The perfect reporters tool

I got myself a new laptop. Mainly because a had a conference to cover with many interviews, but also because my older one had a dead battery. So I started shopping and I have for a long time been thinking about a tablet pc. The great feature is that the screen can be turned around and used for handwriting with a special pen. After a week and many interviews I am surprised how great it works. My desk is cleaner than ever, I have no pieces of papers, notes or pencils around anymore. Everything is stored on the tablet.

Several programs can handle handwriting. I use the OEM Microsoft Onenote, a part of Microsoft Office (I use Open Office for all other office programs) The program lets you create pages and sections as easily as if you were writing on paper. You dont have to save anything as files in folders because the program keeps track of all your notes by date.

Now the great thing is that OneNote learns your handwriting and can convert it to machine text. This makes editing so much faster. I can now do my interview in handwriting, convert to text, paste to open document and I allready have most of my story done when the interview is over.
Another cool thing, is that one note can activate the build in microphone and store recordings in your pages. My job is much easier now and I warmly recommend the tablet computers to anyone who works in journalism.

7 Comments »

1. Thanks for drawing attention to the tablet PC, Hans. A few questions:
   1. Are you able to write at the same pace or perhaps faster than on paper?
   2. Do you make notes in longhand or short?
   3. Have you used the microphone to record an interview and then have it transcribed through software (bundled with it?)

   Comment by George Plumley — September 29, 2006 @ 12:33 am

2. Hi George, I write slower in hand than when typing. I have tried some times to type when interviewing. There are two problems. There is no hand left for holding the phone :-) and when I am with the interviewed person typewriting is taking too much attention (both hands in use and the screen up in front of me)

   What does long and shorthand mean?

   I have not tried speech reconigtion software. Most interviews I do is in danish and that kind of programs are seldom made for such a small market.

   Do you use a plugin to embed videos on your blog? I tried to embed google videos today on this (also wordpress) blog but with no luck.

   Comment by Hans Henrik Lichtenberg — September 29, 2006 @ 12:59 am

3. Hi Hans - I was thinking of the movement of the pen on the tablet screen; does that allow you to write with the pen as quickly as you write with a pen on paper? I’ve worked with pens on drawing tablets for computers and you had to hold the pen a certain way to keep it from slipping…

   Longhand is when you write out words completely, while shorthand is a kind of code that allows you to write faster.

   For videos on my blog, I like using You Tube where possible because they provide embedding code for you and at the same time the video stays on their server, saving you space and bandwidth on your blog.

   Comment by George Plumley — September 29, 2006 @ 3:25 pm

4. Just found the embedding code for Google - over on the right hand side, click on EMAIL-BLOG, then click on Embed HTML. Guess I got lazy, because You Tube puts their embed code right up front :-)

   Comment by George Plumley — September 29, 2006 @ 3:31 pm

5. Hi again George, yes I can write at the same speed on the screen. It took a couple of hours to get used to following the point-cursor on the screen instead of the end of the pen. The screen can recognize the pen from a distance so I have never seen it slip. The only downside to it is that the computer is higher that a block of paper (3,5 cm) meaning the arm doesn’t rest that well when writing.

   If I should buy another tablet I would go for the smallest possible, it seems they get more expensive the smaller they are.
   I will try YouTube for video. The Google code doesn’t work for me, my blog design gets all messed up.

   Comment by Hans Henrik Lichtenberg — September 29, 2006 @ 4:27 pm

6. OneNote Blog posts over the past month…

   Here is another set of these from Mike our Test Manager: “OneNote 2007 Beta — I REALLY LOVE this upgrade.”…

   Trackback by OneNote Extensibility & More.. — October 4, 2006 @ 4:09 am

7. Bush goes ballistic about other countries being evil and dangerous, because they have weapons of mass destruction. But, he insists on building up even a more deadly supply of nuclear arms right here in the US. What do you think? Is killing thousands of innocent civilians okay when you are doing a little government makeover?
   Are we safer today than we were before?
   The more people that the government puts in jails, the safer we are told to think we are. The real terrorists are wherever they are, but they aren’t living in a country with bars on the windows. We are.

   Comment by Antibush — February 13, 2007 @ 9:57 am

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