Recent Coverage

Livescribe kicks off national retailing of its audio-recording pen

July 13, 2008 – DEMO.com

“When the fall college semester starts, some students will be taking notes with a pen that listens. Even those sitting in the lecture hall's back row sneaking looks at their email or social network Web pages won't miss a word…”

Pulse gets points for design, good sound

May 8, 2008 – USA Today

“It's not enough anymore for a writer to be smart. Apparently, the writer's pen has to be intelligent, too. The Livescribe Pulse "smartpen" I've been taking notes with is downright cerebral.”

Livescribe Pulse digital pen brings your notes to life

May 7, 2008 – USA Today

“Pulse transforms an ordinary ballpoint into a digital quill, promising to change the way you cram for an exam, review an architect's blueprints or capture any notes.”

Livescribe Pulse smartpen: Practical, powerful and affordable

May 5, 2008 – San Diego Daily Transcript

“Not only is the Pulse an ingenious design, but it also provides practical utility right out of the box, particularly if you're an avid note-taker, student or even sketcher. This product is so well-designed and useful that I think it's a candidate for one of the best gadgets of the year. Highly recommended.”

The Write Stuff?

May 2, 2008 – Popular Science

“I’m sold. I used to struggle to figure out what my meeting notes meant. Now I can instantly go to the audio for clarification. And unlike earlier digital-ink pens, the Livescribe Pulse is slim and comfortable enough to hold for the few notes I do take.”

Review: Livescribe Pulse Digital Pen/Recorder (Verdict: It's Good for Notetakers)

May 2, 2008 – Gizmodo

“The Livescribe Pulse is an amazing piece of tech, and I enjoy using it, but has an admittedly limited appeal. I'd love to see more creative and functional uses implemented with future ‘apps,’ and a touch of refinement in the current interface. But this is recommended for anyone who takes a lot of notes.”

Livescribe Pulse

May/June 2008 – Technology Review

“Anyone who's been a student knows how hard it can be to scribble down everything someone else is saying. This problem is brilliantly solved by the Livescribe Pulse, a computerized pen that records as you write and digitally syncs the audio recording to the notes.”

A new digital pen

February 22, 2008 – ZDNet

“This may come off as a naked plug for a new gadget, but it’s actually a sober technology assessment. You have my word on this as a journalist, husband, father, and President of the United States. I’m always interested in new user interface hardware and I’ve just run across the Digital Pen from Livescribe….I don’t know about you, but I would have done back flips (or tried) for this when I was in school. Digital pens have been around for years and what’s always bothered me about them is that they have no output – input is excellent (what could be more natural than writing?) but feedback has to wait until you sync the pen with a PC, something that may be hours in the future. Livescribe’s (I think they should get an award just for not using interCaps in their name, by the way) audio output significantly improves this situation.”

Livescribe Hands-On: Translating Written Text on the Fly

February 20, 2008 – Popular Science

“The potential applications of a live-translating pen are pretty exciting: in a pinch while traveling, the Pulse can order your dinner for you—just write out what you want. And for me, writing things down is one of the simplest and most effective methods for remembering something—paired with an instant real-time translation, using this method to learn a new language could be very intuitive.”

Reassessing the Aha! Moment

February 3, 2008 – International Herald Tribune

“The innovator Jim Marggraff, creator of an interactive world globe called the Odyssey Atlasphere, the LeapPad reading platform for children and LeapFrog's Fly talking pen, explained that each creation built on the work that went into making the previous one. That same process of accretion holds true for the Pulse Smartpen, which records audio while it tracks what the pen writes, that his new company, Livescribe, introduced last week. He said he hoped the product would bring back computing to its pen-and-paper roots.”

DEMO 2008 is abuzz about the smartpen

January 30, 2008 – Fortune Online

“If you have ever been to Sundance, or any film festival for that matter, you are always looking for the film that is getting “buzz,” that inexplicable chatter that attaches itself to a potential breakout movie. If there is a startup and product with “buzz” at the DEMO confab this year, it is LiveScribe.”

Livescribe gives your pen some brains

January 29, 2008 – DVICE

“Livescribe gives your pen some brains…Pens are one of the cheapest, most disposable members of the office supply family, but Livescribe is looking to change that. It wants you to view your pen like a gadget, much like you view your computer, cellphone, or MP3 player. And it wants to charge you a lot more for it than you'd pay for a normal pen.”

