Slashdot Mirror
Anoto-based Pens From Logitech
flanksteak writes "Logitech has announced the IO Pen, a ball-point pen with a memory. You write stuff with the pen, then drop it in its USB cradle and your bad handwriting appears on your PC. The pen is to be released in November. How cool would this be with support for a wireless protocol?" We've run some previous stories about this - no telling how well it actually works until it's tested, though. And at $9.99/notebook, the paper is about three times as expensive as regular paper.
What about the amount of power this would require? If my guess is correct, it would seem that they are using a USB connection to avoid excessive power consumption during download transmission of data.
come on fhqwhgads
Logitech has made some really cool stuff lately -- their speakers are an absolute steal and are better at half the price than anything put out by Creative or Klipsch.
.PEN format, however -- and even exported to JPGs, the files are probably too big to be used on PDAs, in emails, and other things.
.NET framework to run -- so much for Linux!
.NET upon you!
Too bad this pen reports in a proprietary
But worst of all, the software that decodes it REQUIRES the
We should write Logitech and request free file formats (like an export to PNG) and free software with open drivers, not some program that forces
No kidding. If you need special paper, then how is this really much different than writing on a graphics tablet?
I think the more practical device would be a run-of-mill-looking clipboard that you could clip any kind of paper to, write on it, and store that image..
I think that offers more flexibility (like automatically filling out "forms" in triplicate, storing receipt/stub information for business travellers, and so on) and would be easier to incorporate wireless into. Shoot, you could even put an inconspicuous PCMCIA slot into it for a wifi adapter, disk drive, or whatever...
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
Well, the special paper has dots that are tracked with a camera in the pen. But the question is, why does it need the dots even? My optical mouse doesn't need dots to work.
Of course you might run into focus problems, like if you pulled the pen up it wouldn't know where on the paper it was. There are a number of ways to get around this, such as an ultrasound range finder connected to a focusing lens (pretty expensive tech to put into a pen, but if were already putting cameras in 'em), or an accelerometer or gyroscope position finder.
Lonely?
Find love on the internet
The first true breakthrough in pen technology in 200 years
Er, the ball-point pen invented in 1938 wasn't a "true" breakthrough?
Yeah, I've always thought that ball-point pens were overrated. Fountain pens forever, baby!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Apparently the pen recognizes absolute position on the paper by recognizing x-y coordinate information encoded in the dot pattern.
Well, is every page in the special notebook unique? And is each NOTEBOOK unique?
Suppose you are keeping lists on pages 10, 18, and 26 of a notebook. You add an entry on page 10, flip to page 18, add an entry, flip to page 26, add an entry and download. Now what? Do you see the complete list on page 10 as it appears on the paper? Or do you see a series of separate one-line images?
Suppose you write a note on page 3 of notebook A and then write another note on page 3 of notebook B, when you download them do you see both notes superimposed on page 3 of "the" notebook?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
We had a somewhat similar piece of hardware for whiteboards, though it didn't require special boards. A suction-cup-equipped sensor stuck on the board and special sleeves fit around the pens. Because we had several sleeves (for several colors) we could get pretty accurate results saved to a nearby, wired desktop. I liked the idea that all the new equipment was non-consumable and we could use our original boards and markers.
If Logitech really wanted to impress me, the paper could be any paper, placed in a small portfolio sleeve with sensors in the corner. If they're using a template printed on the paper, just make it bold and dark, so it's easy to see through the a sheet of notebook paper. I could teach myself to write on the last piece of paper in a notebook and pull the sheet out when done. It would be much more useful to me than trying to justify a $10 notebook every couple of weeks.
I saw the original demoed at CTIA in Orlando earlier this year. Was very impressive when coupled with a bluetooth phone.
.Net ? Yech!
One example used email forms on a pad. You wrote in the different boxes like TO: and SUBJECT: then the message below. When you marked the box checked SEND the message was squirted to the phone via bluetooth, then over the air. You could send text or digital ink which would be included in the email as an attachment.
This looked to tbe the best way to send email if all you had was a phone. No funky predictive spelling do-dads on a standard phone keypad.
The logitech looks like they managed to both dumb-down and encumber the thing. USB cradle? IE?
If the original Anoto pen was available for $199 I'd buy it. No cradle, no 20MB software loads, just use it with your bluetooth phone.
Not that I think this is likely... but since each piece of paper is somewhat unique (one sheet from a 60,000 km^2 area.) Couldn't this be used for some kind of tracking. Microsoft uses media player (with their new update) to grab these .pen files, looks at the dot patterns to see which piece of paper it was written on, then figures out where that paper was sold. I'm getting my tinfoil hat ready now.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
If you need special paper, then how is this really much different than writing on a graphics tablet?
It's like a Steno pad. You take the wireless pen and the wireless pad of paper wherever you go (meetings, brainstorming at the park, etc.). The handwritten graphics (letters, drawings) are stored within the pen's own memory to later be downloaded to a host computer via USB. Imagine the possibility of automatic meeting minutes (the most boring task imaginable now streamlined)!
An awesome application for this would be for college students in addition to professionals. Imagine being able to train an OCR program to convert class notes into plain text files which can be categorized on a disk. Imagine being able to grep for topics to avoid having to flip through hundreds of pages of notes.
The downside is the Windows XP interface in the screenshots. If Logitech is smart, they will also support UNIX/Linux/MacOS. If they are really smart, they'll use Java or really good C, so they don't have to start from scratch on each platform. If it will be truly Windows-only (and remain so at Logitech's discretion), then Logitech needs to go to hell, because there is simply no excuse for non-portable applications now-a-days especially considering the revenue potential of this pen.
