TEO 3.0 screen shots and spent the day with Buzz

Oct 142005

Okay so early this morning I posted a couple screen shots of the task form in TEO 3.0 just to kinda give some insight into the improvements I’ve made over TEO 2.x in overall usability and eye candy. So far the reactions have been good but the reason I try to avoid giving info like this away in increments is because it actually makes the product less interesting when it finally is released because you’ve gradually grown accustomed to things. Take for example the release of the Whidbey family of developer technologies next month. I should be ecstatic because it’s a huge upgrade over VS.NET 2003. But I’ve been using Whidbey in beta form for months now and in fact I’ve been developing exclusively in Whidbey for months too. So to me, Whidbey was released 6 months ago. And don’t get me wrong, it is totally awesome. Well I guess there is something to be said about the fine balance between gradually building buzz about a new product and giving it away all at once.

The other reason is that it’s hard to “see” all of the work I’ve been putting in over the last few months until the final pieces are put into place. For example, there’s been a ton of work that I’ve invested in a very cool background research engine that searches your ink against reference databases while you write. You can’t *see* this yet because only recently have I even been able to use Infinotes (which by the way should be #1 on any Tablet PC developer’s shopping list). But when that final piece of the puzzle is put into place you’ll see how unique and innovative this really is.

So anyway, last night I decided to pull another all nighter. Those of you that know me, know that I get my best work done at night (hey now get your mind out of the gutter for a second…) and I try to leverage that as best I can. Why? Well because I am by nature an easily distracted and chatty person. Arin, Lora, Andre, etc all know first hand that sometimes I just can’t shut up. I guess I’m making up for years of being an introvert. In the middle of the night, Heather is sleeping, nothing good is on TV, and nobody is on my buddy list. Is it any surprise that I am a lot more productive at this time?

But sometimes the real world doesn’t quite accept that schedule, as was the case today. My brother needed some help delivering a larger than usual t-shirt order to a customer of his and I offered to take the ride with him at 8:00 AM. So I wasn’t gonna get any sleep this morning. I also had a lunch appointment with Buzz Bruggeman (ActiveWords) at 12:00 PM so I just decided to stay up all day.

We had a great chat, had lunch, I had a few beers (what else is new), then hung out at Starbucks for a few hours and discussed lots of topics from search, to Tablet PC software marketing, to ActiveWords/TEO integration, and probably lots of others. I checked out his HP TC4200 and he got to know my Motion LE1600. He was having a pretty nasty problem with TEO that I’ve seen on maybe 4 other occasions where all of the double-buffered graphics simply don’t draw correctly. I tried several things but wasn’t able to fix it on the spot. I’ll have to do more research.

Anyway by the time I got home I was going on 36 hours without sleep so I totally crashed. Then I woke up around 10:00 PM so my schedule is all screwed up now. Time to get back to work now. I think I have a few support emails to get to.

Edit: Forgot to link to the screen shots and to ActiveWords… duh. Sorry.

Tablet PC components fixed to support .NET Framework 2.0

Oct 132005

Microsoft has quietly released a fix for the Tablet PC managed ink components when running under the .NET Framework 2.0 which will be released very shortly. I encourage all Tablet PC users (especially TEO users) to install the fix below which I am linking to. Hopefully there will be a redistributable version soon. You should install this component now, even though .NET Framework 2.0 is not out yet. This will ensure that your apps (and TEO) continue to work properly when the framework is released.

This is very very good news because this enables Agilix to release Infinotes 2.0 which is dependent upon these fixes and corrects the problems that Infinotes currently has under .NET 2.0 beta. Agilix has said that they will release Infinotes 2.0 on or before November 7th. I want to thank everyone at Microsoft and Agilix who tolerated my bitching and got these fixes implemented.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=84bbefa4-7047-41df-8583-e3bdbf9d805f&DisplayLang=en

A Visual Studio tip you shouldn’t pass up

Oct 102005

Just wanted to pass on this VS.NET tip that you might find useful.

In the External Tools menu, I have added two commands:

Command Prompt in Solution
Command Prompt in Project

They are pretty simple to add, but valuable nonetheless. Here is how to add them.

Title: Command Prompt in Solution
Command: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
Arguments: /k ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86
Initial Dir: $(SolutionDir)

Title: Command Prompt in Project
Command: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
Arguments: /k ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86
Initial Dir: $(ProjectDir)

The only difference of course being the initial directory, but it’s worth mentioning that the Arguments passed to the command processor will ensure that the environment variables for the .NET Framework get set correctly so that you can run compiler and other framework tools.

TEO 3.0 Upgrade Policy

Oct 022005

As has been reported on a few blogs already, I have announced the upgrade policy for TEO 3.0 and pricing information as well as a preliminary feature list.

If you purchased TEO 2.0 on or after 10/1/2005*, then your upgrade to TEO 3.0 will be no additional cost.

Upgrades from TEO 2.0 will be $24.99 and the full price will be $49.99. TEO 3.0 will be released around December 2005. No concrete release date has been specified.

TEO 3.0 represents a huge upgrade from 2.0 with many new features. Below are some of the improvements and new features.

Improvements

  • Larger, more comfortable input controls with visible rule lines, focus indication, full keyboard support, and improved recognition.
  • Much better correction interface with ability to correct recognition while preserving ink.
  • Background incremental recognition and Outlook data binding for much faster saving.
  • Full featured note taking with support for mixes of ink, text, shapes, images, and flags.
  • Windows Journal import capability.
  • Outlook attachments and contact links supported from within the TEO window.
  • Many more Outlook fields supported. Almost all fields supported.
  • Durations and abbreviations supported in ink. Writing things like “1 d” or “2 hours” supported in duration fields.
  • Tab position can be top, bottom, left, or right.
  • Notes bug fixed!
  • Appointment label supported.

New Features

  • Information bar allows special messages and context sensitive tips to be shown at the top of the window.
  • Integration with Virtual Earth for mapping support without MapPoint.
  • Integrated telephony features such as click to call and auto call journaling and conference calling.
  • Integrated voice recording and playback.
  • Background lookups in Wikipedia and other reference databases.
  • Improved reminders dialog with ink support and text to speech option.
  • Recurring appointments and tasks supported.
  • Ability to choose the handwriting recognizer language on a per item basis.
  • Option to warn when saving an item without a category.
  • Contact images and business card images (from a CardScan device) displayed in the form.
  • Layout manager provides optimized layouts for various resolutions and orientations.

Sorry for not posting this sooner. I’ve been very busy between moving and juggling several development projects. A new TEO web site will be up soon.

* Einstein Technologies may allow a grace period of a few days prior to this date for customers that purchased before 10/1/2005. These customers will be notified via email of their upgrade eligibility.