- Truc Bui

Longtime GBM forum member and community participant Gavin Miller has just sent this intriguing article from Computerworld who interviewed Joel Hagberg, Fujitsu's Vice President of business development. In the face of stiffening competition in the SSD market and with prices dropping and capacity increasing across the board for SSD, Fujitsu has chimed in with reasons as to why the company has resisted the industry trend of shifting towards a solid state medium. Of course, as a manufacturer of HDD's, Fujitsu has a vested interest in the HDD market, but it still makes an interesting read in terms of how far SSD's still have to go to displace the traditional HDD. Thanks Gavin!

 

- Craig Pringle

This morning I was fortunate enough to have a one-on-one chat with Motion Computing's President and CEO, Scott Eckert.  Thanks for all those who posted comments and questions on my blog and on GottaBeMobile.  Rather than pose every question directly (as there were quite a few) I looked for the common themes in the comments and constructed questions from those. 

I met Scott in the foyer lounge of a Sydney Hotel.  We chatted for a couple of minutes about Sydney, the appalling weather and work, then got down to business.  He was pleased that I was taking notes on my LS800 at the meeting and allowed that he used one himself for two years.  This led nicely into my first question.  What follows is summary of my discussion with Scott.  This is not a verbatim transcript as I did not record the conversation.

--

Of the 12 comments posted on the two blogs (excluding the one about taking Scott hostage until he included ice cube makers - which we both took as a joke) fully 4 of them mentioned the LS800 directly and two others mentioned a desire for a smaller tablet.  When the LS range was dropped there were a lot of people who were very disappointed, myself included.  In my view Motion created and owned the Ultra Mobile category before the UMPC label even existed.   Given that there is an apparent market for these devices and that they were, and still are,  a device that really turned heads and got people interested in Tablets - why was it dropped?

In response Scott was pleased that I was crediting them with creating a category.  Their goal was to create a truly enterprise class UMPC and he felt that they had done well with that.  He also indicated that while the LS800 did enjoy some success in certain areas that it did not achieve the volumes needed to sustain it as an additional range.  That said the market for this type of device is still there and Motion is keeping an eye on it, there is ongoing R&D and as pen, touch and other technologies mature it is an area that they may re-enter.

Next I said that to me it seemed that sometimes Motion was focusing more on winning new customers than looking after their existing customer base.  Two examples I held up to support this.  The first was the inability to migrate accessories between ranges - such as the M-series range and the LE-series range.  The second was the relatively poor upgrade experience that Motion users had going to Vista. 

On the first point Scott pointed out that their ranges are expected to exist for about 3 years before being replaced by a new range.  They try to ensure consistency in the range, but in order to take advantage of rapidly advancing technology they won't necessarily have compatibility of peripherals between ranges. 

I suppose that this helps Motion evolve their products more quickly as they are not constraining a new range with the limitations of the old. 

Scott also pointed out that while accessories for previous ranges are not necessarily compatible, they are supported and spares are available long after the range stops shipping, which also helps to mitigate the issue for their enterprise customers.

On the second point Scott acknowledged that the Vista upgrade experience had not been all that smooth for end users.  They have learned from the feedback and hope to do it better next time.  He also pointed out that many of their enterprise accounts are still deploying XP based images on their Motion tablets.

There seems to be an increasing focus on verticals with the specialized range expanding and what I consider to be the general use/corporate range shrinking.  Is this going to be a trend that continues?

Motion are really highly focused on the verticals.  In fact when I was chatting to Scott this was very apparent long before I asked this question.  Scott told me that the way Motion look at it is that they have two primary verticals and three product ranges.  The vertical markets they are focused on are healthcare and field automation and the three product ranges can be applied to both of those.

This is not to say that there are not other niches and verticals that don't suit the Motion tablets.  Indeed some of the successful markets have come as something of a surprise to Motion.  The LS800 enjoyed quite a bit of success in the aviation market, and this was largely driven by a software partner who married up his software, the LS800 and a mounting solution and sold this as a bundle.

What other verticals interest you?

Motion's primary focus has always been people who need to use a computer while standing and walking. 

One of the questions that came up was around a slate for artists - any plans to enter that market?

