Survey of Pen-and-Paper Computing - Human-Computer Interaction - page 43

Fig. 2.9 LeapFrog Tag Reading System (photo copyright Anoto)

retains many of the advantages of a paper notebook: the user can write and sketch
freely with a pen, the notebook is mobile and it can be used in a variety of settings,
including casual notetaking in cases when using a computer would be inappropriate,
think for instance of a therapy session. Moreover, the paper notebook provides rich
physical cues for navigating through the contents.
All pen traces are automatically captured in an electronic form and transferred
to a computing device, either continuously in real-time or at specific points in time
when the user synchronizes the pen with a computer. A software viewer allows
the user to browse through a digital facsimile of the paper notebook. Subsequent
updates made on the paper notebook are automatically integrated into the existing
digital version. The digital version has the advantage to be searchable, e.g. by time.
It is easily accessible even if the physical notebook is not available, for instance
for the purpose of archiving. In addition, some augmented notebook systems auto-
matically perform handwriting recognition of the pen traces. The recognized text is
typically not displayed, but used in the background to enable full text search within
the notebook.
Nowadays, this basic functionality of an augmented paper notebook is provided
by many commercial solutions for end-users. Examples include the Livescribe Echo
smart pen software 17

and the Oxford Easybook notebooks 18 . While these solutions

17

http://www.livescribe.com

18

http://www.oxfordeasybook.com