For many, handwriting recognition is a thing of joy. If you are like me, one of the most ongoing and frustrating things in my life is my handwriting. It is horrible. Mix in some electrons and no wonder I get such mixed results with handwriting recognition. Wanting to do a better job, here are a few tips that I found that may help make an improvement.

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!

Just because we can, (and because Chad asked us to update his picture), we are re-running our Life With Ink feature on Chad Essley. We aim to please.

Chad Essley is an animator and cartoonist that I have followed for quite awhile. On his site Cartoonmonkey.com you can check out his work, as well as how he uses his Tablet PC to create his art. You can also check out a video of Chad working with his Tablet PC and Alias Sketchbook Pro by selecting the Alias Software link on his site.Not only is Chad a great artist who uses a Tablet PC, he is also quite a Tablet PC evangelist as well. When I asked Chad to contribute to GottaBeMobile’s Life With Ink series, it was of course a natural for him to tell his story with using a comic. And here it is. Enjoy!

Chad Essley is an animator and cartoonist that I have followed for quite awhile. On his site Cartoonmonkey.com you can check out his work, as well as how he uses his Tablet PC to create his art. You can also check out a video of Chad working with his Tablet PC and Alias Sketchbook Pro by selecting the Alias Software link on his site. Not only is Chad a great artist who uses a Tablet PC, he is also quite a Tablet PC evangelist as well. (Although, sometimes evangelists have difficulty getting the message across.) When I asked Chad to contribute to GottaBeMobile’s Life With Ink series, it was of course a natural for him to tell his story by creating a comic, in digital ink, of course. And here it is. Enjoy!

As a theatre artist I believe wholeheartedly that Tablet PCs offer a tremendous benefit to those in the performing arts. Hugh Sung lives that everyday as a musician. Take a look at Hugh’s musical Life With Ink.

It's funny to note how some of the greatest artistic endeavors can be hobbled by some of the most primitive obstacles. Take, for example, the paper bound music book. Classical musicians have been relying on plant pulp and ink to record, store, and transmit the greatest achievements of musical thought for hundreds of years. A testament to the longevity of the paper technology, to be certain, but perhaps also a reason why it is so difficult for musicians today to break free from its inherent limitations, such as physical bulk (a library of paper music can quickly take up an enormous amount of space and weight), physical storage ("i know i have that piece of music around here somewhere ..."), and - the bane of all performers - the dreaded page turn.

I'm a classical pianist on the faculty of The Curtis Institute of Music as one of its Resident Pianists, and as its Director of Student Recitals. Although i play solo recitals and concertos with various orchestras, my specialty is collaborative instrumental literature, which simply means that i accompany other musicians who play instruments like the violin, flute, trombone, and whatnot. In fact, it is precisely because of the nature of my work that i've been particularly frustrated with the limitations of paper medium. Collaborative pianists have to work with copious volumes of music on a daily basis - learning new literature, playing standard works that cover centuries of composers, rehearsing and performing with multiple musicians - all of which quickly adds up to musical information overload.

Despite the limitations of digital technology, I had been eying slate computers as a possible alternative to the limitations of paper music ever since Microsoft's old Windows CE operating system appeared on the stylish Vadem Clio C-1000, an early (circa 1999?) touchscreen pen-based pda with an innovative design that allowed it to convert from a traditional clamshell laptop to a slate with the display flipped over the keyboard and secured with two side arm hinges. Unfortunately, the hinges had bulbous protrusions that wouldn't allow the unit to stand securely in portrait mode, but my appetite was whetted!

Fast forward a number of years, and enter the Tablet PC, which has radically expanded my capabilities as a musician far beyond what i had initially expected. My first tablet pc was the Toshiba Portege M205-S810 convertible. I was really impressed with the image quality of my scanned music (i could see the wrinkles of the page, even the difference between pencil lead and printed notes!), the smoothness of the digital ink (feels like a Mont Blanc that never runs dry and is completely erasable), and the fact that i could fold the swivel the screen over the keyboard for a perfect portrait fit on the piano music rack. I was immediately sold on the concept! I've since upgraded several times to different models, finally settling on the pure slate design as my Tablet PC of choice. I currently perform all my rehearsals, lessons and concerts on my Fujitsu Stylistic ST5022D. For concerts, I use the extended battery to ensure power for a full 2-hour recital (the extended battery is capable of at least 4-5 hours at the brightest screen setting).