Scott thought that the artist market was pretty well served today by the likes of the Wacom Cintiq which is not mobile, but it provides a much higher resolution and a better digitizer than what is available today in mobile devices.  There may not be too many mobile artists, but many of the ones that are out there are using the LE range devices today with success.

There were a couple of questions around multi-touch.  Motion was leading the market there - what happened?

The technology was very new and Motion just struggled to get it commercialized.  Touch, and the combination of touch and an active digitizer, is and will continue to be an important technology for future ranges.

(reading between the lines I take it there won't be one in the LE range, though I could be wrong.)

Motion also feels that for touch to really succeed it is critical that the applications are designed for and work well with touch.  This led nicely to my next question.

Again - from the questions posted is there any thought of entering the software market to help bring that about?

The short answer is that Motion is not looking to become a software house.  However Motion are already active in that space and they currently work with about 150 software partners in the vertical markets to help them write better applications.  It is better for Motion to have more partners and to work with them rather than compete against them.

This is where Scott talked about the aviation example and how a partner created a market for the LS800 and did really well in it.  Naturally Motion would like to find more partners like that, so for those of you reading this that write software - keep that in mind!

There are some general issues that most mobile users face, such as battery life and heat.  There are also some technologies that seem to be taking a long time to come to market, such as hybrid drives or that still carry a significant premium like solid state drives.  What do you see as the most important technologies coming.

Battery technology is really a chemical process, which means that adding capacity to batteries is not easy.  Motion have found it more fruitful to reduce the power consumption of the device and this is where they are investing.  This means both engineering better, more efficient hardware, adding technologies such as LED backlit displays and working with application developers to make the applications more efficient.

--

Some closing thoughts from me.  Scott is a genuinely nice guy and I really enjoyed my chat with him.  He is astute, passionate about his products and focused on the vertical markets and the Motion vision.  Motion are not merely aware of the bloggers, readers and commentors that make up the blogosphere.  They are not just listening to the conversations.  They are actively reaching out and engaging and I think that is a really good thing.  Thanks to Scott for taking the time to talk to me.

- Rob Bushway

Much to chagrin of the mainstream press, Bill Gates has been nothing but persistent over the years with regards to the Tablet PC and his belief that natural input technologies, like ink, will one day be common place. Gates will enter his "retirement" by spending much of his 20% Microsoft time on pet projects like Research, Tablet PC, speech, vision, touch, and such. Gates doesn't strike me as the kind of guy that would waste some of his most valuable resources, like time, on technologies that don't have long term viabilities. We happen to agree with him about the long term potential that natural input technologies have.

In many of the speeches that I've heard Gates give, including last year's MVP Summit, he frequently mentions the Tablet PC form factor. Lately, as Gates has been traveling the world, he has been spending a lot of time talking about putting a Tablet PC in the hands of every student. Tablet PC and touch was also a major talking point at this year's D6 conference. It is quite ironic, though, that the community which gives life to his passion has never heard from him directly in the almost six years that Tablet PC has been around. I can't recall seeing any interviews with Mr. Gates from TabletPCBuzz.com, TabletPCReview.com, TabletPC2.com, and yours truly, GottaBeMobile.com.

Mr. Gates, the community that is in step with your passion needs to talk with you - we want to hear from you directly about the technology we both care about, are concerned about, discuss, and believe in. Comments like these are indicative that there are some real issues that need discussing.

I'll be in Redmond in a few weeks meeting with your Surface team. I'd be happy to extend my trip by a day or two in order to spend some time talking with you about Tablet PC, touch, and mobile computing. Your Tablet PC team knows how to get in touch with me if you'd like to talk.

- Rob Bushway

 

I had the opportunity this morning to sit down and chat with Dennis Moore, CEO of OQO, about keeping a company agile, his schedule, his team, the Model 02, Vista Lite, Tablet PC, touch, and the new ultra-portable entrants from Asus and HP. Keep up to date with what Dennis is doing by subscribing to his blog.

The following is the transcript of our conversation. Enjoy!

Rob Bushway says:

Thanks for joining me for this chat, Dennis!

dbmoore says:

My pleasure -- thanks for inviting me.

- Rob Bushway

I'm doing an IM interview with Dennis Moore, CEO of OQO in about 30 minutes.

If you have some particular questions you'd like for me to ask - post them up in the comments. I'll do my best to ask them. Better act quick, though. My interview starts in 30 minutes.

