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.

Comments

The ultimate forger's tool.

[mooman]

Just lend this pen to people anytime they need to sign something.

Viola, you've captured their signature and can forge it whenever needed...

1. Lend pen to important people
2. Blackmail and defraud
3. Profit!

Re:The ultimate forger's tool.

[Scott Tracy]

Unless you loan the pen to someone who has the special paper, that won't work.

Anoto uses paper with grey dots on it, aligned in a grid, that (for some reason or another) is part of a larger 60,000,000-sq-km unique grid (so no two pieces of paper are the same). The 'pen' has a camera in it, that captures the grey dots as you write, and stores the coordinates. This must use very little memory, but does force you to use more expensive (and likely harder-to-find) paper.

Still, I've preordered mine at amazon.com for $199. It's supposed to be available Nov 8.

Re:The ultimate forger's tool.

[Rantastic]

Viola, you've captured their signature and can forge it whenever needed

Actually, no. At least, you can't beat signature recognition devices that way. They look at presure changes, speed, and strokes, none of which are captured by this device.

read the small print

[Anonymous Coward]

"The IO pen only works when used on location at one of Jupiter's moons"

handwritten e-mail?

[misterhaan]

Digitally capture handwritten emails

excellent! now i can keep a record of all my handwritten e-mails as well as my typed ones!

Re:handwritten e-mail?

[TheTomcat]

I once had a boss who would [have his secretary] PRINT all of his emails before reading them, then handwrite replies and [have his secretary] type them into his email client.

Now he can automate his stupidity.

S

It must be pretty cool, then...

[modus]

"How cool would this be with support for a wireless protocol?"

Well, seeing as how Sony Ericsson have already announced a pen using this technology that supports Bluetooth (http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=ERIC_CHA TPEN), pretty darn cool.

Logitech

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

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.

Too bad this pen reports in a proprietary .PEN format, however -- and even exported to JPGs, the files are probably too big to be used on PDAs, in emails, and other things.

But worst of all, the software that decodes it REQUIRES the .NET framework to run -- so much for Linux!

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 .NET upon you!

Re:Logitech

[dizco]

No offense, but why must EVERYTHING be ported to Linux? Logitech is a profitable company, why must they make everything multi-platform? What if they don't have the resources or desire to support (or give away free source) to their products to the Linux community? Does that make them "bad" or "wrong"?

No, not inherently. But it makes the product useless to me. (well, the part where it requires special paper also makes it useless to me..). And I'll continue to feel free to point out that its useless to me, just as you'll countine to feel free to point out that i'm bitching and moaning.

Hi, how's it going?

(ps, I didn't actually bitch and moan about this.)

Nice, but...

[Torinaga-Sama]

You know, I can't even read my own handwriting on regular paper, what good is it going to do if i can download my my own chickenscratch?

Thats why I went to typeing in the first place.

How it works

[interiot]

This page describes how it works in more detail:

• Digital paper with Anoto functionality is created by printing a proprietary pattern of very small dots on ordinary 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).

• As you write, the built-in digital camera in the pen continuously takes pictures of the patterned paper. Then, when you place the pen in its cradle, all of your writing is transferred automatically to your PC.

So my first question is: how much writing can it store if it's constantly taking pictures?

Re:How it works

[Nogami_Saeko]

It's more likely calculating movements the same way an optical mouse is. Just storing direction and distance data by calculating the difference in pattern at a high sampling rate, so it should be able to store quite a lot of it.

Wonder if you could scan the paper in and print your own...

It's possible that the off-white colour is actually florescent or something and the pen might use a UV light source to track the movements.

Seems like the old inkjet / razorblades selling technique. Give them the technology (cheap?) then sell supplies. I won't buy-in to that type of technology.

Re:How it works

[Polo]

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.

erasing

[sploreg]

How does it handle erasing? Can you digitally white-out your mistakes before it is uploaded? It's a neat idea, but I don't see many people using it. The only thing worse than a paper trail is a digital trail.

Re:Paper.

[Fnkmaster]

Because it doesn't store what you write per se. It has a miniature camera that tracks the microscopic dot pattern on their proprietary digital paper, and uses the location of the surrounding dots to exactly identify its coordinates over time. So it really stores a sequence of coordinates, which it then dumps to PC, which reconstructs the lines connecting the tiny coordinate "snapshots" and results in writing.

I can certainly imagine ways of doing that that DON'T require digital paper. 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).

I WAS excited

[RestiffBard]

then I went to the website and learned that unless you use windows its a paperweight. not even a heavy paperweight.

I didn't even bother to find out how much it was. I really liked the idea at first but upon learning that I need MS IE and .Net in order to use the thing my desire to have one went out the window.

Re:Paper.

[Lil'wombat]

The deal with the paper is that the pattern of dots is unique and no- repeating up to a area about the size of the North America. The business plan behind Annoto is to license sections of that mapspace to companys.

Catalog company X could license 100 sq ft for use in their catalogs - using 2mm at a time for a check box next to each item in their catalog. When you check the box, the pen records those cordinates, when you download the map locations trigger an order form to be filled out on the company's catalog web site. Or 3M could sell POST-IT Faxes - a post-it with a check box to fax, so that when you link your pen with the internet , the message you just scribbled is faxed away.

My only concern with the company is the Cue-Cat esque business model of makeing people have to pass their informtion through the annoto servers to perform anything useful.

Is each page in the pad unique? Each notebook?

[dpbsmith]

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?

Re:Is each page in the pad unique? Each notebook?

[qengho]

is every page in the special notebook unique? And is each NOTEBOOK unique?

Yes. Here's a Wired story about the guys who invented the paper.

Is your neighbor a pencil hoarder?

[Julian Morrison]

Is your neighbor hoarding pencils? Since the Prevention Of Subversion Act (2009) was passed, all pens have been required to have proper government wireless logging. Owning a pencil is illegal. Report hoarders to the police! Your house may be inspected for contraband at any time - if we catch you with illegal untapped writing materials, the penalty is incarceration as an enemy combatant in Traitor City X-ray. Remember citizen, information is the poison by which treason subverts patriotism. Eternal war for eternal peace! Heil Bush!