Electronic Whiteboard

Combine a touch sensitive screen with a video projector (and a little creative software). What you get is an extremely flexible PrintableWhiteboard, with almost none of the disadvantages.

See:

• TeamBoard?: http://www.teamboard.com
• SMARTBoard: http://www.smarttech.com (http://www.smarterkids.org & http://www.dpict.com)
• MicroTouch?: http://www.microtouch.com/ibid/
• Mimio: http://www.mimio.com

Features:

• Touch screen keeps all information in electronic format at all times: Can be copied to a workstation for touchup with no loss of data. (COLOR, for example, is preserved.)
• Projector can "simulate" the drawing done by pens on the touch screen, so no actual pens are needed. One can draw in any color with your finger. (One never runs out of blue or black pens! ;-)
• Touch screen can act as mouse input to conventional Windows applications. Example: Make menu selections by tapping on the projected menu bar with your finger.
• Can draw whiteboard "transparencies" on top of projection from conventional application. Like, one can annotate spreadsheet cells and graphs with hand-drawn "whiteboard overlay."
• Drawing usually done with a custom "Paint / Draw" application, provided with the equipment: You can draw lines and shapes, and move them around as objects, but you can also erase, much like a whiteboard.

Related Topics:

• PrintableWhiteboards = "fuzzy fax-like" black and white approximations; inconvenient to make digital.
• ElectronicPaper = leading-edge research topic (may be viable in a few years)
• LargeLcdDisplay = good idea (but currently too expensive and small)

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Someone mentioned in ProgrammingOutsideTheCube that they would love a whiteboard like this hooked up to a wiki.

Do the SimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork. Get an inexpensive digital camera, and post the images on the wiki. Done. Its not perfect.. but it does allow for collaboration without breaking the bank.

A "webcam" or other device that can be triggered from the computer from a script or program that also does the archiving and storing and putting on a wiki or whatnot at the same time is probably better. It's quite a bit of work to download images off a digital camera. Turning on and off, plugging in cables etc

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I tried a few of these out at a local trade show a few weeks ago; very cool. I like the "pen selection menu" at the bottom of TeamBoard? better than the "pen holder sensor" used by SMARTBoard; really, neither needs real physical pens at all -- use your finger.

I still think one would need to "touch up" (or nearly rewrite) most notations after the meeting. Use memory and written notes to flesh out the marks, making them more readable. -- JeffGrigg

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Check out the DynaWall?: http://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/ambiente/activities/dynawall.html

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A complete non-techie recently suggested to me that they build touch sensitive whiteboards/monitors that covered the tops of desks and allow for anything from a simulated keyboard to multiple pointers in use at once. I have to admit, it's a compelling idea.

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These would be incredibly cool for the Denim web sketching application (cf. http://guir.cs.berkeley.edu) which really needs a touch screen, or at the very least, a tablet. JamesLanday? and his research group have some great ideas about integrating sketching, programming by demonstration, etc., into the next generation of applications.

A link on the GUIR site does end up at an examination of active desk surfaces (really big displays mounted horizontally) for architects.

--KenMeltsner

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CategoryHardware