Livescribe Pulse Pen Debuts

January 29, 2008 – Wired Online

“The Livescribe Pulse pen is, so far, the most talked-about product at Demo. It writes! It records! It translates! It turns your scribbles into a document you can access from your computer! It could probably slice and dice, if need be….The biggest surprise: The gadget is relatively affordable: $199 for a pen with 2 gigabytes of memory, $5 for the notebook filled with the required special paper. The downside: It's not available yet. The company is planning on shipping the product in March.”

Livescribe unveil new Pulse Smartpen

January 29, 2008 – Tom's Hardware Online

“The Pulse Smart pen is one of those electronic pens that comes out and is almost immediately lumped into the same category as talking clocks and torch-pens. Surprisingly, it seems like it might actually be useful….Sounds great. If only we had them when I was in school. Might have done a little better in Physics.”

Livescribe’s Pulse Smartpen. What is a Smartpen?

January 28, 2008 – LAPTOP Online

“High tech pens have been, by definition, a niche. Those that have wanted to convert their handwriting to editable digital text have been able to do so for a long time. But today LiveScribe is putting the pulse back into digital writing with what they are calling the world’s first smartpen….So what makes the pen smarter than others? We are thinking that it’s the ability to create applications for it.”

Livescribe reveals it has a Pulse

January 28, 2008 – Crave Online

“But a demo last week from CEO Jim Marggraff shows that the pen has a lot of interesting uses for those who take a lot of handwritten notes, particularly folks like college students and, yes, reporters….Unlike other digital pens that share the same core technology from Sweden's Anoto, the Pulse is a computer in its own right, capable of recording audio and synchronizing the recording with handwritten notes….The company has also come up with a neat way for people to record audio in noisy places….Despite its many new abilities, it remains to be seen whether this pen is indeed mightier. Livescribe faces a significant, though not necessarily insurmountable, challenge of trying to create a mass market success where others have found niche success at best.”

Can You Improve on a Pen? Livescribe Sure Thinks So

January 28, 2008 – Yahoo! Tech

“Jim Marggraff, the CEO of Livescribe, creators of the newest digital pen, called Smartpen, is a pen evangelist. He has a passion for turning a pen into the ultimate computing input device. His last job at LeapFrog culminated in the creation of the FlyPen, LeapFrog's technically impressive but commercially lackluster pen for kids. It was used with special Fly paper that the pen could read….The [Pulse smart]pen is slated for release within the next two months and will cost less than $200. Pens have gone through lots of maturation. From quills to ballpoint to pens that write through grease, but Smartpen may be the biggest thing that's happened to the pen since the advent of the computer. SmartPen is the pen for high tech times.”

2008 CES Wrapup (San Diego Daily Transcript)

January 10, 2008 – Phil Baker

“Livescribe is the next generation product with many new features that will appeal to business people and students. It’s also much slimmer and better crafted. Imagine a pen that you can take notes with while you're recording a lecture or meeting. You can go back and touch the pen to your notes and it will play back that part of the meeting.”

You Tell Us: An Electronic Pen That Listens and Talks Back

January 1, 2008 – IEEE Spectrum Online

“If a pen that helps preschoolers learn to read by sounding out the words they point to in specially produced books could top the list of the most popular toys for two years in a row, how popular would an adult version be? Livescribe Inc., an Oakland, Calif.–based start-up founded by Jim Marggraff, the inventor of the LeapPad’s pen-based computing platform, is about to find out.”

Top 10 Gadgets for College Students

December 14, 2007 – Sports Illustrated

“So if you often find yourself too busy copying down diagrams to actually listen to your professors, fret no more. Go to your notes, and tap your pen twice. You'll hear an audio recording of what went on exactly at the time you were frantically trying to catch up. Amaaaazing and under $200”

Computing on Paper

December 13, 2007 – Technology Review

“A new smartpen could change the way people practice mobile computing by bringing processing power to traditional pen and paper. Made by Livescribe, of Oakland, CA, the smartpen is designed to digitize the words and drawings that a user puts down on paper and bring them to life.”

Smartpen aids blind engineering students

December 5, 2007 – EE Times

“Engineering and science classes, which depend heavily on diagrams, graphs, charts and other figures, ordinarily put students with visual disabilities at a significant disadvantage,” said Andrew VanSchaack, Livescribe's (Oakland, Calif.) senior science adviser and a professor at Vanderbilt. “We plan to use Livescribe's Smartpen and Sewell's Raised Line Drawing Kit to make it easier for blind students to attend these classes.”

