Livescribe Releases Connect, Puts Ink In The Cloud

Livescribe smartpens allow you to record and send the ink you draw or write on paper. They also record the surrounding audio so you can sync the audio with the drawings, something that’s great for students, reporters, and anyone who goes to meetings regularly. For a while, they had little apps that could run on the pen including a very cool piano app that allowed you to draw a piano and then play it on the page.

Now, however, they’ve added an interesting new feature: Livescribe Connect, a system that allows you to send entire pages to multiple recipients including Twitter users, Facebook, Google Docs, and various other cloud services. We got a quick hands on and were able to talk to the company about future plans.

How does Connect work? Well, you draw or write something and then draw an underscore. You then write a one or two word command (“Twitter,” “email joe@joe.com”) and then select a portion of the page or a set of pages. Then, when you sync the pen via USB those pages automatically go to the people or accounts in question.

The major concern is that the Pulse pen isn’t wireless yet so the utility is somewhat limited. However, it looks like a wireless pen is in the offing and the features and dead-simple interface make up for some of those shortcomings.

Erick and I hung out with the Pulsonian Commander, Jim Marggraff, on Fly Or Die a few weeks ago and got to talk about the new product.

http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=hham5nMjrWQXpIjZ-5dtrJf_WvOx6XYu&version=2

The Echo Smartpen costs $99 for the 2GB version and, although the pen requires special paper you can download and print your own pages or purchase special notebooks that work with the pen.