Business Presentations, Write On Paper And Show It Onscreen: Papershow

Papershow is an innovative kit designed for meetings, brainstorming sessions and multimedia presentations developed by Oxford. Some bloggers were invited for the viral campaign in Italy in order to make an exclusive demonstration in Milan last July. We could not attend the event, therefore Show Reel, responsible for the viral campaign on behalf of Oxford, gave us a free kit for testing.

How Papershow works

A simple yet effective idea: to write on a sheet of paper using a pen and see it on screen in real time.

• A pen
• A USB pen drive
• A 48-sheet pad of interactive paper 
  

It’s a regular pen, as any other, which brings an infrared sensor and a Bluetooth radio. The infrared sensor record the direction of the pern on the paper transmitting the information to the pen drive. The pen drive forwards the data to the application for the onscreen reconstruction.

The system works due to the interactive paper, built with invisible dot pattern which allows the position of the pen on the paper and the line direction to be recorded.

How to install it

The ease of use is the strongest point of the kit: there’s no need for extra installing or special configurations. The program is in the USB pen drive and it starts automatically at plugin. The pen is connected automatically when the cap is removed. When the lid is on again and the pen drive is unplugged, the software goes off automatically without a trace.

It seems that all the details have been carefully taken into consideration to devise a product that’s easy and simple to use, especially for executives and professionals who are not really into new technologies, and there’s a huge number of people like that. 

Advanced options and functionalities

The menu for Papershow is in the interactive paper further to the right.

All you have to do is place the pen point on the icons in order to:

• Change line color and thickness
• Change paper color
• Manage paper amount
• Delete and remove the previous action
• Make different shapes and arrows for graphics

All notes can be exported and saved. You can also import presentations from Powerpoint and use the slides as a background for notes etc, but the slides can only be printed out on specific paper (in the kit) for the printer.

My feedback

Papershow really works. The kit was open and two minutes later it was working. Once the pen drive was inserted and the pen lid removed, I began writing on the pad and visualize the process on the monitor in real time.

The pen may occasionally present some difficulty when drawing a continuous line if it is too tipped on the side, all you have to do is to keep it straight up to get things working.

Papershow business is obviously based on the market of electronic charts. The general cost in Europe is about 140 euros and new sheets can be purchased for 9 euros each for a 48-sheet pad, or 14 euros for a 200-sheet pad.

Others reviews

• Oxford Paper Show digital pen: review / preview & tips - presentation tool
• Papershow digital pen and paper combo