What you’re going to be looking at are the following: Notepad by Catch, Evernote (with Skitch), Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile, and Note Everything. This list is of course limited to apps that can be downloaded and used by ANY Android tablet. Each of these applications has its own set of pros as well as some cons, most of the cons being layout and user interface diversity. What you’ll find is that these apps strengths lie in their ability to connect with one another, the cloud, and essentially any other app in your library, as is very often the case with Android in general.

Evernote with Skitch has a nice ability to bring you into a deep web of connectivity – Evernote is known for that kind of excellence. Autodesk’s Sketchbook Mobile is made more for a smartphone and isn’t quite optimized for the tablet sized screen yet, but offers the most diverse set of paintbrush abilities. Notepad by Catch and Note Everything both have the ability to very easily help you collect a diverse set of notes at the tip of a hat, and both share quite well – as it true with the rest of the apps for the most part.

Sketchbook Mobile will cost you [$1.99 on the Google Play App Store], Evernote [is Free] and Skitch [is Free] as well, Notepad by Catch [is Free], and Note Everything [is Free]. Of course several of these apps also have upgraded versions and in-app add-ons that will cost you extra cash, but the basic functions are free for all.

It should be plain to see that this selection doesn’t quite add up to what the iPad currently has for notetaking and otherwise perfectly optimized media-collecting apps. We’d like to encourage developers (as well as those in a position to support developers) to create apps with much more diverse abilities than these – and in the very near future! And you readers out there: if you know of any other applications that you feel should be added to this list, don’t be shy – let us know!

In Allard’s vision, Courier owners would have a smartphone or other device to check email – Courier would support web-based accounts through the browser, but not the company’s Outlook software – and use the dual-display clamshell tablet to take notes, sketch out ideas and generally brainstorm. Although based on Windows at its core, the OS would have been stripped down to basics, removing the familiar UI and streamlining what remained so as to be swift and responsive to pen and touch input.

That didn’t sit well with the competing tablet strategy within Microsoft, based on Windows 8 and capable of running all the apps a regular PC might. As we saw in our own Windows 8 tablet preview, Microsoft has done a decent job in making the Start UI finger-friendly, but Courier would’ve been a step or two beyond that.

“It was not off-the-shelf tech … There is no commercial product today that meets the specs we had for it. It was highly demanding and innovative and no one partner had all of the pieces” Anonymous Courier team member

In the end, despite the Courier team already planning brand strategy, marketing and other pre-launch details, and having the various hardware details – including custom kit from manufacturers like Samsung – all operating on different prototypes, Microsoft pulled the plug. Instead, the company will come late to the tablet market with Windows 8, though OEM partners are already preparing: ASUS documents spotted earlier this week confirm the company intends two flagship Windows 8 tablets in Q3 2012.

While the EP121 will happily let you stab at Windows 7 with your finger – or two, since capacitive multitouch is supported – it’ll also let you whip out the included active stylus and get far more precise. Art apps are the obvious beneficiary, with the Eee Slate turned into a self-contained Wacom Cintiq, but there’s also digital handwriting recognition for a surprisingly accurate alternative to onscreen keyboards. Float the stylus nib above the screen and you can move the pointer without making a selection, for hover functionality; there’s also pressure recognition, so the harder you sketch, the thicker the line.

Unfortunately, most users have only ever come across two types of touchscreen: the resistive panels common on pre-iPhone smartphones and the capacitive screens Apple’s handset helped popularize. Active digitisers are something most people are unfamiliar with, so they associate a stylus with a dumb plastic toothpick, something that’s most likely a compromise for undersized on-screen icons. Throw in the generally underwhelming experience of resistive touchscreens on commercial devices – in markets on self-checkout machines, for instance – and you can see how it could be boiled down to a two-player battle in which capacitive technology pulls ahead.

