October 18, 2010 | Posted by Andrew Sinkov in Friends and Partners
We have some exciting news for all of you Mac-using Livescribers. The latest release of Livescribe Desktop for Mac comes with a hard-to-miss Evernote integration.
As you’ll see, there’s now a big Evernote icon in the Livescribe Desktop menu bar. Select the handwritten notes that you’d like to send to Evernote, click the icon and watch as they immediately sync to your Evernote account.
Livescribe smartpens
In case you missed last week’s post, Livescribe smartpens bridge the analog-digital divide by letting you handwrite your notes and then upload them to your computer. Now, all of those notes can be sent into Evernote, where they’ll become searchable and accessible from any computer or phone you use.
You can pick up your very own Livescribe smartpen through the Evernote Trunk.
Our say: Evernote is already one of the more popular apps we like to rant about and part of the reason why its so popular with us is because they have thought of many different ways to easily add content into Evernote which syncs seamlessly across all your devices. This is just another integration which adds a bit of extra functionality.
Quite frankly, we still like the idea of taking hand written notes in meetings and this gives us a clever way of saving those notes and the recorded audio file into Evernote so we can find them easily when we need to.
Looking for a way to give your note taking routine a 21st-century kick in the ass? Have a gander at the Echo.
Livescribe’s latest smartpen comes with all the insanely cool tricks of its predecessor — the Pulse —albeit in a slightly redesigned package. Packed with the same ARM 9 processor, an infrared camera, a built-in speaker and mic, the Echo lets you write, record and then seamlessly transfer all your notes (with the help of the company’s free desktop software) to your Mac or PC. Of course, you’ll still need that dot-speckled smart paper to perform this magic trick. But with a huge variety of notebook sizes and bundled options, the average student shouldn’t have to part with much beer money to get a semester’s worth of high-tech scratch pads.
While the overall system remains the same, there have been a few design tweaks to the pen itself. The Echo now comes with a smooth rubber grip plus flattened surface. This, presumably, is for added comfort and to keep your $200 super pen from rolling off your desk. Livescribe has also packed the Echo with either 4- ($170) or 8-GBs of flash memory, a much-needed boost as there’s now a host of apps to choose from in the company’s app store (many of which eat up a significant amount of space).
In lieu of the Pulse’s charging dock, the Echo now has a micro-USB connector at the top of the pen. This lets you both charge and sync your notes and recordings with your computer using the included cord. There’s also the ability to name and password protect your pen.
But the real allure of the Echo remains the way the software and hardware work together to make your life easier. Yes, there’s something immensely satisfying in seeing your deranged scrawlings rasterize onscreen. And for college students and journalists in particular, the Pencast option is quite simply a Godsend. Simply hit the record icon on the included paper and start taking notes as you usually would. Once you’ve finished the lecture/meeting/interview, you can not only replay the entire recording, but also instantly move from one section to another by simply tapping on a specific note. The pen will automatically play back the audio from that precise moment. This has the obvious benefit of helping you navigate long, meandering lectures, but it also frees you up to write random or tangential thoughts without the fear of missing important information.
Once your notes have been transferred to the Livescribe desktop software, you can choose to export them as PDFs, audio, or as a .pencast file, a hybrid format that combines both audio and video. Livescribe says that iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone apps are in the works that will allow for Pencast playback, too.
