I recently started looking at the website for the so-called smart pen by Livescribe.
It looks pretty interesting. I’ve seen this before when it was an earlier model and called something else (Flippen, perhaps?). What’s interesting is that it isn’t really transcribing what you wrote, but rather keeping an audio sync. What’s more interesting is the capability of drawing controls (or using the pre-printed ones) and doing things like calculations or starting audio playback.
Whether it’s Livescribe with their pen, or Microsoft with their TabletPC, there’s a lot of technology today still banking on writing with pens. I just wonder, though… is this worth the effort?
The videos for Lightscribe suggest you have a PC, but that in class, you’d be taking paper-based notes (on their dotted paper). I’d personally rather have the PC in class, and type notes. I’m far faster at writing with a computer than I’d be with a pen and paper.
The one “gotcha” for keeping the pen is our ability to draw. I like to draw sometimes. Things like diagrams, graphic organizers, charts… aren’t easily rendered a la minute with a mouse and keyboard. Some, maybe. But let’s say I’m using Microsoft’s Word to put in a quick drawing. The tools aren’t very humanistic. Instead, they’ve provided pre-made shapes and straight lines.
With Livescribe, you can draw, and later, digitize your sketch. You can also do this on the tablet PC (the only reason, I might add, for having one). I’m wondering if these two technologies might somehow be superseded by something even more natural.
Only time will tell us about what “wins” with computers: pens or fingers and touch interfaces.