Awhile back Andy Gray, a Tablet PC software developer, asked asked me:

Regarding your comment, “Blogging with a Tablet PC slate has been an abysmal experience,” what specifically would make for a better experience blogging on a Tablet?

On January 5th, Andy posted this question on his blog and it’s been sitting in my ‘blog about this’ folder for awhile. Apparently Andy and Michael are, in fact, working on their own Tablet PC blogging tool. I was encouraged when I checked into this further to come across Julia Lerman’s Tablet PC blogging tool: BLink, which I’ve marked for download to try out. Among the features I’d like to see a blogging software program like this are:

• automatic conversion of my ink to a compressed image file(s) (in 30k or less pieces so it is web bandwidth friendly) and provide a handwriting converted text version as well. This way also people who didn’t like my handwriting could see the text version and the search engines could better index the entry since they cannot index the images. Or for shorter text, just use the ALT tag for the text contained in the picture (but this has to be really short text).
• Automatic save as I write so if something goes haywire, the post is saved. Nothing in blogging — and I do mean nothing — is more frustrating than losing a blog entry because the software hiccups or some other bizarre act has happened before a save. Saves should occur every time there is a pause of more than a couple seconds OR if a certain amount of text has been added/changed.
• Ability to click and drag text from the browser to the blogging area and have it automatically add the URL of the source. This is a very cool function of OneNote that every blogging tool should have. Yes, I can copy it into OneNote and then paste into the blog posting window, but this is an extra step. Extra steps need to be streamlined on the Tablet PC to make the user not constantly say to him/herself: “where’s the mouse?!”
• Ability to setup custom attribution sources with custom image per each source hyperlinked. For example, if I’m blogging about an article written by CNET I’d like to include an image to attribute the quoted part of the article/piece to CNET. It would be nice to be able to customize a list of these attribution sources so that I could choose from say a dropdown menu and have the code automatically inserted, then I’d only need to add the URL to the source and no typing of the code. See example. Again, the HTML code would be totally customizable by source so that each blogger could choose to customize the source attributed.
• Support for timed publishing using the popular APIs: Metablog, Blogger API, etc. This way if I want to write a bunch of blog entries locally (offline or online) and have them publish as soon as there is an internet connection or at set times once there is an internet connection, the blog software would be able to do that.

This list isn’t 100% complete, some obvious functionality is missing (like the application shouldn’t consume massive CPU or be unstable), but these are some ideas that would make blogging on a Tablet PC in ink much more practical for me. Ideally the Tablet PC developer(s) should use their app to actually do some blogging without a keyboard and strive to make the experience as easy and fluid as possible. If I had the time — or if I can make the time — this is the type of Tablet PC blogging application I’d create. I’m sure other Tablet PC readers can add more to my list and I encourage you to do so in the comments area or by trackbacking from your respective blogs.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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