Microsoft isn’t helping things with software, either. Devices with active digitisers – or hybrid pen/touch displays – generally run Windows, and the Microsoft OS still falls well short when it comes to tablet usability. It’s been more than eight years since Windows XP Tablet Edition launched, and while the handwriting and speech recognition engines have improved behind the scenes, visible tablet accommodation to the end-user has barely evolved.

Ironically, Microsoft has had the answer – or at least a potentially significant part of it – under their nose all the time, in the shape of OneNote and the team responsible for it. Billed as a digital notetaking app (which supports searches of handwritten notes, among other things), OneNote is actually a great example of how Windows and stylus control can work together in a way far more intuitive and flexible than putting finger to screen.

For a while, with the Courier project, it seemed like the company had recognized its strengths and was set to take advantage of them. Rather than the “must do everything your desktop does” attitude that infects current Windows tablets – and leaves them mixing pen, finger, keyboard and mouse paradigms and failing at them all – Courier looked set to do one core set of skills very well, something that no other current tablet offered. Rather than ASUS’ Eee Pad models, which bill themselves as ideal for content-creation as well as consumption and then deliver that by merely bolting on a physical keyboard, the active stylus would have allowed for precise digital handwriting and sketching – with pressure sensitivity, angle recognition and more.

No, perhaps it wouldn’t be the best device to run World of Warcraft on, or to do your company spreadsheets, but Microsoft appeared to be finally saying that some things were best left to your desktop or notebook. Courier could have been another step on Microsoft’s path to an Apple-style ecosystem of devices and services – all held together by its beloved cloud – and offering not just a facsimile of the iOS platform but a legitimate alternative based on something Steve Jobs refuses to countenance: that a stylus can still be a legitimate input option for a mobile device.

This isn’t meant to be an eulogy to Courier, but nor is the stylus ready for its obituary. The iPad has made great strides in popularising the tablet segment, but it’s also left Apple’s rivals scrabbling to create me-too alternatives that offer buzzwords like “content creation” with little more than a half-hearted nod from the spec sheet. The irony is that Microsoft is probably in the best starting place to take advantage of that, and yet seems the most reluctant to use its position.

The EP121 is far from perfect, but it’s also no iPad-clone and for that ASUS deserves some credit. The stylus-savvy will recognize it for its strengths and make up their own minds whether the hybrid display and Windows 7′s naivety balance each other out. They won’t have much in the way of choice, though; look at the tablets announced at CES 2011 this month, and you’ll see the vast majority avoid the stylus like the plague, in preference to solely finger control. Unfortunately, until the tablet segment matures enough to countenance anything other than another would-be “iPad killer”, the stylus will continue to get its unfair reputation.

According to the description, Microsoft were trying to replicate the real paper experience: the lifted page would have increased transparency, showing signs of the text on its reverse, while flipping repeatedly would quickly whip through two or more pages.  It’s speculated that the project was part of Microsoft’s Courier research, and could’ve been used as part of their digital notebook.

“One or more pages are displayed on a touch display. A page-turning gesture directed to a displayed page is recognized. Responsive to such recognition, a virtual page turn is displayed on the touch display. The virtual page turn actively follows the page-turning gesture. The virtual page turn curls a lifted portion of the page to progressively reveal a back side of the page while progressively revealing a front side of a subsequent page. A lifted portion of the page is given an increased transparency that allows the back side of the page to be viewed through the front side of the page. A page-flipping gesture quickly flips two or more pages.”

Meanwhile there are also refinements such as two- or three-finger scrolling, which could move the on-screen page rather than step through individual pages.  Microsoft will likely have their work cut out for them proving that this hasn’t all been done before.

[via GoRumors]

A patent dating back to January 19th of this year just broke cover in its acceptance, and the receipt shows the design of the Courier plain and simply. As you might expect, even if Microsoft has officially canceled the digital journal, they now own the design for the thing, which means they could actually put the dual-screen tablet into production if they wanted to. But, we wont’ hold our breath.

