I just read a post that I think others would be interested to see. In a thread about the MyPaint application, forum member MobileDivide wrote that “[MyPaint] and Numptyphysics have redefined my tablet use over the last few days.”

I can believe it.

MyPaint is a “small [Hildonized] pressure-sensitive painting application written in python and gtk” by Martin Renold and ported to Maemo by Anders Gudmundson.

Here are a couple example drawings done on an N810 in MyPaint by ArnimS:

Not the usual kind of thing we’ve seen so far.

Numpty Physics is Tim Edmond’s gravity-physics game using the same Box2D engine that Crayon Physics does.

MyPaint and Numpty Physics have one thing in common — they let us use the Internet Tablet as a tablet. Sketching can never be done gracefully with a mouse. Even graphics tablets — hand on the tablet, eye on the screen — have a disconnect. So sketching your idea right on the screen — or painting it — is, well, transformative.

Unlike other graphics programs the IT has seen so far, MyPaint focuses on brush controls, rather than image-editing, enabling the full range of styles a pressure-sensitive tablet can capture.

When we talk about the Internet Tablet as being revolutionary or transformative, it’s because everything in its conception — display, open platform, size and weight, price — serves to free us from the constraints our desk/laptops have imposed on us.

So, thanks are due to Martin and Anders and Tim and Erin Catto* for these specific versions of these great applications. And to the Nokia seers who conceived the Internet Tablet.

_______________
* Box2D progenitor.