Announced: the iRex Reader DR1000

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Possibly even the ability to roughly convert scribbles to searchable text, so one could search notes (on a document or standalone) for specific content.

Coupling it with something like MS OneNote would give you that sort of functionality, since it has built in text searching of images and digink. You could probably come up with something to fill the searchability bill in OneNote as well.

The real key, as I see it, is being able to get the merged scribbles back onto a PC, and they seem to have that covered, based on what they've claimed their PC-side software will do.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Coupling it with something like MS OneNote would give you that sort of functionality, since it has built in text searching of images and digink. You could probably come up with something to fill the searchability bill in OneNote as well.

The real key, as I see it, is being able to get the merged scribbles back onto a PC, and they seem to have that covered, based on what they've claimed their PC-side software will do.

Well... I don't use a PC most of the time. I do have hw/ocr on my Mac, however. And I've been considering EverNote, which is available across platforms. But unless the layers of scribbles are passed over linked to, but not superimposed on the text document, it could be hard to recognize but still maintain the link with where the scribbles were put. OneNote might be able to find an annotation, but does it manage bibliographies?

[NatCh]

Dunno, I haven't tried to use OneNote for bibliographical purposes ... I haven't done a bibliography in ... wow, a long time ... at least twelve years, anyway. I don't think that it has any special tools for bibliography creation, but I haven't looked either.

I've heard of EverNote but I haven't played with it at all, about the time I got to looking at such apps a copy of OneNote fell into my lap on my work Tablet PC, and also on my wife's PC. Does EverNote not parse text out of digink then? OneNote will do that ... reasonably well. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's usually close enough to find stuff in a search.

The real strength of OneNote for my purposes is the ability to move things around and organize various pieces easily. I guess I see the DR line as an easier, more portable way to generate pages to be put in OneNote. I'll have to think quite a bit about whether that's worth it for the price it's looking like costing.

My wife's grading activities are a much easier sell on the notion, so I may get to try it out, or even just borrow her's when she's not using it, assuming that it does work out to look like a good deal for her, of course.

[nekokami]

From Evernote.com: "We run everything through our recognition technology, and then synchronize it across your devices. You can then organize and tag the notes, if you wish." I'm quite tempted. Maybe I'll get a chance to play with it this weekend.

If it works as well as the ad copy, it would be almost enough to talk me into an iPhone... but I can't afford one anyway.

[NatCh]

Hey, if it's open source, it's not like you have much to lose by playing with it!

[Studio717]

OT for inking: Circus Ponies' Notebook (just out with ver 3) does a pretty good job integrating with Apple's Ink app. CPN3 does a lot of other stuff, too. It's about as close to MS's OneNote as I've seen on a Mac.

One big plus is that a 'notebook' can be exported to html or a web site, so I imagine it would also be able to be on a 1000SW.

Edited to add: I use Evernote quite a bit, but not for the same things I use CPN for. If the 1000SW does have a browser with its wifi, Evernote would be even more useful to me.

[nekokami]

CPN looks quite interesting. (Too bad Apple still doesn't make a tablet!) If CPN could import selected snippets from the iLiad and take iLiad scribbles as input and do HWR on them, that would be extremely cool.

[bobnoxious]

As an academic I have been hoping for a larger-sized kindle for a long time. I have stacks and stacks of papers to read every week and adding annotations is important. However, probably more important is the ability to do this without having to sit at my desk. The iLiad provides this opportunity as long as papers can be easily moved on and off the device, with attached annotations.

However, another important aspect is the ability to efficiently find information among your literature. While the iLiad may provide a search function it still may not be up to the task. I can search for a keyword, but what happens if that keyword is in dozens of papers on the 25th page of a 100 page document. The refresh is terrible and you would spend ages trying to quickly find something.

As much as I love eink technology I think a giant iPhone like device or Fujitsu Stylistic running OS X is the right tool for academics. On my mac I can sort through hundreds of papers really quickly until I find that one I was looking for. It is certainly faster then the going through filing cabinets, or the inevitable stacks of papers on my desk with attached post-it notes.

If I am to buy an iLiad it will be just for the ability to read PDF files comfortably on my couch and not for archiving. But for the time being it is a little pricey just to serve that function, and am waiting to see how annotations are implemented.

- A note for the PhD students using a mac. I would recommend skim software for highlighting and annotating all of your PDFs. And I would recommend something like Papers or Yep to archive.