There may indeed be a boom, but I don't know if you can classify it as a resurgence. If ICQ became popular again, that would be a resurgence. One could view Apple's recent form as a resurgence. But from my point of view, you cannot call this a resurgence of ink. Inking, as far as I stand, didn't take off enough for this to be classified as a resurgence. It may very well be a boom and I'm always a fan of that, but a resurgence requires previous interest, and I'm not sure there was a widespread interest in ink previously. Even I, and I consider myself tech-savvy, only found out about inking about a year or two ago because I was channel surfing and came across a OneNote demonstration.

I hope you are right and that more inking options will be flooding the market. Capturx, Epos et. al, have offered some alternatives to on-tablet inking. I have used a tablet since they came out (Transnote, then a Motion 1200). The reason is simple-I want to take handwritten notes. Otherwise, I would just get a laptop.

As noted, I am definitely seeing a major resurgence in my niche field of ink blogging, and I take that as a sign of resurgence in interest in inking (as opposed to a resurgence in inking). As for why it's happening, I think it's just a natural progression of awareness. Awareness may be increasing incrementally, but it is displayed bursts of activity.

seems InkSeine is all over you guys .. drink-eat-sleep InkSeine ?

to me InkSeine is more of a pen-feature rich small app and unless it comes in a package like onenote, it will never be the mainstream app for my tablet. And the way MSR talks about it, onenote with inkseine is a dream.

Now to the original post (Resurgence)
ever wondered there is no real ink app for blogging.. all we have is the tweaks(sumocat's, live writer's not so slick plugin, upcoming vasanth's twitter).

- i do not want to pay for a third party app (blubeam's, annotator's, evernote's) after spending on already pricy tablet.
- i do not want to test research lab's betas to store my ever increasing data
- i do not want to work with almost broken-compromised-buggy-hacked-tweaked open source efforts.

having said this .. I appreciate MSR's effort whether we see it in onenote or not. Also all the free apps fr giving us some reasons to enjoy tablet experience.

The OS/tablet manufactures will and will have to lead in tablet apps.
and heres my $0.98 !

No, there's not.

I wish.
I wish there would be increased interest in inking. But I would have to answer your initial question as a sad "no." I've watched the tablet PC industry for 5 years now, subscribing to 7 RSS feeds from tablet PC related sites. Why? Because I'm waiting and hoping for the right product to be affordable (under $900 US) and available to assist in my mobile webcomics production. Namely I am looking for an affordable new slate active digitizer tablet PC that is not slow. As far as I know, one doesn't exist yet.

In the absence of such a device, I have gotten by with the inferior but cheaper passive touch screens on my old IPAQ pocket PC and now my pocket PC phone (Verizon 6700). Of course the tiny screen size has its limitations too, but I get by with drawing on them and have gone on to make the first comics created entirely on a mobile phone, called "telephomics."

That's all nice and fun, but to really let the pen run wild, I remain patient (barely) for the day when new active digitizer slate tablets become affordable. Until that time, I think "inking" will remain a fringe but fun activity for a tiny portion of consumers.

seems to me that there is little/no interest whatsoever and what your are really trying to do is make people think there is. A sort of 'Tickle Me Elmo' must-have tool for tablet users.

I've thought pretty hard about it. I can definitely see the value of Ink Seine, but of course I would like to have those feature integrated into OneNote. The ink application I would like to see is the OneNote notebook/tabs system with the interface, search, and screen real estate of Ink Seine. Perhaps they could implement a "note-taking" mode then a "note-review" mode for OneNote. The former displaying only the options needed to take notes, much like Ink Seine's UI, and freeing up much needed screen space. The latter could be the current interface. I'd like to see a better lasso; OneNote seems to "block" my notes weird and will miss strokes in the oddest places. Better integration into the Office system is another feature I want. Example: be able to export my handwritten notes, mainly math equations, to Word and have it span across multiple pages automatically..maybe I'm missing something..or even better yet, have word be able to read OneNote files natively since everything has to be in Word nowadays. I know you can save as word in OneNote, but have you ever tried to have math notes with specific formatting read by Word. It tends to move things around, and it takes forever to get it look just the way it did in OneNote. Of course, I am no expert; there maybe a way to do it. Anyway, there is my two cents. Oh, all ideas are currently undergoing the patent process. In other words, Patent Pending.

I hope more will pop up. It's obvious there won't be many ink blogs since there's not a whole lot of tablet pc users to begin with. Remove from that list those who won't deal with the whole process of ink blogging.
Then count out those who refuse to ink on touchscreen.
Finally take away all those who think their handwriting sucks.
You're left with a very small crowd.

I'm included in the last 2 excuses, but I'm playing around with it anyway.

I don't think there is. My bosses all see the value in being able to ink in OneNote but it doesn't justify the extra cost of a unit. Bearing in mind that we are an IBM/Lenovo-only house so it's not like they're cheap...

Not that it bothers me, I still love it.

Boy, what a lot of gloom and doom in the comments section! I think just the fact that HP has come out with a computer with an active/passive digitizer starting at $1200 shows that they are betting on inking as something that will be in demand, especially among students, who are the obvious target for the TX 2000, with its multi-media emphasis. I'm still waiting for the 7" form factor with an active digitizer or capacitive touch. I think we'll see it soon. Ink capability is very important to creative work, notetaking, use in meetings, etc. For the TX 2000, we have a dual digitizer that starts exactly where the passive digitizer started on last year's model. That's huge!

I'm optimistic about inking.

I agree that software is pushing the ink resurgence, but I think the active digitizer getting more attention from the main stream is what will make tablets popular among the average user. I've only returned to the world of tablets. I started a long time ago, but then handwriting recognition was terrible, the inking was terrible, and battery life was terrible. I just couldn't use it as effectively as I should have been able to. Same can be said for voice recognition. I believe if more people just experienced the active digitizer with a good handwriting recognition software, the tablet PC's popularity will skyrocket like the Ipod's. I just don't think the average user thinks there is a viable inking solution for their mobile computer needs. When you go out shopping for a laptop, Americans still think of non-Tablet PCs.

my handwriting sucks, because i'm only using a umpc without an active digitizer. because of this, i'm,now targetting to buy a tablet pc... so i can inkblog better :)