Microsoft Research just released it’s fabulous InkSeine application. It’s a prototype application done by a research department and as such it lacks some features and streamlining but in general it’s cool. The biggest gripe I have that it’s very Microsoft centered, but coming from MS Research I can’t blame them.
In general if you have a tablet or an UMPC, which I both have at work, you can install this application to easily write notes, organize thoughts and link them with existing dat, like email, (word) docs, (windows) desktop search and (MSN) internet search (amongst others). It does remind me a bit of a combination of Beagle, TomBoy and InkScape and it does have some neat ideas how to work with Ink, Touch (although mainly pen-focussed) and mindmapping.
I really like their swipe-menu which makes it easy to select something: you hold you pen/finger on the icon and a circular menu appears, if you move your pen/finger in the direction of one of the items it is automatically selected. Once you know where the different menu items are, you just point and swipe, without waiting for the menu. This is a really nice way to work with a pen, especially for an application which you use a lot.
The IE icon in the center is the actual icon the circle-ish thingy is the menu, as you can see going up from the IE icon goes to cut. In all other swipe menus going up means cut/ delete/ remove/ destroy/ kill (nice career-statement 
This swipe-menu does remind me of the Plectrae-menu I designed for our DiamondTouch table-top computer. (Plectrae is a pun on Plectrum and Latin plural rules, which obviously have been ignored.) A Plectrae-menu is triggered by any user touching the table and holding their finger still for a second or so, it provides the user with a set of options, which face the user in the correct orientation (more or less). This is important, since tabletop computing doesn’t have a bottom or top orientation so all information should be rotated towards the user.
Plectrae menu in action, shot by Martijn van Exel
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