Friday 26 March 2010

Widgetbox

Widgetbox looks like a lot of fun. I spent 5mins over lunch having a look today and managed to come away with a rather basic mobile site: http://m.wbx.me/royston-vassey. Still pretty good though and I will be playing with this again soon.

Friday 12 March 2010

Possibly one of the best gadgets ever? (Part 2)

So, as promosed I am reporting back on the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen (see Part 1 for the rather short and not very helpfull introduction).

It turns out that it's a real crowd pleaser! And even with my unconfident and slightly shy manner it got a lot of post meeting airplay. This is probably its most impressive feature. Whilst it is a useful gadget and there is a lot of impressive technology on show the amount of noise it inspires is really overwhelming. Is it because its like a new approach to 'the pen' or becuase it has packed in so much for such a little initial outlay? I don't know. I did enjoy the extra attention though.

I've been using it in most meetings. It has effectively done what it promised it would. It saves me time in wiriting my meeting notes and gives me a very useful record of what was said and therefore often what I signed up to so that I can make sure I deliver. Which is all very good and pleasing.

However, there is always one of these, the text convertor is lame and doesn't work that well. You'd have to virually write in full capitals with no arrows or bullets etc. for it to work effectively. And with my Doctors style handwriting this is never going to happen!

All in its a great gadget and one that I will continue to use and make part of my working life. It isn't the best gadget ever though. And the 'smartphone' probably remains at the no.1 spot for now - well some of them deserve this position that is. The search continues.

Tuesday 2 March 2010

Possibly one of the best gadgets ever? (Part 1)

I just bought a gadget. Well a couple of days ago actually, it has just taken me this long to get it working properly (that's down to me not the gadget by the way - you would probably take a matter of minutes).

Here it is:















Now I won't describe everything it does just yet. However, I will say that it isn't just a pen and it actually records stuff while you write and then when you dock it all your notes are up there on the screen instantly. That is only a very small part of what it does but the primary reason I bought it.

I am going to use this device extensively over the next two weeks and then report back on whether it is in fact one of the best gadgets ever (in my opinion).

More on the gadget click here.