Mobile Blogging Via Newton

This niche blog has now been merged into the The Wireless Report (www.thewirelessreport.com), which covers all things wireless.

Posted May 6th 2004 2:29PM by Sean Bonner

Apple's Newton Message Pad, which was discontinued in 1998 sure has been getting a lot of press lately. It seems like everytime I turn around some other Newton freak has figured out a way to keep these devices current. Wired is running a story about Mike Manzano, a blogger who is using a Newton as his main input source.

Manzano fitted his MessagePad with a Wi-Fi card that sits in one of the Newton's two PC Card slots (it uses a driver written by a Newton user in Japan).

Manzano writes in longhand, running his posts through the Newton's spell-checker. "It's got really, really great handwriting recognition," Manzano said. "Natural and accurate."

Manzano e-mails his posts to his TypePad account, a hosting service run by Six Apart, publisher of the popular Movable Type blogging tool. The TypePad service does a lot of the magic; it's set up to accept blog entries by e-mail, making it very easy to maintain a blog from just about any e-mail-capable device.

The story goes on to talk about other Newton-based bloggers, and how people are soldering bluetooth chips into the motherboards to allow them to transmit images from digital cameras and blog those.

Reader Comments

(Page 1)

1. He must be using special software... the Newtons has notoriously BAD handwriting recognition! Perhaps he's just gotten used to it after 6 years.

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by authgeek

2. Yep, the first release of the handwriting engine sucked bad. But the entire engine improved dramatically quickly. By the time the MessagePad 2000 came off the line, even Gary Trudeau (who penned a seriously damaging Doonesbury about the Newton's handwriting) had taken back his remarks and was using one himself.

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ross Olson

3. The handwriting recognition is great (yes, the first release sucked) - better than great...amazing.
Anyway, It's still the best out there, and Apple has included it in OS X. In the System Prefs, if you plug in a USB tablet, you'll see an option for "Ink". You could sit and write on a digitizer tablet and have your Powerbook recognize it. Kinda like a Newton on steroids!

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ron

4. He must be using special software... the Newtons has notoriously BAD handwriting recognition! Perhaps he's just gotten used to it after 6 years.

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by authgeek

5. Yep, the first release of the handwriting engine sucked bad. But the entire engine improved dramatically quickly. By the time the MessagePad 2000 came off the line, even Gary Trudeau (who penned a seriously damaging Doonesbury about the Newton's handwriting) had taken back his remarks and was using one himself.

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ross Olson

6. The handwriting recognition is great (yes, the first release sucked) - better than great...amazing.
Anyway, It's still the best out there, and Apple has included it in OS X. In the System Prefs, if you plug in a USB tablet, you'll see an option for "Ink". You could sit and write on a digitizer tablet and have your Powerbook recognize it. Kinda like a Newton on steroids!

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ron

7. He must be using special software... the Newtons has notoriously BAD handwriting recognition! Perhaps he's just gotten used to it after 6 years.

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by authgeek

8. Yep, the first release of the handwriting engine sucked bad. But the entire engine improved dramatically quickly. By the time the MessagePad 2000 came off the line, even Gary Trudeau (who penned a seriously damaging Doonesbury about the Newton's handwriting) had taken back his remarks and was using one himself.

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ross Olson

9. The handwriting recognition is great (yes, the first release sucked) - better than great...amazing.
Anyway, It's still the best out there, and Apple has included it in OS X. In the System Prefs, if you plug in a USB tablet, you'll see an option for "Ink". You could sit and write on a digitizer tablet and have your Powerbook recognize it. Kinda like a Newton on steroids!

Posted at 5:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ron

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