Bamboo Spark to the rescue

J'avais envisagé m'offrir une noteslate pour mon anniversaire. Mais même un an après la date de sortie annoncée dans l'appel à pré-commandes, il n'y a toujours pas de Noteslate disponible. Par contre, j'ai reçu la très sexy et un peu curieuse "bamboo spark". Une tablette graphique nomade et autonome, en somme.

I have a dream of an electronic device that would not hurt the eye. It would be as easy to use as a sketchpad. It might be crude, but it could capture drawn information as naturally as a keyword captures typed information.

I had hope that noteslate would match that dream. I had hope that staedler digital pen would fulfill that dream. I had hopes that hacking code for the cybook would make that dream close to reality. It didn't worked. This week-end, my family gave me a Bamboo Spark unit. Something that captures pen strokes, even when there is no computer around. You just write on plain paper with a modified rollerball pen. When close to an Androïd/iOS device, you can then swap pages that are in the device's memory.

From there on, you can send your notes to different data-sink applications on the phone/pad you have, though unfortunately, with my fairy's pad, twitter and blogger applications don't seem to work.

On trace, ça enregistre. On synchronisera avec un appareil Androïd (ou iOS pour les autres) plus tard. Les traits sont nets, bien plus précis et fiables qu'avec le décevant stylo numérique de chez Staedler, malgré la présence ici et là de "lignes fantômes" que je dois encore retoucher dans gimp. C'est aussi beaucoup plus propre qu'une photo de bloc-note et même que la plupart des scans.

 The result is clearly more appealing that whatever I come up with using a scanner or shooting a picture, but it is unfortunately not yet perfect. First, I cannot crop without downloading the file on a full-blown computer (or maybe I could do that in Androïd's Image Gallery ?). Second, the device introduce random "ghost strokes" that impact readability and better have to be deleted. It's a shame the "draw" feature of the androïd application can only paint white (or black) pixels over the captured strokes, and not delete a stroke as a vector object.

Pour les schémas du type "UML" et sans doute pas mal de croquis d'études, c'est assez chouette. Par contre, peu probable que je puisse m'en servir au bureau pour encoder directement les comptes-rendu de réunion: la reconnaissance d'écriture n'est présente ni dans l'application Android, ni dans l'appareil lui-même, mais uniquement sur les serveurs de chez Wacom. Pas sûr que le boss apprécierait que tout ce qui se dit en salle de réunion termine là... Et pour le contenu du blog, on repassera: la fonction n'est disponible que moyennant abonnement premium :(

If sketching UML documents works fairly well, there is no default handwriting recognition. For that, you have to upload to wacom's cloud and pay the premium subscription to their services. That means the device can't be used as a write-to-report short cut, unfortunately. Not if the meeting whas somewhat private, as any meeting at work would be:

Wacom may disclose all of Your Personal Data to service providers [for data processing, storage and transmission, and other form of support for the application] and to legal authorities [in case wacom believes this is required by law]. Wacom will not sell or disclose your personal data  to other third parties.

I thought I had found a windows application that would allow me to skip the need for a android device at hand (for use in the office, that is), but it is apparently for another device. I also find it strange that it leaks usage information through Google Analytics. The era of Micro Application is so far away ! (in any case, as mentioned in the Inkspace license contract, "You can withdraw your consent by opting-out the use of Google Analytics. The opt-out is available under /Settings/About/Google Analytics/ within the Inkspace App").