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FLY pentop computer

Fri, 2007-06-08 14:41 — Jeni

My dad got me a FLY pentop computer for my birthday! Basically, it lets you draw your own interface on special paper: draw a box, some numbers, some operators and an equals sign, and you’ve got a calculator; draw a keyboard and some circles for drums, and you can make music; write details of an appointment, and it’ll store it and repeat it at the designated time.

Yes, I knew that they were aimed at 8-13 year olds and I’m… hrm… a couple of years (well, let’s be honest, decades) outside that age bracket, but I don’t think either of us realised quite what “aimed at 8-13 year olds” would actually mean.

It comes with special stickers that will make the pen make a farting noise.

Enough said.

The most annoying thing? The technology is so cool! It does handwriting recognition (albeit only capital case), and can recognise and repeat something like 70,000 words. That’s just with the built-in firmware. And it has a moderate amount of built-in memory. The recharging dock comes with a USB socket. Wouldn’t you think that they’d release some kind of developer’s kit for the budding 8-13 year old hackers? Or that someone, somewhere, somehow, had managed to hack it anyway?

Ah well, at least I can rest assured that it will make me popular (for about 15 minutes) with fellow geeks… and any 8-13 year olds I happen to come across.

Comments

Fri, 2007-08-03 18:14 — Tom Cook (not verified)

Re: FLY pentop computer

Congratulations on your new t/o/y/ learning tool! Once you have a chance to try it out, you may be interested in the new verison of the Fly Pentop that Leapfrog has just introduced…the Fly Fusion pentop computer. I “accidentally” ran across it and ordered one from Amazon.com as a pre-release the day before they started shipping it (basically August 1), and can recommend it as a great step forward (for $70 MSRP).

It does most of the same things the original Fly does, plus play your .mp3s as well. A USB computer interface allows downloading the .mp3s and serves to recharge the battery and add new functions downloaded from the Fly web site. But the big win, out of the box, is that you can take notes and draw on the Fly paper in the notebook provided, and upload the page to your PC. It will turn the drawings into images and the notes into text documents which you can import into Word or other apps…basically come up with an editable image of your notebook page. And, yes, it does recognize upper and lower case.

So don’t invest too much in accessories for your Fly until you see if you want to upgrade to the latest and greatest…

Tom Cook

Tue, 2007-06-19 08:53 — BarryT

Re: FLY pentop computer

Jeni (hello, daughter!), I really think you should have linked to your previous post where you practically begged for a flypentop.

In my view, the “most annoying thing” about the flypentop is the lack of a decent output mode or device. Apart from the writing (which is really just a record of your input), there seems to be only the audio, loudspeaker or earphones. So for example with the calculator, a result is read out loud - precluding all sorts of things like remembering past results (my memory…) or pipelining(!), feeding previous results to subsequent calculations. I know that other versions of the Anoto pen have a small built-in lcd screen, but this is hardly sufficient. Ironically, released on Jeni’s birthday, there is an “adult” version of the flypentop, the livescribe.

(Oh, I do love the subtleties of language - consider the semantic significance of the comma after the word “Ironically”.)

See also more comments which seem to imply that for the livescribe the writing, at least, can in some way be transferred to a PC.

Perhaps we might hope in future for a wireless (bluetooth-like, PAN) link to a flexible display, especially one that gave a window onto the acres\Whectares\Wmillion-sq-km of distinct Anoto patterns.

Still AFAIK no sign online of any hints on hacking the flypentop.

Barry

Thu, 2007-06-14 17:14 — John Kemp (not verified)

Re: FLY pentop computer

I hope you’re bringing this to XML Summer School - else I’ll have to buy one… err, for my daughter of course!

Mon, 2007-06-18 12:45 — Jeni

Re: FLY pentop computer

Indeed, I was intending to :)