A Pen That Wants to Be a Computer - It's All About the Apps
It’s really the ability to put apps on the pen that
Livescribe is pushing as a differentiator, though. The company is distributing
SDKs as cheaply and easily as it can, to open the smartpen up as much as
possible as a development platform rather than just an enhanced note-taker.
The most obvious apps are dictionaries, specialized
dictionaries, calculators, reference books and other content that gives
unplugged note-takers the benefit of Google in their hands.
Salespeople can carry a product catalog, all the technical
specifications, FAQs and other data they might need about a customer on the
up-to 4 GB of space in the pen, and record the meeting so customer objections
or requests can be analyzed later, for example.
The first wave of software in Livescribe’s
online apps store is relatively mundane: multilingual phrasebooks,
dictionaries, the periodic table, measurement-unit conversion utilities, and
the like.
There are also more traditional apps -- a helicopter-rescue
game, Hangman, sports and music references, and an ask-the-fratboy advice app
that promises it will provide an answer to your questions, though possibly not
a good one.
Loading the apps is as simple as syncing the pen itself:
plug it in, click, drag, and drop. If you’ve used Palm, Windows Mobile or any
other handheld devices, nothing about the process will surprise you.
Everything about Livescribe had to be upgraded to support
apps, the company said. It needed more memory, better processors and updates
to the desktop sync software. Pretty ambitious for a product that only launched
in 2008.
There’s a good reason for that urgency, though.
A really smart smartpen -- even one that records audio, does
well what it says it can do, and makes all its abilities easily available -- is
still a kludge.
A better option is to carry a computer that’s small and
light enough not to be obtrusive, but powerful enough to bring apps, data,
Internet connections, and multimodal input (typing or handwriting) with you
when you leave your desk.
That’s exactly what Apple has promised with its recently
announced iPad, and what a dozen other computer makers offered in the
ultralight and tablet sections of CES this year.
Tablets, which do everything the Livescribe can do and quite
a lot it can’t, are on the list of big things that will hit the IT industry
this year. To be fair, they were on the same list five years ago, and still
haven’t been that big a hit.
Still, Livescribe is the most successful mixed-media
note-taking device I’ve tried so far, and the one with the greatest range for
growth in the future. At list prices of $199 for the 4GB
version and $149
for the 2GB, it’s pricey for a smartpen, though cheap for a tablet.
It’s also big and heavy for a pen, slow for a computer and
has a pretty small screen on which to read all those dictionaries. If you don’t
want to wait for a tablet, or don’t want to rely on future technology to
improve note-taking you need to fix now, I’d put Livescribe high on the list of
tools with which to do that.
Anoto inside :-)Posted on: 02-04-10 | By: Ebba Åsly FåhraeusHi!
Glad you like this special deployment of Anoto technology - Livescribe has done a great job with the apps and features. For more info and videos of other applications of the underlying Anoto technology check http://www.youtube.com/user/Anotogroup or www.anoto.com
/Ebba Åsly Fåhraeus
Anoto AB
Love it...Posted on: 02-04-10 | By: davegI've had mine for about 4 months as my notetaking tool for my return to school. I love it. Its quick and easy to use. Slipping it into my pocket between classes means its one less thing I have to carry. My note taking has been useful and meaningful and allowed me to easily share entire lectures to classmates that missed the class...The entire lecture notes and audio.
I have found the desktop app to be cludgy at first and recent updates have really improved its performance. I think the upload feature to the online storage needs work but I am sure it will improve.
A user comment on this articlePosted on: 02-02-10 | By: AnonymousI have tried it, but the fact that all the files are in a proprietary format was a deal killer for me. There is no way I can convince an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that I have my interviews under my control as required by our Human Subjects regs when the files are on the vendor's servers somewhere. Back to paper and audio recorders for me
A user comment on this articlePosted on: 02-02-10 | By: Sal SalamoneI love this type of gadget. And I too have been frustrated with how poorly previous versions have worked.
The audio grab with this pen is an interesting twist.
