Jack Kapica of the Globe & Mail has just done a mini roundup of the digital pens currently available. The first in the roundup is actually the PaperIQ For BlackBerry pen that lets you write on a specific notebook and your handwriting will automatically be inputed to your BlackBerry over Bluetooth.
I think this is pretty innovative stuff so I thought I would share it with you. The process to get started with the PaperIQ is a bit difficult to remember but Kapica seems to have gotten the hang of it. Sadly you have to use a specific notebook for your handwriting to be recognized so you cant just use any cheap notepad.
The writing process as explained by Kapica:
The user is required to initialize a new notebook by using the pen to tap a certain box printed on the front of the notebook, and each page of the notebook by giving the document a title, a subject line, and the letters BT in a column on the right or B in a special “action” box at the bottom of the page.
To transmit the page contents — drawings, doodles and cursive text — one pokes a box at the end of the notebook. The pen then transmits the contents to the Blackberry, which will accept the notes as text files, using optical character recognition to translate the writing into readable text. The pen will then vibrate three times to signal the end of the process.
Your handwriting is then transcripted onto your BlackBerry which is quite cool. If you have $299 in cold hard cash to throw down on such a gadget you can check out the details on PaperIQ’s website. They also have an enterprise solution which may be interesting for companies that require signatures to be taken on the road.
