Digiscribble: Answer to my analogue prayers?
Today I walked into a well-known PC store with the intention of buying a PDF writer. I left with what I now trust will be the final answer to my analogue prayers - a Digiscribble.
A "mobile, digital notetaker" using a simple memory receiver unit and "PC pen" transmitter, the Digiscribble claims to convert handwritten notes to typed text for direct processing into Windows XP and Vista. It recognises 15 languages and gets to know your handwriting 'quirks'. Clever stuff.
The effervescent in-store salesman exalted that even his scribble was legible to the receiver. Good. Because years of childhood schooling in pen poise and neat, cursive writing has been obliterated by incessant keyboard use to the extent that even holding a pen now for more than 5 minutes gives me severe finger cramps. Any hand-writing analyst could be forgiven for having serious, (and - I must point out - unjustifiable), concerns for my mental wellbeing.
After a visceral journalistic grounding that has taught me never to leave home without notebook and pencil, I am expecting much of its promised "handwriting revolution". I don't always schlep a laptop around and, in fact, often find that I become more inspired by observations and ideas when I'm out of a PC environment.
Justifying a notepad by the bedside table, ideas often have a Damascus-moment urgency about them and need to be captured there and then, wherever they grab you. This unfortunate urge to scribble last week caused me to spontaneously camp on the floor of WH Smith as if staging a lone, sit-in protest against the amount of shelf-space given over to pointless teenage celebrity biographies.
If this device can decipher my scrawl that even I find barely legible when faced with the tedious, wasteful task of transcribing it to PC; if it really can detect the 'Umlauts' when I'm penning a note to my wonderful German associate, Uschi, then I shall be proclaiming not only a handwriting revolution, but a veritable miracle!
A "mobile, digital notetaker" using a simple memory receiver unit and "PC pen" transmitter, the Digiscribble claims to convert handwritten notes to typed text for direct processing into Windows XP and Vista. It recognises 15 languages and gets to know your handwriting 'quirks'. Clever stuff.
The effervescent in-store salesman exalted that even his scribble was legible to the receiver. Good. Because years of childhood schooling in pen poise and neat, cursive writing has been obliterated by incessant keyboard use to the extent that even holding a pen now for more than 5 minutes gives me severe finger cramps. Any hand-writing analyst could be forgiven for having serious, (and - I must point out - unjustifiable), concerns for my mental wellbeing.
After a visceral journalistic grounding that has taught me never to leave home without notebook and pencil, I am expecting much of its promised "handwriting revolution". I don't always schlep a laptop around and, in fact, often find that I become more inspired by observations and ideas when I'm out of a PC environment.
Justifying a notepad by the bedside table, ideas often have a Damascus-moment urgency about them and need to be captured there and then, wherever they grab you. This unfortunate urge to scribble last week caused me to spontaneously camp on the floor of WH Smith as if staging a lone, sit-in protest against the amount of shelf-space given over to pointless teenage celebrity biographies.
If this device can decipher my scrawl that even I find barely legible when faced with the tedious, wasteful task of transcribing it to PC; if it really can detect the 'Umlauts' when I'm penning a note to my wonderful German associate, Uschi, then I shall be proclaiming not only a handwriting revolution, but a veritable miracle!
Labels: apcom, digiscribble, handwriting recognition
posted by Joanna Lund
at
1:39 PM
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5 Comments :
I'd love to know how you like it after a few days. Sounds interesting, and like you, my scribble is pretty bad to read. I also find my handwritten notes pretty terse these days. Will it help translate my incomprehensible thoughts into rational wonderful records as well????
Will it help translate my incomprehensible notes into wonderful, mature English when it saves it to my hard drive????
I shall certainly keep you posted in the coming weeks to let you know how I get on! I think translating thoughts into wonderful prose is for the next sci-fi generation. Lucky things! Great thought though!!!
So how have you found it. I am torn between the Digiscribble and NewLink Note Taker
Apologies for delay. I have been wrestling with re-installation of the Digiscribble since I moved everything across from XP and Microsoft 2003 across to Vista and 2007!! I now have an expert wrestling with it too(!!), so have not yet been able to use it in earnest. The immediate issue I have is with the pen design itself. This is where, I suspect, the Apcom science boffins dominated the marketing teams. It has a cumbersome shell and is far from a decent ergonomic fit into my fingers at least. This rather defeats the whole objective of the concept as its thick barrel end and rigidly centred, protruding sensory 'nib' forces a slow, unnaturally vertical and cramped style of writing which makes the whole initial handwriting effort rather burdensome. This, before you even get to the magic of the application itself! Here, there should also much clearer guidance for users in terms of emphasis on the first step one should take, above all, to complete the handwriting recognition exercise so you can get the most from processing accuracy. A further end-user marketing oversight. I wasted too much time launching straight into handwriting and finding myself rather perplexed, frustrated - albeit sometimes amused!! - by the processed outcome which would phonetically have allowed for fine mimicry of Inspector Clouseau!
So, until my PC technology upgrade frees me to be able to proffer any further insight, I'm afraid all I can suggest right now is to take a look at the fundamentals for comparison. The pen unit itself and guidance on first 'training' the unit to your own personal handwriting style!
And with that principle of looking at the fundamentals in Life, you have just inspired my next blog! Thank you Charliecassam!
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