The transcript of the interview will be posted in its entirety right here on GBM.

- Rob Bushway

We have quite the talented group of readers here at GottaBeMobile.com. One of our readers, Aaron Walker, just started his own eBook publishing company, Walk Broad Publishing and has published his first children's picture book, "Good Morning, Friend Moon".

I recently had the pleasure of reading "Good Morning, Friend Moon" to my children the other night and they absolutely loved it. The illustrations really brought the story to life. It is available via download for only $4.99

Here's the great part: "Good Morning, Friend Moon" was written and illustrated entirely using a Fujitsu 4010D Tablet PC. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Aaron about this project and wanted to share some of that with you.

Where did the idea for "Good Morning, Friend Moon" and Walk Broad Publishing come from?

Walk Broad Publishing got started because I wanted to be able to share ebooks with my 6 year old son at bed time story time. I searched and, whereas I found a few, they usually used some sort of additional software or required an internet connection to view.

I figured there had to be a better way.

The story really was inspired by my son asking me why was the Moon still up one morning while the Sun was in the sky. Not knowing the scientific reason, I did what any parent would do, I made up a good story to tell him :) That was the germ of the idea that produced "Good Morning, Friend Moon" and started Walk Broad Publishing.

You are quite the artist! My children loved your illustrations. What hardware and software did you use to illustrate the book?

I am a committed tablet pc user. The entire book, and website, was done on a Fujitsu Lifebook 4010D. The drawing application I used was Corel's Painter Essentials. The drawings were then imported into Microsoft Publisher 2007 for layout and scripting, then converted to pdf using PDFCreator. Everything was done on the Fujitsu.

When reading the book to my children the other night, I was using the Dell Latitude XT. The flexibility of eBooks are the number of ways in which they can be read. How has the book been optimized for reading?

The reason "Good Morning, Friend Moon" is formatted with pictures on top and words on the bottom is to facilitate helping children with word recognition while also allowing them to still see the pictures. While reading with my 6-year-old son, I like to point to the words as I'm reading and see which words he has learned. It makes things a bit more interactive.  Some picture books have words top, bottom and middle which takes away from the presentation of the book page as a whole while still helping with reading. 

The book is best viewed on tablets (IMHO) using Adobe's Digital Editions in portrait mode.

I've also been following the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, iRex iLiad and the rest. Whereas I don't have any of those devices yet, it occurred to me that parents who did, would probably appreciate good, wholesome picture books to share with their children.

They can let their children read the book in the back seat while traveling with the Kindle for example.

I know the book will lose something in the translation going from full-color to black and white, but there isn't anything else out there. One day e-ink displays will be in color but, in the meantime, parents should have good picture books to share.

Or, if they are tablet users like myself, they can have them for their tablets or devices like the HTC Advantage and any of the UMPCs that support portrait screen rotation.

I try and make it clear on the FAQ on the website that it is not recommended to be viewed on a smartphone, although I'd be interested in finding out about how it would view on an iPhone or other small device with a larger screen, and if there is a way to tweak the setting for a passable reading experience.

 

As an author and publisher, what are your feelings about Digital Rights Management (DRM)?

I currently have no DRM on the books. I believe that people are basically honest and those that can will pay the modest fee for the books I am offering.

They can then transfer it to any device that reads a pdf file and I've tried to optimize the file for the Reader and Kindle as much as possible while not actually owning either device.

Each person who buys this book (or any book from Walk Broad Publishing for that matter) can download the book up to four times at no additional cost.

Being an ebook reader, I know how important it is to be able to transfer a book on my tablet to my phone or read it on my desktop. When people get a new computer or new device, I don't believe readers should be penalized for wanting to keep the book they've already paid for.

Do you have any other books in the works?

I am already at work on the next book "Natty McGumm and the Lazette Street Gazette" that was written and edited in OneNote using only the pen.

And there will probably be at least two more books featuring Friend Moon, Friend Sun and Friend Star.

How can folks stay up with what you doing?

Of course, they can visit Walk Broad Publishing to view current books for sale. I also have a blog where I write about upcoming projects and more.

I know I'll be following your blog as my children will want to know what Friend Moon and Friend Sun are up to. Keep up the great work.

