Livescribe Pulse 2Gb Smartpen
- Image by Becca Taylor via Flickr
For those of you that are avid readers of this column it should have become obvious that whilst I am a committed computer geek – I also have a love of fine pens, paper and writing instruments. In this months column I have managed to combine both – and find a tool that is invaluable to doctors, especially when studying or at a conference. The device in question is the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. Physically it is a slightly chunky ball pen – but this pen will digitise everything you write and save it to a desktop application. An addon called MyScript then does a reasonable job of converting it to typed text.
Alone this would be quite impressive – but this pen can also record the ambient audio at the same time – and link it to your written notes. Excellent for conferences, lectures and meetings. On the desktop the whole becomes searchable – and it seems to use the audio and text together to make the search quite accurate. Even better – you can return to your printed notes and tap on any word with the pen and it will play the audio from that point in the meeting.
The secret behind all of this is the use of special paper which is covered in microdots to form a unique map the size of Europe and Asia combined. This means you have to use special notebooks – but they are reasonably priced. If you have access to a laser printer the Windows desktop software allows you to print your own paper. The Mac software works well but so far lacks some of the features available to Windows users.
The 2GB pen holds about 200 hours of audio and is available from Officeworks or smartpen.com.au for $329 - smartpen.com.au has the wider range of accessories. More information at livescribe.com.
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