[FoRK] 10 years later, a research prototype becomes a product

[Luis Villa]

Note that MS onenote has had similar tech (for typing rather than
writing) for a release or two now.

but yeah- generally the web has had it easy, since very few web
products are more than translations of old concepts to html.

Luis

On 1/31/08, Ken Meltsner <meltsner at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Software people, I think, have an unrealistic notion of how long it
> takes for research to become products -- the Internet Bubble (s) had
> many people going straight from a dissertation to a startup, but that
> was (historically) unusual.  In fact, one friend told me that (approx)
> "30 years later, we're still trying to catch up with Ivan Sutherland's
> CAD dissertation."
>
> Here's one more data point.
>
> LiveScribe just announced (and will ship in March) a pen that will
> automatically record what you write and what you hear at the same time
> -- you can go to a specific spot in a long lecture by going back to
> the notes you took at that time.  I've been waiting for something like
> ever since I saw a research prototype at MIT's media lab:
>
> http://www.media.mit.edu/speech/people/lisa/anb.html
>
> Things have changed along the way -- the prototype used a digitizer
> pad and a pad of paper coded to identify each page.  The product is
> just a pen with a built-in audio recorder that uses special paper that
> has been printed with positional information -- each sheet is unique
> and the pen can identify where it is to some ridiculous precision.
>
> It's the same technology used by other Anoto-based products such as
> LeapFrog and various vertical market solutions.
>
> http://www.anoto.com/?id=917
>
>
> http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/techspecs.html
>
> Probably would be a good masters or so for a student to trace from the
> original research concept to the product.  Even if there's no direct
> connection (e.g. licensed technology from MIT to Anoto),  it would be
> interesting to see how much LiveScribe was aware of or inspired by
> prior art.
>
> Ken Meltsner
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