PDF Annotator has proven to be indispensible as my music reader of choice, enabling me to open and mark up music scores with digital ink in PDF formats (the most common type available from online vendors) and to "turn" pages quite speedily. Vendors such as CD Sheet Music and EveryNote.com have enabled me to quickly fill up my digital library with virtually every major classical music composition, from the complete piano works of Chopin and Beethoven, to all of the major sonatas and concertos for Violin, Flute, and a host of other orchestral instruments. A wonderful portable camera scanner device from Justice Vision Systems has enabled me to quickly scan in digital images of my paper library.

Finding a programmable footswitch to turn pages was more challenging, but i was able to come up with a variety of USB-based solutions, from the X-Keys (a 3-pedal system made by P.I. Engineering), to a single footswitch made by Delcom Engineering, to my current custom modification of a Griffin PowerMate Multimedia controller seated in a wooden cradle i made myself. Now, i'm able to perform any piece of music without disruption, as my hands no longer need to leave the keyboard to turn the virtual pages, and i don't have to count on a nervous page turner to leap up at the right moment!

It's hard to appreciate how the subtleties of this wonderful pen-based windows xp computer solve so many problems for the classical musician apart from the context of the issues I've raised above, but in this device I've solved my library, storage, annotation and page-turning issues, all in one fell swoop! As difficult as it is to explain to many of my tech-averse classical music colleagues about the incredible advantages the Tablet PC offers as a viable musical tool, I'm hoping to convince by example day in and day out from rehearsals, lessons, the concert stage, and more recently from the recording studio.

You can follow Hugh Sung’s musical and ink exploits here.

Christian Falch knows what it is like to be on the bleeding edge with Tablet PCs and mobile technology. Take a look at his Life With Ink in Norway.

-Christian Falch

My first encounter with mobile computing was back in 1998 when I got my first Palm Pilot. I was instantly hooked on using a pen to interface with the device, and quickly became an early believer and mobile computing evangelist, keeping track of my contacts, calendar events and even taking my meeting notes on my Palm.

After these first experiences with mobile technology, I got interested in finding ways to make use of these small computers in both my work-days and my private life, and that has lead me to spend the past 6 years with laptops, PDAs and Smartphones as my primary devices.

Working as a professional software developer, I’ve often felt that I’ve chosen a tough path to go by.  Being a heavy user of tools for software development like integrated development environments, web and database servers, running on small and underpowered laptops has often been a challenge. Since I’ve been running my own company for a long time (not any more), I’ve spent a lot of time working from remote places. I can’t count how many times I’ve been working from our cabin by the sea, connected using GSM, GPRS, EDGE or UMTS. I’ve had a ton of different cell phones, my last one is a Nokia 6680 which I’ve had for a long time even though I’m not especially satisfied with it, mainly because it’s a very slow device.

When I first read about Tablet PCs, I didn’t really catch the advantages of the concept. I thought it was for people with special work-related needs. After following the news and reading about other users’ experiences, I decided to take a closer look at the technology. I read all I could find about it, following Eric Mack’s blog in particular. When I finally decided to go for a Toshiba Tecra M4, I was confident that I’d made a great choice.

After receiving my Tablet PC, I quickly understood that becoming a YABHTU would be hard for a Norwegian. The computer had no support for Norwegian handwriting at all, even though the Tablet PC operating system was in Norwegian! I got used to changing the input language whenever I wanted to use ink, and realized that I had to live with performing those extra clicks with the pen, Some of the software utilities I read about on the net and hoped could be usable for me didn’t even work because they didn’t find a suitable recognizer for the current language.

Probably because of the above mentioned disadvantages, Tablet PCs haven’t become very popular here in Norway. Frankly, I haven’t met anyone using a Tablet PC here. On the other hand, since I always bring my Tablet PC to meetings, people pay a lot of interest when they see what I can do with my Tablet PC like taking notes and saving small drawings directly in the meeting. They’re always very impressed when I let them write something in Ink and then ask the Tablet PC to translate it to text.

My biggest issue with mobile devices has been power consumption. Stronger processors demands more power, and as some of you already know, I’ve been quite busy finding ways to make my computer use less power, which in turn produces less heat, and gives me longer battery-life.

Since I’m a developer, I’ve always spent some of my spare time creating small programs and utilities that solve day-to-day problems. I’ve uninstalled all the extra software (crap-ware as some say) on my Tablet PC, which means that my task-manager doesn’t show more than one or two processes written by Toshiba. By turning of the services I don’t need and by removing unwanted programs, I’ve reduced the list of running programs on my computer to approx. 50 before launching programs like my email client, web browser and development tools.

