Pencil
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Pencil stylus from the makers of Paper now available
As we reported a while ago, the makers of the awesome iPad app Paper have developed a new stylus called Pencil. In fact, it looks like a jumbo pencil used for construction, but (of course) it is Bluetooth-enabled and does a variety of things when used with Paper. A clever "kiss to pair" connects the device to your iPad, and unlocks some new features in Paper. The app will ignore your wrist resting on the screen, as one example, something that is a consideration if you're used to tablets like those from Wacom. You can erase with the Pencil (again, like Wacom pens) by flipping it around and using the "eraser" on one end. Two models are available: a US$59.95 "Walnut" model and a $49.95 "Graphite" model. The tip isn't like Evernote's ball point; it's more like a Cosmonaut stylus, but chiseled to look like a big pencil. Makes sense! You can read more about the Pencil on TechCrunch. We hope to review it soon.
FiftyThree launches $50 Pencil Bluetooth stylus for its sketching app (video)
Remember when we spotted that FiftyThree, makers of the iPad sketching app Paper, was working on a stylus? Now it's time for Paper to meet Pencil. Looking like an enormous marker pencil, the unit comes in a choice of sustainable hardwood or brushed aluminum, jam-packed with technology inside. Innovations include palm rejection, an eraser-end to remove your digital mistakes and a rechargeable battery that promises a month of life with normal use. Pairing to your iPad over Bluetooth, you'll also get access to various paid-for tools like Outline, Mixer and Sketch for free. Of course, the unit will set you back $50, but that's a small price to pay to be top of the life drawing class.
FiftyThree building a stylus for Paper sketch app
The developers at FiftyThree, makers of the amazing Paper app for iPad (free, with in-app purchases), are branching out in a new direction -- hardware. The company will soon be marketing a new capacitive stylus called "Pencil" that has shown up in FCC filings, using low-power Bluetooth for connectivity to presumably transmit pressure information. The information supplied to the FCC shows two models, one made of wood and the other from an aluminum alloy. One image, seen below, appears to show a USB connector on one end to make charging of the device a breeze -- simply plug the "eraser" end into an open USB port. We can't help but wonder if the Pencil will have a protective case around the body, or it they're really going to ship it in this "carpenter's pencil" configuration. As our cohorts at Engadget point out, FiftyThree is made up of people who were behind Microsoft's innovative (and prematurely canceled) Courier project, so it's not surprising that the company is looking beyond just software. The Paper app already supports a number of third-party styluses, including the Wacom Bamboo and the Pogo Connect. FiftyThree has also partnered with Moleskine to let artists create hard-copy books of their Paper drawings and paintings.
Pencil on Paper: meet the stylus for FiftyThree's popular iPad sketching app
When you're the creator of an award-winning iPad sketchbook app, making your own stylus would be a logical move. Unsurprisingly, that's exactly what FiftyThree, the brains behind Microsoft's Courier project and developers of Paper, intend to do. The company's new "Pencil" capacitive stylus has just popped up at the FCC, outlining its plans to equip Paper users with a rubber-tipped low power Bluetooth accessory that can draw on a touchscreen "like a canvas." The documents detail two models: one crafted from wood and the other from aluminum alloy. The FCC approval highlights FiftyThree's desire to further expand beyond Apple's App Store and venture into new markets. The company recently partnered with Moleskine to allow Paper users to create a $40 custom-printed 15-page "Book" of sketches and designs created within the app. The new products will directly compete with Wacom's bluetooth-enabled stylii, and of course with plain old fingers -- which will likely still be welcome in the Paper app, even after the Pencil comes to market.
Icon Notebook: textual communication avenue for the Microsoft Word averse
It looks like a document. It's chock-full of documents. But not Microsoft Word documents. Only documents that could dream of one day being scanned in and converted to a Word document. It's the Icon Notebook, brought to you by the brilliant minds at Brigada Creativa, and it's on sale now for €6.95 ($9.34) direct from Spain. Which is a whole lot cheaper than a Word license, no matter the font you're talking in.
