Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Commercial
xThink Calculator: Like a mathematician's whiteboard, but smarter
xThink Calculator is one of the more unique programs seen recently. It's an on-screen calculator, but you don't click on or type in numbers—instead, you draw them just like you did in your notebook in high school, saving yourself the trouble of having to deal with convoluted sets of parentheses and other symbols to write a complex expression. Obviously, this software is intended for tablet PCs, but even using my mouse the program was able to interpret my scribbles pretty consistently.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tevetorbes said 11:31PM on 8-25-2005
"write a complex expression"
Guess it really depends on your definition of a complex expression: certainly didn't understand (-16)^1/2 (har har).
At any rate, I'll stick with mathematica for complex expressions- I was hoping to at least get the solution to a definite integral out of this thing, but it kept giving me nonsense answers like 5=5 and 8=8. BRILLIANT!
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Adora said 8:41AM on 8-26-2005
Very interesting concept. I'm one of those people who just HAS to do certain things on paper because they don't flow out of my brain right if I use a keyboard and mouse. An application like this seems like it could be the best of both worlds. Besides, I've been meaning to buy a wacom tablet anyway. ^_^
:: Lisa
:: adora [at] techslut [.] net
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Chris said 3:27PM on 8-30-2005
This is very old news.
The real story is that if you help xThink by sending them copies of specific math symbols -- in your own handwriting -- they will give you a free copy of MathJournal (the grand-daddy of Calculator).
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