It's a little late to announce this — particularly since the class is full — but it's worth mentioning for future reference. The Richard Hale Shaw Group is presenting our Visual Studio Team System class at the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham, MA, with me as lead instructor.

We're also trying to find another chance for me to present Ink in 60 Seconds while I'm there.

This is a little late, because I've been doing post travel stuff, and then getting ready for the new VSTS class coming up. To the fine folks in Montreal, I say: Pardonnez-moi, svp, mes amis!

So on Wednesday night in Montreal, I gave my presentation to GUMSNET: Ink in 60 Seconds. Despite my rather hideous attempt to apologize in French for not being able to speak French, they were most gracious hosts. (And darn it! I rehearsed that apology over a dozen times on the trip, until I had it down pat; and then I fell apart when I actually had to give it. Here's what I meant to say: Bon soir, monsieurs! Mon nom est Martin L. Shoemaker, et je ne comprends pas le français. Pardon, si vous plais. Je suis un debutante en français. Mais mon Tablet PC comprend le français!)

I got caught in a lot of Montreal traffic, and also had to fight to find parking in Centre-ville, so I was just a bit late. And then my machine had to reboot. But we finally got rolling, and I started writing little Tablet PC demos, with a 60 second clock running. There were occasional laughs at my expense when I missed the 60 second mark; but on the other hand, many of the demos were done in under 30 seconds. The Tablet PC API is just that powerful. By the time we were done, we were drawing pictures, editing them, erasing them, saving them, loading them, and exporting them as images. We were also drawing shapes that the Tablet PC recognized and identified. We were converting handwriting to text, in both English and French. And we even wrote some text by hand and then had the Tablet PC speak it out loud. We finished with ten ideas for great Tablet PC apps just waiting to be written. I hope that I inspired someone in the audience to go write one.

There was one hang-up in the presentation; and I promised the good folks from GUMSNET that I would blog about it, including what I learned afterward. Late in the presentation — right about the time I tried to do handwriting recognition, when I needed really good ink collection — my wonderful Gateway CX200X Tablet PC started exhibiting dead spots that were strangely reminiscent of the bad old days of Toshiba. The dead zones weren't as consistent, but they were irritating. And they always seemed to be right where I was writing text en français to try to show off the multi-lingual power of the Tablet PC. The audience was forgiving for this, but they did insist on knowing the answer when I learned it. Well, here's what I think I have learned. I noticed that the pen seemed to behave better when I held it at different angles; and then I remembered that when we broke for dinner, I dropped the pen. And as far as I can recall, there were no dead zones before the break, only after. I suspected that maybe I had jammed something in the pen tip; and with a little experimentation, I found that rotating the pen around its axis or relative to the screen could sometimes make the dead zone go away. Suspecting a pen problem rather than a screen problem, I pulled out my spare pen. And I have had no dead zone problems since.

All in all, Montreal was a delightful place to visit, and I hope to return some day when I have a little more time to visit. And the folks at GUMSNET were a great audience. I ran about 40 minutes over time (gee, there's a surprise); and they were all alert and attentive right to the end. We would probably have stayed longer, but the Microsoft employee who was keeping the facility open for us wanted to go home!

Of course, Richard would have my hide if I didn't mention that Ink in 60 Seconds is the opening segment of our Tablet PC Programming Workshop, where you can learn all this and much, much more about building your own Tablet PC applications. In the class, you won't just watch: you'll build a full-featured Tablet PC application yourself, and learn the Tablet PC from the inside. I hope we'll be adding a public Tablet PC class to our schedule first, but you can always bring us to your site.

So why aren't you writing Tablet PC applications with .NET yet?

Do you think it's too difficult? Do you think you're too busy to learn the Tablet PC API? Well, I say you're wrong.

Or do you just not see what sort of Tablet PC app you might build? Do you think that there's no great Tablet PC applications out there for you? Well, I say you're wrong again.

And I'm so sure you're wrong, I'm going to prove it to you at the Groupe d'utilisateurs de l'archutecture Microsft .Net de Montreal by building some simple little Tablet PC samples — samples you can easily adapt into your own applications — each written in under 60 seconds. (Note: In order to meet that time limit, I'll be writing these in C#, the language I know best. Every single one of these demos could be written in 60 seconds in VB.NET, but only by a better VB programmer than me!)

Then after each sample is running, I'll explain to you what I did, how I did it, and how you might expand on it. Some of the samples I'll build include:

• 60 Seconds to Ink: Capturing Ink in a window in your application.


• 60 Seconds to Ink Anywhere: Capturing Ink in any window in your application.


• 60 Seconds to Programmatic Ink: Adding Strokes programmatically to an Ink surface.


