Testing Ink Blogging Trying to get a few tools working with each other. Got Windows Live Writer set up for my blog but I want to get it to work with Windows Journal and Posterous. Let’s see if using the Send To Email plugin will work for posting to Posterous. Also grabbed the Ink blog plugin, Snipping Tool integration plugin, and Clipboard Live. I’m imagining copying the entire page from Journal into Live writer and then emailing to Posterous.

No love for UMPC inkers
I am writing on my old trusty Samsung Q1.
A year ago most tableteers wouldn’t even
consider this as a viable inking device.
I’ve gotten used to it and I hardly have
any vectoring issues with it even with
my palm resting on the screen. Now
I have the Fujitsu U810, which in my
case, has even a softer touchscreen. In
a nutshell, inking on the U810 is plain
horrible.
Looking down the line of future
UMPC’s such as the HP 2133, which
I consider a subnotebook, and other
Asus Eee PC clones, it appears there’s
a slim to none chance we will see a
viable UMPC inking device. Even MID’s
will pass and try to go with finger
touch interfaces to compete with the
iPhone/iPod touch.
So what’s left for people like me?
Hope OQO continues with including an
active digitizer? Hope future Nokia
Internet Tablets will still have a
touchscreen and include a stylus?
Oh well… I’ve all but given up on
seeing a UMPC with a 7″ screen
that has a dual-mode active/passive
digitizer.

I found out Inkseine was available a day early from Rob of gottabemobile.com so I went ahead and installed it.  So far it seems cool.  It works perfectly fine on the Fujitsu U810’s touchscreen.  I like the interface, but I’m not exactly sure what I’d use it for.  I’d still rather use Windows Journal for ink blog posts.  It’s fun to use so I suggest you try it out.

Bill ‘Taxman’ Miranda has been
eagerly awaiting the Mac Book Air.
He finally got one and has been
liking it so far.
His real-world battery tests have
resulted in better results than
most tests. He points out by
default, the power settings are
not set to ‘longer battery life’
mode.
For Sierra Wireless 875U
users.. it fits right into
the Air.
Congrats to the Taxman
on his brand new
‘Thin Air’.  

—–

Check out his MacBook Air coverage here.

—–

I’m trying out Ript in this post.  It’s fantastic.  Thanks Sumocat!

Live Inkblogs Demo
Using ManyCams and Utterz.

National Handwriting Day
Well, well. I found out from Sumocat (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2008/01/its-national-handwriting-day.html)via
GBM (http://www.gottabemobile.com/National+Handwriting+Day.aspx)it’s National Handwriting Day today.
This day was chosen using John Hancock’s
birthday which makes perfect sense.
GottaBeMobile has been posting a lot
about ink blogging lately. I’m not sure if
interest will blow up significantly, but
it would be nice to gain a few more
inkers.
-Rod
P.S. Going to try out
Build 52 (http://www.markandtanya.us/scribbles/Build52v2.html).

Another ink attempt on U810
Well I figure I better practice
inking on the Fujitsu U810 since
I’ll be stuck with this for a
while. It’s just not easy writing
on this super light touch screen
that’s super slick with a thin
stylus.
I really wanted to use this for
mobile/on-the-go inking since
I grabbed the domain name
‘mobileinker.com.’  I envisioned
myself using this while out of the
house and moblog my entries
on the fly.

Live Video Streaming
Justin.tv wasn’t there lifecasting.  We did get sporatic coverage from Robert Scoble using Mogulus and Qik.  Other than that, there wasn’t much effort to put out 24/7 live coverage. 

This is surprising since ‘lifecasting’ has been blowing up in the past year with ustream.tv, justin.tv, operator11.com, stickam.com, mogulus.com, and blogtv.com.  Are these sites now just being used for simple web cam chatting?  It would be great to see the cam get out of the house sometime.
For those who prefer to do live video streaming from your cell phone, there’s qik.com and comvu.com.  Both work amazingly well.  Qik is the new kid on the block and has an easy to use web 2.0′ish front end to make things easier for the end user.  At the moment, it currently only supports Nokia S60 based phones.  Comvu has been around the block for a while now and has the advantage of supporting both Symbian and Windows Mobile based phones.  If you have GPS in your phone or have a bluetooth GPS receiver paired, you can even have viewers track your location.  Unfortunutely, this is only supported with the IE browser.

Moblogging
James Kendrick of jkOnTheRun was moblogging with his HTC Advantage, but I wouldn’t call that live.  Moblogging is nothing new either so I’m also surprised more people didn’t do it.
I have been posting moblogs for some time now by taking photos with the iPhone and emailing flickr, which then updates my blog.  Lately, I’ve been micromoblogging by emailing photos to Utterz which then crossposts to twitter.
One of my favorite activities is inkmicromoblogging (!) by using Loren Heiny’s Ink Grams web app.  You ink a message staight from your web browser and have the image cross post to flickr and twitter.
Moblogging isn’t limited to photos either.  If you have a phone that can record video (Come on Apple, add video recording already!), you can email the video as an attachment to sites such as blip.tv.   Blip.tv will automatically convert your emailed video to the format of choice (Flash is the default) and you can set it up to autocrosspost the video to your blog with the embedded video in the post.

Our Stories
While waiting for the OLPC to
arrive, I’ve been messing with Sugar OS on VM Ware.
One of the interesting ‘Activities’ in
development is called Our Stories.
A joint project by UNICEF, OLPC, and
Google; it strives to allow anyone-
anywhere to share their stories with
the use of an OLPC. On the main
site, there’s a Google Maps mashup
with stories that have already been
posted.
So far, it appears the activity simply
records audio and archives it for now.
It’ll be interesting to hear stories
from around the world that will
enter the ‘cloud’ with the help of
an OLPC.

—–
Here’s their welcome message presented by Queen Rania of Jordan:

My First U810 Inkblog
I thought l should try ink
blogging at least one time on
the U810. It’s just very difficult.
First of all, there seems to be a
delay when you first make contact
with the screen. So you end up
writing the first word of the
sentence over.
Second, the screen is very light
touch. I’m training myself to
not place my palm on the screen
which isn’t difficult due to the
5.6" screen.
3rd, the screen is too smooth.
It’s like trying to write with a
pen on glass. It’s taking time
to get used to writing on
a smooth surface.
Last, the pen is too thin. Not
easy to get a grip on it.

Sitting At The Beach
At Manresa State Beach on one of
the benches. It’s almost sunset. I’m connected w/ the Novatel U727 sticking
out of the Q1. Working out nice.

Coffee Break
Chillin at Starbucks wishing I
didn’t have to swap SIM cards and
tether to get online.
I like sitting here w/ my Q1 on
my lap with its small footprint
and light weight. I keep looking
into 12″ convertibles though since
many have internal WWAN options now.
Not sure if I can get used to having a
big USB modern sticking out of my
UMPC either. At this moment,
a HTC shift would be nice, but
I’m using interpolated 1024×600 now
but the performance loss and fuzzy
screen is way annoying.
Maybe I should just hack my
Q1 w/ a EVDO card while I
continue deciding what to do.