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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.
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
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!
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.
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