Writing
Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge is a book that tries to answer the question of how to adapt the traditional paper and pasteboard book to the digital age. How do you take what is essentially a static collection of words and turn it into something open ended and interactive? How do you give it a new digital dimension? Mr. La Farge's answer is to turn his novel about a content manager returning to his boyhood home in the Catskills into an experiment in hypertexting or, as he prefers to call it, "immersive" text. Read More
Computer styluses are certainly handy, but it can be kind of tricky when you're writing or drawing on a stylus pad, yet you can only see what you're doing up on the screen. The resulting scrawls often have ... shall we say, a child-like appeal. Writing on paper with ink is definitely easier, but how do you get what you've done into a computer? Scan it, page by page? Well, yes you could, but now - in the spirit of Livescribe's Pulse smartpen - you could also use E FUN's APEN A3. Read More
iA's Writer app for the iPad has been on my home screen since it launched, and it's one of the apps I bring up when people ask me what brings me to carry a giant iPod touch in my bag. In an age where it's not at all weird for someone who writes for a living to stare at two or more monitors displaying tweets from hundreds or thousands of Twitter users and RSS feeds from hundreds or thousands of websites/blogs in real time, iA Writer is an infinite number of steps in the opposite direction. The effect on my ability to craft words has been nothing short of ridiculous. Read More
Distraction-free writing with Writer for iPad app
Ahhh, the glamorous life of the professional writer. Spending untold hours alone in a room staring at a screen awaiting inspiration with no guarantees of attracting the interest of a publisher, let alone readers, after baring one’s soul on the page. Many successful writers will say, when in the grip of the Muse, they go into a kind of trance with thoughts flowing faster than they can be written down. But inspiration is a fickle thing and, once found, often difficult to hold onto. A new iPad app from Information Architects called Writer for iPad is designed to remove many of the distractions that can send inspiration packing and give writers a better chance of maintaining focus. Read More
December 16, 2008 A simple but new development of the humble pen might make life easier for almost one in six people on the planet – those who are left-handers. From birth, molly dookers are handicapped compared to right-handers because the world is configured for right-handed people. The perceived awkwardness of a leftie is just because they’re forced to use tools configured for a right hand preference. The pen is one of humankind’s most important tools, and regarded by many as even mightier than the sword, so this is an important development for a lot of people. The reshaped pen with S bend neck and ergonomic grip makes it easy for left-handers to immediately write comfortably without smudging. Read More
May 9, 2006 Pantech will demonstrate a finger writing recognition phone at the SVIAZ Expo Comm trade show in Moscow, Russia, this week. The PG-2800 GSM model’s keypad recognizes and processes the individual user’s writing of text messages. Consumers can either push individual keys or write letters with their fingers on the keypad when looking up words in the electronic dictionary or sending text messages. The ‘finger writing recognition’ avails faster, more convenient communication and is especially useful for inputting text in Russian and Chinese characters. Read More
The unusually-shaped Siemens mobile PenPhone concept is unique in the way it incorporates handwriting recognition. The PenPhone will let users write on anything and enter text in that form via the integrated handwriting recognition. Read More
