Scarlet Umbrella|Adventures in Mobile Technology

While I disagree with the claim that ChemPad will replace ball-and-stick models (they’re way too much fun), ChemPad looks like a nice tool for your tablet to help with visualizing molecules from two-dimensional drawings. It allows you to rotate molecules to analyze them in 3D space. The program has handwriting recognition to allow you to draw the scructure, and has both ball-and-stick as well as space-filled modes of viewing.

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By now, most tablet PC enthusiasts have heard about Virginia Tech requiring incoming freshmen in the engineering program to purchase tablets. This requirement has been met with enthusiasm among us tablet PC aficionados but concern among the student body who wondered if the program would actually utilize the tablets enough to warrant the cost in purchasing a tablet.

The university I attend has a program with a major computer manufacturer to provide students with laptops at a discount. Students are strongly encouraged to purchase a laptop and laptops are supposed to be incorporated into every course. The problem with laptops is that they aren’t really optimized for student activities such as note-taking. It’s typical to see students lugging around textbooks, notebooks, and their laptops when I can’t help but think it would be better to encourage the implementation of tablets instead of laptops.

The problem that most students complain about is that it is difficult to integrate notebooks into the classroom and that they end up lugging around dead weight. It is difficult to integrate notebooks into a classroom. The typing gets distracting and the temptation for the student body to use the time for activities other than the lecture is there. Having taught some myself, I understand this concern. This is one of the main reasons I encourage universities that have technology programs to start suggesting the use of tablets instead of laptops. Tablets provide transparency. You are no longer creating a shield around yourself, everyone around you can see what you are doing. This helps alleviate some of the distraction aspect of laptops and encourage professors to be more willing to allow new technology into the classroom.

To provide more use for tablets for students, software needs to be provided for them or they need to be shown where they can get the software to improve the classroom experience. At the bare minimum, tablets should come with the Microsoft Education Pack
installed. The Education Pack comes with GoBinder Lite which is a simpler version of the more powerful GoBinder which among its features includes Blackboard integration so it can download syllabi, class schedules, etc.

This situation is frustrating to me as a tablet user. To be fair, my university does offer tablet PCs at a discount with a nice software package including Office and OneNote. However, this offering is not emphasized enough and it is not recommended to incoming students in the brochures they receive about the university’s technology program which I find bizarre.

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Since I’m stuck at home with a lovely case of bronchitis on a major U.S. holiday (Memorial Day), here are some interesting bits for today:

After scouring various fora, I have come to the conclusion that my hardware issue with my TC1000 is a somewhat common issue due to a loose connection between the power input and the motherboard. The best recommendation (from Tablet PC Buzz) I have found is to get a docking station which feeds power into the system from a different socket. The other solutions seem to be paying for another motherboard or soldering the thing myself.

James Kendrick has a hands-on video review of OneNote Mobile. I’ve been excited about OneNote Mobile since I have heard about it although since it was designed for smartphones it doesn’t have ink support. I’m a fan of the OneNote team so hopefully they will find a way to add this feature. Some features I am excited about are the ability to easily add pictures and record audio messages on the fly.

Also, most readers of my blog have probably figured out that I think that OneNote is the greatest thing since sliced bread so if you want to get on the OneNote bandwagon and have more limited funds, Alienware is offering OneNote for $79.98.

Wridea seems to be an interesting online project management software. The core component seems to be “ideas” which can be organized into categories and pages. Pages can collect related ideas with different categories. I’m currently having fun playing around with it.

Finally, online battleship. The best use of Ajax EVER!!!!!

tablet+pc, tablet, OneNote, Web+2.0, Ajax, productivity, games

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Warner Crocker is familiar, I am sure, to everyone in the tablet PC community.  For those of you not active tablet PC community, he is a Microsoft MVP, editor at the Tablet PC Buzz, and one of the kind people willing to help the rest of us get the most out of our tablets.  I was delighted to find out that he mentioned me on his personal blog, Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 2.  It is a treat for me as a blogger and also as a fellow Virginian (albeit one that has been misplaced further South due to graduate school). 