- Rob Bushway

In this interview with Brett McAnally, Dell's Director of Business Notebooks, we talk about the launch of the Latitude XT Tablet PC, choosing N-Trig as its digitizing partner, the potential for an Inspiron / Vostro type of Tablet, and more. Enjoy!

Brett, thank you for the opportunity to talk about Dell’s Latitude XT. It has been four months since the release of the Latitude XT. How has the response been in your target market?

We’re really pleased with the response so far.  Thankfully, the feedback has confirmed what we expected, that usability is really valued, whether it be in the form of small size/weight, bright panels and multiple input options- especially touch. We’re getting great tips on what is good and what needs work for next time – it’s a learning process and there’s lots to do as we want to improve, but at least we’re hearing that we’re off to a good start.

- Sierra Modro

As the final installment in this series, I'll take a look at the target markets, availability, and my first impressions of the Celio REDFLY usage concept.

Target Market

As previously mentioned, the REDFLY is not being initially targeted at consumers. The targets are vertical markets and businesses. Considering the price point of $499, this target is necessary, since most consumers won't spend that kind of money on something that doesn't even have a processor.

To be fair, though, this strategy also makes sense based on the usage models, covered in Part 2 of this series. Most of the applications available for the Windows Mobile phone are more oriented towards business users, like email and office applications. Sure, consumers use those functions also, but they're more likely to just buy another device. Consumers don't worry about the technical support aspects of computer hardware.

- Sierra Modro

Usage models! The most important aspect of any device is not its technical specifications, blasphemy as that may seem. The most important aspect is whether it does what I need it to do. The problem is not the 800MHz Pentium 3 in my old laptop - the problem is that it won't run the software I need. But if I install a small Linux distribution, I suddenly have a useful system again. It fulfills my usage models once more.

When I was talking with Kirt Bailey, President and CEO of Celio Corporation, and Brad Warnock, VP of Marketing, we talked a lot about how the features and capabilities of the REDFLY translate into usage models that really make sense to me.

Let's look at the Celio REDFLY and how it would change some of my daily tasks.

- Sierra Modro

Fundamentally, the REDFLY is an 8 inch screen and a slightly reduced size keyboard. There is no processor, no memory, and nothing to configure. And this is its strength.

The REDFLY is truly a mobile companion. You must have a compatible Windows Mobile 5 or WM6 phone for it to pair to for this to be a functional device. The REDFLY connects via USB or Bluetooth and extends the functionality inherent in your phone to a screen and keyboard that are fully usable. By doing this, you can keep the same REDFLY and switch phones to your heart's content. You also don't have to sync your data with yet another device. Considering how much time I spend syncing data between devices, this is a major benefit.

- Sierra Modro

I got the opportunity to meet with Kirt Bailey, President and CEO of Celio Corporation, and Brad Warnock, VP of Marketing, to discuss the new REDFLY Mobile Companion. I came across this intriguing device at CES and I've been following it closely.

I got so much good information from talking to Kirt and Brad that I can't fit it all in one post, so I'll be doing a short series over the next week.

Part 1: The device itself - technical specifications, form factor, supported platforms, etc.

Part 2: Usage models

Part 3: Target markets, availability, and my first impressions of the idea

Stay tuned for more info on the Celio REDFLY!

- Rob Bushway

In part 2 of our 3-part video series with Motion Computing, I spend some time chatting with John Doherty and Scott Eckert, co-founders of Motion Computing. John Doherty personally designed the original Motion slate Tablet PC, the M1200.

John and Scott talk about those early days at Motion, the story behind the design of their original slate, how the name came about, and much more. I think you'll enjoy getting this rare inside look at the people behind the products we have all enjoyed using.

Follow the read more link for the embedded version or download directly here.

- Warner Crocker

We live on the bleeding edge of technology here at GottaBeMobile.com and sometimes we trip and fall over that edge and land on our faces. That’s what happened with getting this podcast recorded, edited, and mixed, which is why it is a few days delayed getting into your hands. (The stories will make for a couple of great discussions at some point in the future once all of our hair has grown back from all the follicle pulling that has been going on.)

Suffice it to say though, that we’re back with another GBM Audio Inkshow with lots of Tablet PC and UMPC goodness to talk about. Not only that, Hugo’s back from CeBit Australia, and Dennis and Warner grill him on what mobile gadgets he saw and didn’t see and much more. And yes, we are still flirting with getting in trouble with PETA.

