Tech Zombie: LiveScribe's Pulse "SmartPen"

I keep wanting to say, "Say 'Hello' to my little friend!" in meetings when i bust out a nifty new device that we have been testing in our department for the better part of three months now, and feel that i have enough "field testing" to give you the low-down on its benefit and uses.  Here goes:

The rather bulky (but not TOO bulky) pen i'm holding in this photo is a new Pulse SmartPen from LiveScribe.  It's "Smart" because it remembers everything you write and then transfers it to digital format, along with all the ambient audio of whatever you were listening to when you were writing stuff down.  Example:  Let's say you're a student and you're taking notes in class.  The teacher is talking faster than you can write, and you panic that you just couldn't keep up.  No problem.  The SmartPen just recorded the teacher's entire lecture, and when you dock your pen to your computer later that evening, it shows you a PDF style version of your written notes (see other photo for example), and if you click any point on the page, it will either re-play the entire lecture, or just the part of the audio you were listening to when you were writing those particular words.  Even better, you can then upload your notes (plus audio) to LiveScribe's online server, and then dope them out to all your friends (maybe that friend who was sick that day and missed the notes altogether) as a link that the server will provide you for others to access either "openly" or with restrictions that you can set.

We like them!  Only drawback is that you have to use LiveScribe's "special paper" in order for the pen to work, but we were pleased to see that you can print the paper out from your own computer and are not restricted to HAVING to buy it from them.  Right now, you can pick one of these little guys up at Target or from Amazon.com, or directly from LiveScribe's site for about $150 (or $200 for the 2 Gig version).