern.

If it works, it would be interesting to play with, to say the least, since (from that same page) "Total pattern size: 73 000 000 000 000 A4 pages"

This company has come up with a wacky pen/printed-code scheme that allows for all sorts of paper-to-net interaction. From the latter page:

On this paper is the "ANOTO pattern", consisting of very small dots in an imaginary grid. A minute section of the pattern will give you your exact location on the full pattern.

If it works, it would be interesting to play with, to say the least, since (from that same page) "Total pattern size: 73 000 000 000 000 A4 pages"