I love writing and book related gadgets, so was delighted to find a friend of mine Conrad using one at the National Speakers Association this week.
We were listening to Steven Bradbury, Olympic Gold medallist, and he was taking notes with the Livescribe Pulse smart pen. I had previously seen the videos but never one in real life!
The basic concept is that the pen records audio at the same time as you write notes on the smart paper. If you then touch the pen to the paper later on, it will replay the audio at the point you were writing the notes. This is particularly good if you are recording lectures and your notes are incomprehensible afterwards!
You can speed up or slow down the recording by using the controls on the smart paper just by touching it.
After the session, you dock the pen and your notes are downloaded to yuor desktop along with the audio files. This is a great feature as you can play with the visual files as well on-screen as well as share them.
The notebook was actually good looking as well, like a real pad, not techy. The pen is easy to hold and light. I was generally impressed with how easy it all looked. Of course, you have to buy the pen AND the smart paper, and if you write prolific notes in large handwriting (like me!), you will end up paying a lot for the pleasure of use.
Here’s a video on it so you can see how it works. This is the official video but there are a whole lot of other videos on the product as well.
You can get them on Amazon.com here => Livescribe 2GB Pulse Smartpen (APA-00002)
Has anyone else used this tool and what do you think of it?
*************************************
Thank you for visiting The Creative Penn! For more top posts, try the Articles page.
Like this article? Subscribe to my RSS feed by email or in a RSS reader.
Follow me on Twitter.
Join the Facebook group “How to Publish a Book”
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I use the Pulse Smartpen for work and it is amazing!
Hi Joanna,
Sorry to do this, but a shameless marketing plug…
Just so you know, Smartpen stocks a complete range of Livescribe products and accessories. You can read about what’s happening via our blog (http://blog.smartpen.com.au), on Twitter (@smartpen) and on Facebook! Whilst we don’t have the b&m presence of Officeworks, we are very service focused and know the product inside out.
cheers
Mr Smartpen
You can bring down the cost of ownership by printing your own LiveScribe paper. The free LiveScribe desktop software allows you to print your own paper as long as you have a printer that prints at least 600dpi. They include the option of printing a sample sheet and then testing it before printing a whole “notebook” worth of pages.
My Pulse pen has been game-changing. As an ADHD Adult, I’ve been able to use my Pulse Smartpen as one of my GTD “collection buckets” along with my planner system. I’m an IT professional but using paper-based products is a lot easier if I want a solution that I can bring with me just about everywhere.
This has had such a huge impact in my own productivity that I’m thinking about buying two more for my boyfriends two sons with ADHD to help them with their note-taking in school.