![]() An iPad that worked well with pen input would make me drop the Echo. They're just not flexible enough to be general-purpose devices, like tablets. I like the Livescribe pens and find them useful. Wi-Fi would be better, but getting a pen to work well with Wi-Fi would be a big challenge, both in terms of the user interface and battery life. A short-range wireless link like Bluetooth would be neat, but might not be fast enough to transfer notes. The other big shortcoming is that the pen needs to be physically connected to your computer to send email, upload notes or control your cursor. Even a phone screen can communicate a lot more. It can also talk to you through its little speaker, but that's not a medium that can convey the complexity of a Web page. But it has a really hard time communicating anything back, since its screen shows less than 25 characters at time, in monochrome. It's not that hard to control this "pen computer" - you write things, and it responds. The biggest drawback to the pen is its tiny screen. It's also possible to print your own dotted paper if you have a color laser printer. You can buy a four-pack of additional notebooks from the site for $19.95 (one small notebook comes with the pen). The dots are picked up by a small camera in the pen and allow it to figure out where it is on a page. ![]() It works only on paper that's preprinted with a pattern of dots that looks like a faint speckling of the page. Speaking of pads, you do need a special pad to use the Echo. It's equivalent to Wacom's PC input tablets, but it doesn't register different degrees of pressure, so it's unlikely to be useful to artists. Press down, and you register a click, or draw on the screen. Hover over the pad, and the cursor moves. " scroll by on the pen's screen.Īnother app lets the pen control your PC's cursor when connected by cable. The coolest app, by far, is a version of the classic text-based adventure game "Zork." It's a pretty magical experience to write commands like "go north" and see replies like "You are in a clearing. One lets you measure the distance between two points on the pad, or compute the area of an enclosed space. There's also an "app store" where you can buy little programs to download to the pen. The writing looks good on screen - much better than it would look if you simply wrote on a pad, then scanned or photographed it. You can also post them on Facebook, perhaps for sharing lecture notes with friends. You can also send them to Google Docs, for sharing, or to OneNote, to keep your notes tidy. For instance, you can mark pages and have them sent in an email as soon as you connect your pen to your computer. On the software side, the pen now "talks" better to other programs. The Echo improves on the Pulse by replacing proprietary audio and data ports with a standard headphone and micro-USB port. ![]() (In the old days, reporters used to learn shorthand. I used Livescribe's earlier model, the Pulse, quite a bit in my reporting job, and found the ability to tap back into a conversation to get a verbatim quote useful on several occasions. So, the Echo is still the best tool for note-taking, particularly when you're standing or when hammering away at a PC would seem rude, like in a meeting. You can use a PC instead - Microsoft's excellent OneNote application records audio and typing - but you need to sit down to use a PC, and their microphones can be iffy. Styluses are awkward, and typing on the screen is not much better. This is useful in almost any situation where you want to record something for future reference, be it a lecture or an interview.Ĭertainly, you can do the same thing on the iPad, with apps that match up audio and writing. It matches up the audio recording with the recorded writing, so that if you tap the pen on something you've already written, it will play back the audio recording, either through its built-in speaker or through headphones. But its reason for being is that it records what you write, and its microphone records what you're hearing at the same time. It works as a regular ball-point pen, leaving ink marks on paper. The Echo is a fat, cigar-like pen with a small screen near the top. It starts at $100, making it more affordable than the iPad, and it could be a good tool for a student. Livescribe is tiny.īut the Echo is interesting enough to be worth a look, particularly with some recent software updates. I don't have to tell you which is the better idea - iPad sales have helped make Apple Inc. Livescribe put all the smarts in the pen.
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