There were quite a few links to this accessory from Navisis this past weekend which can provide pen input for just about any display. Here’s a link to one article that provides several photos of the product in action. The Navisis website has several videos too, including one that shows ink in a community website.
What’s cool to see going on here is not just the pen device, but rather how Navisis is exploiting the pen and ink capabilities that are built into most versions of Vista now. A Tablet PC isn’t the only way to leverage ink in Windows anymore. Anyone with one of the main retail version of Windows Vista–other than Home Basic–will have ink capabilities available to them if they have an appropriate input device. An external Wacom digitizer is one possibility. Navisis is providing another.
But the possibilities go further than this. I’m thinking in terms of SmartBoards and pen and projector systems. With Vista and its built-in handwriting recognition, handwriting input panel, and the like, there’s now a possibility that Windows’ handwriting and ink technologies will see an adoption that the Tablet PCs in themselves could not achieve.
Developers and engineers now have access to ink technologies in Vista that they had to create themselves–which is no small chore. Vista changes all that.
I look forward to seeing products, like those from Navisis, that challenge out thinking of what and where “Tablet” ink should be.