Sharpie Liquid Pencil, the aftermath: it's 'permanent,' not permanent
And so it comes to this, the final bleak chapter of our time with the Sharpie Liquid Pencil. If you'll recall, the Liquid Pencil first increased nerd heartbeats around the world a week and a half ago, when it was launched promising to write like a pen, erase like a pencil, and eventually dry like a Sharpie permanent marker. In fact, those were Sharpie's exact words: "Becomes permanent like a Sharpie marker after three days." The world seemed yet full of wonder; our ambition was limitless. We poured champagne and conducted our first hands-on with great success: indeed, the liquid graphite contained inside wrote like a pen and then erased completely. A simple pencil rising to the pages of Engadget -- could any story be more American? But then... tragedy. A week later, we returned to our Moleskine to test the permanency of our earlier scribbles and found that they still erased completely. Yes, given enough squinting and optimism, the argument could be made that the marks were slightly darker, but we'd been promised "permanent like a Sharpie marker" -- was the Sharpie Liquid Pencil nothing more than an elaborate ruse? Our hopes chastened, we clicked off another few moments of film documenting the fundamental transience of our creations, kept our best stiff upper lip, and dispatched a letter to Sharpie, imploring them to explain. Today, we received a response, which we shall reprint in full after the break.
Sharpie Liquid Pencil doesn't dry like a Sharpie
We were pretty excited about the Sharpie Liquid Pencil when we first heard about it -- it uses liquid graphite to write like a pen, erase like a pencil, and (supposedly) dry like a permanent marker after three days. Well, it's been just over a week since our first hands-on, and we've got some bad news: we can still erase what we've written pretty easily. If you squint just right it sort of looks like it might have dried a little darker, but it's certainly not Sharpie-level permanence. Sad faces all around. We've followed up with Sharpie to see what's going on and we'll let you know what we hear, but check the video after the break in the meantime.
Miniature pencil tip sculptures make art from the everyday
We'll admit it: we're pretty big fans of pencils (you may remember them as those wooden sticks early humans used to scribble in their diaries with), so we were pretty tickled to see these beauties. Artist Dalton Ghetti's tiny pencil sculptures are made using only a razor blade, a sewing needle and a sculpting knife. The results are incredibly beautiful and impressive. One more shot below, hit the source for plenty more.
Sharpie Liquid Pencil writes and erases like a pencil, dries like a Sharpie (video hands-on!)
Doesn't look like we've ever covered a pencil on Engadget before, but this is just too nifty to pass up: the Sharpie Liquid Pencil uses liquid graphite to write like a pen, erase like a pencil, and eventually dry like a permanent marker. Sharpie's blog says the Liquid Pencil go on sale in September, but Office Depot has a $5 two-pack with six erasers in stock online now -- and we were charming enough to snag an early review sample. It basically works as described, although the marks don't erase completely clear -- because you're writing with a metal pen tip, there's no way to avoid impressing the paper a little, and the indentations are pretty visible. Still, it's better than any erasable pen we've ever used, and it definitely writes like a decent clicky-pen, so we can't fault it too much. Oddly, Sharpie's blog says it takes three days for the ink to dry to permanence, but the back of the package says 24 hours, so we'll have to see how long our test scribbles last -- we'll let you know. Video after the break. %Gallery-99118%
N-trig's Digital Pencil plays pen and fingertip roles, claims mastery of both
It's hard to justify rolling into summer school with just an electronic wooden ruler, but pairing that with one of N-trig's new Digital Pencils just seems like a match made in detention heaven. The company responsible for pushing out that snazzy DuoSense technology back in 2008 is hitting back with yet another digital writing instrument, with this particular one designed to work with multitouch devices. Being a part of the DuoSense family, the battery-powered device can actually act as either a fingertip (you know, for those capacitive screens) or a digitizer pen, enabling it to play nice with a smorgasbord of third-party peripherals. The company claims that the two-pronged approach will give users far more flexibility, and the DuoSense software identifies the position of the Pencil and the pressure level, removing the need for an excitation coil within the DuoSense digitizer. Curiously enough, there's no public mention of a price, but we're guessing it'll sell for far more than you're willing to pay here in just a few days.
