Livescribe Pulse Smartpen
by Chris Hardwick on December 12, 2008
I REALLY dug this thing. I’m hoping the company will offer handwriting-to-text soon, but it’s still a nifty device with boatloads of potential.
from the official Gadget Pr0n site:
- While you’re writing, the smart pen will pick up any audio near you and you can adjust the mic settings, so it’ll work well even if you’re taking notes in a lecture hall
- Then, all you have to do is play the session back and it plays your audio along with it, either from the pen or through the livescribe software
- The software recognizes words so you can search through your notes, even if your handwriting is terrible
- It won’t convert notes into computer text, but there’s already third party software to do so
- You can make a flash movie out of your notes and audio, and it’s fun to see how everything played out while you were drawing or writing
- Upload your notes and audio to your Livescribe account so you can access it anywhere
- The main graph is used to get to each feature, and this is at the bottom of every page along with the other shortcut buttons
- You very rarely have to tap twice and there’s very little lag while navigating
- This makes all the other features work well too
- The translator demo will translate a word you’ve written from English to a few different languages
- The piano app lets you draw a piano that you can play
- Developers have already started writing apps for this, so it has serious potential
- If you’re always taking notes for college classes, meetings, or stand-up, it works like a charm
- PRICE: $150
I am in the market for a good digital pen and this one looks great. Does the software work on the Mac OS though? While looking at others I noticed a good deal were Windows specific.
I am in the market for a good digital pen and this one looks great. Does the software work on the Mac OS though? While looking at others I noticed a good deal were Windows specific.
if that pen is so great it should do my homework for me
Their Mac software is a public beta at this point and I didn’t try it.
Oh ok. Well out of curiosity I went to check it out and in case anyone else was wondering, the Beta is for Mac OS 10.5 only, which sucks for me cause I still use 10.4. Oh well…
Also sorry about the double post…not sure how that happened.
Damn… I never thought I would pay $150 for a freaking pen but that thing looks amazing. Thank you Mr. Hardwick, also completely off topic but I was watching The Incredible Hulk yesterday and every time I see Edward Norton I get your picture in my head for some reason.
I am kind of glad the Mac version isn’t quite ready yet, as I am very interested but very “not in the market”. Awesome review though! Can’t wait until money is less tight.
I liked how concise your points were; I always find myself going on and on when I’m telling people about the smartpen. Yeah, I was impressed by the quality of the audio, especially since there were 200 other students in the big lecture hall! I feel like the pen was well worth it. For those who are hesitant because of the price, I know livescribe is offering a discount that ends Dec. 31. It’s 10% off with free shipping. If you’d like to let your readers know about it, just reply! (:
The Mac Beta is stable and syncs the same pen to both PC and Mac. The Handwriting recognition is now in the PC version (printing and handwriting options). Now I’m just waiting for Evernote support (which they say is in development). There also was a recent firmware update for the pen itself. Thanks for the recommendation Chris!