I’ve also replaced the Toshiba Power Management software with a little program that I wrote in Microsoft .Net. The software uses undocumented APIs from Toshiba to control the cooling method and brightness of the screen. I’m running this together with a program called Notebook Hardware Control that changes the speed scheme for the CPU and can control the voltage used to power the CPU. Together with a new battery that now occupies my slim-bay, I now have a computer that almost never gets too hot to work with, and that never runs out of power when working without my AC adapter. This is how my life with mobile computing should be!

I enjoy using my computer at work. But at the same time I think that the computer should be a tool in my private life, with the goal of making everyday life more effective by spending less time on activities like searching for information I know I have somewhere on my system or retyping letters or documents that are lost.

To solve these (remember my demands for long battery-life and cool computing), I need tools that are small and effective at what they do. I use Mozilla Thunderbird for my email, since it’s a great program that does what it is  good at very well, and has little or no problems with viruses like other email clients I’ve previously used. I use Google Desktop to index the data on my computer, and can recall almost any email conversation or instant messenger chat I’ve had within a few seconds performing a local Google search. This is great, since my email is where I store my relational data; data that defines me and my relationship with the people I have around me, that is!

To sort my digital pictures (which is starting to become a large library of images), I’ve created a small utility that merges the pictures with my calendar (which is still Outlook, mainly because of its integration possibilities and ease of programmability). The tool exposes all my pictures as a calendar that is viewable from within Outlook. In combination with this tool, I’ve also created a program that uses appointments and data from Outlook to sort images in folders and subfolders with names from the appointments I had when the pictures were taken. A simple backup routine is also part of my image library, so that all the pictures and their corresponding folders are copied to my media server (which is a small Linksys NSLU 2 together with a D-Link DSM 320) for viewing on our TV set.

To end this article on how mobile computing (and Ink in particular) integrates with my life, I’d like to show you a picture of me, my Tablet PC, and my desk (or what used to be my desk). In my office everyone has glass desks, and I’m officially the first one that has managed to break one of them. My Tablet PC survived without a scratch, and I spent the rest of the day cleaning up! Thanks for taking the time to read about me and my life in ink! You’re always welcome to follow my journey on my blog: RND() Thoughts.

Here’s a link to Christian’s Fan/Brightness Control Utililty

In this installment of Life With Ink, Jeff Singfiel gives us a unique and fascinating look into the life of a missionary working in Kosovo and how Tablet PC technology helps him serve others. You can visit Jeff at his blog, Missionary Geek.

– Jeff Singfiel

My experience with ink has probably been very similar to most readers of this blog, but my work environment is probably quite different.  I work for a faith-based organization in Kosovo, part of the former Yugoslavia.  In other words, I'm a missionary, and it's probably the most fun anyone could ever have.  On any given day I may go from visiting with a very poor family out in a small village to a board meeting of an international  organization, or from writing a Bible study for a small group of local people to writing a grant proposal worth tens of thousands of dollars.

On most days my Lenovo X41 Tablet PC has become my brain's expansion pack, to riff on Chris Pratley’s line about OneNote.   Maybe my Tablet PC isn't "essential" or "indispensable" but I sure get a lot more done having one and I'd never go back to a conventional laptop.  I say this even though I probably use my Tablet PC in slate mode only 15-20 percent of the time.  But the venerable Pareto principle holds true -- that twenty percent makes eighty percent of the difference.

The place I feel my Tablet PC really shines is during meetings.   First, with a Tablet PC there is no physical barrier between myself and another.  Look at the picture to the right taken during a recent team meeting with my colleague which illustrates the options for bringing information to meetings. On the right is my wife, laptop propped up on her lap, consulting a schedule for an upcoming group of visitors.  The laptop screen is clearly a barrier.  Another colleague sits to my right, sorting through her pile of papers, searching for something she can’t quite find.

To be honest, I set up this picture, but only to a point.  I did say, “Come sit by me because I need to take a picture for an article I’m writing.”   What I didn't set up was how my colleagues bring their reference material to meetings.  The difference is obvious; in one convenient, inconspicuous "tablet" I had all my budget figures, calendar, e-mail and project files.  When I need to reference something it’s always handy without thumbing through a pile of papers or turning my laptop into a personal privacy divider.  I’ve found all this to be true whether I’m in large meetings or small, or working in my native English language or my adopted Albanian one.

Recently I was at an important meeting for the founding of a new national organization.  The purpose of the meeting was to ratify the founding documents of the organization.  Since the organization is international in character these documents were distributed both in English and in Albanian, which is to be the official language of the organization.  In preparation for the meeting I printed both sets of documents to OneNote 2007 beta where I could view both languages side-by-side.  Not only did this make marking-up and editing the documents a breeze, but printing to OneNote 2007 also made both instantly searchable.  I can even search on the Albanian version of the document with no difficulty.

