Livescribe, the company whose pen combines paper note-taking with digital recordings, is launching its next-generation product and new ways of sharing pages and audio.
The Echo pen has a number of improvements from looks, to capacity and new standard interfaces that open up fresh uses for a signature product among digital pens.
Livescribe says it has sold more than 400,000 of its current generation Pulse smartpens since they went on sale in April 2008. They are now available in 36 different countries and have found buyers among students, teachers, lawyers, health care and market research workers, and even journalists like me.
The Pulse allows you to tap on a paper record button in a special Livescribe notebook and begin making handwritten notes, while microphones in the pen or attached headphones record the audio of the lecture or meeting or interview taking place.
A camera in the nib area of the pen records keystrokes, while tiny dots on the paper map them and help to synchronise the audio with the notes. It can then be replayed at the point the note was taken by just tapping on a word on the page, allowing users to make sense of their notes by having the full audio immediately at hand. They can also dock the pen with a computer and upload and share a digital version of the notes with embedded audio to livescribe.com.
I use the Pulse every day and hoped the next version of the pen would be slimmer, lighter and easier to grip.
In fact, it’s much the same in size – marginally longer and wider at the top, but tapering from there to the nib and a rubberised grip has been added. One flat side has also been added, so the pen no longer rolls away easily.
The other main changes are a standard 3.5mm headphone socket in the top instead of Livescribe’s less common interface and a standard micro-USB connector there as well, rather than the Pulse’s separate dock.
On the plus side, the headphone socket allows any standard headphones to be used now without an adapter. However, it means users will have to pay an extra $30 for headphone accessories that have been included with the Pulse and contain microphones in their earpieces for better recordings.
The micro-USB connector means any standard cable can now be used to charge and dock the pen and it opens up future possibilities for the device.
The San Francisco Bay Area startup is working on software that allows a pen plugged into a PC to be used as a stylus for online whiteboarding on products such as Adobe Connect. It would be able to draw, mark-up and sign documents on-screen and even be used as a mouse.
The software should be available in the fourth quarter along with Adobe Reader compatibility so recordings and notes, or sections of recordings and notes, can be emailed and shared in a standard PDF.
Software improvements available now include the ability to password-protect notes and to share them as pencasts with users that have downloaded pencast software similar to Adobe Reader. There is also a new iPhone app that gives access to notes and audio stored on livescribe.com.
While the Pulse has been available with 2Gb and 4Gb memory chips, the Echo will have 4Gb and 8Gb versions for $170 and $200, while a Pulse 2Gb version will remain on sale at $130.
The Echo should be available on Livescribe.com and Amazon in the US and UK this week and in Best Buy stores in the US.
The pen’s design improvements make it easier to hold and more versatile. Its new memory size – enough to store a year of my notes and recordings – along with its new connections and software open up even more possibilities for what for me has become an indispensable business tool.
