Livescribe Echo Smartpen: Changing the Way you Write

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NEW YORK (GaeaTimes.com) — You draw a piano keyboard on a piece of paper. You tap the piano buttons with tip of the pen. The piano plays as you tap the hand-drawn piano on paper. “Gosh!!! What’s this nonsense?” Perhaps, that’s what you think! But, all that nonsense makes sense when you have a Livescribe Echo Smartpen in your hand.

Centuries have witnessed Pens take up the responsibility of documenting knowledge of mankind. Well, the future credits for taking up this responsibility may go to the heir to its throne - The Livescribe Echo Smartpen. Look at Livescribe, it is a Pen of versatile features.

Let’s draw a comparison between the pen in your pocket, and Livescribe Smartpen. You write with your Pen; Echo owners Pencast with theirs. Half a million Smartpens have already been sold within the past 2 years. It’s the quality and feature-set that sells and it’s the market that demands more of it. Its a Pen that can record the lectures in your class. It a pen that can store what you write, draw or scribble. That’s not all. We are not at the zenith yet.

You can even create your custom applications for a richer experience. What’s more, you can write something in English and get it translated in other languages. The boundaries are undefined. They are infinite. Livescribe is writing just the tip of the iceberg.

So, lets take a tour of the Livescribe World. It’s too enthralling to miss it. Hope you are not one of the unlucky fellas. This time, Robert Scoble interviews the CEO of Livescribe, Jim Marggraff. Well, Scoble got a crux that said, Echo is perhaps the most coolest Gadget of 2010.

Concept that Led to the Birth of Livescribe Echo Smartpen

Its a technology that uses simple dots on a piece of paper. A camera is put on the pen. It allows you to write on the page and the camera tracks it. This simple concept has been used to turn a pen into a computer. Its something like a Paper Computer. Jim used it to create the World’s first Smartpen and that led to the foundation of the Company called Livescribe. The Pen shown in the video above is the next version of the Pen called Echo.

It’s a full multi-modal computer. It means, it enhances reading, writing, listening and speaking. Anything you write, hear or speak, the pen will be able to capture that. You can then save it for future use or share it with others.

When something is being written, the Camera in the pen, aided by the LED records the pattern written on a dotted page. You have to use that specific paper to let your Echo work. But, that’s not a problem. Livescribe sells notebooks at the price of ordinary Notebooks. You can even download files from Livescribe Website and get it printed by any Laser Printer. This paper is also a part of the technology. As the Pen moves, the camera takes snapshots at the rate of 72 times/sec. It tracks the rotation, speed and position of what you write. It simply creates a digital track of what you write. The dot pattern on each page is unique and is created by an algorithm. It’s such that if you use that algorithm and print that pattern, it could literally cover the square miles of Europe and Asia combined. So, it’s not a grid of Dots, but a unique maze in which the invisible dots are laid out. Its a well defined mathematically oriented pattern.

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A Tour of the Echo

When you take notes, its not that you only write. You may need to record lectures or some other important stuff. At the bottom pf the page, you get options like Record, Pause or Stop. Just tap pen on those printed buttons and your pen starts reacting accordingly. The Pen comes in 2 versions of 2 Gigs and 8 Gigs, which means that you can record up to 800 hours of Audio with the 8 Gig one. The battery lasts for 10 hours when you continue recording. And when you are just writing, it can record up to 40 hours.

The Pen’s also got an OLED Display, a Speaker, a 3.5 mm Jack and a Mini-USB port to transfer data to your Mac/PC. You can buy the Headphone at a price of $30. Even the headphone is a part of a bleeding edge technology. It has built in microphones in it that can record the most wanted voice amongst the most hated noise.

Pencast

The pen also lets you use custom applications that you can download from the Company’s Website. You can watch the video that explains how you can put each feature to great use. There is one basic application that let’s you capture ink and audio synchronously. You can then transfer the recording (which includes both the audio and writing together) to your Mac/PC. This recording is called Pencast. There are more than half a million online pencasts available today. You can view some of the Pencasts at Livescribe Website.

It’s far more awesome than you think. All of us have used the Nav Keypad on your Phone. Well, this time you can draw your own Nav button on a piece of paper and use that to traverse thorough the menus that Echo provides you.

Exclusive Apps

It has a some pre-installed apps like piano, Translator, Calculator etc. Lets take a peek at the Translator app. You open the application, choose your language and write a word. The rest is done by the Echo pen. It pronounces the word in your chosen language and yet again, it also translates your writing and shows it on the OLED display. Right now, only 4 languages are available by default on the phone, but very soon various other languages will be available for download from the Website. Even the whole of Wikipedia Abstracts are loaded on the Pen. You write a word and if you need an abstract, Wikipedia will provide it instantly.

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The next-gen of this pen is yet to arrive. Right now, Echo is a standalone device. It will turn into a wireless device very soon, hopefully in its future versions.

Piano App

The App Piano is also very interesting. It asks you to draw 9 vertical lines one by one and join them. Thereby it shows you the way to draw a piano keyboard. You draw the keyboard and tap your pen on it. The Piano plays great and you can adjust tones, tempo and every other thing you can imagine of doing on a real piano.

CEO of Live Scribe, Jim Margrraff says:

We created some basic apps by default into this pen because we wanted to show the potential of the platform. People can make their own custom applications and use them. They can also share it or sell it to other Smartpen owners.

Launching an Application can also be done easily by writing the name of the app on a line. The pen recognizes the app and launches it. The calculator is also one of the basic apps available on pen. At the back of every notebook you have a calculator: a scientific, normal and statistical one. You can just tap it to use the calculator.

A Pencast can change the way lecture sessions are taken. Anybody in the world can take the lectures from a pencast. And its just superb. Click on any part of the writing and you are done. You can get the lectures given accordingly at the time of writing.

This pen was first shown in 2008, but it was not available commercially. With Livescribe, Jim Margraff has revolutionized the “pen” technology. He has brought in a very new dimension that can be explained by a pencast.

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What’s more? Buy a Livescribe Echo Smartpen for yourself and make your life easier. It’s just 120$ for a 2 Gig model and 200$ for the 8 Gig one. You can buy it from Bestbuy, Apple, Amazon, Target, Staples or Brookstone.

It has been recognized with a lot of Awards. It has recieved the MacWorld 2009 Best of Show, Business Week’s 50 Best Startups and Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards in 2008.