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To wit: where the fuck is our electonic paper already? I've wanted it ever since I saw Captain Kirk using an computer tablet some 35 years ago.

PDAs aren't it. Except for a few people who can do 40 WPM without concentrating using Fitalystamp or something similar, there's no practical input for plain text, never mind math. And how can you possibly keep track of your notes on such a small display? (Even the Newton was too small for this purpose. And of course too big to put in your pocket. The worst of both worlds.)

IBM was on the right track with the Thinkpad 700, which folded flat so you could use an electronic stylus instead of the keyboard. Alas, the 486 processor just wasn't up to serious character recognition, and IBM abandoned this option in later Thinkpads.

(The Transnote is interesting, but I don't quite like the idea of having a separate input device.)

Here's what would make Captain Kirk smile. Somebody comes out with a mass produced pad device. Minimum requirements:

• At least VGA-resolution display
• Stylus input
• Enough processing power and RAM to do serious handwriting recognition
• Mass storage of some kind (hard disk uses too much juice, but anything else is probably too expensive)
• Some kind of comm/expandability option. USB 2 would suffice.

Ok, what about something now? Well, if you can't spring for a Transnote, there's always the Crosspad, which was an attempt to market the Transnote's input device as a separate product. No longer in production, but you can get them on ebay for about $150.

It is interesting that Jean Ichbiah, the designer of the Ada programming language, recommends Delphi for everyday programming tasks. See this this Usenet thread. That is high praise for Delphi (Kylix) indeed. Ada is perhaps the most carefully designed programming language in existence, so Jean Ichbiah knows whereof he speaks. At the time of his recommendation, Kylix did not yet exist. It would be interesting to see what Ichbiah's thoughts would be now.

this technology has been aroud for quite some time. Fitaly uses it and some others
ok, maybe the algorithm is new but it's almost the same. In any case I'm from .cz so this sh*t won't save me anyway.

Same idea as the Fitaly keyboard. But I think the Fitaly would be easier to navigate with a stylus.

I agree that the proposition is completely backwards: we should be replacing phone numbers with urls, and not the ohter way around...

how about
"phone://voice.company.com/department/person.tel "

ok. har har.

Apparently they were thinking about portable phones and w@p services. Their point was that it is easier to tap numbers on a phone than words. which is true. but i think phones will evolve a bit in the next few microseconds to make such an idea unnecessary.

IMHO, if you have screen realestate big enough to comfortably browse for information, there is a way to fit some kind of intelligent input system that would make it easy to type, at least an URL.

T9 software is already pretty neat, and things will get better.

if you are interested in typing efficiently in small spaces:

T9

FITALY

BAT

FAQ

so, i don't think alternative URL systems are necessary. rethinking cellphone input is, however.

adrien cater
boring.ch

If/When I ever get around to buying a Palm, I'm seriously going to consider getting FITALY software for it. FITALY -- which was mentioned here once, I believe -- is a keyboard layout designed for one-finger typing. It's laid out based on what letters you'll most commonly need, by analyzing the English language. The most commonly typed six letters are in the center, for example, and much of the time, the next letter you need to type is right next to the one you just typed. Seems like a very viable solution to me. No voice-control to make you sound like lunatic on the subway, no chording to make you feel like a Borg.

At the gym I go to, there are computers with touchscreens over some of the exercise bikes, and you can 1-finger type on them. It's a dog-slow way to enter anything, but fine for web browsing once you're past the first real URL, at least given the speed you read the web while biking.

Nice idea, but the windows version is a software program. If it locks up it ignores your finger, liked bill cared anyway..... By the way no linux version? (is there a pen version of linux?)