Ken Hinckley from Microsoft Research has unofficially put together a prototype Tablet PC note-taking application designed and built from ground up around the pen. InkSeine (rhymes with 'insane'), which gives you the ability to easily search the web or your local computer directly from your ink. Although it's scheduled for a public release on February 15, 2008, Microsoft insists that it is not intended for public consumption: "InkSeine is a research demonstration only, and is not a Microsoft product, nor is it intended to become a product. It is just something we built as a pure research project to explore novel pen and ink functionality."
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Member since:2005-07-06
It's a well worn tactic. Promise features that you know you're never going to produce in order to make your competitor's customers wait for what you have. Wait until your competitor leaves the market or goes out of business and then drop all mention of what you were going to do.
Member since:2007-02-07
"InkSeine is a research demonstration only, and is not a Microsoft product, nor is it intended to become a product. It is just something we built as a pure research project to explore novel pen and ink functionality."
Yeah, that sounds like a feature they're 'promising'!
They explicitly mention that they have no plans for a product. Didn't even bother reading the summary, did you?!
Edited 2008-02-11 15:52 UTC
Member since:2006-09-30
Well it's not like Microsoft invented the "tabletPC" itself either...
http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/stpad.html
Member since:
2005-07-06
Of-course if Microsoft had not killed off Go Computers years ago with it's blitz about Pen-Windows doing it all in the first place. There would be a good chance that all these features would already be available in a commercial product today!
Most of what Microsoft claims it invented was really developed be Go over 15 years ago.
Check out http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0REL/is_n1_v91/ai_9379872/pg... for an example.
PS. Notice how fast Microsoft dropped extending Pen Windows once Go went out of business.