[NTLK] WWNC 2009

Well the Newton Conference is history and, except for the somewhat
disappointing attendance, was a great success. I thoroughly enjoyed
my two days in Vancouver. The weather was perfect if a little on the
warm side - Vancouver was in the middle of a heat wave (there's no
other way to put it, temperature records were falling every day it
seemed). Oh, and did I mention, the air conditioning was not working
in the room where we were meeting.

In spite of the small turnout the company was excellent and it was
quite an experience to be sitting round a table with people who all
shared my passion for things Newton.

Ryan Vetter obviously put a lot of effort into his interesting
Keynote presentations and demonstrations which included the history
of the Newton, the history, and the future, of tablet computers,
methods for linking the Newton to computers, useful software for the
Newton, and more. We were treated to a veritable museum of tablets
and Apple/Mac laptops and there was a demonstration of the
installation of a flush WiFi card in a 2100.

Larry Yaeger gave us a fascinating glimpse into the development of
the Newton and, of course, the work that he spearheaded on the second
generation print recognizer - which was based on the use of
artificial neural networks - that made Newton OS 2.x so incredibly
better than the original (non-Apple) version. We were shown some of
the original Newton prototypes and development/testing equipment (I
hope that one day these end up in a suitable exhibit in Apple's own
museum). Larry then took us on a short stroll into Polyworld where
he currently explores the further application of neural networks, and
their various properties, in artificial life systems (to me it looks
just like a straight extension of his work on the Newton!!!).

Lots of interesting discussion. A great time was had by all.

One attendee who has to be mentioned was Matej Horvat who came all
the way from Slovenia. Nice to see you Matej.

====================================================================
The NewtonTalk Mailing List - http://www.newtontalk.net/
The Official Newton FAQ - http://www.splorp.com/newton/faq/
The Newton Glossary - http://www.splorp.com/newton/glossary/
WikiWikiNewt - http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
====================================================================
Received on Mon Aug 3 19:23:47 2009