randform

short video clip about jboard (1.4 MB) (link to 12.1 MB)

randform reader Lano Ferryman asked in a comment to a randform post:

If you are so interested in new input devices – so why don’t you report on the new iPad?

answer: First of all I think there had already been quite some media coverage about the Apple iPad thus I dont really think that testing the iPad on randform is really needed. And in order to be fair one would need also to report on other similar tablet computers or tablet PCs. Moreover I haven’t seen the iPad yet, apart from displays in in-depth video demonstrations. Tim is a bit skeptical about it, since you can’t run a programming language on the iPad, so he couldn’t e.g. install his string-rewriter jsymbol on the iPad. So he is rather waiting, like there is e.g. a Berlin company called neofonie, which produces a similar pad, called wePad (wikipedia site (sofar only in german)) which is announced to run like with an Android-like-OS that is it is some Linux, but able to run with Android applications (and rumor has it, that google is also about to release an android powered pad), furthermore Adobe Air is available on the wePad, thus Flash would run on it (i am not such a fan of flash though). However the webpage of the wePad isn’t really overly informative. On the wePad’s facebook site (in german) one can at least read (in german) that more information in particular regarding price etc. is to be released tomorrow.

It is also that I am getting more and more reluctant to promote new technologies which make people want to consume more.

On the other hand its not that randform is totally uninterested. Tim has meanwhile some new programs, which would run nicely on an iPad-like pad. The above short clip displays his program jboard (under development) for using an electronic board. I was asking him to implement something like stickers (on the right side of the board) where you can store little pieces of text and graphics, which you can freely move and copy to other pages. The stickers are automatically “tagged” with parts of what the sticker holds, but one can also tag them also with any other self-designed icon/text. So for example if you have a table you are constantly referring to throughout a lecture then you can get that table from the sidebar by clicking on your icon. We forgot to display the highlight feature in the clip.

update 13.04.10 – I forgot to mention: Tim is not sure wether jBoard will be GPL, LGPL or something similar, in any case jBoard will be open. There will also no ridiculous patents be filed (like for the stickers). Further development of jBoard will be rather slow, in particular next week the semester starts again and Tim will mutate again into a teaching machine.