Inkseine vs. Journal vs. OneNote

[Chris Paris]

OK, forgive an old, slow man. I am just not understanding what InkSeine does that is any different from OneNote, or a mashup of Journal/OneNote.

The official site isn't very clear either, one of those sites that assumes you understand the product before you've ever seen it.

Can someone walk me through what, exactly, InkSeine is, and how it's different from the other inking programs out there?

[segalsegal]

I've wondered the same thing after seeing the video at http://www.gottabemobile.com/GBMShor...tResearch.aspx. I use Journal instead of Sticky Notes and Ink Desktop, and I've never quite gotten the point of OneNote, at least for people who don't use ink as their central repository of information.

As far as I can tell InkSeine is primarily a "concept" program to show off motifs for other programmers to use. But if it loads fast it could be a good Journal replacement. If that is the use case for the concept program I'd call it something like "Journal on Steroids" instead of something that looks like someone dumped a bunch of pens into the river in Paris. (Though if they keep the original name it would be funny to get Paris Hilton to do some PR for the program).

[Steve S]

<<...As far as I can tell InkSeine is primarily a "concept" program to show off motifs for other programmers to use...>>

Mickey: I agree with your characterization. InkSeine is a research product as much as it is anything else (like a definitive application). Ken Hinckley, or one of his team,will hopefully weigh in on this discussion, but my perspective is that they are busy developing new and better ways of doing all things inking (or maybe pen).

In order to create a setting in which these things can be showcased, proto-apps like InkSeine are necessary, but being the forward-thinking folks that they are, even the proto-apps themselves may be innovative ... the sum of innovative parts, so to speak.

In talking to Ken, I don't get the impression that InkSeine will necessarily become a new, stand-alone Microsoft product. Rather, InkSeine components may be incorporated into a next-generation OneNote or, perhaps, that InkSeine and OneNote will be merged into a completely new application product.

It will be interesting to see what Ken says when he finds this discussion thread...

[sbtablet]

One thing that InkSeine does that Journal and OneNote do not, is integrated websearching with ink. And yes, it's a protoprogram. But REALLY cool.

S.

[FeralBoy]

From what I've seen, this research project representsa total rethinking of the pen interface--jettisoning the need for menus to get things done. In-program search integration means you don't have to switch programs as frequently, which is a total boon to small form-factor computers like UMPCs and tablets. The interface appears to totally get out of the user's way so you can be as creative as you wanna be.

I'm a huge fun of OneNote, huge I say, but OneNote wasn't designed from the ground up as a tablet app, so there's room for improvement in the ink/pen integraction. I'd love to see the love child of these two programs one day (:

And finally, whenever a program arrives on the scene where ink is the input mode of choice, I'm popping champagne corks. Couple that with a researcher who's down for the community, and you've got the perfect recipe for success.

For me, I see this as an adjunct to my OneNote use, not a replacement for most things I do. I don't currently use Journal, but I'm aware of its excellent ink usage andI suspect, for many, Inkseine may replace their use of Journal.

[KenHinckley]

Steve S. pointed me to this thread and asked if I'd chip in. Let me do so.

First, let me thank you all for raising the question and the interesting discussion. I welcome critiques of our project and inquisitive questions from doubters.

This is indeed a research effort. So really the main focus of the InkSeine project (and the reason Microsoft research exists) is to try and do things that have never been done before and thereby contribute new knowledge to science/technology.

My research agenda for a while now has been to innovate pen and inkinginterfaces for the Tablet PC and UMPC. To progress further withthat we needed to have a program that was useful enough for people to use it for real work. It's a little bit of OneNote, a little bit of Journal, and a little bit of whacky stuff you've never seen before.

My apologies that the InkSeine web site is not clearer and more well organized. Your critique of it is spot-on... I should probably spend some more time editing it and focusing it better. It's quite a good thing for Microsoft that I am not in the marketing department!

