Collusion - iPad Creativity & Collaboration Tool | Hacker News Reader

Collusion - iPad Creativity & Collaboration Tool

collusionapp.com

39 pointsSchwolop24 comments

The negative connotations of the word 'Collusion' puts me off before I even see it.

Looking at it. No one appears to be writing with their hand resting on the iPad. Their hand is either floating or off to the side. Is this because writing isn't very good with your hand resting on the screen?

Its interesting but I feel it still isn't needed. Pen and paper is typically fine. So is typing. This allows you to back up all of your scribbles but beyond that I think pen and paper has the advantage.

How many people need to collaboratively write on the same page of A4 at the same time?

If I need to see multiple pages of notes I either add a sticker to the page to easy flick between them or tear out the page and put pages side by side on the table. Collusion doesn't appear to be able to do this.

If it could automatically convert written notes into typed notes. Maybe that would be cool. I don't know though. I still think a laptop is better in most note taking situations. With my laptop I can take notes, get additional resources and record the audio of whatever I am taking notes from all at the same time. With an iPad I can't.

Replacing a pad of a paper and pen with an iPad, sensor and pen doesn't look like innovation to me.

I've tried Collusion. I was resting my hand on the screen. There's an option to allow for this so it only detects the pen, which is awesome.

Watching the video, I was struck by how slowly and carefully everyone was writing. I guess I might do that if I someone was filming my handwriting, but if it's to compensate for the speed of the sensor it's a problem.

Competing with paper and a pen is hard enough, but if you can't scribble fast it might be a dealbreaker.

It might have more to do with the lack of friction from the medium.

We're all trained to write by putting some minimal, but constant effort to move the stylus (pencil, ballpen) against the paper surface. Here, it's just a piece plastic sliding on a glass surface. You have to make a different kind of effort in controlling the stylus, when it moves too easily and has to be stopped or redirected at the right moment. (Learning to ice skate might be a good analogue.)

Looks interesting - the biggest shame is that, thanks to the closed nature of iOS, it won't be possible to make this an input device for other apps without each app having to develop to it specifically (assuming there's even an SDK).

There is already an app called "Collusion", a Mozilla add-on:

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/collusion/

They are two very different projects on two entirely different platforms. It's not going to be a problem.

We have this conversation on HN every single time.

Two apps with the same name is a problem.

Hi Guys.

Paraphrased from our Kickstarter page: Thanks to those that have identified an issue with our drawing video clips, they were shot with a high fps camera and included in our video at half speed. @mcobrien this is why drawing looked "slow and careful". In response, our video will be adjusted to demonstrate the drawing at normal speed.

Additionally, we have identified areas to further optimize our algorithms for you to ensure that any latency is fully minimized. You can consider drawing speed to be equivalent experience to the iPad touch interface; if not better.

Cheers,

Rob (CEO) Collusion

I do not really care about collaboration, even if it could be fun sometimes and I believe we will find use cases where we absolutely need it,...

The one thing I find interesting is "Real Palm Rejection". I tried to replace my trustworthy college block with the iPad but I always failed because writing without putting my hand on the screen feels wrong and results in a writing even I cannot read anymore. If they only get this one feature right I believe they can enter and enterprise market without any real competition.

It is hard to believe they can perfectly solve this problem. There are many developers out there struggling with this beast.

They don't use the iPad touch events when the pen is on the surface, so there's no issue with this whatsoever.

So when the pen touches the surface they deactivate touch input? What is when the app crashes? "did you try turning it off and on again?"

So what's the difference in this and the iPen? I mean what is going to make this project better to support than just getting the iPen right now? On the products page of Collusion you say, "Why are we doing this? Nobody has stepped up to own the problem of digital writing and drawing on the iPad"

I think you ought to say in the site somewhere, "Where the iPen is successful in this...we are doing this"

It's got to be differentiated somehow.

Differentiation is apparent by scrolling down our product page: decently designed and manufactured hardware (unlike iPen) real time cloud collaboration, ocr as you write (mentioned in the video), handling of media, deep field.... hope this helps

It looks interesting, and the the palm rejection is probably the feature that will make or break it. It looked to me from the video that nobody was actually resting their palm on the surface - they either suspended their hands above the screen, or wrote on the edge and rested their palm on the (ipad's large) bezel.

So perhaps, as of yet, that 'tricky problem' isn't quite as solved as they say it is.

The Collusion guys are hanging out at my coworking space(fishburners). I just used it 5 mins ago. The palm rejection works great.

Yeah, palm rejection is better than anything else because they simply don't register iPad touch events when the pen's pressure sensor is activated.

The underlying tech is that the pen is an ultrasound transmitter and the attachment has stereo microphones. It's then just a matter of basic trigonometry to get the position much more accurately than the iPad can detect a finger.

That's bad ass

Thanks man! what's even more badass is that the core IP around the ultrasonic techniques used in the pen was developed by the Israeli Military. Now that is BAD ASS!

How does palm rejection work (if at all)? That has been the major barrier to me using my iPad for note-taking etc.

It works by considering only the digital pen signal for writing. The pen in the demo is essentially the same as the iPen, which has been supported by a few handwriting apps (including mine) on the market. However, the pen is not accurate enough for serious note-taking, because the signal is transmitted some distance above the pen tip. There are many complaints in the iPen Kickstarter comment section.

iPen: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ipen/ipen-the-first-acti...

(Disclaimer: I am the developer of GoodNotes.)

I've tried it. The pen was accurate enough for me to color in tiny squares (same as those on grid paper). Writing felt natural too - I was surprised.

It's an appealing, nicely-produced video.

Everyone in it has nice handwriting, even when writing on a low-friction screen. What about those of us who don't particularly like reading our own handwriting, let along sharing it with others?

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