Here’s the notes for show #17:

• News Items
• Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC Announced
• A New HP Tablet PC the Compaq 2710P Coming in July
• Other Links on this topic
• The Big Announcement
• More Specs
• 24hrs of UMPC Battery Life in the future?
• Rob Wants to start a conversation
• Did The UMPC Die and Nobody Notice?
• Matt’s going to be attending the WIPTE Conference. Are you?
• This Weeks Hot Topics In The GBM Forums
• What’s Your Essential Software Kit For Tablet PCs and UMPCs?MindManager 7 To Be Released the end of May: (Forum thread started by Areyes)
• Mobile PC Partner News: Take the survey to help plan the future of Tablet PCs and What Would You Say to the Mobile PC Team?

And we spend some time picking Hugo’s brain about what he saw and didn’t see at CeBit Australia. Do you know about the PocketSurfer? Hugo’s got his hands on one.

• Download or listen to this GBM Podcast here (46.09mb, 50:20 minutes, mp3 format)
• Subscribe to our GBM Podcasts in iTunes 
• Subscribe via your favorite podcatcher at this link.

 

 All GottaBeMobile.com InkShows are sponsored by:

- Dennis Rice

Just came across this interview that was done during CES with Bill Gates by John Takahashi on his Tech Talk Blog, and noted with interest this excerpt relative to Tablet / UMPC's:

Q:  It seemed like there were a lot of interesting PC advances to talk about.
A:  There is a lot of meat on the core PC. I love ultra-mobile PCs. Even good old SPOT (Smart personal objects technology). It’s out there on the Garmin device. A new generation of phones. We’ve got weather. Devices from Morgan Scientific. We had a lot. How many Vista features did you hear me mention? I mentioned one. The demo hit about five. How many Office features did you hear me mention? Maybe the ribbon. The keynote is more fun for everybody involved if it’s done by 8 o’clock. We had a lot we had to put in there. Sync we had to put in. The home server we had to put in. We looked hard. A lot of the things that we wanted to talk about didn’t make the cut. I wanted to talk about the momentum in Tablet PCs. It’s not mainstream yet but there are good things happening. Vista is the big milestone now in terms of hardware people are building. But I get to give a lot of speeches all year long.
Q:  Does the handwriting recognition learn this time around?
A: It harvests the documents on your machine. It looks at the search index. It looks to understand what words you looked at and re-weights them for you. That harvesting is the big, big advance.

Q: It doesn’t specifically recognize your handwriting? It doesn’t tailor itself to your handwriting?
A: Not in any significant way. There are a few things like number forms and left hand and right hand. You can teach it new symbols that aren’t in there. It’s not a complete redesign.

Q: Are you still lobbying for that?
A: Yes. The sky is the limit on how good we want to make that.

Nice to know that Tablet PC is still there is Bill's mind.

Go check out the whole interview, it is worth a read!

- Dennis Rice

 While cruising to a primary target at CES, Warner, Eddie, and I decided to stop by a booth for a company named Panavise that offered mounting solutions for multiple device types for automobiles.  I pulled out my trusty TabletKiosk eo i7210 Ultra-Mobile PC and started discussing what the possible mounting solutions were for it in my 2003 GMC Yukon.  During this discussion (more on that later as we work with Panavise on that solution), the gentleman I was talking with pulled out an UltraMobile PC I had not seen before (always a nice surprise!).  Now it was not a totally new machine, it is the same basic OEM'd model that the TabletKiosk V series were based upon manufactured by PaceBook Japan.  However, each company that markets this device adds some of their own flavor to it.  The company that was marketing it was called Azentek, which we had not heard of, but found they were actually exhibiting at CES, so after our conversation ended with Panavise, we headed out to find Azentek.

Once there, we met up with a gentleman named Dereck Prentice, who showed us in this interview not only the model we had discovered (Azentek GB-810 Scout, retail $899), but also a new OEM'd rugged Ultra-Mobile PC product (targeted at $1,600, which is pretty aggressive for a ruggedized machine) they have under development that they are working on integrating into their automotive line of products.  They use an application called iMobile for adding all sorts of computing functions to your car.  This new rugged model looks very interesting, and is not a form factor we had seen before from anyone, so we will keep an eye out for more info on that as it comes available.

