Awesome Product: SmartPen

Dear readers, I must beg forgiveness for not having written as much as promised lately.  I do not have a great excuse for it.  I just haven’t been in the mood to post anything great and I don’t want to post anything subpar.  I hope this post will pass the muster.

I wanted to share my excitement for this great new product I have only recently given a try.  It is called a Smart Pen, manufactured by LiveScribe.  It makes many great promises and, from what I can tell so far, it lives up to them.

Smart Pen

Read the website for a good salespitch.  It is highly effective.  I am very impressed with the Smart Pen’s features  and price tag.  I bought the 1 gig version.  It is $150 at Target.  I have not seen them at my local Walmart, but I’m sure the price would be comparable. 

This pen is able to write on anything, but the bells and whistles will only work on special dot paper, sold exclusively by livescribe (surprise).  The Smart Pen comes with one notebook, but I bought an extra pack, 3 notebooks for about $25.  I think each notebook comes with 100 pages  (Edit:  I confirmed that the notebook that comes with the pen has exactly 100 pages.).  I’m sure the price of this special paper will come down as the product becomes more popular and the technology becomes more ‘typical’.  So this is one drawback: expensive paper.

I also bought a red leather case for $25, but the Smart Pen comes with a case (though not as nice as the red leather one), so I feel as though I was duped into spending extra money on something I didn’t really need.  So, if you are thinking of purchasing a Smart Pen, I would resist buying the extra leather case until you’ve at least seen the one that comes with the pen.

I left the docking device at work, which is what keeps the pen charged.  I brought the pen home for the weekend.  It is Sunday and, though I haven’t used it yet, the pen is dead (Edit:  This is terribly embarrassing.  The pen was not dead, I had just forgot how to turn it back on.  I thought it should come back on as I began to write, but instead you must manually turn it on by pushing a tiny button.  The battery still had a good charge in it.)

The pen charges via USB, which is convenient.  You can charge the pen and upload your notes using just one device.  I’m not sure if the pen charges even if the computer is shut off.  I’ll have to test that next weekend.

The audio capture works surprisingly well, better than the microphone I have plugged into my computer.  The 3-D sound feature is pretty neat, though I haven’t thought of any creative ways to utilize it.  I have not tried the audio capture in a lecture setting yet.  If the class is quiet, I’m sure the pen would capture the audio well.  But I suspect that the microphone is sensitive enough to pick up whispers, pages turning, people rustling around, doors opening, etc.  To their credit, the folks at livescribe have different audio settings for different environments (ex:  there is a lecture hall setting).

The speakers on the pen are just as impressive as the microphone.  Good, clear playback at the perfect volume.

The pen has a piano application that just blows my mind.  You draw 7 keys on the paper and a couple of letters.  Then, when you touch the key with the pen tip, the pen plays the note.  You can change instruments (just like a keyboard) and you can even play some rhythm (this is what the letters are for, to change instruments and rhythms). 

Just as jaw-dropping is the ability to listen to audio that was playing at any point during the lecture by merely touching that point of the lecture in your notes on the special paper.

Another nice feature:  the audio is optional.  You can choose to capture audio by pressing the ‘record’ button at the bottom of each page with your pen.

You can upload your notes and/or audio to your computer using the docking device and the livescribe software, which must be downloaded from the internet.  Just like on the paper, you can play back audio from any point in the lecture by merely clicking on that point in your notes.

From the software, you have just a few options, which I think will grow in the future.  You can keep your notes to yourself, by either viewing them on the computer using the software or save and print them as a pdf file. 

Or you can share your notes on livescribe online (and only through livescribe online).  This presents your notes and audio using flash.  You can share your notes directly on facebook, but apparently not myspace or yourtube.  You can obtain a link to post on your blog or website.  Also, once you’ve elected to share it, it becomes public on livescribe online for others to find.

The presentation on livescribe online is pretty sharp.  See it for yourself: click here.  It works best if you make it full screen.  My only complaint about it is that when you zoom in, you have no control.  It always zooms in to the middle of the page.

When you register your pen, it automatically sets you up with an account and 250MB of space.  As a teacher, and with what I’d like to use this pen for (a semester’s worth of homework solutions, for example), that doesn’t seem like much space.  It says that in the future, livescribe online will give you more space at a price.  I am a little disappointed by this.  It would be nice if livescribe would either give more space for free (around 1 gig or more) or make it possible to share the notes outside of livescribe online.  For instance, I was hoping to be able to post smartpen-created homework solutions directly to my website.  Instead, I will have to upload it to livescribe online and then post a link to it.  My concerns here are that I will use up that 250MB very quickly and that I will be in trouble if livescribe online ever went off line for any reason (server issues and whatnot).  It would be nice to have more control over sharing the notes, instead of being forced to do it through livescribe.

One last thought I’d like to mention.  It appears that livescribe is making its development software open source in order to encourage independent development of applications for the smartpen.  It is a trend that many companies are following (including facebook).  In this way, you will have a lot of people trying to find clever ways of using the smartpen and developing their own applications, which they can then share with the rest of the world (at a price, if they want).  It’s a win-win:  the smartpen becomes more functional and developers get a chance to make a name for themselves and make some money as well.

This technology is very fascinating and the smartpen is alot of fun to play with, not to mention useful.  I recommend anyone in the area of business or education (teacher or student) to purchase one.  It will increase your productivity and/or efficiency.  I look forward to using the smartpen for teaching and for taking notes at meetings/conventions, etc.  I wonder what they will come up with next.   Thanks for reading.

~Witch Doctor

Edit:  One other thing I forgot to mention is that once your notes have been uploaded to the livescribe software on your computer, you can search your notes.  Evidently, it can recognize even my poor penmanship and find words that you are searching for in your notes.  Invaluable for when you have a ton of notes and are looking for that obscure little fact that was mentioned only briefly that one time….Incredible!

Tags: audio, dot paper, hot product, livescribe, livescribe online, math, mathematics, note, notes, pen, product, product review, review, smart, smartpen, smartpen review, student