Livescribe Echo Pen

Saturday, 13 October, 2012

Over the summer I bought a Livescribe Echo Smartpen to try out some digital note taking (a review and on Amazon). Believe it or not, I like writing and smartphones don’t cut the mustard here, whilst tablets still have a way to go to beat the convenience of paper. The Echo particularly caught my eye as it integrates audio recording in to the digital note taking which in my mind makes it a killer combination. Sit in a lecture and take notes whilst recording the audio. Want to hear what the lecturer was saying when you were writing a particular note? Simply tap the paper at the point and it starts playing it. Audio ceases to be purely linear with a content timeline mapped out in your notes making it very easy to access. You can also upload your digital notes (and audio) to the desktop application and, wonderfully, you can search for words in your text (clearly it does some handwriting recognition behind the scenes) and also convert the writing to text (but using the extra “paid-for” app).

How does it work? Well digital note taking on paper falls in to two categories - a clip on IR sensor that works on any sheet of paper or special dedicated paper that allows the pen to know which page you are on and where. Livescribe use the latter approach with a small camera in the tip of the pen that records the ink trace and compiles the 2D coordinates in to your handwriting. This means you have to buy Livescribe notebooks - I find this fine and think the product is very reliable as a result. Combined with the audio (and you can get a directional mic to plugin!) it is a killer product in the note taking market. In a business meeting a need a formal written/audio record? Use Livescribe? Clerking a meeting? Livescribe. Legal ramifications (lawyer, education etc) - Livescribe.

The basic pen comes with 2Gb of memory - not much if you want keep all your recordings with you but more than enough if you record, upload and store. And its cheap at ~£70 in the UK (recent price drop), although Livescribe themselves have gone very quiet which suggests a product range revamp.

I use it for
-use it for recording a lecture and making notes
-use it for taking notes from books
-convert writing to text (MyScribe plugin)
-user it to create multi-media animations

More in a follow-on blog entry.