Peter reviews the three “Does Your Code Think in Ink?” winners that are being shown at PC Magazine.
Reality checks like in Peter’s post can be painful, but in the long run they help. I haven’t had a chance to download these programs, but Peter’s assessments seem reasonable. I’m guessing many are going to have the same impressions.
Remember, this contest was being run back in the days of www.TabletPCDeveloper.com which was a site that was languishing in the bowels of the Internet. And don’t forget the rules weren’t all that grand either–code up a terrific app and give it to Microsoft in exchange for the possibility of winning a prize. It kind of makes sense now why the contest only did so-so. My other take away from this is that creative promotion is critical. In my mind, the place for this contest was at the college level where it would have been great to push the contest hard. Make sure that every student that wants to develop for the Tablet can by providing the Tablet PC OS or better yet the Ink SDK and Reco SDK as free downloads. Waiting for them to buy a Tablet so they can win a Tablet in a contest doesn’t sound very compelling when you’re a student trying to juggle every penny. Heck, it doesn’t sound compelling as a full-time developer either.
It’s work to promote contests like this. I know Lora worked hour after hour recruiting people for the Tablet Get Togethers at CES and Comdex this past winter. It took time to convince people to show up for a free dinner. Convincing people that they should take a couple weeks (or more) to author an app for a contest which might win would be even tougher I bet.
Someone at TechEd asked me why I didn’t enter any of my apps. Well, most of them I’d already started before the contest. Also, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of giving my work away to Microsoft. If it was just for a concept app, that might be something different. Also, the rules if I recall didn’t allow you to use third-party tools so that meant more coding. And finally, I knew there were lots of others that would get a kick out of entering and trying to win. The 70 or so entries proves this. I already blog about Tablets. Winning a prize would just look like I have an inside scoop and be a bit redundant. Someone else winning helps spread the word. Now if Microsoft wants to post one of my apps on their PowerToys list or maybe MathPractice on an Education PowerToys list–now that’s something different.
Of course, all this talk of Tablet software need that’s why we started TabletPCPost. It’s a our own community list that I hope continues to encourage Tablet development.