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you need handwriting in order to take notes

Nope.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295110

I was convinced to design a system so that I could actually pay attention in class and take good notes, as well as take notes during these important face-to-face conversations. So whenever somebody says something interesting, I can get it down unobtrusively, quickly, and actually then reuse those notes later on in further conversations.

That's why I made a wearable computer. ...

I went to a heads-up display. I could put the focus on the whiteboard, and suddenly I could keep up. And I found not only could I keep up and take good notes, especially with this one-handed Twiddler keyboard I have, but it actually focused my mental attention, so that during a lecture I got a whole lot more out of it than ever before. And that's why if you've ever seen me in a meeting or a lecture, you'll see me taking notes furiously on my wearable computer not just so I get it, but also because it keeps my attention focused. I can put in new ideas and new offshoots and things I want to ask later into the stream of data that I'm capturing. ...

I also have a one-handed keyboard called a Twiddler. It has 12 keys on the front and six keys on the top. One of those keys is actually a joystick. It allows me to type up to 130 words per minute, though I maintain about 70 when I'm writing papers, that sort of thing. ...

And this is the system I wear basically every day. Right now, if you looked at my screen, you would see that I have all the previous conversations I had with David here – one on 25 January 2006, one on 25 January 2007, and one 29 January 2008, today. So every time I've met with Gartner, I've kept notes on the conversation.

This is the Twiddler:

http://www.handykey.com




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