Livescribe ready to ink January launch

November 15, 2007 – CNET

“Livescribe is one of a handful of companies hoping there is still some ink in the well when it comes to the notion of pen computing. Hoping to keep the buzz going until the product itself is ready, the company launched a new blog, posted additional technical details and kicked off a contest in which it is giving away two of its devices a day, with the promise that winners will get their pen before the product is generally available.”

Part PC, Part Table Or Pen, New Ways To Get Things Done

November 13, 2007 – OhGizmo!

“...I got quite a few tips about the Livescribe Smartpen as a more 'adult-oriented' alternative. (And by 'adult' I mean 'grown-up.') Well the other day the company sent me a message about their new blog that also happened to include the first photos of the Smartpen hardware.”

The Pen Is Mighty; the Computer Pen Might Be Mightier

June 4, 2007 – Yahoo! Tech

“The company is hoping that software developers will create all sorts of special applications. But one of the fundamental applications, "Paper Replay," is already part of the system. Paper Replay lets you take notes with the pen while you're speaking at the same time.”

Part PC, Part Table Or Pen, New Ways To Get Things Done

June 2, 2007 – InformationWeek

“Smartpen's most important initial application will be Paper Replay. Because audio and keystrokes will be marked by time stamps, and because the pen and paper incorporate a GPS-like system, users can tap the pen on a specific word or phrase in their notes and immediately hear back whatever was being said when the notes were being written.”

Livescribe Smartpen

May 30, 2007 – All Things Digital, CA

“A student sitting in a classroom taking notes can download them into a desktop computer and manipulate them in many ways. (“So one student in a class of 150 could come take notes and sell them to 150?” Walt asked. “What a country.”) That same student can archive the notes and search them for review purposes (cramming for an exam), as well as searching the recorded audio version of those notes.”

Takahashi: 'Smart pen' helps get notes organized

May 30, 2007 – San Jose Mercury News, CA

“…a “smart pen” with a computer in it that can record up to 100 hours of boring lectures and tie the recording to digitized version of your handwritten notes. You can upload the notes you’ve taken with the pen to a laptop computer and then search for key words. When you click on words, you can play the recording of the words at the precise time you wrote the words.”

Jobs, Gates to reunite at digital conference

May 30, 2007 – USA Today

“Start-up Livescribe showed a fountain-pen-size "smart pen" that records text written on special paper. It also records audio, which can be played back. Text and audio can also be uploaded to computers for replay.”

Yes, but can it doodle?

May 30, 2007 – Oakland Tribune

"A smart pen that captures your notes, records what you hear, solves your math problems, translates languages and sends handwritten e-mails is extraordinary to experience," Marggraff said. "It is the harbinger of a new era of mobile computing." Uses he foresees include taking notes during a discussion or lecture, which the pen will record and digitize. The notes can be stored and uploaded to a personal computer. Or they can be played back as voice audio when the note taker taps on the ink on the dot paper.”

Livescribe Smartpen Links Your Scribbes with Audio Notes

May 30, 2007 – Gizmodo.com

“In a nutshell, the most critically cool thing it can do is link audio recordings you make as you jot written notes to the actual text you're writing. And it can later all be indexed on a PC, and played back on the computer. Or by clicking on the notepad. Completely useful for students, journalists, lawyers—anyone who takes a lot of notes. And it works.”

Take Note: Computing Takes Up Pen, Again

May 29, 2007 – New York Times, NY

“Anyone that is writing notes on paper, wants to capture the information, they want to access the information,” Mr. Marggraff said. “We are giving a way for people to essentially forget about forgetting.”

The Shape of Computers to Come?

May 29, 2007 – Wall Street Journal

“Livescribe's "Smartpen" adds a microphone and a small display on the side of the pen. A user can tap on a section of written notes, for example, and call up a recording in the pen of what an instructor was saying when those words were written. Mr. Marggraff, who expects to deliver the device in October for less than $200, plans to create a community of programmers to write exchange applications for the Smartpen. "I believe this will affect the way people think," he says.”

D5: A new pen for a new era

May 29, 2007 – San Francisco Chronicle, CA

“We’re creating a new medium,” he said. “We can see this changing the world. It can affect people from executives to people in the developing world.”

Livescribe lets the paper do the talking, and thinking

May 29, 2007 – Venturebeat

“I got a personal demo of the technology from Jim Marggraff, chief executive of the company, and I was immediately sold. As someone who takes copious notes and would like to find the vocal version instantly, this is quite the journalist’s nirvana. Moreover, it lets you hook up to a computer, so that you can see the spoken version of your notes unfolding on your computer screen (it uses translation technology, to translate the voice into text). It shows you where you are in the lecture, and the parts that are still to come — in a different shade of color.”