From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06

Contents 1 Project Proposal: Blog on the Go 1.1 Background 1.2 Problem Description 1.3 Problem Context 1.4 Target User Group 1.5 Solution Sketch 1.6 Related Work and Products

Project Proposal: Blog on the Go

Basic pitch: Create and publish blog entries right from your notebook using the Anoto digital pen technology.

Background

The virtual landscape of the internet is a far cry from what it was just a decade ago. People are logging on to the internet from everywhere around the globe, from all different walks of life, and many have a voice that they wish to be heard. With this wish came the advent of the "blog," or web log.

Today, blogs are as diverse and plentiful as the people who use them. Here are a few categories of blogs one can easily find:

• Personal diaries of angsty teenagers
• Messages, updates, and photographs from celebrities to fans
• Circles of retail workers sharing their horror stories and gripes about customers
• Group collaborations and brainstorming notes within companies

The popularity of blogs has been guided by the availability of free and easy to use blogging services provided by companies such as Blogger, Xanga, and LiveJournal. The interface of these services is intuitive to anyone technologically savvy enough to figure out how to log on to these sites in the first place. Further, the services are also robust, often allowing users to fully customize and personalize the layout of their blogs.

Problem Description

In general, blog services require the user to be in front of the computer, typing away, to be able to create and publish blog entries. This can be frustrating to bloggers who may wish to blog "on the go," that is, away from a computer. This project proposes to alleviate the following problems with the current blogging process through the utilization of the Anoto pen and paper to allow bloggers to create and publish blog content anywhere with greater freedom and personalization:

• Being able to create and publish blog content from any location, regardless of access to a computer, can be desirable when writing about events that just happened or when inspiration suddenly strikes and ideas are still fresh in one’s mind.

• In addition, being able to blog using an alternative medium such as a notebook can be desirable when you have the time to write but aren’t by a computer, such as during dull hours at work or lectures, or when you just feel more comfortable or secure writing in a notebook, which is more portable and easier to hide from prying eyes than a laptop.

• Further, the text medium alone may be too limiting and impersonal in the minds of some users. Bloggers may wish to create handwritten entries, sketches, and even animations for their blog, but may lack the hardware or software know-how necessary to do so.

To better illustrate the problem, here are a few scenarios that motivate the project:

• Imagine the situation of an internet journalist attending a technology convention. Due to the sheer number and variety of exciting new products, as well as reader demand for comments in real time, the journalist may wish to update her blog while in attendance of the convention. The current blogging procedure would require a computer, which may be inconvenient to carry and use in a crowded convention center, as well as an internet connection. A notebook is much easier to carry and jot down entries while waiting in line for exhibitions, and entries can be streamed to the blog when Bluetooth is available.

• Some companies use blogging internally as a way to collaborate on projects or to brainstorm and keep a log of future ideas to implement. However, brainstorming should not always be limited to text. Brainstorming bloggers may wish to create diagrams and charts without the hassle of opening up programs such as Visio and Photoshop or scanning in their notes in order to clearly sketch out their ideas.

Problem Context

Bloggers come from all walks of life and are varied in their available time, education, motivation, values, and resources. In this sense, it may be hard to analyze them and the use cases generally. However, all are united in their desire to express themselves conveniently through blogs. The traditional blogging procedure is convenient as long as you have access to a computer and with it, the internet. There are a few alternative blogging procedures available:

1. Edit blogs on mobile devices with internet connectivity
2. Text message to create blog postings from your cell phone, as well as send photos from camera phones
3. Create voice recordings from your phone that users can play from your blog site

These procedures, while allowing bloggers the convenience of posting entries without a computer and internet access, are extremely limiting as modes of expression. Options one and two are often too clunky, slow, and awkward to be enticing to users who wish to blog "on the go." In my personal experience, text messaging inclines users to be brief and to the point, as punching in letters on the cell phone is a painstakingly slow process, and writing is further marred by the inability of cell phones to display large amounts of text on screen at a time. The third option, while personal, does not mesh well with the general text content of the blog, and the quality of the recording is constrained by environmental factors like background noise. Further, all three options are relatively expensive to blogging on the computer, either because the blogging services require paid membership to have access to these alternatives, or the costs are incurred by text messaging or further internet connectivity fees.

Target User Group

People who blog, who wish to explore an alternative blogging procedure than the traditional method of logging onto a web site and inputting text which allows for greater convenience and freedom of expression. This project may narrow the user group down to bloggers who use a specific blogging service, such as Blogger.com.

Solution Sketch

The scope of this project may go above one semester’s worth of engineering. Thus, I will describe some of the initial project goals and designs into small deliverable chunks which can be added on or refined as time goes on.

• Users start up the software and enter in information about their blog(s) upon their first time using the software. This information will be used by the software to upload content to the user’s blogging service.

• Users write their blog entry using the digital pen on the provided paper, and also write down information about what blog they will send it to. They check an appropriate box on the page when they are ready to send and publish the blog as is, or to save it as a draft for further manipulation through the software interface. Upon transmission of a blog entry, the blog information fields are parsed and interpreted. The entry is then published or categorized under the associated blog.

• The software interface may allow the user to edit an entry:
  • Change the color, stroke width, and other appearance features of the stroke data
  • Insert image files
  • Convert to plain text using optical character recognition
  • Convert a selected part to an animation using timestamped stroke data

Related Work and Products

• Many products for the digital pen are similar to this project, including ButterflyNet which we read about, or the bundled software with the pen, in so far as they capture text and publish it to some software interface. This project differentiates itself by being specifically purposed for blogging.
• Some people already use digital pens for writing blog entries, but as far as I can surmise do not have an automated system to do so. Here is an example of a blog post written with a digital pen.
• Unfortunately after further digging, I found this. Someone coded a simple plugin to publish to BlogJet, and posted their code as well. However, the blog posting occurs after docking the pen and does not seem incredibly robust.

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