The pen may be mighty, but it has never been quite as useful as the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, a gadget that looks like a futuristic fountain pen with a tiny one-line display stamped across its side.
But this writing utensil has about as much in common with a ballpoint Bic as a Ferrari does with a Hot Wheels car. In fact, this US$150 device probably has more processing power stuffed into its cylindrical frame than a 10-year-old desktop computer.
As you write with it, a tiny camera records every stroke, saving your notes or doodles onto its internal memory — either 1 gigabyte or 2 gigabytes — as searchable digital images. The notes can then be uploaded and instantly archived to your PC by way of an included USB dock, which also charges the pen’s built-in battery.
What sets the Pulse apart from other so-called smartpens is the inclusion of an audio recorder and a truly novel way of utilizing it.
As you take notes with the Pulse, a built-in microphone records the proceedings. To play back a section of your recording, just use the tip of the pen to tap any word from your handwritten notes. Like a handheld time machine, the pen will then play whatever was recorded when you wrote that word. This is done either through its built-in speaker or headphones that can be plugged directly into the pen.
This method of instant, on-demand audio retrieval has the potential to fundamentally alter how you take notes.
I’ve spent the past several weeks using the Pulse in meetings and the effects were immediate and enormous. Rather than attempting to studiously transcribe every important fact, I was able to trim my note-taking down to simple annotations. For example, when a meeting drifted to the topic of a budget, I simply wrote the word “budget” and a few key words as they came up, and let the pen do the rest. Later, I was able to replay sections of the meeting just by tapping my handwritten headers. To put it another way, this is a pen that basically takes notes for you.
While businessmen who frequent meetings may find this gadget useful, it is students who probably have the most to gain from it. They will be able to pay more attention to lectures and exercise their brains, instead of their wrists. They may even find that, with the doldrums of note-taking out of the picture, they actually enjoy class.
As compelling as the Pulse is today, it should become even more useful down the line. Livescribe has opened up the pen to software developers who have the ability to expand upon its functionality. While these add-on programs are very limited, they give a clear sense of what is to come.
For example, the pen comes with a limited translation tool that detects what word you are writing and uses the pen’s display to print out the Spanish equivalent while its speaker pronounces it properly.
The Pulse is not without its drawbacks. Its greatest shortcoming is that it requires special paper. For the pen to record your writing, it must be used with sheets that are filled with microscopic dots, which serve as reference points for the pen and its camera. This limits the Pulse’s usefulness in spontaneous situations, such as jotting ideas on spare cocktail napkins. Fortunately, customers can now print their own paper for free off of the company’s Web site.
While impressive, the technology of digitized writing is nothing new, and can be found in a number of other products. The most notable of these is the Leapfrog FLY, which is primarily marketed as an educational toy for children.
But as digital smartpens go, the Pulse is the most useful. While some competing products, such as the Iogear Mobile Digital Scribe, can be used on any paper, they require you to clamp special devices to the top of your notebook and do little more than digitize your writing.
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