Mobile Computing with the Tablet PC
By Bernie Day, VP Marketing, Leszynski Group

The concept of being able to work in a periodically connected world, move about while viewing and gathering information, reduce or eliminate unnecessary paperwork, all while improving efficiency and reducing overall operating costs, has been an elusive dream for quite some time. Many approaches have been tried and just as many have failed, but it took the advent of the revolutionary (if not evolutionary) Tablet PC to make this dream a reality.

It's the Tablet PC's form factor that allows for true mobile gathering of information while standing up and moving about. What is a Tablet PC? It's a full-fledged computer equipped with a special screen that you actually write directly upon with a special pen (or stylus). Virtually every aspect of this new device was engineered from the ground up to make it a truly integrated solution to the mobile computing environment. All in all, it has the same speed and capabilities of your desktop PC, only it has legs-yours! The Tablet PC is as mobile as you are.

Many are ready to adopt-they just need help overcoming the hurdles of complexity that Tablet PCs introduce. Yes, everyone wants to convert from paper to digital-it has been talked about for years. However, many companies are afraid of making the transition incorrectly, having to throw away what they have already developed, and of starting over again.

There are, however, some steps you can take to "get it right the first time":

1) Educate yourself and your team about what it means to "go mobile".
2) Study your workflows and determine what tasks are redundant, wasteful or inefficient.
3) Develop a migration roadmap on paper. Consult with experts.
4) Get buy-in from those who will use, engineer, and deploy what is built.
5) Build a pilot program.
6) Measure results.
7) Test, test, test.
8) Make modifications based upon your experiences with the pilot and testing.
9) Deploy your solution enterprise-wide.

When you carefully plan and custom-design your mobile strategy, you greatly improve the odds of ending up with a useable and efficient system that will stand the test of time. To learn more about mobile strategies for your work flows, attend a FREE seminar sponsored by Microsoft, Acer, ScanSoft and Leszynski Group. Call 1-866-644-7826, x219, or visit the Web page outlining the dates and locations of events coming to your city: http://www.tabletpctraining.com/evtMobileQ1.htm

About the Author:

Bernie Day is the VP of Marketing for Leszynski Group and helps clients understand and migrate toward a mobile strategy that integrates current workflows and modern technologies-paper to paperless. She offers educational seminars and workshops to end-users, software developers, and management teams. You can contact her by e-mail at: bernied@leszynski.com

"Ink on the web"

Buzz forum member MrDecav started this thread back in January. Basically the thread is about his idea to do a new web site with a twist. His web site would be done "completely in ink" using his tablet PC. His initial quick attempt can be seen here. Reactions to his efforts were interesting, and some good conversation sprung forth. A number of people liked the idea a lot, but others questioned the place of "ink" on the internet as a graphic design element. Interestingly enough, Spencer and I have been having a little of this same debate ourselves. Spencer would like to see some ink on the Buzz site somewhere besides just in members forum signatures, but not sure really how to incorporate it into a good clean web site design that is enhanced for viewing on a tablet pc. Here are some of the comments people had:

(ifly) "Good idea, I only use inking to create greeting cards and upload it to websites. Most of my friends saw and gave feedback that they loved it. People miss handwriting for many reasons."

(ipagrat) "Mrdecav uses these components to good effect, plus throws in a priceless dash of style. What he's up to is worthwhile for coolness sake alone. Time will tell how cool it seems later, when everyone else is copycatting."

I agree ifly! I have heard some interesting comments along these lines. Funny that we went to using a keyboard for computers for so many years, and now we are seeking to return to the handwritten message. The presence of someone's handwriting definitely adds something to the personalization of any message, long or short. I think we get hung up on the speed at which we can type, and forget the personal side of communications. If you only sent your significant other a typewritten Valentine message, I suspect you may be in the doghouse today (or at least not on their good side)! :

There were also a number of mentions for the new 1.7 SDK that will be out in the next few months (it is in aloha right now). This SDK version will have some ink controls that will be usable in a web page. Once that is released, you will start seeing more ink capable web sites! Spencer and I are experimenting now with a little bit of code (a sample provided by forum member ArinG at Microsoft) using the alpha 1.7 SDK in the form of an ink blog. Still a way to go, but it looks promising!

Attention was brought to a current Tablet PC web site tool "(PhilL) "With the advent of the Tablet PC, some folks down at UC Berkeley built an application called Denim that's designed to help build hand-drawn websites, albeit, again, mostly for prototyping purposes. It also allows developers to build a site based on a sketched information architecture. You can learn more about the project and download the software (free) at: http://guir.berkeley.edu/projects/denim/"

In a related thread on handwriting, there were some comments relative to the bandwidth and data storage requirements of using ink on the web, as well as some actual ink "posts" done with image inserts.

Some good debate on this topic. Check out the threads on this and post your comments, let us know what YOU think! Where (or if) ink should be used on the internet! Where would you like to see ink on the Buzz?

The time is almost up to enter our 6,500 member contest! I'll leave the thread open for entries through noon tomorrow (12:00 PST, Monday February 16th). Good luck! - http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9825