Thursday, March 02, 2006

Craig, Buzz, Skype and I

On one of my recent chats with Craig Pringle (tablet PC MVP New Zealand) I was introduced to Buzz Bruggeman of Pete Weldon in Florida, 4pm their time. Now, if you ever have a chance to have a beer with these two chaps then you should definitely take it up. Apart from oozing with enthusiasm for all things Tablet they’re also focused on world domination too. It seemed that for every challenge presented, they had a solution; and for every solution they actually had a service pack downloadable at some forward-slash address I’d never heard of!!!

We sat through the morning talking Tablet PC, Origami and more. Our conversation also moved onto name dropping…a competition declared even at fulltime.

I’m excited about Active Words and am happily linking you to Craig Pringles ActiveWordsDemo. I’m a strong believer that Active Words is the programmable button that the Slate tablet has been missing. With this application you can program any given word to then be used as a trigger for an event. When you consider that I am currently running three different slates (keyboardless), then having this mechanism has accelerated the way I work. For e.g. I now input into the Active Words panel “@neil” and my email client is launched with Dr. Neil Roodyn’s email address already typed into the address box.

Let’s put this into perspective. Normally on my slate I would launch Outlook via my start menu (I’m not a fan of desktop icons or Quick Launch either) and then click on “new” to compose an email. Then via the Tablet input panel I would type the letter “n” for Neil and select Dr. Neil from the selections available. With Active Words all I do is write "@neil" (because that’s the way I distinguish an email to Neil as opposed to other triggers I have set for Neil) and the rest is done for me…too cool!

Some facts I learnt today:

  • ActiveWords software stores your database of words in a file that can be backed up and migrated to other installations.
  • ActiveWords PLUS gives you the ability to install the product on all your computers (as long as they're for your own use).
  • ActiveWords Enterprise edition allows you to share your companies "ActiveWords" directory over a network. This means that company related triggers can be accessed simultaneously across and network, with out the need to configuration's on every computer.
  • ActiveWords has the ability to receive both "Ink" and "Type" in the input panel.

Download a fully functional free 60 day trial of AvtiveWords Today!

Craig Pringle will be in Australia for Toshiba's Mobilexchange event held next week. I’ll be picking him up from Sydney Airport to do what I do best…talk Tablet. If you want a chance to meet Craig then he'll be at the monthly Sydney Windows Mobile User Group meeting.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I met Buzz virtually when he connected me to ActiveWords, wish I'd found it long ago, and in person in Orlando late last year. Great Guy and a great product.

Thanks for your tip, I'm now busy converting my "em" active words to "@" which is a far better short-code for email and one less character to type. Thanks!

Hugo Gaston Ortega said...

Hi Robin,

I concur, Buzz is a great guy!

PS. I'm always happy to help :-)