They also have another product available for total in car permanent mounted computing called the Atlas CPC-1000 Series, check out the links below for full descriptions on this line of products.

It was a good find for us, we love to discover new players in this up and coming UMPC market, and Azentek looks to be making a good committment to the form factor.  Our thanks to Dereck for the time he spent with us on this.

• Watch the Azentek interview InkShow here
  (7:08 minutes, 39mb, Windows Media streaming or direct download)

• Get more info on Azentek's products here

• Check out Panavise and their mounting solutions here

All GottaBeMobile.com InkShows are sponsored by:

- Dennis Rice

Our friend John Hill at Allegiance Technology Partners has started a new series of reports on Tablet PC usage he is calling, "True Tablet Heroes".  These reports are intended to show real use of Tablet PC's in actual working situations.

In this first segment, they are following a local fire marshal who has been using a tablet PC for 3 years to do inspections and fire investigations.  It shows hm going to do an actual fire inspection using his Motion Tablet PC.

It is great to see people using these in ways that are not just normal computing tasks which tends to define us in the enthusiast market.  This is an on the job story using tablet, an aircard, web forms, etc.  Go check it out!

We'll keep following these videos!

- Warner Crocker

Dennis Rice and I had the great pleasure to sit down recently and talk to Tablet PC developer Ed Holloway for an interview. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Ed Holloway is quite active on a number of fronts when it comes to developing ink applications. As the co-founder and CTO for Field2Base he is instrumental in the development of that forms application as well as the new Forms2Base application that was recently released.

Ed is also the man behind the Ink Blog Plug-in for Windows Live Writer and the new Ink Search Tool (which just went into Beta 2.) Take a few minutes and check out our interview with Ed about Field2Base and his other inking exploits.

 

• Watch the video (17:05 minutes, 92.7mb, Windows Media streaming or direct download).
• Check out the Ink Blog Plug-in for Windows Live Writer
• Check out the Beta for the Ink Search Tool
• Check out Field2Base and Forms2Base 
• Enjoy!

All GottaBeMobile.com InkShows are sponsored by:

 

- Rob Bushway

If you have been following Tablet PCs for any length of time, you have surely heard of Agilix. Agilix was an early stand-out in the Tablet PC space with their GoBinder application, development on FranklinCovey's Plan Plus for Windows XP, and their Infinotes SDK. If you know what you are looking for, you will see the Infinotes SDK being used in a lot of applications today.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Mark Calkins, Vice President of Marketing for Agilix, about where they are headed and the future of GoBinder, their popular notetaking application for the Tablet PC.

Rob Bushway: Mark, it has been 4 years since the launch of the Tablet PC platform. I remember early on that Agilix was leading the way in the development of Tablet PC applications, with Tablet Planner, GoBinder, and InfiNotes. It seemed to many folks in the tablet pc space that Agilix was the poster child for what we all hoped lay ahead for Tablet PC software.  Talk to me a little bit about the start-up of Agilix and those first couple of years.

Mark Calkins: I wasn’t here the first few years, so I missed that phase. But the team talks about it quite often. The early Agilix team created some amazing solutions for FranklinCovey and ones that we sold. We banked a lot on the Tablet PC market, and unfortunately it didn’t take off like we had hoped. The company was even smaller then than it is now, and yet we achieved a lot. It was pretty exciting from what I understand. It helps to have an experienced team with a focus. The focus was clear and the products were delivered. Unfortunately, the market didn’t materialize as we all expected, so we had to branch out. That’s what took us to the education market in the first place.

Rob Bushway: With the release of GoBinder 2006 earlier this year, Agilix seemed to lose a lot of momentum with GoBinder, in my opinion due to a buggy release. We were all looking forward to module development, plug-ins, further enhancements to GoBinder, etc. I know there was a big rewrite to go to .net 2.0. What happened? Have things stabilized out?

