The Codex Project: Multiple Tablet PC Displays

Our good friend is at it again. Microsoft Research’s Ken Hinckley has unveiled a prototype project he’s working on called The Codex that brings two OQO Model 02’s together to take advantage of a multiple tablet pc configuration.

Ken showed off this prototype to Warner, Craig, and me back in April and we were blown away with the possibilities. Can you see the potential here? Head over to Ken’s blog and check out how the Codex works.

The Codex has two screens, it’s designed to be used that way, and you won’t find any half-apologetic demos that try to mash them back together into one big screen. Instead, it’s all about the intelligent partitioning of tasks and interface elements across the screens.

Above is one example where I’m working on a blog post that I’ve had planned for a while. On the left I have a whole bunch of cool photos that I found tagged with moleskine on Flickr. I was browsing through these as inspiration for our InkSeine digital note-taking software. On the right I’m organizing bits and pieces from these photos along various themes.  So I just take a snapshot from the collection on the left screen and it appears in my notes on the right screen, where I can arrange it and mark it up as I see fit. I can scroll back and forth on the left screen to find a photo that meets my current needs, while the page that I am authoring on the right screen always remains visible. The two screens are invaluable because I always have the reference material in the context of what I am working on, instead of feverishly flipping between them on a single screen.

I’m further along with authoring my blog post now, and I have a bunch of material floating around in my notes. I create a page that is a Table of Contents, with links to several themes that I’ve identified in my Flickr moleskine investigations. If I open a link, such as my Creative Collage page, it opens on the opposite page. I don’t even need a "back" command to return to where I was – I still have my navigational structure on the left, side-by-side with my content page on the right.