Tablets are great for watching movies, playing games or checking email — a.k.a. consumption devices. But can they be an effective means for creating cool stuff? Our guest on the GeekWire radio show this week believes that they can.

Jon Harris
Jon Harris, co-founder of FiftyThree

We’re pleased to be joined in the studio by technology designer Jon Harris, the co-founder of FiftyThree — the company known for the virtual notebook and sketching app Paper, which was Apple’s 2012 App of the Year for iPad. FiftyThree was founded by a team that includes several veterans of Microsoft, who left the company to follow their vision for creation tools on tablets.

The company, based in New York and Seattle, just landed $15 million in funding from a group of investors led by Andreessen Horowitz. They’re planning to use the extra funds to expand their business beyond Paper, making a big push into collaboration tools and hardware.

“When we started FiftyThree, as creators ourselves, we recognized that the creation tools today are lacking,” Harris explains. “They’re antiquated. One one hand you have pencil and paper, in physical form, which have lasted for however many thousands of years. On the other hand you have keyboard and mouse, which we’ve been using since the 90s,” such as Photoshop and Word.

He continues, “These tools they haven’t really been rethought for the modern-day maker. Why are we capturing our ideas using basically a chisel and hammer when we have this sleek, beautiful iPad in front of us that’s got this amazing gesturing system? As we recognized this need, we thought, hey this is a great opportunity space for us.”

Other topics include the role of the stylus on tablets, the FiftyThree team’s roots in Microsoft’s Courier project, and the origins of the FiftyThree name. We also get Harris to talk a bit about FiftyThree’s future following the funding round.

That conversation begins at 8:30 in audio player above, following our weekly news roundup. Topics this week include Microsoft’s Xbox One policy reversal, and the startup BookVibe and its tool for recommending books based on your Twitter feed.

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