Yet another project to do a Dynabook. Maybe they'll be able to get further
than the ones I've been involved with?  (Annoyingly, this requires a (free)
subscription.)


WILL THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING BE WRITTEN ON A TABLET?
Enlisting the talents of two computer designers who were part of Alan Kay's
legendary team at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s, Microsoft
has plans for developing a portable, wireless, keyboardless "tablet
computer."  Although generally similar devices developed by Apple, Go Corp.,
and AT&T were commercial failures in the past decade, Microsoft is betting
that the current rapid convergence of display, processing, storage and other
technologies is finally setting the stage for commercial tablet computers
using handwriting or speech input.  (One recent development has been
Microsoft's introduction of its Cleartype software that improves the
readability of fonts on flat panel computer displays.)  The two designers
who will lead the new Microsoft tablet computer effort are Chuck Thacker and
Butler Lampson.  Lampson says, "I think this will be the way most people
interact with the Net and the rest of the computing universe as well."
Thacker injects a personal note:  "I've always wanted this kind of device,
and in systems research one of the most motivating things is that you want
the device yourself."  (New York Times 30 Aug 99) 
http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+82844+0+wAAA+tablet%7Eand%7E%22research%7Ecenter%22



-- 
New: It comes in different colors from the previous version.
Tim Rowledge:  rowledge at interval.com (w)  +1 (650) 842-6110 (w)
 tim at sumeru.stanford.edu (h)  <http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim>