Sava's Place

Have you ever had the need to take notes at a meeting or in class only to get hopelessly lost in the middle of the conversation? Afterwards, you question what you wrote and wonder if you got the details correct.

In some cases, the solution to this problem would be to record the entire meeting or class and play the audio back later. But what about when you only need certain parts of the conversation, or when you just can’t bring a tape recorder along?  The answer may very well be the Pulse smartpen from Livescribe.

This pen pairs with a special notebook to do things that you’d never expect a pen to do. When you’re taking notes, you can set the pen to record what’s being said as you write. When you’re reviewing your notes, you can confirm that what you wrote is what was actually said.

The Pulse pen can also recognize images in the special notebook, such as an image of a calculator that is pre-printed in the front of the notebook. Just touch the pen to the numbers and it performs the functions of any regular calculator, with the answer being displayed on the small screen on the side of the pen.

What is perhaps the most impressive feature of the Pulse pen and its accompanying notebook is its search feature. You can upload the contents of the notebook to the included software, then view them on your computer exactly as they appear in the notebook. You can then search the notes for specific words, and the search will include not only the notes that you jot down – it will include the doodles and diagrams that always seem to pepper the pages of any notebook.

This innovative pen is already being used to do great things, such as helping blind engineering students to take more effective notes in difficult classes.

There are tons of other cool features that make the Pulse’s price tag ($149 with 1 GB of memory, $199 with 2 GB) seem positively reasonable.