OneNote To Tackle Note-Taking, Bolster Office Lineup

OneNote, due in the middle of next year, will also let note takers make audio recordings of their meetings on the PC and annotate them via pen or keyboard, said Chris Pratley, group product manager.

The application will run on the nascent Tablet PCs as well as standard computers, Jeff Raikes, group vice president, told reporters at Comdex here.

Also at the show, as reported by CRN, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Release Candidate 2 of .Net Server 2003 will hit the street within weeks, with a final version due to ship in April. He also unveiled RC 2 of Visual Studio .Net to accompany Windows .Net Server.

That product tandem is viewed by many solution providers as a crucial underpinning of Microsoft's much-touted Web services game plan. So far, there has been a lot of noise--and a lot of confusion--about what that plan entails.

Gates said the new server operating system will provide significant Web services opportunities. He said Danske Bank is migrating its mainframe applications onto .Net Servers, a move expected to save the company more than a million dollars. Further, he said Enterprise Rent-a-Car is rolling out .Net Servers to 5,000 branches.

Gates also presided over the first public showing of OneNote, which augments the "Journal" note-taking technology that ships with the Tablet PC. "This is a much broader, richer, deeper experience that goes across desktops, laptops and Tablet PCs," Raikes said.

Tabs across the top of the note-taking pane organize entries into categories for notes, general, meetings, personal, research etc. Each notebook tab has its own page tabs down the right-hand side.

Users can write on screen with stylus or use mouse commands or standard keyboards. The software automatically detects the type of input device so the user doesn't have to toggle back and forth between modes. Users can also force the mouse to act as pen and vice versa via a toolbar command, Pratley said.

It also enables users to "tape" meetings and annotate the important parts for later review.

The application utilizes its own file format for keyboard or inked input tentatively known as .Notes, Pratley said. Audio is saved in Microsoft's Digital Media format. Users can send notes and comments via Outlook to other OneNote users or send them as HTML files to non-OneNotes recipients.

The product integrates with SharePoint Team Services so documents and files pertinent to the user will show up on their screen.

Raikes said the application will be a boon for solution providers that support professionals such as doctors and lawyers who do extensive note-taking. "This is going to be the application for notetaking," he said.

This is the second application to be unveiled by Raikes' InformationWorker Group, which owns Microsoft Office, in recent months. XDocs, also due next year, promises to link office workers with the back-office applications they need to access. It was unveiled last month.

Gates also showed off for the first time Smart Personal Object Technology (SPOT), which the company has been developing for more than two years. It is intended to put intelligence in everyday devices such as alarm clocks and even refrigerator magnets. A SPOT-enabled alarm clock would automatically default to the user's preferred wake-up time and show things such as that person's appointments, how long it will take to drive to the airport and the weather at his destination city. The goal is to make everyday devices better at what they do.

The devices, which will be further detailed at CES in January, are wirelessly connected. Brian Halla, chairman and CEO of National Semiconductor, the chip partner in this venture, will provide further details later this week at the show, Gates said.

Gates also presided over demonstrations of Tablet PCs for the third consecutive year. This year, however, many models are actually shipping.

New SmartDisplays were also featured. Microsoft is positioning these devices, to be manufactured by ViewSonic, Philips and other hardware makers, as a natural evolution of monitors. These devices will let users wander from the PC that actually runs their applications to sit on the couch. The processing still occurs on the desktop or laptop PC, but the display is "remoted" out to these displays via 802.11, Microsoft said.