Livescribe Launches the Echo Smartpen

At the ISTE 2010 Conference I had a chance to sit down with Jim Marggraff, CEO of Livescribe and talk about the the status of the Smartpen Ecosystem. Jim was very excited to meet with me and to share Livescribe's newest offering the Echo Smartpen which will be released today. The Echo Smartpen will over time add some exciting new features and expand on the number of applications that can run on the digital pen. Jim was very excited to see how educators have embraced the Livescribe products and noted the shear number of pencasts that are now available. With the move to portable computing, Jim was very excited to share with me the new design of the Echo Smartpen and to talk to me about how pencasts can be shared going forward. There have been some updates to the Livescribe Desktop software that will make it easy to customize notebooks and to export audio and pen strokes. Likewise, we should see the availability to view pencasts on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch making this a compelling learning tool. With the new Echo Smartpen design it will be even easier to download our digital ink and charge, now that it uses a mini USB connector on the top of the pen. I was rather impressed with all of the new features and the move to integrate the features to make the Livescribe solution even more powerful as a computing platform. Watch the Livescribe website for new announcements and updates. Look for a complete review of the Echo Smartpen within the next couple of weeks on my blog.

Livescribe Pulse Smartpen Update

Everyone is waiting with great anticipation for the release of the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. But with new technology sometimes the date of release needs to be adjusted so that the company can deliver a quality product and user experience. This is the case with the LiveScribe Pulse Smartpen. Jim Marggraff, Founder and CEO of Livescribe announced last week that the Pulse Smartpen will be released on March 31st giving the company some more time to make sure that all the pieces are working the way they should. I for one applaud Mr. Marggraff for taking the time to ensure us that our experience with the Smartpen is a positive one. It is often hard when developing a new platform to be able to account for all of the nuances that occur which may set the time table back a little. In any case the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen is right around the corner and as much as I would love to test it now, I for one an willing to wait until all of the pieces work the way they are supposed to, right out of the box.