Although some of us have started taking notes on iPads and other mobile devices, pen and paper is still most people's default medium for note-taking. But while pen and paper is often faster and more convenient, sharing is limited to passing notes, and backup means making photocopies.
That’s where Livescribe’s latest smartpen offering comes in. Livescribe has been creating smartpens since before the iPhone debuted. These pens record what you're writing as you write it and can then connect with a computer so you can offload the digital files for sharing and storage. But previous models, like the Echo that debuted in 2010, required a wired connection to transfer data. As neat as the recording functionality was, the idea of a pen that had to be plugged in was just a step too far for many people.
But Livescribe's new Sky smartpen, available today, operates over Wi-Fi, deftly blending the comfort and convenience of an analog form with the benefits offered by purely digital mediums. Like past Livescribe smartpens, the Sky is a bit chunky, roughly the thickness of one of an extra-large Sharpie, with a flat section along the backside so it sits flat on a desk surface. I imagine my hand could cramp up if I were using it for extended periods, but for anything under an hour, it should be fine.
Livescribe wisely ditched the proprietary software, called Livescribe Desktop, that past models required for web and computer integration. Instead, the Sky relies on tighter integration with Evernote, the popular digital notebook app. The Sky smartpen is listed among the notebooks you've created in Evernote, and there you'll find all the notes you've written using the pen on one of Livescribe's proprietary dot notebooks. (Yep, you still need to use those, and you get one free with a pen purchase.) You can access them anywhere you can access Evernote -- your desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
Initial setup is very straightforward. Once you’ve got your pen, you create a Livescribe account online, input a code from the pen’s small display, and link to your Evernote account. You can then connect to Wi-Fi in three steps (scan for networks, tap up or down to select yours, and then tap to input the password).
After you've written something, you can hit the Sync Now button to immediately push that data to the cloud. Alternatively, if you've hit the record button so you can simultaneously write and capture audio, the pen automatically syncs once you hit the stop button. And the pen isn't handicapped by its wireless connection: You can still write and capture data if there's no Wi-Fi available. The Sky simply sync the next time it it connects to a network. Also, since it's Wi-Fi enabled, software updates are pushed OTA.
From Evernote, you can share pages and animated HTML5 "pencasts" -- which play back your writing as it happened, synched with any recorded audio -- to social media, over e-mail, or with a link. In the early part of next year, you'll be able to do most of that directly from the pen.
The actual pen input technology seems much improved over the Echo, which would miss some of my pen strokes when I was writing quickly. So far, the Sky seems to catch everything, which is key if the digital copies are to be of any value.
I enjoyed using the Livescribe Echo but would often forget to plug it in and sync it up, making it about as useful as a normal ballpoint, only clunkier. With the Sky, you really don't have to think about syncing. For someone who prefers to write by hand but needs that written information online, this could be a godsend. The only thing better would be if notes were automatically transcribed into text -- and that's something the company says it's working on for Q1 2013.
The Sky Wi-Fi smartpen starts at $170 for 2GB of storage but is also available in a $200 4GB model and a $250 8GB model (which is a Livescribe.com and Best Buy exclusive). Each GB equates to about 100 hours of use. The Echo is also still available as a budget option.
