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Galaxy Tab Bluetooth Stylus emerges, up for £49.99 pre-order
It's been a month since we caught our first glimpse of the Galaxy Tab's Bluetooth Stylus and today, although still seemingly unofficial, it's appeared in its first pre-order listing. Priced at £49.99 ($79) by UK online specialist Play, this capacitive stylus will facilitate handwriting recognition for those of us not served well enough by the Tab's generally excellent soft keyboard. It's also capable of hooking up to two Bluetooth devices at a time and has the extra intelligence thrown in to receive and reject phone calls -- whether on the Tab or on your phone. It's an intriguing piece of kit, maybe Samsung should go ahead and make it official now, eh?
Samsung Galaxy Tab accessories may include Bluetooth stylus and USB adapter
That weekend leak of Galaxy Tab accessories was apparently not done flowing. The same source is today dishing the dirt on a pair of highly intriguing extra bits for Samsung's upcoming tablet. Firstly, the Bluetooth pen acts both as a stylus for the Galaxy Tab and a sort of wireless remote control. It's compatible with other devices, meaning it can be used to control voice calls you receive on your cellphone. The second tidbit is no less thrilling: a USB adapter that promises to turn the Tab's dock connector into a standard-issue USB port. You don't need us to explain how handy a trinket that could be for the multimedia maven on the move. It's worth pointing out, however, that both these accessory leaks show what looks like an earlier hardware prototype of the Galaxy Tab, so we may be looking at slightly dated information. All such uncertainty and questions should be resolved come September 2.
SMK's Wireless Input Pen lets you scribble like a 5 year old
SMK Corp just introduced a supposed world's first "Wireless Input Pen." Catchy. The prototype pen features a 3-axis accelerometer and Bluetooth allowing you to write to, and interact with a display at a distance of up to 10-meters. It works without any of that specially formatted paper required by most Bluetooth pens -- just a bit of flittering the device about in mid-air. That is, until your arm gets tired and you question the whole point.
Pen-it Bluetooth Digital Pen
Okay, this is just plain cool. Watching MacBreak 59 I came across the Pen-it from Hitachi Maxell. I suggest you watch the video (the segment starts about 6:35), but basically it's an ink pen with built-in Bluetooth. When you use it to write on special paper (which has been pre-printed with literally millions of little dots), it records your strokes for later wireless upload to your Mac. Apparently the pen has a tiny camera which makes this possible. The Pen-it NOTES application on the Mac then retrieves your scribbles as vector data(!) which can be saved or further edited on the Mac. Of course, as Merlin Mann notes, this locks you into their paper, and they don't say exactly how much it will cost. It is also not clear whether this is compatible with Apple's Inkwell technology. Since this is a brand new product for the Mac (though a PC version has been available for a while), their website is rather incomplete. However, they are running a special promotion for Macworld with a $100-off coupon, bringing the price down to $199 for the pen (and USB charger), one notebook, and the software. It appears that this is the same technology (from Anoto) behind Logitech's io2 Digital Writing System, but it's not clear at all whether the Logitech pen (which is Windows only), would actually be compatible. (If it is, three 128 page notebooks of the Logitech pen's paper sells for about $12.)