Playing around with the LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen on the Mac

I think the idea of a pen that remembers what it wrote is great by itself. That's why I couldn't resist to buy a LiveScribe Pulse Smartpen as soon as they announced the availability on the Mac. Basically, I want to use it for taking notes which sync with the desktop. That's a nice lower tech and cheaper alternative to a tablet PC, which are not very good at this point anyway.

The Pulse needs special paper, which can be purchased from the company. It can also be printed (currently Windows only) on a laser printer. The Pulse remembers all the written content of a notebook and syncs it with the desktop software as soon as it's connected via USB. From there you can view and print pages in the notebooks. That's basically it for the Mac version: the beta doesn't offer much more functionality. Most notably, a handwriting recognition is missing (there's one available for Windows by a third party vendor).

The other thing the Pulse can do is record sound and sync it with the writing in the notebook. Then you can tap on text in the notebook and listen to the sound that was recorded at the time the text was written. This is probably great for lectures and meetings, but so far I had no opportunity to test it. I'm not attending a lot of lectures anyway and my colleagues wouldn't appreciate it if I recorded business meetings. But I'm sure I'll find an application for this feature.

The Pulse is an open system that can be enhanced with applications. It includes a calculator and and application that allows drawing a piano and playing a tune on it. I'm sure more useful stuff is coming.