Another aspect of my work is to supervise renovations and reconstruction projects.  As with any project of this type it involves a lot of measuring, conferring with contractors, donors and team members.  The work is usually complicated both by the fact that there are few standard sizes or building codes to help along the way and that I’m not working in my mother-tongue .  Rooms are often not square.  Windows are often of different sizes, even within the same room.   It's been so helpful to walk into a project with a digital camera and begin to snap pictures.  Those pictures are downloaded to my Tablet PC where I can ink the various measurements right on the photos.  It has saved me a lot of time re-measuring or trying to explain which wall or window I was referring to in a conversation with a team mate or contractor.

On the home side my wife and I wrestle a little bit as foreigners with educational options for our four- and seven-year-old girls.  Both are in local schools, learning the Albanian language, culture and subject matter.  At the same time we are home-schooling our seven-year-old in the North American system.  She loves it when I open my Tablet PC to illustrate a math problem or sketch out something I'm trying to explain. Now that a lot of home-school curriculum is available as PDF files they are easy to use in either PDF Annotator or OneNote.  Occasionally scratching things out on the Tablet PC turns a sometimes grumpy seven-year-old into a giggling learner.

During my down time I enjoy cracking open a good book...generally a good story.  The problem is that there aren't many English bookstores in this part of the world.  I’ve read books on my Palm device for years and, while it’s great for fiction, it’s a pain for non-fiction where I want to underline, make notes and retain the marked up text for reference purposes.  The first non-fiction ebook I read on my Tablet PC was Scoble and Isreal’s Naked Conversations.  Rather than order the book from Amazon and wait two months for it to arrive, I just downloaded it and began reading, and did I ever mark that book up.  I took notes, highlighted, pasted portions into e-mail for my blogging friends...all without ever holding a paper copy in my hands.  

Much of what I’ve describe here can be done with a traditional laptop.  I don’t even use the tablet functionality in my X41 all-day long and some days not at all.  But most days there are these niche tasks that are best, and most enjoyably done with pen and ink.  I think most people who try a Tablet PC would agree, whether they’re working in a corporate boardroom or for a humanitarian organization in a small, war-torn corner of Europe.

Assuming that most of you have some type of computer, describe your set up. To help get you started, consider these questions: What kind of tablet pc / laptop do you have? Do you use multiple monitors? If you have a tablet pc, is it your primary computer? Are you finding a Tablet PC is best implemented as a companion device or as a primary computer, or both? Do you use a PDA / PDA Phone? Do you work in multiple locations and what kind of software do you use to faciliate your changing environments? What do you find challenging about your current setup and how could it be improved? What do you need that isn't out there yet?

We'd really love to hear from our readers on these issues. I believe the more we share about what is / isn't working in our experiences, we can help to bring about the necessary changes in technology and hardware to facilitate the best mobile experience possible. Lots of folks from Microsoft, OEMs, and ISVs read our site. The folks that need to hear about stuff like this will read what you have to say, and hopefully impact how the next versions of software are implemented and hardware is rolled out.

BTW: look for a new article on our Life With Ink series next Friday. Our contributor will offer a very unique view into his Life With Ink.

In our first installment of Life With Ink, Dana Bostick gives us a look into his Inking World. You can visit Dana at his blog or website, www.PrivateInspect.com

– Dana Bostick

I am a professional property inspector and as such, I need to use a computer of some sort all day.  Until about a year and a half ago, I used a conventional laptop / notebook type computer.  After about a year, my refurbished Compaq© laptop died and could not be fixed without a motherboard replacement.  Decision point!  My livelihood depends on using these things and I needed a reliable unit for field use.  I started searching for a replacement.  My ancient AcerLite® P-150 backup laptop machine just wasn’t cutting it.  My budget was a bit tight and a quick search of Pricegrabber© brought to light an NEC VersaLite® slate tablet for only $1200.  Now, this was intriguing!

I am somewhat of a “techie” and the idea of a slate tablet was something that looked ideal for my particular usage and something I should explore further.  I could switch to a tablet for about the same price as a replacement laptop. Carrying the tablet around with me and directly entering the data could save a lot of time. I bought it and switched to inking and never looked back.  No regrets!

 The NEC “proof of concept” proved the form factor was very usable for this niche “vertical” application.  I run a commercial software for doing home inspections called 3-D Inspections® www.3dinspections.com and the inking worked fine.  The software is not ‘ink aware” in that I can’t actually ink in the fields but being a Windows© program, it did accept the ink input and convert it to text via the tablet input panel (TIP)  In fact, it saved time.  I no longer had to take handwritten notes and then spend 20 minutes transcribing them to the program.  When I did inspections on larger properties where several inspectors were involved, I usually finished my section much sooner than the others that were using conventional, non-tablet computers. Since we print the reports on-site, I was able to clean up and print my report and move on to another inspection.  Time is money!

