Many Web sites today offer what content providers refer to as "Web interactivity" or an "interactive Web experience." We have been conditioned to know that on the Web, interactivity more accurately refers to multimedia, broadband, streaming, and other "rich content". Users have little or no ability to manipulate this content.

Contrast this definition of Web interactivity with desktop interactivity. Our expectations are completely different for the desktop experience, and our terminology reflects the fact that the desktop provides functionality that lets us truly interact with content, rather than just view it. Consider desktop "content:" documents, spreadsheets, instant messages, email, database applications, mark-up tools, and reports. All provide a truly interactive experience. The fact is, Web interactivity involves "rich content." But desktop interactivity involves "rich applications." Interactivity has everything to do with functionality. Word processor interactivity suggests the ability to type and modify a document, save work, print it, return and resume work. For email, it suggests the ability to compose and send a text-based message. Overall, desktop interactivity includes content creation, modification, typing, drawing, printing, transmitting, sharing, saving and then resuming work later.

Slate Technology's goal is to bring desktop interactivity to the Web. Imagine if Web sites provided truly interactive content, enabling site visitors to create, enhance, and share their work with other visitors to an online community or within an enterprise. 

To bridge the gap, Slate Technology provides Web site owners and developers with "digital ink" tools that let users interact with content. Applications using Slate Technology's digital ink solutions will provide important channels with which to extend the value of traditional content, enhance the functionality of existing web applications, and leverage thhe ubiquity of the Web and power of interactivity with digital ink to create new solutions.