ismael chang ghalimi

BlackBerry Pearl

In my never-ending quest for the best mobile phone, I recently switched to the BlackBerry Pearl, and I must say that I am very impressed. The device is so small and lightweight that I can carry it in my pants’ pocket without feeling it. Initially, I was worried that the trackball would not be as effective as the good old trackwheel, but after five minutes of use, I realized that it’s actually better, for it can control both vertical and horizontal navigation. I am still concerned that it will stop working over time, as did the one on my Apple Mighty Mouse, but only time will tell. The SureType keyboard is not as fast as the full keyboard found on previous BlackBerry devices, but its predictive software is smart enough to make it work, and I do not type long emails from my phone anyway. Overall, I think the Pearl is the best mobile device I have ever owned. At this point, I can only hope that Apple’s upcoming phone will be even better.

[...] Back in April 2001, I read a fascinating article written by Steve Silberman for Wired Magazine. It described a new technology developed by a Swedish company called Anoto. The technology allowed hand writing to be digitized by a micro-camera embedded into the tip of a pen when using paper layered with barely visible patterns. I played with an early version developed by Nokia, but the pen was too bulky to be used on a daily basis, so I decided to wait for the technology to mature a little bit more. Recently, I came across PaperIQ, a British company that integrated a pen developed by Maxell with the BlackBerry Pearl. I have been using the system for a couple of weeks now, and I am really impressed. I use it to take notes on EASYBOOK notebooks made by OXFORD, upload my notes to my BlackBerry Pearl over Bluetooth by simply tapping onto a sticker affixed on the back of the notebook, and send them via email after they got automatically converted into text by PaperIQ’s online service. Life-like copies are also made available on PaperIQ’s website in PDF format. Overall, the technology works, and the workflow is almost perfect. Really cool… [...]

[...] Recently, I came across PaperIQ, a British company that integrated a pen developed by Maxell with the BlackBerry Pearl. I have been using the system for a couple of months now, and I am really impressed. I use it to take notes on EASYBOOK notebooks made by OXFORD, upload my notes to my BlackBerry Pearl over Bluetooth by simply tapping onto a sticker affixed on the back of the notebook, and send them via email after they got automatically converted into text by PaperIQ’s online OCR service. Life-like copies are also made available on PaperIQ’s website in PDF format. [...]