technorati tags: thanks, tablet+pc

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I came to the tablet PC environment from being a hardcore Mac person for several years.  I used (and still use) Entourage on my Mac as one of my primary inboxes.  One of the features I missed when going from using Entourage to Outlook was the Project Center.  Entourage tends to get knocked (unjustifiably) by hardcore Mac users when the folks at Microsoft have done a very nice job of putting together a piece of software that isn’t just an Outlook clone but also has some unique features of its own including the Project Center.  The Project Center is a nice way of organizing all documents associated with a project including emails, Word files, Excel documents, etc.  When going to Outlook, I missed a way of organizing all my project information. Since I work on long-term projects, keeping track of the tasks associated with each project is very important to me in terms of keeping organized. I could keep track of the documents by setting up a folder but I missed a way to keep track of my to-dos by project.  I thought of creating project categories but since I also keep each task in a category and organize my task bar by category, organizing my project tasks by category would have ended up messing up my task bar.  I found a nice hack on the David Allen GTD forums about organizing project tasks by treating projects as contacts.  I setup each project as a contact, and since Outlook can keep track of tasks associated with a contact, I now have a way of organizing my tasks by projects.

 From my understanding, Outlook 2007 is going to have some cool features for organizing projects so this hack may very well be obsolete in the future.  However, if you are going to stay with Outlook 2003 for a while, I have found this to be a nice way of organizing my projects.

technorati tags: GTD, Outlook, tablet+PC, hacks, Entourage

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 My eight-week challenge has come and gone.  In this series of posts, I would like to discuss what I’ve gained from the challenge in terms of how the tablet pc can be used as a tool to make working on personal and professional projects easier.  I acknowledge that everyone has unique circumstances but I think that the tablet PC is a versatile enough tool that most everyone can find a use for it in some aspect of their life.  In this first post, I will give an introduction into my work environment and the hardware (a Compaq TC1000) I used for the project. 

Read the rest of this entry »

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I’ve been reading a great blog, GottaBeMobile.com, for a while now and I’ve been meaning to give it a good mention in a post.  Rob Bushway and Dennis Rice have done a great job putting together a very informative blog.  Two of my favorite sections are their "InkShows" and the new "Hardware InkShows."  The InkShows section is filled with video overviews of some of my favorite pieces of software including PDF Annotator, TEO 3.0, OneNote, and many more.  Even though I am quite content with my Compaq TC1000, I have also enjoyed the Hardware InkShows which are indepth reviews of various Tablet PC models.  Imagine my delight when Scarlet Umbrella got a mention on GottaBeMobile.com today and embarassment because I hadn’t got around to mentioning  GottaBeMobile.com.  So go check GottaBeMobile.com out.  It’s a great site. 

technorati tags: software, hardware, tablet, blog

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I work in a lab and part of our weekly group meetings is the discussion of scientific papers.  Due to various reasons, my colleague giving the presentation was unable to send us a copy of the paper she was discussing until last night which meant I didn’t get the email until this morning.  Since I am in a lab, our "IT person" also has a full-time job as a grad student.  The rest of us try to help but with so many people using the computers, having a duel Mac-PC environment, and machines runnings both Windows NT and XP, the network often acts like it is possessed.  Needless to say, I couldn’t print the paper.   Luckily,  I had my tablet PC so I was able to use a neat program called PDF Annotator to markup the paper with highlights and notes from the pen (I am one of those people who needs to scribble notes on everything they read to fully comprehend it).  I wrote up an agenda of the points I wanted to discuss in the meeting using OneNote and a meeting stationary and I was able to have one tool to bring to the meeting instead of my agenda, notepad, and the paper (which is nice if the meeting is down three flights of stairs).  Very cool.

technorati tags: tablet+pc, tablet, productivity, software

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It’s official.  Gizmo Project has announced that Gizmo will come preinstalled on the Nokia 770.  Woot!  The Nokia 770 is looking really tempting especially now that it has been confirmed to have a microphone.  Gizmo Project has also announced support for Asterisk. 

technorati tags: Nokia770, Gizmo, VOIP, Asterisk

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Apple has just released the 13" MacBook which is both an update to the iBook and a replacement for the 12" Powerbook.  I really like the Core Duo processor, the included iSight, and the ability (finally!) to have an extended desktop.  I am concerned about the integrated graphics.  I still haven’t seen the benchmark that I would like to see:  how well it plays The Sims 2 (yes, I am a total Sims addict).  That will be the final decision for whether or not it will be my next laptop to replace my 12" Powerbook.

Nokia has announced support for Google Talk on its Nokia 770 internet tablet.  I have also read rumors that there is an upcoming Gizmo client as well so this is looking to be an alternative while I wait for UMPC prices to come down.

Netgear has given a few more details including pricing of its Skype Wi-Fi phone.  Amazon is offering for $249.99.

Nokia, Netgear, Skype, VOIP, Mac, Apple

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