iPhone 4S, Siri and the Garmin Zumo 660

So I just received my iPhone 4S. I love it.

One of the new features is Siri, an AI assistant which uses voice to interact with me as an user, and the backend of what is my iPhone: reminders, my calendar, my contacts, and the internet.

Now, interacting with voice is not something entirely new. My car’s hifi and satnav system supports a basic level of voice commands to call people from my contact list, and even my Garmin Zumo 660 which I use on my motorcycle supports it.

Whereas in my car the voice commands are processed by the car, however, Garmin’s Zumo 660 uses the voice support of my phone. So if I had a phone which did not support voice commands, I’d be out of luck. But Garmin’s Zumo 660 specifies in the documentation that this voice is only limited to calling people: you shout their name in the microphone, and your phone should know what to do: call the contact who’s name you shouted.

It all goes a bit haywire on the iPhone 4S though: instead of simple voice commands, the

 

IOGear Mobile Digital Scribe GPEN200N on Mac OSX

In 2008, I was still using laptops running Windows, and had a project which included having many meetings with alot of people.  I found the process of retyping my on paper written notes onto my OneNote application tedious and felt I could spent my time more productive.

Visiting Canada, I found a digital pen called the Mobile Digital Scribe from IOGear (GPEN200N) for 99$ which did not need special paper, but worked with a special pen and a sensor you could place on any surface, to register all notes I would write on paper.  With the simple included software, I could easily integrate my handwritten notes into OneNote.

Not long later,  however, I switched to a MacBook Pro running OSX and was unable to use the digital pen any longer, since there was no such support on Mac.  I could use the device connected to my MacBook as a mouse, but not really for taking notes.

Up until I did some research…

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