• 60 Seconds to Saving Ink: Saving your drawings.


• 60 Seconds to Loading Ink: Loading your drawings.


• 60 Seconds to Saving Some Ink: Saving part of a drawing.


• 60 Seconds to Loading Some Ink: Loading a drawing into an existing drawing.


• 60 Seconds to Exporting Ink: Savinging your drawings as images you can share with non-Tablet PC users.


• 60 Seconds to Selecting, Moving, and Resizing: Manipulating the Ink that you draw.


• 60 Seconds to Erasing: Erasing the Ink that you draw.


• 60 Seconds to Drawing Attributes: Drawing with multiple colors, transparent Ink, and different shapes and sizes of pens.


• 60 Seconds to Clipboarding: Really simple Ink clipboard functionality — and why it doesn't work!


• 60 Seconds to Simple Handwriting Recognition: Simple handwriting in a form.


• 60 Secondes au Français: Identification d'écriture en français.


• 60 Seconds to More Handwriting Recognition: Handwriting recognition mixed with typing.


• 60 Seconds to Handwriting Recognition Anywhere: Handwriting recognition from any Ink surface.


• 60 Secondes à Plus Français: Plus d'identification d'écriture en français.


• 60 Seconds to Text-to-Speech: A simple talking application.

And just in case those samples don't inspire you to devise a great new Tablet PC application, I'll finish the presentation by spending 60 seconds (probably more) describing each of ten different killer Tablet PC applications that I'm just too busy to write myself, but which I think somebody should be writing.

So fasten your seat belts. This is gonna be one heck of a fast ride!

And no, I'm not doing this talk just for the free pizza from INETA and the free trip to Montreal. I certainly hope that some of the attendees are so excited that they'll want to take our Tablet PC Programming workshop, where we'll go places you just can't reach in 60 seconds.

OK, let me first acknowledge right up front: this project is eminently impractical. For one thing, there’s the price: replacing a paper process with at least four Origamis (plus other support hardware) is just a bit pricey. And for another thing, many of the target end users are just a bit suspicious of and even opposed to technological solutions. They think the paper processes are working just fine, thank you very much. (Though as someone who occasionally has to process their paperwork, let me tell you: it ain’t easy, and often their handwriting and habits complicate my job.)

Still, inspired by Epee Bill, I had this vision. And I really do think it would be a vast improvement over the paper processes, if people would accept it. Just imagine...

Mr. Vesper stands beside the fencing strip. In his hands is an Origami: somewhat heavier than the clipboard he once would have carried, but not much larger. On the Origami screen are the names of two fencers. He calls them: "Up next. Mr. Smith. Mr. Bolakowski." The fencers enter the strip, Smith on the right and Bolakowski on the left, and hook up to their wires. Then they present their weapons to Mr. Vesper. He tests each one, and then with his finger makes two "check" gestures on the Origami to indicate that the weapons passed inspection.

Mr. Vesper returns to the sideline and calls out: "Fencers ready..." The combatants assume their en garde positions. "Fence!" The wireless microphone he wears picks up this command and starts the fencing clock, as the fencers approach each other. (If Mr. Vesper preferred not to wear the mike, he could also start the clock by pressing a button on the Origami.) The fencers engage. Beat, beat, beat, feint, attempted parry, disengage, lunge! The scoring box lights up with one light, and Mr. Vesper calls "Halt!" Ideally, the scoring box automatically stopped the fencing clock; but since most scoring boxes aren’t capable of that, Mr. Vesper can also stop the clock via voice or button. Mr. Vesper calls the action, and then records a touch left by making a downstroke gesture in a box near Mr. Bolakowski’s name. The Origami acknowledges by announcing, "Touch, Bolakowski. Score is 1, 0." Meanwhile, the Origami uses WiFi to update the tournament server; and then the server posts the results live to the tournament’s Web site. One of the tournament workers is also wandering around between the strips, using another Origami to record live video and stream it to the server and from there to the site. Fencers and fans from all over the world can follow the tournament in real time. A tournament monitor near the bout table shows the live results. It has a touch screen (in fact, it’s really a larger Tablet PC device being used as a kiosk) so that spectators and fencers can navigate to different pages and check current standings. (This will, I hope, keep them from coming to the bout table and distracting us from our work by asking, "So if I win my next bout, who will I face after that?" Or "So is this an A tournament?" [Like I know how to answer that.] On the other hand, this system will do so much of my work, so I may have time for questions.)

