Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m writing my review on the RC800 scanner and trying to include as much data as possible, screenshots, and sample scans. It’ll be another week or two before it is ready, but I wanted to at least give you an update.
Geek.com has offered up a mini review of NuShield’s screen protectors for Tablet PCs. If you are in the market for one, check out the review.
…they will come
hmm….
The Age offers up a nice review of the TabletKiosk’s Sahara i215. Note: the prices in the review are Australian dollars.
Notebooks with fold-away keyboards seem to be the most popular tablet PC form, but slate-style tablets with the keyboard removed seem to offer more innovation.
The size of an A4 notepad and only 25 millimetres thick, TabletKiosk’s Sahara Slate PC i215 pen is getting closer to our futurist vision of a tablet PC. Weighing 1.5 kilograms, the Sahara packs a 1.5 GHz Pentium-M, 512 MB of RAM and a 60 GB HDD. It sports a 12.1-inch XGA display and a Wacom electro-magnetic pen that slots into the unit, but a touch-screen version is available.
Since meeting up with Steve Hoffman of ActiveInk Software during the Mobile Partners Brief several weeks ago, I’ve been playing with their forms based software on and off over the past couple of weeks. I’ll have a full review and a screencast coming up in a couple of weeks after I get a feel for how I would use the software in my day to day meanderings, but I wanted to tell you a little about what makes this company tick and why I think they will continue to be successful in the tablet pc space.
Before I do that, I want to fully disclose to you that Steve gave me an eval license of their software several weeks ago so that I could get a full taste of how it works, etc. I’m also evaluating this software for a client of mine that could have get some real-world benefit from it. I’ll be demoing it for them next week. I get a lot of eval software, some of it I write about, some of it I don’t. I never let that color my reviews. I’ll call things as I see them. That said, on with it…
Last week, I blogged about how Microsoft is relying too much on the TIP to solve inking interactions with the tablet and how it sends a bad message to the ISV market, not to mention their own internal product teams. Well, ActiveInk is a piece of software that helps with the user transparency experience.
First of all, it allows the user to very quickly create an ink-enabled form template directly from a Word file, Excel document, (name your source), or scanned image. Open the form template and start filling out forms (credit apps, patient file info, work orders, etc) – in ink without the TIP! then when you are done filling out the form, you can convert the ink to text or keep it as is. Use that same form template over and over. You can even tie those forms to a database or import the XML files directly into Excel and Access for common data collection purposes.
ActiveInk is a company that recognizes relying on the TIP to fill out forms (think PDF forms, Access forms, etc) is a bad move. They seized an opportunity and buck the trend in terms of ink-enabling software.
All of that said, there are some rough edges around the software that I’ve run into and communicated to Steve: their help system just plain stinks, several UI issues, and a few other weird bugs that I encountered. I’ll get more into that in my full review, but it leads to what I think will continue to make this company successful.
People like Steve Hoffman are running the company. Case in point: I shot off an email to Steve last night about some bugs I was finding. Early this morning (on a Saturday) I got a response with each item addressed. He then calls me to go over the issues more in detail. Later in the day, when he’s not able to duplicate my bug, we setup a GoToMeeting so that he can see exactly what is going on. All of this on a Saturday.
Now, I’m sure your reading this and saying: sure, you write this blog that gets a lot of exposure, you bet he’s going to follow up with you on a Saturday and give you all the attention you want. Sorry, but I’ve gotten to know Steve well enough over the past several years to know that this is how they run their company. If you are interested in their software or buy it – you will get a call from Steve and they will be there to help along every step of the way. That is the kind of differentiator that will make ISV’s like ActiveInk succeed. How I was treated this weekend is how they treat their customers. Bottom line.
There is another company like ActiveInk that understands customer support in the same way: Josh Einstein of Tablet Enhancements for Outlook. Ask anyone on www.TabletPCBuzz.com about Josh’s support follow through. Often times, he’ll email you within minutes after getting your support request.Why? Like Steve, Josh’s livlihood depends on you being a satisfed customer and they will go the extra mile to ensure that you are satisfied.
Josh’s TEO product is another fine example of seizing an opportunity to present the user with a TIP-less solution. I’m doing some testing with Josh on TEO 3.0 and it is going to rock your world. Look for something very special from me on TEO 3.0 in the next week or so. Come to think of it, look for something very cool and exciting from Dennis and I in the next week or so.
Well, I think you get my point here: ISV’s like ActiveInk Software and Josh Einstein are customer oriented and are providing solutions to meet some gaping holes. In addition, they understand customer service and go the extra mile. Check them out, download their trials, give them some feedback, buy their software if it fits your need.
Trying to figure what this “blogosphere” is about and can’t make sense of it all? Read Warner’s most excellent essay. I’ll take a Coke with that hot dog!
