Digitize your writings !!!

In todays digital world could the humble pen be left behind !!!

Welcome to the age of SMART PENS. These new gen pens have been around for a while but havent really caught the main stream acceptance due to their high costs.

With the cost of some of these pens falling to < 100$ these SMART PENS becomes so much more attractive to the average user.

There are many alternatives which one can consider before buying. Let me explain a few and the key differentiators among them.

1. Livescribe provides two smart pens PULSE and ECHO.

Echo is a 2GB cheaper alternative.

So the key USP of livescribe is that itnot only captures the text on the page. It can also capture the audio along with the writing and replay the same back on demand or transfer the same to your desktop when a cable is connected.

This is how livescribe works. Livescribe Pen requires you to use its own book/page. The Page provided has a some buttons printed at the bottom of the page.

You click on the record button and the pen starts recording all the audio and the writings in sync. You can stop / Pause / bookmark all your writings.

All the content is saved on the PEN when you connect the pen to your laptop/desktop the content is then transferred to the PC/MAC. You can play back the entire page on the PC.

You can also save the notes and convert them to text that can be edited on the PC with word processoers.

It can also translate to other languages on the FLY. For example you write a word Hello on the paper. Then select the language on the SMARTPEN and tab the word hello. The Pen then playsback the word in the langugage selected.

Read more details at : http://www.livescribe.com/

Pros :

1. Most digital pens out there just capture the writing but this captures the Audio also.
2. The writing can be converted to a flash movie and played on any flash supporting players.
3. Good integration into phone and pc apps.
4. Can translate on the fly to different langugaes , really useful for people who travel.

Cons :

1. Needs special paper ( can be printed on  a laser printer but cost still remains a high)
2. Many applitions are add on which increases the cost of the overall solution.

There are other pens which work in a little different way like the IRIS Notes.

The IRIS Notes comes with a Pen and a clip on USB Receiver. The USB receiver can be clipped onto any book or paper and anything writted on the sheet is saved on the USB receiver. Upto 100 pages are saved at a time. Once connected to the PC the content can be transferred and viewed. The newer bluetooth version can directly send the data written to a Android / Blackberry device.

Pros :

1. Can write on any paper ; no need of special paper as in the case of livescribe.
2. When the USB receiver is connected to PC the writing on the paper is instantly seen on the screen and can be edited. The same pen can be used as mouse also.
3. Can write directly on images/pics when USB receiver connected to PC.

Cons :

1. Cannot capture Audio along with the writing.
2. No translate or playback feature

Both digital pens claim that the writings can be converted to editable text. Having used the scanners and OCR ( Optical character recognition softwares ) I am pretty sure that this feature is far from usable for now. So if you are looking to covert your hand written notes to text , you are better of typing them 🙂

Having considered all things I will probably go for a livescribe and try it out. Waiting to get man hands on one of them soon 😉 wait for the reviews !!!