Mr. Vesper repeats, "Fencers ready... Fence," and the clock and the action start again. Thrust, retreat, thrust, retreat, ballestra-lunge! And the scoring box lights up with one white light. Off target. Mr. Vesper calls the action and records the off target by making a downstroke in a different box (colored white to match the white off-target light). The Origami announces, "Off target, Bolakowski. Score is 1, 0."

"Fencers ready... Fence!" Taking a more aggressive tact, Mr. Bolakowski almost immediately leaps into a fleche. But his timing is off, and he ends up colliding with Mr. Smith. Mr. Vesper calls, "Halt! Red card." And he makes a downstroke in a third box (colored red for penalties). The Origami needs more information, so it pops up a list of possible reasons for the penalty, and Mr. Vesper checks the one that says, "Corps a corps." The Origami announces, "Red card. Bolakowski. Score is 1, 1."

Chastened, Mr. Bolakowski falls back into a more defensive mode. He and Mr. Smith trade thrusts and parries and occasional points back and forth, but the action slows. Eventually, the fencing clock runs out, and the Origami announces, "Time." Mr. Vesper calls halt, and then says, "Victory to Mr. Bolakowski, 4-3." The Origami has already figured this out for itself; but since no result is official until a director confirms it, the Origami presents the results to him. He makes a check gesture, and the official results are sent to the server and the Web. Immediately his Origami screen displays the next bout, and he calls it out: "Fencing, Emerson, Jones." Mr. Jones is not immediately available for some reason, so the Origami begins a countdown clock. If he doesn’t arrive in time, he’ll forfeit.

When the last pool bout of the event is complete, the server immediately produces a seed page and also an elimination table. It also pushes the list of elimination bouts out to the directors’ Origamis. The software on the Origamis knows that these are elimination bouts, so it changes the way it keeps time: elimination bouts run to 15 points, and are stopped every three minutes for a one minute break.

Now again, I know this is impractical, probably for more reasons than I have identified. (Flashing blades and computer equipment may be a bad combination.) And while I do think Microsoft could be interested in unusual showcases for their devices as a way to get publicity, I’m not sure that getting involved with fencing is the way to do it, at least not in America: in a country where competitive hot dog eating is actually broadcast on ESPN, fencing can’t get any air time. But boy, would I love to see it in operation! And I could write practically this whole system by myself, without a whole lot of work; and I could teach a team how to write it in under a week. I just have no confidence I’ll ever persuade anyone to let me. But I can dream...

Of course, there are other sports that could make good showcases. I’m thinking that the American biggies – football, basketball, and baseball – would make poor showcases. The fields of play are too large, and officials are too distant from the action, so no one would ever see the Origamis. So that hints at what would make a good showcase sport: one with a smaller playing field, with probably only a small number of participants (two, or maybe four), and where the officials are fairly close to the action so that the Origami will be in the camera shot quite often.

Tennis, anyone?

UPDATE: Fixed the score, thanks to Epee Bill.

...but Microsoft says it so much better here. As some reports have hinted, Origami devices (now known as "Ultra-Mobile PCs") are small, light, highly portable Tablet PCs.

And for developers, there's a lot more on Ultra-Mobile PCs here.

And of course, if you want to learn how to write programs for UMPCs (boy, is that an ugly abbreviation, or what?), I would like to suggest that you start with our Tablet PC Programming Workshop. (If your organization plans to deploy a large number of UMPCs, Microsoft's SSP program recommends our course.)

UPDATE: Epee Bill (famed member of the Ann Arbor Dueling Society) asks:

And if I asked you, "Why do I want one of these and no a PDA?" what would you say?

Well, Bill, I'm not sure that my answer will make any difference to you, because you're a Mac guy. But I'll give you the answer anyway. Does the PDA run Word? Excel? Outlook? Internet Explorer? Windows media player? A wide range of PC games? MapPoint? And pretty much all of your Windows software?

Does the PDA play DVDs? A UMPC will, though I expect you'll have to plug in an external DVD player on most of them, and probably a power cord. DVD playing should use a lot of battery power.

And while I'm at it, does the PDA run Tablet UML? Or OneNote? Or Journal? Or the Franklin Planner software? Or GoBinder? Or any other Tablet PC software?

See, you're a Mac guy, so you don't have any Windows software; but a lot of people do. For them, this may be a good alternative to a high-end PDA. (Low-end PDAs will still be a lot cheaper.)

And wait until we see new applications built on the power of ultra-mobile connectivity and power. I have some ideas on those, but not enough time to present them right now.

UPDATE: To make it easier to find this entry, I've added a link to it in the right sidebar, right under the links for my books and my classes.

Presentation to the Montreal Microsoft .NET Architecture User Group. Topic: Ink in 60 Seconds (Tablet PC Development). March 15.