I’ve had a listing on Technorati for quite a while now and I have to say that I’m not that impressed with it.
Some rough numbers:
1) my stats say that I have 259 links from 54 sites. The problem with that number is that it has been the exact same for at least 3 months. I emailed technorati about it last week and have yet to receive a response.
2) I often post 2 – 3 times a day and ping technorati each time. However, when I click on the Recently Updated link, it’ll still show that my last update was 10 – 20 hours ago, even several hours or so after I pinged them. I posted some stuff last night and I still don’t show up on the list when someone types in Tablet PC on the search screen.
3) What is the deal with the authority tab? It is the default link when someone goes to a technorati keyword. What i’m finding is that anyone that includes a certain term in their technorati tags and has a very successful blog mainly concentrated on something else is listed as a high ranking authority on any subjec that they tag. Scoble, for example, hardly ever writes about tablet pcs, but is considered the #1 ranking authority on tablet pcs because he has a hugely successful blog and included the tablet pc technorati tag in his profile. Is Scoble the #1 authority on tablet pcs in the tablet pc blogosphere? I don’t think so.
I’m curious how many people actually use technorati and find it useful? Is it really relevant if the data is not updated and is so skewed? I know others have had issues with Technorati in the past – they seem to fix the problem (temporarily it seems) if you bring it to their attention, but then eventually you’ll either disappear again or become static.
Curious on your thoughts. If you don’t use Technorati, what is your most successful blog search tool?
Tracy Hooten has posted version 2.0 of her OneNote Planner Plug-in. Looks like a good template to include in your OneNote system. She has also posted a good video on how to use it.
If you are interested in helping Microsoft affect the future of mobile computing, you might be interested in joining the Microsoft Mobile PC Advisory Council. I’ve pasted the letter below that I received from Microsoft.
Your knowledge and feedback are vital to our success! Microsoft’s Mobile PC User Research team is building a panel of customers who use mobile computers such as Tablet PCs in order to better understand what is important to you. This is a unique opportunity to give feedback that will affect the future of mobile computing.
If you’re interested in participating in this panel, please click on the link below to see if you qualify and join today! If you are accepted into the Mobile PC Advisory Council, you will receive a $10 gift certificate that can be used at Amazon.com. The survey should take approximately 5 minutes to complete.
http://deploy.ztelligence.com/start/index.jsp?PIN=13869Q29VVQQK
Typically, we will send you six to twelve surveys per year. In appreciation of your time, at the completion of each survey, you’ll be entered in a sweepstakes to win cash awards.
Join our elite group and have a direct impact on the development of some of the world’s most popular software.
Sincerely,
the Microsoft Mobile PC User Research team
I want to chime in on what Marc Orchant is talking about on his blog regarding Outlook missing from the Home and Student Editions of Office 2007. Marc makes a very good case on how this is good move on the part of Microsoft, especially when you consider Vista’s much improved Windows Mail client.
Here is where I think Microsoft has messed up: part of the Out of Box experience with buying a tablet pc is inking an email and sending it to a friend. Outlook does a fairly good job with that and it raises the “wow” factor tremendously. Think about students as well – sending an email to a fellow student in ink – word gets around “ I gotta be able to do that”. Most folks who go buy to Best Buy and CompUSA to buy a Tablet PC will usually pick up the cheapest version of Office they can get by with: the Home / Student Edition. It will be the edition I buy for my clients who get home PCs and tablet PCs.
Considering that Microsoft is trying to increase the “lifestyle” usefulness of ultra mobile and tablet PCs, don’t you think that ink-enabling Windows Mail for Vista would have been a priority? Getting ink across basic OS apps is a must to increase the transparency and out of box experience for new tablet pc users. Instead, the user is faced with using the TIP to ink an email, or worse, the keyboard. The new tablet pc enthusiast immediately begins to think: inking just isn’t an integral part of using a computer yet. I can’t even ink an email. The wall immediately begins to go up.
I believe that Microsoft is making a huge mistake by relying too much on TIP input for basic OOB expeience: search, windows mail, etc. They also send a message to the ISVs – relying on the TIP is fine. Follow our lead. Relying on TIP input for your apps is wrong. Transparent computing begins with allowing ink to be an defacto input and handlng the recognition automatically without needing a separate interface or need to press another button.
If Microsoft isn’t going to include Outlook in their Home / Student Editions, they MUST ink enable Windows Mail. While Vista is a huge step forward in terms of personalization and tablet pc functionality, the most glaring miss here is Windows Mail, which will be the defacto means of communications with ones peers, especially for those who buy the Home / Student Edition of Office 2007. Including ink as part of that standard experience would do nothing but increase tablet pc awareness in huge ways.
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