I have since upgraded to a Motion LE-1600® to handle a few issues I had with the NEC.  The battery life was only about 1-1/2 hours on the NEC and my typical inspection was 2 hours or more.  The NEC screen was totally useless in the sunlight as well.  The LE-1600 handled both these issues for me by providing 2 to 2-1/2 hours battery life with the standard battery.  I also carry an extra standard battery rather than go for the extended battery with it’s extra weight.  (BTW, I love that the Motion batteries have a built-in way to check the charge.  There is a little spot that you can press and a series of led’s light up indicating the level of the charge.) The ViewAnywhere® screen on the Motion was at least workable.  It was still not as bright as it is under indoor conditions but still usable outdoors.  I have become a strong advocate for the form factor.  I am the go-to guy in my group for computer issues and have convinced several of my associates to switch to tablets.  They hate it when I blow them away with the speed I achieve by using my tablet instead of their clunky laptops.  Some didn’t get it and bought convertible models.  What is the point if you still have to lug around a 4+ pound machine?  You can take some people to school and they will eat the books!

I have jumped into the Tablet PC arena with both feet.  I’m currently running the full Beta of MS Office© 2007 on both my desktop and the Motion tablet, including OneNote® 2007. (which I love)  Next trial is TEO.  The more “ink aware” a program is, the more likely I will run it.

I run the Motion LE in a docking station on my desk at home as a second computer on the network.  I live in a one bedroom duplex and have four computers running on the wired network and have a wireless access point as well.  I am a true GEEK!  But then, Geeks are cool nowdays.J

The inking ability has significantly changed the way I use computers.  It has also improved my handwriting.   People ask me “How long does it take to train it to recognize your writing?” (a throwback to the voice recognition programs I guess)  I usually laugh and say “It trains you to write cursive better”  The recognition is amazing!  I cannot complain about it’s accuracy.  Occasionally, I need to revert to the OSK to force the system to accept a word that is not in it’s dictionary.

Overall, it has been a very satisfying experience and I have absolutely no regrets that I made the switch.  I continue to push the envelope, always on the watch for something new that will make my work more efficient or just be more fun to play with.

Thanks for a great article, Dana. Enjoy that $50.00 Amazon Gift Certificate!  If you have a good "Life with Ink" story to tell, submit your 750-2000 word piece to info@gottabemobile.com.  If accepted, we will send you your choice of a Buy.com or Amazon gift certificate as well!

Last week I posted about a new feature series we are beginning on GottaBeMobile.com, called Life With Ink. The purpose of this series is to hear from you, the GottaBeMobile.com reader, on how the use of Tablet PCs, Tablet PC software, UMPCs, accessories, etc has impacted your business or life. Have you started using software in a new way that others would love to hear about?  How is life different now that you use a Tablet PC? Tell us your Day In The Life story. How do you integrate your Tablet PC with other technology in your home or business? You get the idea. Fresh, unique stories from the folks that matter – you!

Send us your story ( 750 – 1,000 words),  with at least one picture, to info@GottaBeMobile.com . We’ll review it and then contact you if we decide to publish it. Sorry, no guarantees. If we publish your story, we will send you an Amazon.com or Buy.com gift certificate worth $50.00.

So…start the brainstorming and get to Inking!

Next week, we will be launching a new feature series called “Life With Ink”. We will be featuring stories about real world use of tablet pcs, umpcs, how people really use tablet pc software, the impact the technology and software has had on your business and life, struggles you’ve had, expectation adjustments, etc.

The key to this features series will be you, the GottaBeMobile.com reader. See, these stories are going to come from you and they are going to be about you. We want you to tell us your story.

For example, we want to hear about how you utilize OneNote in a busines setting, how the use of forms software has impacted your bottomline, how the implementation of Tablet PCs changed your business or how it didn’t impact it at all, what the impact has been on your productivity, integration successes, a Day in the Life of your work, etc. We want pictures of you with your tablet, pictures of you and your associates with their tablet pcs, pictures of you at home using some software, videos, etc. You get the idea. Rich, real world stories of Life With Ink.

Be thinking about how you can contribute to this series, and we will let you know next week what we are going to do for you if you send us your story and we publish it. Our goal will be to publish a Real World story once a week, but that will all depend upon you sending them in.

Stay tuned for more details…