I did assemblea list of some of the interesting/unique features of InkSeine here. http://research.microsoft.com/users/.../features.html
If you don't see anything there that sounds interesting to you, then there is probably no reason to use InkSeine. The search features are the biggest "functionality" difference that we have over Journal or OneNote.There is nothing quite like our search features anywhere else, andthe search capabilityhas really been the main value-added feature that we have spent a lot of time developing.A lot of what InkSeine is about, though, is not having features/functionality that you can't find in other programs, but rather trying to present functionality in a way that really lets you keep your concentration on writing/sketching your ideas, with a minimum of attentional overhead from the user interface.

InkSeine certainly isn't a OneNote killer, or even close to that. It might be a Windows Journal killer though :-)A comment we often get about InkSeine is that people like it because it is fairly simple and "clean" or"uncluttered."OneNote has a lot of stuff on the screen by default - it probably takes up 30% of your screen real estate with rows of menus/icons, section and page titles, scroll bars, etc. - so by the time you are done there is not much of the screen left to write on. On a small-screen device that can be a real problem. InkSeine takesa "less is more" approach for the most part, and as much of the screen as possible is left for the single most important task: inking.

In terms of the interaction model InkSeine is much closer in some ways to Windows Journal than OneNote. After all, like InkSeine, Windows Journal is an ink-centric application that really exists to showcase some of the unique stuff on the tablet. So maybe "Journal on Steroids" would have been a better name for our project. But it can make the product groups' jobs a lot harder if some dude in research starts appropriating their product names. So I try not to dothat.

Re:the name "InkSeine" the 'seine' reference there is to seine fishing, not the Seine river. A seine is a fishing net. The lame pun there was that in order to use ink to fish information off of your hard drive or the web, you need an ink seine. There is a long tradition of sneaking stupid puns like this into the title of research systems. Steve S.'s executive summary ofInkSeine to me was "Great application. Awkward name."I couldn't be happier if he is absolutely correct on both of these points :-). Unfortunately for all of us, InkSeine sounded pretty good to me at about 2AM when I came up with it in the frenzy to produce our first demo of the system. Its main virtue is that, at the time I picked it, it returned zero search results from google.

And that, my friends, is darned hard to do with any random sequence of 8 characters these days!

Ken

PS: When people do try InkSeine, I welcome both positive comments, as well as complaints and negative experiences. Really, the most helpful feedback tends to be from people who tell you your software is a piece of crap - but also carefully explain why it didn't work for them. I hope to learn a lot about what is great, good, not-so-good, and really crappy about InkSeine. If we don't learn anything from the project, why do it in the first place?

[sbtablet]

What I love about the Inkseine concept is that it is what I have been begging for. A truly pencentric environment.

Even OneNote, much as I use and love it, is a keyboard app with ink capabilities added. Inkseine is a program designed from the ground up for the pen.

I've always thought that one reason tablet pcs haven't caught on as hoped is that there aren't enough applications that are really designed for the pen. (There were some, like OrangeGuava, that were developed by small start ups who couldn't hang on with only a small market share, but I digress.) Thus, the pen was an expensive extra that a lot of people figured they could do without.

Now, if we can get cost down, performance up, and some cool programs that don't work with the keyboard, people will find out what the excitement over a tablet computer is all about.

Sharon

[segalsegal]

When people do try InkSeine, I welcome both positive comments, as well as complaints and negative experiences. Really, the most helpful feedback tends to be from people who tell you your software is a piece of crap - but also carefully explain why
it didn't work for them. I hope to learn a lot about what is great, good, not-so-good, and really crappy about InkSeine. If we don't learn anything from the project, why do it in the first place?

I'm sure all of us are looking forward to trying InkSeine and we'll be there with constructive comments as well as free associations about the name.

Having grown up in a French-speaking country I'd never heard of seine fishing; the term, when written, would probably trigger too many snickers. But what is the pronunciation of seine? Matt Faulkner made it sound more like "seen" but a dictionary makes it seem more like "sane" (which opens up the possibility of ditching Paris Hilton and using "Crazy Eddie" to do the marketing).

[Steve S]

<<...But what is the pronunciation of seine?..>>

InkSeine like insane...

[KenHinckley]

I'll have to start another contest to come up with a better name for it!