Smart Pen Records Your Writing, Voice

The Livescribe Pulse pen amazes everyone I’ve shown it to: Writing on special paper, it records every stroke you make on the page. It can also record the audio you hear, synchronizing the audio track with everything you write.

You can upload everything to your computer via USB, so you can view and search through your notebooks online. Or, without the computer, you can play back recorded audio simply by tapping on the page — the pen plays back whatever audio it recorded at the moment you were writing or drawing on that part of the page.

As a journalist, I love the idea of this pen. And for the most part, I like it in practice, too. I can take it to interviews, write down whatever chicken-scratch notes I want, and rest assured that the audio recording will capture every word, should I need to get a quote. Also, the search function on the desktop works amazingly well, highlighting search terms even when I’ve written them fairly illegibly, and the desktop synchronization lets me have access to my notes even when I leave the physical notebook behind.