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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