Mark Calkins: Agilix was experimenting with a new architecture. First, we were moving to a new platform, the .NET Framework. We were hoping this would cut development time and costs, and allow us to leverage the work we had done with InfiNotes. Second, we were hoping to build a single platform that would allow us to support our work with FranklinCovey, our efforts in the higher education space as well as continue our efforts with GoBinder. Third, we were trying to build an open architecture, so others could extend what we were doing. On paper it made a lot of sense. The challenge was making it happen—we ran into a number of technical issues. It seemed that .NET was not ready for prime time, at least for shrink wrapped software. It was way too slow. And we found we were trying to do too much at the same time. And trying to do one platform didn’t appear to work. What worked well architecture wise for FranklinCovey did not work well for higher education. And we didn’t anticipate the time it would take to make the SDK a reality. So a combination of too many objectives with too few resources and some unfortunately architecture issues resulted in something that didn’t quite meet our expectations. We had to go back to the drawing board.

We decided we could not be all things to a lot of different people and markets. We saw our future as getting more into education and learning, so we made the decision to focus there. We decided to learn from our mistakes and ended up re-architecting a whole new product, called GoCourse. This product became the basis for second version of Blackboard Backpack, and a few other projects we have done  for Thomson and Early College. The results were fantastic. The platform really delivers. It runs on .NET 2.0, it’s amazingly fast and is very customizable, allowing us to support a variety of education-oriented solutions.

Rob Bushway: I’m sure you’ve felt the pressure, on many fronts, from Microsoft and OneNote 2007. What does that mean for the future of GoBinder and your focus on Tablet PC development? Are we going to see a GoBinder 2007 release?

Mark Calkins: There’s no question that Microsoft cannot be ignored, even in the Tablet PC space. While I doubt OneNote 2003 met Microsoft’s expectations, the product does have some great capabilities. And what we’ve seen from OneNote 2007 shows Microsoft is definitely committed to this space. We sort of figured we’d never be able to take Microsoft head on, and that’s another reason we decided to go over to education and learning markets with some unique capabilities. Sure, OneNote is widely distributed in colleges, but it doesn’t do anything like what Blackboard Backpack or Early College EPIC do. And where we are heading will take us further from what OneNote does. The education and learning markets have great potential and we like the direction it is going.

We definitely won’t abandon the Tablet PC. It’s too easy for us to leverage our InfiNotes work. And the Tablet PC is a great product for higher education. But I doubt we’ll spend much time in the general purpose Tablet PC market in the future. FranklinCovey still delivers their solutions, which we will continue to support. Both make the Tablet PC a natural for us to continue to support going forward.

I’m not sure we will do a GoBinder 2007 that would be a natural follow on to GoBinder 2006. We want to stick with the GoCourse platform and there are a number of things we dropped out of the previous architecture to make it faster and more robust. These were features that were hard to maintain and little demand in the higher education market. And we won’t be supporting the SDK any longer—we just don’t have enough resources (technically, it never made it out of beta test). If and when we come out with GoBinder 2007, it will have a definite education, training and learning focus, along with Tablet PC support. Many of the features will be similar to GoBinder 2006’s, but quite a bit will change. Some features will be gone.

Rob Bushway: Being heavily focused on the education market, what has been your experience with the Tablet PC roll-out in the education sector? Are you seeing many deployments or are they mostly laptop based? In your opinion, is  it trending up or down?

Mark Calkins: The Tablet PC has a lot of potential in education, especially higher education and K-12. It is definitely making progress, but unfortunately not fast enough. Many implementations are still laptop based. There are some great exceptions, and we hope they continue. Quite often, when we demonstrate Blackboard Backpack  and show the Tablet PC features it supports, people are still pretty blown away.

Rob Bushway: Where is Agilix focused right now? Who is Agilix’s customer?

Mark Calkins: Agilix is focused on one major effort: building private-label versions of our GoCourse application platform for ISVs and SIs in education and in learning. We started in higher education, and are now moving to government and corporate markets. We are getting a lot of traction, and that is encouraging. There is a HUGE need for what we are doing in serving the department of defense. Everyone who has seen our solution is completely amazed by what we are doing. We think there is the same potential in the corporate market as well. And some of our work is taking us outside the U.S, such as China.

At the same time, we are still looking at a solution we can deliver ourselves. We are working on a new plan that is quite different from anything we’ve done. Still focused on learning, but moving out in a new direction, leveraging Web 2.0 trends. It’s still in prototype stage, but we’re pretty excited about it. We think it has a good chance of being a delivered solution in the future, although only time will tell at this point.

