Stew Sutton, the Aerospace Corporation fellow who gave the presentation about Second Life that I blogged yesterday, has posted a comment so interesting that I'm making it a post of its own. Thanks, Stew!
Jessica, I enjoyed your replay of the material shared last week. Perhaps you should lose your notes more often if it produces such a good result. :-)
I am compelled to share what we did not get around to talking about last week that will have a profound impact on note taking. The "pen computer" is now coming of age. This is a wonderful device that works in combination with special paper (with a barely visible micro-dot pattern). The pen records the authors strokes on the paper and the traditional “ink” is put down on the paper just like with a regular (non-computer) pen. The combination is absolutely amazing. This technology is being licensed around the world by the inventing company Anoto (http://www.anoto.com/). The U.S. licensees are several.
Within the U.S., a couple of the digital pen providers that I found to be interesting are focused at two ends of the market. Leapfrog offers a product called the “Fly Fusion™” Pentop Computer (http://www.flyworld.com/whatis/index.html) aimed at the Junior High to High School market. I’ve had one for a month or so and my younger daughter (5th grade) really enjoys it. She is taking “digital notes” and often uses the built-in algebra programs to help he “check her homework answers.” Dad verified that it was a post-solve check. I have also been testing this technology and have several experiments in process.
At the college / business end of the market, there is a very interesting product being offered by a company called Livescribe (http://www.livescribe.com/platform/index.html). They are planning to start shipping their products in early 2008. Both Livescribe and Leapfrog are using the same base technology but their products are tuned for different applications.
The most compelling application (for us Knowledge Management types) is the idea of going back to paper for real knowledge capture. Our tools constrain the way we think and the manner in which we record our thoughts, ideas, and notes. Nothing is as unconstrained as a blank sheet of paper. And where structure is important, you can have “forms” that are printed on the paper to “coordinate” your note taking.
So Jessica, if you had one of these last week, your notes would have been posted directly to this blog from your paper notebook. See the example from the Livescribe sight to get a peek at the new face of blogging from “remote locations”… http://www.livescribe.com/sneakpeek/clip3.html
-Stew Sutton
