InfoWeek asks, "Can pen computing ever move beyond computer-industry curiosity and remake the way we talk to our machines?"
They then answer, "Well, hope springs eternal.
Literally. Of the 10 hours, dozen presentations, and hundreds of PowerPoint slides displayed during Microsoft's annual confab with financial analysts last month, the moment with the highest coolness quotient--a value Microsoft sometimes severely lacks--involved a spring. A Tablet PC user drew a spring holding a weight suspended from a ceiling, wrote a few equations, then, with the flick of an E-pen, set the freehand sketch bouncing in a manner dictated by the equations.
Microsoft has given the demo about a dozen times, and it apparently never fails to wow. This week, computer jocks from Brown University who developed the software, called MathPad2, will show off a newer version of their creation--funded by Microsoft, of course. MathPad2, which could be available later this year, can illustrate projectiles, charts, and other things that change as a function of time. Bouncing balls and colliding objects are next, say MathPad2's developer, Brown Ph.D. candidate Joe LaViola.
08-09-2004, 08:14 AM
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