[via TechFlash]

According to some sources speaking with ZDNet, it looks like Chief Technical Officer J Allard (of the Xbox and Zune Team fame) is currently on a sabbatical from the Redmond-based company, but with the Courier getting axed, he may not be returning to the company at all. Allard was “the champion” of the Courier, and believed wholeheartedly in its success in the market, but CEO Steve Ballmer did not feel the same way. This may have lead to some personal disagreements between the two men, which boiled over with the cancellation of the electronic journal device.

Microsoft, of course, have no comment on the situation, and their site still lists Allard as an employee. What this tells us, is that the man who knew Xbox would be a success, knew that the Courier would have been too. That just makes us want the Courier even more, and wish beyond all wishes that Microsoft hadn’t decided to can the project. Now we’ll just have to see what’s next for the company, and hope that it’s anywhere near as good as the concepts we’d seen in the past.

[via ZDNet]

According to Rathakrishnan, there’s two big extras coming. The first, and perhaps most notably (considering you’ll have to buy another model, if you were one of the 64 to buy the first, we mean), is the confirmation that there will be a JooJoo with 3G connectivity. And, best of all, it’s apparently coming in a matter of only 3 months. So, if you were waiting for 3G, there you go. At least you know it’s coming. Eventually.

As for the other big change, the company is going to allow for USB mass storage, thanks to unlocking the USB port on the tablet. This would indeed make it stand out from the competition, but not necessarily push it ahead of the pack. And, considering the iPad WiFi + 3G iPad is available today, we’d imagine that has a bit of a jump on the situation. Though, if the HP Slate is dead (or not), along with the Courier from Microsoft’s demise, maybe the JooJoo just got a little boost. Or not. Your call.

[via Ubergizmo]

Wishful thinking? You’re probably right, but I’m remembering MSI’s dual-display prototype that’s been wheeled out at a few trade shows now, and recent talk of a Toshiba Tegra 2 based “dual-screen model running Windows.” Both have been anecdotally compared with what we’ve seen of the Courier project.

Of course, that dual-display MSI notebook is facing problems of its own, the biggest being battery life. According to a recent Engadget report, MSI’s Andy Tung has said that “the two screens are a major drain on the battery, and even with a higher density battery and the Menlow CPU we are only getting three hours [of runtime].” The prediction is that the device won’t arrive until Q4 2010 at the earliest.

That’s a similar timescale as attached to the Toshiba tablet, which was fingered for late 2010 with Compal doing OEM duty. Toshiba themselves have confirmed that it’s on the cards, though is set to be more expensive than a single-screen Android version they’re also apparently looking into.

To be honest, such a move – providing a software solution, rather than taking the helm in hardware – would be a better fit with Microsoft’s general approach: giving OEMs the OS and letting them do their own thing with the physical product. That’s certainly the way they’ve played it in the past with the Tablet PC functionality integrated into various iterations of Windows, whether as a standalone version (like Windows XP Tablet Edition) or, as in Windows 7, baked into certain feature builds of the platform. There’s also the much-underrated OneNote digital journal app to consider, software which – while it will work perfectly well on a regular computer – really comes alive when used with pen input, with handwriting recognition, the ability to search through inked notes, OCR from pasted in photos and just the sort of life-recording that Courier seemed to promise.

Microsoft have been pushing pen and touchscreen input more and more with each OS release, and OneNote has been gradually making moves from the distant cousin of Office to an inclusive part of the Office Home and Student package. If it were me in charge, I’d avoid dipping my toe into competitive hardware waters – risking defining the niche to the detriment of manufacturers coming up with their own alternatives – and instead focus on pulling the technology in OneNote into a custom Windows build (multitouch and gestures included), and linking it up with the existing online tools like Windows Live Spaces blogs.

NVIDIA have been telling us for months that their latest Tegra chipsets can deliver not only 1080p HD performance but extreme power frugality, and it’s not unusual to find Tablet PCs with dual-mode displays that can automatically flick between finger-touch and stylus input. Alternatively we’ve seen plenty of rival chipset manufacturers with products capable of driving multiple simultaneous displays.

