Word: penned
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...love my keyboard. In Hong Kong, where I live, I do all of my work on it, typing in articles, letters, e-mail, memos, rEsumEs. For me, a pen, whether Mont Blanc or Bic, holds no more charm than a bullock-cart or a charcoal stove. And paper is for reading, packaging and folding into little planes. In my world, keyboard and trackball reign supreme. So the folks at Anoto AB have their work cut out for them if they're going to convince me that plain old writing is the best way to get on the Internet. This start...
...talking about just any pen and paper, of course. To both words, add this century's prefix of choice: digital. The pen "reads" what it writes on the special paper, then transmits this information as e-mail, fax or mobile-phone message. Why bother, I ask, when keyboards are already ubiquitous and so damn easy to use? "There's a reason people still use pen and paper," says Anoto's director of new concepts, Linus Wiebe, with only a hint of admonishment. "It's not because they are stupid or old-fashioned, but because pen and paper are the most...
...point. After all, I'm jotting down his words in my notebook, not keying them into a computer. And unlike reporters, many people need more than words to express themselves: architects, engineers, graphic designers, artists. Sure, you can "draw" on graphics tablets, but these are no real substitute for pen and paper. Then there's the two-thirds of the world that doesn't use the Roman alphabet. You can get keyboards in Chinese and Hindi, but speed is a problem if you have to hit several keys to make a single character. Writing is intuitive, natural...
...works. Printed on the digital paper are microscopic dots within a near-invisible grid of 2 mm by 2 mm squares. Each square is unique, and in the realm of mathematical possibility there are enough such squares to cover the surface of the United States - four times. The digital pen, or Chatpen, as Anoto has christened it, contains a tiny infrared camera that recognizes the patterns and essentially photographs, 100 times a second, the pen's interaction with the paper. In this way, it "reads" what's been written. The pen then processes and transmits this information, via a mobile...
...this one weighs no more than your average Mont Blanc and is about as long. But it's twice as thick: the infrared camera, which peeks out from under the nib of a basic ballpoint, seems to take up a lot of room. Most folks would find this pen too fat for comfortable writing. Wiebe assures me this is only a prototype, and the final product will be practically indistinguishable from an ordinary pen...