handwriting

The slow demise of cursive handwriting is not a new story, but lately the death knell has been tolling a little louder. In a recent example, the State Board of Education of Kansas is about to debate the role of cursive lessons in the schools amid a nationwide decline in those lessons.

School districts large and small have been phasing out cursive. Verona, Wis., will phase out most third-grade cursive instruction by 2014. Indiana formally de-emphasized cursive last year in favor of pushing proficiency in keyboard use.

Common Core State Standards for what students are expected to learn have been picked up by most of the states in the union. Those standards don't require cursive. Keyboarding skills, however, are featured in the writing standards. That means most states no longer have a mandate for teaching cursive.… Read more

Google's bringing back that elementary-school skill most of us stopped using in 2010, if not earlier, with Handwrite.

Actually, I discovered today that Handwrite is pretty er... handy. The idea is that hunting and pecking on an onscreen tablet or smartphone keyboard, or even using a fancier keyboard interaction tool like Swype, isn't ideal in certain (some might say most) situations.

Instead, you can now simply trace out the letters of what you're looking for anywhere on the touch screen when you're searching Google Web services on a mobile device.… Read more

Google today introduced a new way to search on your phone or tablet. Dubbed Google Handwrite, it lets you write letters on your touch-screen mobile device instead of tapping away on the keyboard. Whether you'll find writing out search terms faster than typing them out remains to be seen, but it's worth checking out this new way of searching on your phone or tablet.

To enable Google Handwrite, navigate your way to Google.com on your mobile device and find the settings link or button. On an iPhone, for example, the Settings link is located at the bottom … Read more

Amazon's Kindle Touch is getting handwriting recognition, but it isn't being delivered by the company you think.

A new puzzle-focused technology startup called Puzzazz has developed a Kindle Touch-exclusive product called TouchWrite. The technology, which GeekWire's Todd Bishop tried out, enables users to write numbers and letters with a finger, and then TouchWrite converts them into digital on-screen versions.

For now, Puzzazz's technology is limited to a couple of Sudoku e-books available in the Kindle Store. However, the company's founder, Roy Leban, told GeekWire that he believes TouchWrite is "the future of books."… Read more

Small businesses and start-ups need all the help they can get. Fortunately, there's a wide range of free tools that can help entrepreneurs, contractors, and tradespeople take care of business. Bid-n-Invoice Basic Invoice is an easy-to-use application for creating and printing professional-looking invoices and estimates. Best of all, it's free for both personal and commercial use.

Basic Invoice opened with an extremely basic interface, just a blank field and a toolbar with icons labeled New Invoice, Manual Invoice, and Help. We clicked New Invoice, which opened the program's template in a separate window. A drop-down list let … Read more

Many people use an iPad or other tablet almost exclusively to view Web pages and e-mail. For them, the machine's tiny onscreen keyboard and other input limitations are no big deal.

Recently I've been doing extensive note-taking on my iPad. I could use Apple's $69 iPad charging dock with attached keyboard or the company's $69 wireless keyboard. But lugging around a keyboard--however compact it may be--makes the iPad a lot less portable.

I decided to test three handwriting apps for the iPad: Software Garden's $5 Note Taker HD, Viet Tran's $6 Notes Plus, and … Read more

Lots of people buy iPads under the mistaken assumption that they can scribble notes on them, much like they would on a legal pad.

However, because the tablet employs a capacative touch screen, you can't just grab your old plastic PalmPilot stylus and start writing. You need a special pen, one with a conductive tip that mimics your fingertip.

Many moons ago I wrote about the Pogo Sketch and Pogo Stylus, both of which work well enough but feel thin and lightweight. If you're looking for something a little more substantial, a little more business-class, check out the … Read more

Multitouch capacitive screens and pads are arguably the first new style of input and device interaction to hit the mainstream since the gamepad became the standard for most modern gaming consoles.

Even if we most associate multitouch with the Apple product ecosystem at this point, by itself that's still an enormously high-profile "niche."

HowStuffWorks describes the technology of the iPhone's touch screen and one of Apple's relevant patents, for a mutual capacitive screen, can be found here. A mutual capacitive screen includes two active layers; one contains lines with a driving current, the other contains … Read more

If you had visions of scribbling notes on your iPad, much like you can with virtually every other tablet that preceded it, Apple pretty much dashed them with Wednesday's focus on its onscreen keyboard.

Unsurprisingly, accessory makers have already stepped up to fill the gap. Ten One Design recently announced the Pogo Sketch and Pogo Stylus, which are fully compatible with the iPad.

As with the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad's screen requires capacitive input, which is why a traditional plastic stylus (or a gloved fingertip) won't work. The Pogo pens have special tips that mimic … Read more