You’d need to solve three key issues for it to work: price, battery life and market positioning. The first is always going to be tricky, matching not one but two touchscreen panels with wireless-enabled components small enough (and sturdy enough) to make for a pocket- or bag-friendly device. Battery life is, as MSI have discovered, a make-or-break factor; however, when you ditch Intel’s CPUs and look to ARM-based platforms, far more interesting things are possible. Look at the 10+ hours of runtime Apple’s iPad is capable of for evidence of that.

Hardest still, though, is giving would-be buyers a reason to welcome a Courier-style device into their lives. Apple have a head-start in a way, what with the almost devotional levels of appeal the brand has to many people; the iPad was guaranteed a strong debut for that reason alone. For all that the “it’s just a big iPod touch” criticism must have rankled over at Cupertino, in the end it at least drew connections between the iPad and a paradigm consumers were familiar with. The growth of blogging, sharing-focused microblogs like Tumblr and social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter are all strong examples of spontaneous – and personalised – content manipulation and distribution that Microsoft could, if they’re clever, use to illustrate their new idea. Yes, perhaps it’s unlikely, but several months ago we were ready to write off Project Pink over talk of internal collapse, and Microsoft still brought Kin out to play. Time will still tell whether that particular project succeeds, but at least Microsoft showed they were willing to give it a chance.

The Best of R3 Media

The LG Aloha Hits Verizon in May as the LG Ally: At least, that’s what the rumors are saying. Which is good news for Verizon Wireless customers, considering it’s got a physical slide out full QWERTY keyboard, and an impressive 1GHz Snapdragon processor under the hood. Now, if we could just talk about the name, then we’d probably get somewhere nice. We liked Aloha, Verizon. Really. [via Android Community]

Apple’s iAd Asks Marketers for $10 Million: Mobile advertisers are accustomed to paying to get their ads on things. And now that the mobile market is booming, and you’ve got Apple putting together iAd, why wouldn’t you want to jump on board? Maybe, just maybe, because Apple doesn’t want you to pay $100,000 to $200,000 to jump on board. Oh, no. How about $10 million? You’ll be part of a handful of marketers, which, isn’t surprising. Any takers? [via Everything iPad]

Palm Could Face Class-Action Lawsuit: Seems incorrect, right? Well, according to a law firm on behalf of some investors, it seems that they believe they’ve been short-changed due to this whole deal with HP. You know the one, where HP buys Palm? The deal equaled somewhere near $1.2 billion, or about $5.70 per share, and the investors believe that all of this should have gone down last year, when shares were at $17.20, apparently. There’s no word on how close the lawsuit is to being started, or if they’d win, but this should get interesting soon. [via SlashPhone]

The Dredget Net

Steam for Mac is Coming in May: Sure, they may have said that April would be the month of months, but Steam knows how to handle pushed released dates. You could almost call them professionals with it. And sure enough, Steam for Mac got pushed back. But, apparently, they’ve conceded that it’s now coming on May 12th, so, not too far away. Patience, it works out. We promise. [via Joystiq]

TomTom Wants an App Store: Okay, this app thing may be getting out of hand. When a dedicated GPS company wants to get into the app game, it’s a certain fact. And, according to TomTom’s CEO, Harold Goddijn, that’s exactly what he wants for his units. By the end of this year, in fact. He wants something for both the consumer, as well as the automotive market, and he hopes that the WebKit-based Operating System will make it easy for developers who choose to come on board to create their apps. [via Pocket-Lint]

Samsung N150 Joins Other Verizon Wireless Netbooks: Short and sweet here: the Samsung N150 has been officially unveiled for Verizon Wireless, with embedded 3G. It’s black, and red, and that shouldn’t surprise you in the slightest. You’re looking at your standard 10.1-inch netbook here, so unless you’re in the market for one, you probably won’t be blown away. [via Netbooked]