TPC University: Degree Series Announcement

27 February 2005 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: Tablet PC University Series

Trev and I are pleased to announce we’ll be adding a new segment to our website we like to call "Tablet PC University." We’ll be looking at different majors and going through ways a tablet PC and related software (or whatever else) can help make you more productive at whatever focus you may have. Look for our nifty logo in at the top of the article to know it’s a TPCU series article ^_^.

Tablet PC Education Blog…Finally!

25 February 2005 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: News, Teachers and Tablets, Websites

Robert Heiny (Loren Heiny’s dad, for fans of Incremental Blogger, another great tablet blog) has started a blog on the tablet PC in education, and considering in his profile it writes, "Specialty in organizational development to increase personal benefits for students through education," as a personal description, I’d have to say it looks pretty promising. There’s already a lot posted (lol, way more than we’ve pulled off lately, dang mid-terms…), and hopefully will really help cover both sides of the story that we as students just can’t cover. There’s a lot of teachers out there who are probably very happy to see a site dedicated to them finally (I know at least we’ve had many requests)!

Nigel Ward on OneNote and My Response

16 February 2005 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: OneNote, Tablet Concepts

Associate Professor of Computer Science (University of Texas - El Paso) Nigel Ward posted a comment about a review of OneNote he wrote on whether OneNote really is the next big thing for students. He asked for my comments on his article and I thought this discussion would be beneficial to all you out there in computer world as it covered a lot of issues many have problems with. Somethings I agree with, a lot of things I don’t, but I hope some of this helps. (me in black type, Nigel in italic gray)

"OneNote is being marketed to college students as a tool for taking notes in class. Is it up to the task?

"The short answer is, probably not. The longer answer is, of course, it depends . . . "

Type Fonts with a Twist

13 February 2005 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: Other, Tips / Tricks

This is just a quickie (since I have a test tomorrow), but here’s just a little trick for an old dog.

For those times where you do type because it’s just easier (e-mail, a need of spell check, formatting, etc.) and it’s not official business (resume, reports, etc.), going back to blah fonts such as Times is just…blah. It’s not fun to look at anymore after being use to your own handwriting everywhere, especially for things which require creativity (where your own handwriting gets your creative juices flowing).

For my test tomorrow, we have to write an essay on one of two questions we were given a week ago. Since I type well and wanted to keep formatting (and not get distracted with using my tablet in tablet mode ^_^), I wanted to type out my outline and rough draft. Maybe it’s just me, but I always have a tough time finding a font. Either it looks too official, too hard to read, or too weird. I wanted my handwriting. This brought me back to an old trick I used a couple months ago…

50,000! Spectacular!

10 February 2005 Posted By: Trevor
Posted in: Blog Related

Hey all. Today we broke 50,000 hits. The Student Tablet PC opened up officially on December 1st, 2004, so we’re very excited that so many people come to read our site.

I’m thinking of offering a contest to celebrate. I’m unsure of the prize at the moment, but I can get a copy of most any software you guys might be interested in winning. I’ve also got a cross pen that I could give away. Post some comments on what you might be interested in winning and I’ll see what I can scrounge up. Ideas for the contest are appreciated as well.

Organizing Your Files, nay! Your Life

7 February 2005 Posted By: Trevor
Posted in: Organization

Face it. As students our papers, our notes, our readings are our lives, at least they are the means to our livelihood. So what do we do when something gets lost? We have problems, that’s what. This article will cover a few simple techniques that will preserve your sanity and hopefully your grades…

Great Article on Shared Maps

7 February 2005 Posted By: Trevor
Posted in: MindManager, Note-Taking

I saw this on Nick Duffill’s  blog, Beyond Crayons. It’s a great example on how to and how not to create shared mindmaps. You already know my love for MindManager and mindmapping in general. In the academic world though, very few of my friends know about mindmaps or MindManager, yet they are fascinated once they see them. (I’m trying to get MindManager into the academic setting a bit more, but a las I’m just one man) My mindmaps tend to be very good for sharing as they are easy to understand and quick to look at compared to linear notes. This article does not discuss the technicalities of sharing mindmaps but rather the concepts involved in creating a map to be viewed by more than one person.

It’s in the Bag

2 February 2005 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: Accessories

Once you have a Tablet PC, a big question that hits usually runs along the lines of, "Um…what do I carry this in?" A normal laptop bag may work fine for a normal laptop (hence the name "laptop bag"), but most tablets are no where near the size of a standard laptop. One would soon notice the waste of space in a big bag, but, well, what else is there? Tablets don’t exactly have a huge share of the market (yet), so needless to say there is a limited number of accessories for them. The good thing is that tablets can fit into a lot of places due to small size, leaving for a wide variety of options. I’ll cover the basic ideas you can use for carrying cases, but you can get creative as you want (as you’ll see in the article ^_^).