I think the more practical device would be a run-of-mill-looking clipboard that you could clip any kind of paper to, write on it, and store that image.
The clipboard is a good idea, since the grid is embedded in the backing. However, clipboards can be somewhat clunky to write on due to their size. Smaller pads of paper can be more naturally held in one hand while writing and flipping pages can be done very quickly. If there is a way to make a clipboard behave like a Steno pad, that would be worthwhile.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I don't know why this got moderated up, because I don't think the poster quite understands the technology.
The special paper provides unique coordinates. You know which page is which, when you've changed pages, when you've gone back and annotated old pages, what type of page you're on. You could define special forms and print millions of them, and be able to tell what data was captured and what (unique) form it was written on - even what the order of capture was. It's quite a powerful concept.
I mean, I can see forms that are all identical and print on the same coordinates. Maybe this would be good for anonymity and cheaper to reproduce.
There are already plenty of handwriting capture pads and stuff, but the special paper really is the technology, not the pen.
I was once an intern in an advertising company who was trying to break into internet advertising, since this was 1996 and the web ads was supposed to be the Next Big Thing.
I was a recent college grad with Internet Experience (TM). Part of my job was to, yes, print out webpages of successful web ads and bind them in a folder for their strategy meetings.
Needless to say, they never really landed any big contracts, and were forced to stay with their Junkmail business.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
YES!!
50 years from now who the hell wants to look at an email. How are you going to find an old forgotton email tucked away in the attic? Is an email going to show the wrinkles of deleting it to the deleted items folder. Email has no personality!
This is essentially a glorified 2D barcode reader. The camera captures enough information in the little dots to know where it is with good precision in the 60 thousand killometer 2 dimensional barcode.
They couldn't use an optical mouse mechanism because it can't tell where on the page it is. They have a 60 thousand kilometer space so if you go back to the same page you wrote on a week ago and make changes then it'll show up on the correct page.
They could simplify it, though, by allowing generic pads to be made where each page in a pad is unique, but if you want to change to a different pad you have to scan the top bound ridge first so it knows you're on a different pad. The pads are currently expensive because each sheet has to be printed individually. Make it simpler with the suggestion above and you can at least make the pads duplicates of 90 different printed sheets.
I suspect it'll flop. People will only buy the special pads for the pen, but they won't always have a special pad available when they want to write something down.
I think a simpler technology could suffice here with the parts of an optical mouse. It only needs to know which words are continous, and you can reformat their actual layout later, if needed, on the computer. Add a cheap accelerometer and it'll have a good idea of where things are in relation to each other. Add some powerfull post-processing software and it'll be able to eat drawings as well, matching up areas where the camera saw previously drawn lines.
In the end, this is a hardware solution to a problem begging for a software solution.
-Adam
The reason that the grids are unique on different pieces of paper is so that software can get some context about what you're writing on. The statement that no two pieces of paper are the same is not entirely correct. Each piece of paper in the larger grid is assigned a unique ID. That ID is mapped to a particular application, so that by calling the Anoto lookup service, software could know that you're filling out an insurance application, or that you're sending e-mail to somebody. It can then interpret the ink intelligently, since it can then determine where the various fields are on the page and what they mean.
I'm surprised that nobody has done anything novel such as a small coil in the tip and a ink ball that has a partial metal structure. In such a system you should be able to sense the ball movement and direction. The ball would be super cheap and could be your renuable revenue stream by selling the replacement ink cartridges. Furthermore, such a sensor would be so small that it could easily be placed into just about any profile - not the bloated fat (and probably uncomfortable) pen they came up with.
I mean, isn't a pen nothing more than a very very very tiny mouse ball? Sensing it's rotation and position should not be hard asuming you can fiddle with the balls composition.
I don't see any novel technology here, only bad design.
Either this was the easiest way to implement it (unlikely) or they saw that the real margins for this market are in selling digital paper on an ongoing basis (much more likely).
One of the problems with these kind of devices is that they (like mice) use a completely relative coordinate system. The dots allow you to have specific paper for various tasks. Imagine properly formatted page for email. It has TO, FROM, CC, BCC, Subject, etc. The dots give an absolute position and information about what the format of the page is. Thus, when the computer parses the data it can tell that this was an email, and it knows which part of your scribble was the subject, the body, and all the rest.
My question is can they make it to work with *both* the dots and without. Clearly it's technologically feasible...optical mice can work on most surfaces these days. If so I can use a bluetooth enabled version for all of my device types:
1) absolute coordinates with onscreen feedback
as graphics tablets, and possibly touch-screens
2) relative coordinates with onscreen feedback
as a replacement mouse
3) absolute coordinates with writing trail
on special paper (email/calendar/contact/art)
4) relative coordinates with writing trail
on regular paper (free-form notes/authoring)
This is not a troll; I'm serious in doubt as to why this product is useful.
Notepads are useful largely because they're essentially disposable; you can scribble as much as you want without worrying about running out of paper or about it costing too much. $10 for a replacement notebook is a bit steep. I usually pay $1 or so for my notebooks.
So I can get an image of my notebook pages... doesn't a $50 scanner do the same thing? Ok, so a scanner takes a little while and only handles a page at a time. Is that limitation worth $150 to that many people, especially with an extra $7 per notebook?
Cool technology, but I doubt this will be a successful product.
-John