We really like the whole education, training and learning space. So that’s the focus. Primarily selling to vendors, like Blackboard, Early College and Thomson. But with plans to do some direct to users, but very unlike what we’ve done in the past.

Rob Bushway: Talk to me about your software team. I met several of them years ago when they used to work for Folio Corporation; and really enjoyed getting to know Bernd and Jeff at  various forums and conferences. You guys have managed to hold on to a great set of engineers.

Mark Calkins: We have some incredibly talented developers at Agilix. I’ve been in high tech for 30 years, and haven’t worked with a team like this one. Every single developer is able to do what 3-5 people do in other companies, and a lot faster too. With our new direction, people are more excited at Agilix than we have been in a long time, since the early days of the company. There is a new energy here, and that has also helped to make these guys more committed and productive.

Rob Bushway: What advice would you give to the small ISV shop starting to develop and market mobile software?

Mark Calkins: That’s a good question. We have probably developed a couple double business plans to get to where we are now. What we started out doing is not what we’re doing now. I’m not sure we have all the answers but a few things seem clear. First, it’s great to get focused, but you need to be very flexible. If what you are working on isn’t working, don’t be afraid to make a change in direction. Second, take risks with new opportunities. You can’t succeed without taking risks, even if you make big mistakes. For example, Windows Vista looks like it has some pretty amazing opportunities with mobility, and from what we’ve heard from Microsoft, it doesn’t appear that many companies are fully leveraging some of the built-in mobility features yet. RSS and peer-to-peer networking could be very interesting aspects of Vista that have yet to be exploited, for example. Third, get connected. Probably one of the most amazing things about Agilix is how well connected the company is with Intel, Microsoft and other key players in our market. We are able to do things that many other companies much larger than we can do. For example, right now we are doing a joint marketing project with Intel that they are paying for that is hitting over 20,000 education executives with some very high touch marketing. We would have never got that without connections. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that our new platform, GoCourse, is optimized for Core Duo either.

Rob Bushway: Mark, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. I know our readers really appreciate the update on Agilix.

Mark Calkins: You’re welcome.

- Warner Crocker

Before you head out for the weekend load up your favorite podcatcher with this GottaBeMobile.com podcast for some great conversation about Tablet PCs and UMPCs. I sit down with the big GBM guy himself,  Dennis Rice, and we discuss Dennis’ recent adventures with the new TabletKiosk eo i7210 and his installation of Vista on his Toshiba M200. Dennis provides some great insight on both topics and much more. We probably both say a few things we shouldn’t that will upset our respective wives, and we take advantage of the fact that Rob is out of town to rib him a bit.

• Listen to the Audio Inkshow (direct download: 26:02, 29.8MB-MP3 format)
• Check out Dennis’ InkShow look at Ilium Software’s Inscribe data entry software.
• Check out Dennis’ Real Time walk through Inkshow of the TabletKiosk i7210
• Check out Dennis’ first looks at the TabletKiosk i7210 in this Inkshow.

And don’t forget you can now subscribe to GottaBeMobile Podcast Inkshows in iTunes. Here’s the link.

Thanks to Aubergine for the rocking intro music, Pursuit.

All GottaBeMobile.com InkShows are sponsored by:

- Rob Bushway

Tableteers love Inking. Blogging Tableteers love blogging about wanting more applications, both client and on the web, to Ink with. But one Tableteer hasn’t waited around, and has created his own system of Blogging in Ink. Mark “Sumocat” Sumimoto, The Father of Ink Blogging, not only is the most consistent Ink blogger in the Tabletscape, but he has spun of a small legion of Ink bloggers. Sumocat and his progeny continue to take pen to blog as they spread the gospel of Ink Blogging.

In this Audio InkShow, I sat down to talk with Sumocat about Ink Blogging, and his perspectives on Tablet PCs. We discuss his Ink blogging tool, Build 52, and also his Electrovaya Tablet PC, a Tablet PC that we don’t hear much about these days. So, if you’re interested in Ink Blogging or anything Tablet PC, sit back and give a listen to this chat with the Sumocat!

• Listen to the Audio Inkshow (direct download: 22:14, 25.4mb-MP3 format)
• Visit Sumocat’s Scribbles
• Visit Inkblogging.net 

 Thanks to Aubergine for the rocking intro music, Pursuit.

All GottaBeMobile.com InkShows are sponsored by: