Notes, sketches, diagrams and drawings created with your Livescribe smartpens show up instantly on your smartphone or tablet - Find what you need quickly with incredibly accurate handwriting. Using the Livescribe+ app with the Aegir or Livescribe 3 models, recorded notes are accurately transcribed and made ready to share in various formats across popular cloud services (Dropbox/Google Drive/MS OneNote/Evernote). In addition, Livescribe recently introduced its new plug-in for Microsoft Office, which allows users to add additional notes and mark-ups to their existing documents.
A Livescribe smartpen is a clever tool that will help any professional, student, educator or note-taker in innumerable ways.
Like any regular pen, a smartpen uses ink and paper. You take notes just as you always have, with or without doodles and diagrams. When it is turned on, a Livescribe smartpen will remember every pen stroke you make on any page in any one of your Livescribe notebooks.
What is more, you may optionally activate a microphone to automatically synchronize what you hear to what you’re writing.
Which Smartpen is right for me?
There are two families of smartpens available: the 'Echo' and the 'Aegir/Symphony'. The two types are differentiated by answering the following three questions:
- Where is the data stored?
- How is the data transmitted?
- Where is the microphone physically located?
Echo smartpens (2gb and 8gb)
Where is the data stored? On your computer hard disk.
How is it transmitted? Via USB cable.
Where is the microphone? Integrated right into the Echo smartpen.
The Echo smartpen transmits data via an included USB cable to a free application called 'Echo Desktop' which you download for free to your computer (scroll about halfway down).
The data you create is stored on the hard disk of your computer (Windows or Mac, English or French).
Your handwritten notes and audio can then be viewed, organized, searched and shared in a number of ways, including Evernote, Facebook, GoogleDocs, PDF and more! For an Echo smartpen, you need not have direct access to the internet, but you do need a computer to run Echo Desktop. That computer can be Windows or Mac (English or French).
There are two versions of the Echo smartpen. The 2gb Echo can store up to 170 hours of audio, whereas the 8gb Echo can store up to 760 hours of audio. If you prefer to keep many hours of audio on your smartpen without archiving older notebooks, the 8gb version may be the better choice.
IMPORTANT NOTE: A new version of the 2gb Echo is anticipated. It may be available in May 2021, or it may be later. Supply of the current version of the 2gb Echo is highly constrained. There are no 8gb models available at all.
Aegir and Symphony smartpensWhere is the data stored? On your mobile device (Android or iOS).
How is it transmitted? Via Bluetooth (requires v4.0 / Low-Energy).
Where is the microphone? Uses the microphone in the mobile device.
The Aegir smartpen is a phenomenally useful accessory for your mobile device (such as an iPad, iPhone or Android), but it requires such a companion device to function fully.
How to choose between Echo and the Aegir/Symphony
1) It is mostly a question of personal preference. Both models work great!2) We often recommend that you ask yourself the following question: where do I do most of my real work?
3) If you do your 'real work' on a PC, you are likely to prefer using the Echo 2gb or the Echo 8gb.
4) If you do your 'real work' on a mobile device (iPhone, iPad or Android), then the Aegir/Symphony is likely to be the better choice.
5) Remember: the microphone for the Echo models is physically in the smartpen. You do not need another device to record audio. The Aegir/Symphony leverages the (higher-quality?) microphone in your mobile device, but it also means that your mobile device must be present/available, charged, have the Livescribe+ app installed and running in the foreground.
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What else should I know?
***What are the differences between the Symphony and the Aegir?
***
What are the differences between the 2gb Echo and the 8gb Echo?
The two smartpens function identically; the 8gb does obviously have four times more memory than the 2gb. The Echo 2gb is adequate for most circumstances. The 8gb model is recommended if you need more storage, and will appreciate the convenience of not having to archive older notebooks nearly as frequently. The 2gb model can typically store 170 hours of audio before archiving becomes necessary, whereas the 8gb model can store up to 760 hours of audio.
***
What happened to the SKY smartpen?
The Sky smartpen was discontinued by Livescribe in 2014 and is now no longer available. The following information is provided for reference only.
The Sky smartpen is configured to transmit data over WiFi directly to your free Evernote.com account on the internet. No computer is required and notes can be taken anywhere (with or without an internet connection). Notes can however be uploaded to Evernote only when you are at a hotspot. For a Sky smartpen, you do not need a dedicated computer but you do need occasional access to WiFi and to your online Evernote account. Where: in your online Evernote account . How: via WiFi to the internet.
The Livescribe 3 is the predecessor product to the Aegir/Symphony smartpens. It was discontinued in 2019.
What is Evernote?
Evernote.com is a cloud-based (internet-based) repository for all sorts of files (not just Livescribe content). Your handwritten notes and audio can then be viewed, organized, searched and shared in a number of ways! For a Sky smartpen, you need direct access to WiFi to upload data, but no computer is required! All Livescribe smartpens (Echo, Sky and LS3/Aegir) can push data to Evernote (but is -required- only for the Sky smartpen, and the Sky is NO LONGER available for purchase). Once uploaded you may access your Evernote account from almost any internet-connected device including iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows and of course any connected computer (PC, Mac, Linux or other).
What is OneNote?
