In this interview, I had the opportunity to chat with Eric Petitt, Director of Marketing at Livescribe, and he gave me a first-hand look at the company’s first product: the Pulse smartpen, which just hit retail stores nationwide in July. This innovative pen captures and computerizes your handwritten notes while simultaneously recording audio. The audio is synchronized with your handwriting, so you can simply tap on a specific word in your notes to play back the audio recorded at that time.

The product is basically a pen-sized computer, with a Samsung ARM 9 microprocessor, 1 or 2 GB of memory, OLED display, speaker, audio jack, USB port, and rechargeable lithium battery. To capture handwritten notes, it contains an infrared camera that records 75 frames per second, and it includes 2 microphones for recording audio. The pen uses a Dot Positioning System, which allows it to interface with special paper containing nearly-invisible dot patterns on each page, uniquely identifying the location of your notes for correlation with audio.

Once notes are captured, not only can you use your notebook to navigate through them, but notes can also be uploaded to your computer, either as PDFs or interactive Flash files with audio and video. You can use the search feature to find specific words in your handwritten notes, and you can share notes via email, facebook, or the Livescribe community. Additionally, an SDK has been released for the pen, so numerous third party applications are in the works, including a translator, movies, a piano you can draw and play, and much more!

Eric discusses that their target market is “anyone who uses pen and paper,” but they’re initially focusing on college students, who take tremendous amounts of notes, and could greatly benefit from the audio/visual capabilities of the smartpen. He also discusses what differentiates Livescribe’s product from unsuccessful digital pens in years past, and how their product will manage to compete with laptops, tablet PCs, and other electronic writing tools.

The last 5 minutes of this video include a jam-packed demo showcasing the smartpen’s range of capabilities, including note capture, audio recording, tapping to navigate through notes, speed replay, uploading to a computer, searching for specific words, and sharing notes online…as well as several of the applications, including the calculator, Spanish/English translator demo, and piano!

If you’re wondering about pricing, the 1GB pen with accessories costs $149, the 2GB option is $199, and the notebooks range in price from $5-12. If you’ve given the Pulse smartpen a try, do leave a comment and let me know what you think…and also let me know if there’s another gadget startup you’d love to see featured on a future episode of TalkTech!

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This week’s interview features Blue Vector, a company specializing in supply chain tracking and automation for applications in manufacturing, retail, and distribution. Many companies today use automation for manufacturing quality control, inventory tracking, shipping management, and other applications, but this typically involves expensive custom software to manage all the data. Blue Vector’s network infrastructure manages this data at a fraction of the cost, and provides a web-based interface for ease of monitoring. Their system is capable of integrating data from RFID, barcode, temperature/weight, GPS, photosensors, and motion sensors, and can be used with a company’s existing sensor setup.

Anurag Mendhekar, Founder of Blue Vector, explains the various features of their software, gives an overview of RFID technology, and describes several examples of the company’s system in action, including a client’s use of their software to interface with RFID sensors on shipping docks, and another client’s use of their web-based features to monitor the temperature history of an inventory of pharmaceutical products in a refrigerator. He also gives his thoughts on futuristic applications of RFID tracking for personal inventory management…hmm, imagine if sensors could be used to automatically track and manage your inventory of groceries! Or the last time you watered your house plants! The possibilities are endless…

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In this interview, I had the opportunity to speak with Bill Flitter, Founder & CEO of Pheedo, a company focused on RSS advertising and analytics for distributed content on the web. They provide the means to assess the Return on Investment of a site’s RSS feed by analyzing subscriber traffic and demographics, as well as tools to generate revenue from the feed through the integration of ads.

Bill begins the interview by discussing the tremendous size of the RSS market, citing studies revealing that 43-53% of today’s internet users are consuming feeds, whether they realize it or not. For example, the Facebook home page aggregates content from all friend-related online activity, allowing the user to consume information about their friends in one place instead of visiting individual Facebook profiles.

Pheedo provides feed publishers with a holistic view of all activity related to their feeds, allowing publishers to determine the ROI of their RSS feeds and really assess the value of their syndicated content. Their service can track details on feed traffic, allowing publishers to learn information about their subscribers, who have a stronger loyalty than ordinary website visitors, and are thus more valuable to advertisers. Pheedo also works with Fortune 1000 advertisers to embed ads into RSS feeds, and they share 50-70% of the ad revenue with the publishers.

Bill talks about how Pheedo is distinct from companies like Feedburner, in that they focus specifically on premium publishers (e.g. CNET, New York Times, Wired, etc) rather than small blogs. They allow these publishers to extensively analyze the behavior of active readers, and integrate ads from their own corporate partners, going beyond the simplified analytics and Google AdSense advertising options that Feedburner provides. Bill also shares his thoughts on Pheedo’s unique advantages when competing with Google in this space.

Bill also discusses the technology behind Pheedo’s services, explaining the fingerprints added to the RSS feed for analytics and advertising, as well as the challenges with JavaScript and IFRAME compatibility issues when embedding ads into feeds. He also chats about the history of the company, the opportune timing with the immense growth of RSS, his experience as the founder of multiple startups, and his advice for successful VC negotiation, so you won’t want to miss this interview!

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