While ink blogging *is* neat, it has two problems:
1) It’s only slightly faster than using the TIP but isn’t really text.
2) No search engine will ever index it as text. If you say anything useful in an ink blog, nobody will read it unless they stumble on it manually.
3) OK, one more… the vision impaired can’t have your ink blog entries read to them by computer.
I’ve had no problems with ink blogging so far.
1. i want to handwrite
2. i’d rather be stumbled upon
3. too bad
I wonder what Sumocat has to say about all this.
I believe that Sumocat’s ink posts are indexed due to the method he uses to post. I used Ed Holloway’s great plugin for Windows Live Writer, so no, I don’t think my ink post will be indexed. Honestly, I don’t care if they are or not because we don’t blog here to “be indexed”. We blog to help people understand Tablet PCs and mobile technologies. If people never saw an ink blog post, they might assume that it can’t be done, so I see this activity as a value add.
One other point about ink blogs, they are hard and slow to read. Not a nice customer experience at all.
Oh. I just thought of another thing. You can get 35,000 characters down an internet pipe in the same time/cost/bandwidth as it takes that image to be transferred. Lets assume 300 people read that ‘blog’. Its costs the world 10MB of data instead of about 60KB!
If you do your ink blog post “right”, it can be indexed, because you would provide a typed-text version below the image. That’s how Sumocat and other ink bloggers (including myself) do it. Obviously preferences for ink blogging or not is a subjective thing. But I have said in the past, when a bunch of ink bloggers decided to come onto the scene, that ink blogging is a great way to
a) differentiate your blog from others.
b) show personality, both through your handwriting and what you decide to write out longhand. I tend to ink blog more personal blog posts, like rambling about what I did last weekend, or some short opinion pieces, while other bloggers like Sumocat write out all their blog posts, no matter what the subject.
c) bring out some creativity in your posts, since you can use different ink colors, pressure (on active digitizers), writing size, and add drawings. Yes, you can do similar things with typed text and jpegs, but it’s a lot easier with ink, IMO.
I love reading ink blogs because it’s a lot like reading a letter from someone, or reading someone’s journal (that they let you read, of course!). I’m pretty good at deciphering all kinds of handwriting, so I don’t find reading ink blog posts hard at all. YMMV, as seen in above comments.
Obviously ink blogging is a niche, but I think it’s a nice niche to be in (which reminds me that I wrote an ink blog post a week or so ago that I need to post…).
I detest ink blogging. Well, I might stand it assuming the person who inked could actually write beautiful, legible old-school handwriting, but let’s face it – people who run tablets today and ink at all are super-nerds, and super-nerds have handwriting like 5-year-olds. I know I do.
Anyone who wants to ink blog should definitely provide the text OCR:ed beneath. Especially James – what does “Jt tle skveer hlauks wkile on hatlery pouer” mean anyway? ;)
that’s not hard!
While ink blogging *is* neat, it has two problems:
1) It’s only slightly faster than using the TIP but isn’t really text.
2) No search engine will ever index it as text. If you say anything useful in an ink blog, nobody will read it unless they stumble on it manually.
3) OK, one more… the vision impaired can’t have your ink blog entries read to them by computer.
I’ve had no problems with ink blogging so far.
1. i want to handwrite
2. i’d rather be stumbled upon
3. too bad
I wonder what Sumocat has to say about all this.
I believe that Sumocat’s ink posts are indexed due to the method he uses to post. I used Ed Holloway’s great plugin for Windows Live Writer, so no, I don’t think my ink post will be indexed. Honestly, I don’t care if they are or not because we don’t blog here to “be indexed”. We blog to help people understand Tablet PCs and mobile technologies. If people never saw an ink blog post, they might assume that it can’t be done, so I see this activity as a value add.
One other point about ink blogs, they are hard and slow to read. Not a nice customer experience at all.
Oh. I just thought of another thing. You can get 35,000 characters down an internet pipe in the same time/cost/bandwidth as it takes that image to be transferred. Lets assume 300 people read that ‘blog’. Its costs the world 10MB of data instead of about 60KB!
Tut tut Kevin. Think about those trees! ;-)
Steve.
One question: Doesn’t everyone have neater handwriting than James? :^)
If you do your ink blog post “right”, it can be indexed, because you would provide a typed-text version below the image. That’s how Sumocat and other ink bloggers (including myself) do it. Obviously preferences for ink blogging or not is a subjective thing. But I have said in the past, when a bunch of ink bloggers decided to come onto the scene, that ink blogging is a great way to
a) differentiate your blog from others.
b) show personality, both through your handwriting and what you decide to write out longhand. I tend to ink blog more personal blog posts, like rambling about what I did last weekend, or some short opinion pieces, while other bloggers like Sumocat write out all their blog posts, no matter what the subject.
c) bring out some creativity in your posts, since you can use different ink colors, pressure (on active digitizers), writing size, and add drawings. Yes, you can do similar things with typed text and jpegs, but it’s a lot easier with ink, IMO.
I love reading ink blogs because it’s a lot like reading a letter from someone, or reading someone’s journal (that they let you read, of course!). I’m pretty good at deciphering all kinds of handwriting, so I don’t find reading ink blog posts hard at all. YMMV, as seen in above comments.
Obviously ink blogging is a niche, but I think it’s a nice niche to be in (which reminds me that I wrote an ink blog post a week or so ago that I need to post…).
I detest ink blogging. Well, I might stand it assuming the person who inked could actually write beautiful, legible old-school handwriting, but let’s face it – people who run tablets today and ink at all are super-nerds, and super-nerds have handwriting like 5-year-olds. I know I do.
Anyone who wants to ink blog should definitely provide the text OCR:ed beneath. Especially James – what does “Jt tle skveer hlauks wkile on hatlery pouer” mean anyway? ;)
Steve, you really have to stop printing out all of our posts; that would help save the trees even more. ;)
Brian: Yes.
I resemble that remark.