OneNote.com is a Microsoft product, similar to Evernote. It is a cloud-based (internet-based) repository for all sorts of files (not just Livescribe content). Your handwritten notes and audio can then be viewed, organized, searched and shared in a number of ways! Software exists to allow pages from a Aegir/Livescribe 3 smartpen to be synchronized automatically from your mobile device to OneNote. Once uploaded you may access your OneNote account from almost any internet-connected device including iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows and of course any connected computer (PC, Mac, Linux or other).
***
Still have questions?
Please Contact Us if you have any other questions!
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Livescribe keeps making its smartpens smarter. The company has created a pen that can capture writing, record audio, and then wirelessly transfer the captured data to a smartphone, tablet, or Evernote note-taking software on a PC. By doing so, the company makes it a lot easier to make use of and share notes from lectures that you’ve heard or meetings you’ve attended.
The Oakland, Calif.-based company is launching Sky, the first Wi-Fi-enabled digital pen that can transfer your data to cloud services, including synchronizing with Evernote, which has more than 40 million users. The new Sky wifi smart pen digitizes and records audio at the same timing, allowing consumers to capture everything they hear and write.
By moving handwritten work or recorded audio to Evernote, Livescribe makes it a lot easier to back up your important notes. Once the data has been securely stored on the cloud, it becomes easily searchable and can be played back, organized, and shared. The target audience is on-the-go people, from executives to students. Those individuals don’t have to choose between writing on paper or writing on a tablet, as the Sky smartpen allows them to write an image on paper and have that image appear automatically on a tablet.
“It’s like a companion to the iPad or Android tablet,” said Byron Connell (pictured), vice president of marketing at Livescribe, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We’ve overhauled our strategy to be more tablet and cloud-centric.”
With Livescribe, you write your notes on a special type of paper that records the strokes in digital form. That data is recorded on the smartpen’s flash memory drive, and when you use the pen to tap on the words later, you can play back the audio recording from that moment in the recording. That makes it easy to find the right spot you want to listen to in the captured audio.
Livescribe can also automatically transfer what you’ve written on paper to a tablet’s touchscreen. That makes sense because 54 percent of Livescribe users also have tablets. About 85 percent of tablet owners want to use those devices for notes, but only 13 percent say they are satisfied with tablets’ abilities to take notes, according to Livescribe’s own survey.
If you underline a word and then associate that word with an app, you can launch that piece of software in the future by tapping on the line. The pen also has a password feature so your data can remain private, and you can put your name on the display, making it easier for someone to return a pen to you if you lose it. With paper, writing is easy, flexible, and precise. But it’s easier to share, search, replay, and save on a tablet. Once in Evernote, the data is searchable and shareable.
Connell said the partnership with Evernote is a natural fit since 57 percent of Livescribe pen owners also use the note-taking software. Evernote allows you to take pictures of notes or other objects and then store them in a digital archive, which includes cloud storage for backup and access via a variety of devices. Rather than create such a solution itself, Livescribe decided it would partner with Evernote. Sky allows you to store 500 megabytes of monthly uploaded data, or 70 hours of recording time, for free. The Evernote sync can be set for automatic updating of material to the cloud storage.
“The Livescribe Sky wifi smartpen is cool,” said Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote. “It’s one of the deepest partner integrations that we’ve ever done. You get the feeling that a bit of magic just happened when you see your handwriting and words transformed instantly and wirelessly into shareable, searchable ideas in Evernote.”
One of the new apps that goes with the Sky smartpen is Transcribe Me, an audio transcription service using the latest transcription technology and crowdsourced techniques for providing high-quality audio-to-text conversion for Livescribe customers.
“Thanks to our unique partnership and joint development efforts with Evernote, we have created an amazingly simple and exciting new experience for our customers,” said Gilles Bouchard, Livescribe chairman and CEO. “With the Sky wifi smartpen, they can easily capture important ideas, presentations, and conversations in the most natural way, on paper, and they automatically appear right where they want them — on their mobile devices and personal computers.”
Livescribe is also launching its Mobile Software Developer Kit (SDK), which allows developers to create apps that work with the Sky smartpen via a Wi-Fi connection. For example, Branchfire, creators of iAnnotate, a popular PDF markup app, is building apps to help individuals make the most of their digital content. Other apps are also in the works. Livescribe showed a prototype app at a Cisco chief information officer conference where 30 people could work on a collaborative whiteboard at once.
Livescribe Evernote Integration
“That one has a lot of academic potential,” Connell said.
Livescribe Echo Evernote
In the U.S., the Sky wifi smartpen will be available at Best Buy, Fry’s Apple stores, college campus book stores, and online through sellers like Livescribe.com, BestBuy.com, and Amazon.com. A two-gigabyte Sky smartpen will sell for $169.95 and records around 200 hours of audio. The four-gigabyte version records 400 hours and sells for $199.95. The eight-gigabyte version will be sold only through Best Buy and Livescribe.com. That one sells for $249.95 and records 800 hours of audio, and it includes a one-year subscription to Evernote Premium. The older Echo smartpen sells for $119.
Livescribe has sold at least a million units since its debut in 2008. The pen is the first major product release since the company launched its Echo smart pen in 2010. In September 2010, Livescribe raised $39 million in venture funding, and it has raised more than $100 million to date. Investors include Crosslink Capital, Scale Venture Partners, Qualcomm, TransLink Capital, Presidio Ventures, Keating Capital, and existing investors VantagePoint Venture Partners, Lionhart, and Aeris Capital. Michael Stark of Crosslink and Rory O’Driscoll of Scale will join Livescribe’s board. Livescribe’s technology is licensed from Anoto.
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