SpeedScript is an innovative program (one of many) aimed at making it easy to enter text on mobile devices. With all the talk about whether the iPhone's lack of a physical keyboard is an advantage or a detriment, it's easy to forget that folks have been struggling with on-screen text entry methods ever since the days of the Apple Newton. See how it all comes full circle back to Apple?

Anyway, as we've mentioned before, SpeedScript is available for Windows Mobile devices for about $13. But SpeedScript is also testing tablet and UMPC versions of the software. And when we say testing, we mean if you download a copy today, they're not going to charge you for a year. That should be more than enough time to figure out whether SpeedScript actually saves you any time.

[via jkOnTheRun]

James Kendrick over at JKOnTheRun is reporting that the latest updates from the popular Spybot Search & Destroy anti-spyware application are falsely detecting and removing files that are crucial to the correct functioning of Tablet PCs. The fix appears to require rolling back to a recent system restore point, which to me makes puts this problem in the serious category.

Of course, you're immune if you don't have a Tablet PC, but think of the possibilities had this problem caused bigger problems for more mainstream versions of Windows. I suppose these days there's no real solution that will prevent a buggy update from slipping through for one of the many security based tools we now need to run to keep a Windows installation running in good shape. Heck, Windows Updates are often the worst offenders in terms of introducing problems when they're trying to fix something.

What's a user to do, short of unplugging from the net and never updating?

A school in Philadelphia just opened (Sept 7th) all decked out with Microsoft technology. Students will be able to use "...smart cards and Tablet PCs for many of their daily activities, and will be able to connect wirelessly to the schools internal network." (Beta News) Officials in New York are also talking to Microsoft about doing the same thing for their schools. Many are touting this school as the "way it should be done" for the future of education. The Philadelphia school is high school serving grades 9-12, but the Microsoft-ized school may hold possibilities for middle and grade schools as well. The newly christened school also makes work easier on teachers by eliminating much paperwork.

[Via Beta News]

While Tablet PC software isn't something we typically cover, this particular offer is hard to ignore. EverNote is offering a free license to either EverNote Plus, or ritePen 2.5 (a Tablet handwriting recognition utility) for a sample of your handwriting. And although the offer in and of itself is quite interesting, to me what I found most interesting was the list of sentences that users must submit to meet the qualifications for the free offer. Here's the list:

1. Sympathizing would fix Quaker objectives.
2. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs!
3. The July sun caused a fragment of black pine wax to ooze on the velvet quilt.
4. How quickly daft jumping zebras vex?
5. Just keep examining every low bid quoted for zinc etchings...
6. The explorer was frozen in his 'Big Kayak' just after making queer discoveries.
7. Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dogs.
8. Jackdaws Love My Big Sphinx Of Quartz!
9. Six Big Juicy Steaks Sizzled In A Pan As Five Workmen Left The Quarry.
10. The Five 'boxing' Wizards Jump Quickly Up.
11. While Making Deep Excavations, We Found Some Quaint Bronze Jewelry.
12. Whenever The "Red Fox" Jumped, The Squirrel Gazed Suspiciously.
13. Quick Zephyrs Blow, Vexing Daft Jim.
14. ~45% #342a $87 €60 <D&G> 7*(2^3) = 56 {27/9}=3
15. Nora@comcast.net; www.slashdot.org; Cecil@hotmail.com; c:\temp
16. [94085] 12:45 +1 (924) 572-3601 © EverNote 2006

Web addresses, email addresses and file paths make the list, which is not surprising, as do currency values and formulas. More surprisingly are some of the regular sentences that are apparently difficult to detect, such as "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs!".

[Via Black Belt Productivity]

37Signals' Basecamp is pretty slick, wouldn't you agree? Tablet PCs, in their own right, have quite the slick factor as well. Wouldn't it be cool if someone, say a small software company called Luckymonk, came up with the idea of combining the two, say with a product called Scout? It sure would!

While Scout isn't quite ready yet, Luckymonk offers a preview screencast of everything that will be possible once it's released. As an added bonus, the company will be releasing their Basecamp API wrapper for .NET 2.0 as well. For now, however, you Tablet PC owners will just have to bookmark Luckymonk's Scout product page under 'ToDo'.

We prefer to leave the gadget news coverage to the pros so we haven't been covering every little development in Microsoft's no-longer-mysterious Origami "ultramobile" handheld tablet PC buzz campaign, but we are user interface nerds, so Engadget's coverage of Origami's novel "Touch Pack Interface" piqued our interest. The core of the Origami Touch Pack Interface is a virtual keyboard in the form of two quarter-circles that the user controls with his thumbs. It looks pretty cool, but will it work? Or should we preemptively add "Origami thumb" to our medical vernacular?

For lots more Origami info and lots of photos of Origami devices from Samsung, Asus, and more, head over to Engadget, where the CeBIT coverage is fast and furious. This post is a good place to start.