Samsung's 40-inch LCD is world's thinnest at 3.9-mm, attracts magic pencils
What measures 3.9-mm thin by 40 inches? If you answered the standard Korean product waif you'd be close. This time, however, we're talking about Samsung's LED backlit LCD featuring a 120Hz refresh and 5,000:1 reported contrast. Yup, that makes it the world's thinnest -- easily besting cross-town rival LG's 5.9-mm thick LCDs -- even if you can't buy it as a complete television package... yet.[Via Akihabara News]
World of WarCrafts: Wowatar fills in the lines
World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by contacting our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) -- not-for-profit work only, please.Getting started can be the most difficult step for WoW newbies and WoW "WarCrafters" alike. Showing your artwork to other people – or even having the gumption to create any in the first place – can be intimidating stuff. Discovering someone who's willing to show you how it's done or even share his creative process represents a major inspirational coup. Swedish WoW player Jonas at wowatar.com is one of those creative wellsprings. He's created a small drawing site filled with WoW-related nuggets that inspire, instruct and delight.
Pencils down, iPhones up
The next time someone calls you a pencil-necked geek, take comfort in the knowledge that the humble pencil can be used to do wonderful things, especially if you happen to have a few of them lying around plus some heavy-duty rubber bands. In fact, with the kind of ingenuity displayed by the Geeky Gadgets team, you can whip up one delightful iPhone or iPod touch stand. The same design could work with sturdy twigs and twine, if your office supply oversight is too strict to allow the pencil version -- impress your cubicle-mates with your Adirondack outdoorsy style. In a similar vein to the binder-clip stands featured on Cult of Mac and Instructables, this stand does a nice job of reusing found materials. If you've got a favorite iPhone stand made from atypical structural items, throw it into the TUAW Flickr feed. Thanks Ged!
Enpitsu de Oku no Hosomichi is lovely
Sometimes writing about the DS is kind of surreal. Like when we get to make a gallery of preview images for a poetry book. We doubt the Xbox 360 Fanboy dudes are doing that right now. They're probably writing about games.In addition to being as subtly beautiful in presentation as we're sure the original poetry is, Enpitsu de Oku no Hosomichi now appeals to us in another sense: it includes free junk. As a limited bonus, Success is throwing in a pencil stylus. Because "Pencil (Enpitsu)"is right there in the name.%Gallery-3547%
The Narrow Way to the Dual Screens
Here's a really cool non-game from Success: it's a DS version of the Basho poetry collection Oku no Hosomichi, (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) in a form where you draw over each character as an actor reads the poem. Enpitsu de Oku no Hosomichi DS is based on a similar book release, which featured the poems in grey print for readers to trace over, thereby forcing them to think about each kanji as they read. It's a beautiful idea for a book release, and equally nice-sounding on the DS.We know that it's basically an attempt to cash in on the non-game craze, but Enpitsu de Oku no Hosomichi DS is such a great idea that we don't care. More importantly, it makes a pretty strong case for the e-book, not only on DS but in general, with features that improve on the traditional print version.[Via Insert Credit]
The pride of our pocket protectors
Unless you're the type who sharpens a pencil down to its metal crown, the DS Lite stylus just doesn't compare to the familiar weight, thickness, and balance of a pen or pencil. Hori's latest Touch Pen looks like a comfortable and convenient alternative to the stock stylus. Users drop a standard stylus into the Touch Pen Attachment's casing just like with an ink refill. Including two replaceable styli with every purchase seems a bit unnecessary, but we're not going to argue with free stuff. The pen's wider and taller body will be able to rest on your hand, and the rubber grip makes sure that the stick won't slip out of your fingers during a hectic game of Elite Beat Agents. The Touch Pen Attachment is as portable as any other writing utensil, but you can also latch it onto the back of your handheld with the two plastic bumps on the clip. From the product shots we've seen, the nubs fit right into the holes meant for the DS Lite's strap. The pens come in White, Black, and Pink, retailing for about $6.00 each. Head past the post break for more photos of the Touch Pen Attachment DS Lite. [via DCEmu]
