The Smartpen Blog

December 28, 2009

New Paper Products

We added two new products into our store today.

A4 Spiral Pads

The standard spiral notebooks have been updated as we now have the A4 packs available. This is a good update for our regional customers as it standardises our most popular pad product with metric conventions.

Like the previous spiral pad products they are sold as a pack of .

If you’re currently using the spiral notebooks 1-4, then you can go straight onto the new A4 version when you need further books.

A5 Spiral Notebooks

Extending the range of paper products we offer we now have the A5 pads available in packs of 4.

Livescribe, Pulse Smartpen, Smartpen, A5 notebooks

I first saw these a few months ago and they are a really good addition to the paper products range. Many users have commented that they like using the spiral notebooks – so these A5 pads are a great alternative for those of us who don’t want to lug around the bulkier books. I’m sure they will prove popular.

We’ll get our first shipment of both products in early January

October 30, 2009

Windows 7 and Livescribe Pulse Smartpen

We’ve had a few requests from the community about whether Livescribe Desktop will work with Windows 7.

If you have upgraded to Windows 7 (we will be shortly) and you have a Livescribe Pulse Smartpen – then you’re in luck.

Livescribe Desktop v1.7 is compatible with Windows 7. To get Livescribe Desktop v1.7, simply go to the Livescribe website and follows the links through the Support section of the site.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line

September 29, 2009

Livescribe Pencast Example

We’ve written before about the new Pencast feature available in the Livescribe Desktop. It’s a very cool feature as it allows you to create YouTube-like snippets of content and then share this out with your audience.

So if you’ve been wondering about Pencasts – could you use them in a learning environment? Watch this Livescribe Pencast as it’s a great example of how to use this feature.

more about “Livescribe Pencast Example“, posted with vodpod

Sigh…all we need now is integration to Microsoft OneNote and Apple Evernote…

Livescribe Desktop Upgrade for PC and MAC

News through this morning that Livescribe has released upgrades to both versions of Livescribe Desktop.

You can download the relevant update by docking your Pulse Smartpen – then accept the prompt to download the update.

Livescribe Desktop for Windows version 1.7

Livescribe made improvements to Livescribe Desktop for Windows to correct known issues, and improve usability. Livescribe recommend this upgrade for all users.

We’ve downloaded the new Livescribe Desktop for Windows – version 1.7 – note the attachment is 2.2MB

Livescribe Desktop for Mac OS X version 1.2

Livescribe has made improvements to Livescribe Desktop for Mac OS X to add new features, correct known issues, and improve usability. Livescribe recommend this upgrade for all users.

The new features include

  • Support for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
  • Support for drag and drop installation.
  • Support for handwriting to text conversion using MyScript for Livescribe from Vision Objects

We’ve downloaded the new Livescribe Desktop for Mac OS X version 1.2 – note the attachment is 3MB

There are some known issues with the new Mac version. Please contact me if you need further information

September 4, 2009

Livescribe 2GB + MyScript Offer Finishes – Should we bring it back?

Filed under: livescribe — Mark Parker @ 8:21 pm
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Over the past few months we’ve been running a really great offer whereby the Livescribe Pulse 2GB Smartpen has been bundled with MyScript for Livescribe. Our regional distributor organised this for us and it’s been very successful (thanks John!).

But all good things must come to an end – or do they?

We’re currently investigating whether we extend the special offer or even create a special offer or special bundle.

We need your feedback.

If you purchased a Pulse Smartpen how important was it for MyScript to be included?

Should we extend the offer?

What are your thoughts?

August 31, 2009

Livescribe Desktop Upgrade for MAC Snow Leopard

Great news from Livescribe over the weekend for our MAC community. The Mac Livescribe Desktop v1.2 for Snow Leopard is now live!

We’ve included the release notes here.

Livescribe recommends this upgrade only for customers using Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). This update is not recommended for customers using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5).

New Features for MAC Snow Leopard Version

Livescribe made improvements to Livescribe Desktop to add new features, correct known issues, and improve usability:

  • Currently supports Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard only
  • Includes drag and drop installation

We’ll post a link to the documentation as soon as we have it.

Known Issues

  • New installations of MyScript® for Livescribe from Vision Objects® are not currently supported on Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard. If you already have MyScript for Livescribe installed with Livescribe Desktop for Mac 1.1 and upgrade to Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard, it should run properly
  • Sometimes, the displayed size of a recording is incorrectly displayed as 0 bytes when viewed in the List View. These recordings are not 0 bytes and will play back correctly
  • Double-clicking on a page thumbnail in the Now Playing panel does not open and display the page in Single Page view

If you have any questions you can contact us via comments – or via Twitter – Smartpen or Livescribe

August 17, 2009

Livescribe – Feedback from the field

We received some great feedback from a customer late last week and given we are exhibiting at the Assistive Technologies Forum this week I thought it was good feedback to share

Our customer originally bought a Livescribe pen for himself as a business tool. As most of us do with new toys he was showing his family and was impressed with how quickly one of his sons took to the technology. Given his son has a learning disability he sent him off to school with his pen.

The impact was immediate and enough for his teachers to show considerable interest in his magic pen. This was enough for dad who purchased a pen for his son and has been a great advocate for Livescribe and Smartpen at his school.
Dad spoke to me late last week – he’s very happy as his son is learning dozens of new words every day and best of all – learning is fun. Learning has gone from a frustrating chore to a fun experience.

This is an important point that we hear a lot from parents and educators. One of the hidden powers of Livescribe is its ability to help young people keep up with their peers in the classroom – making their day more enjoyable and less stressfull.

At Smartpen, we really enjoy hearing stories like this – if you have a similar experience please let me know – we’d love to hear from you.

August 13, 2009

Top Tools for Learning – An International List

I stumbled across this from one of my Twitter contacts – a really interesting project being run out of the UK to collect and collate the most popular tools for learning.

UK’s Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies are seeking submissions from the education and learning community around what tools we’ve found are our favourite and/or most useful.

To my amazement as I scan the top 100 entries, Livescribe doesn’t get a mention, so clearly we need to mobilise the crowd and ensure Livescribe Pulse Smartpen makes the list – I believe it deserves to be on the list so I’m going to do my bit to make sure others nominate Livescribe

Following the instructions set down by Jane Hart this blog post serves as my submission of my top 10 tools (in no special order of importance):

  1. Livescribe Pulse Smartpen 2GB
  2. iPhone
  3. Microsoft OneNote
  4. Confluence from Atlassian
  5. Facebook
  6. Mzinga Social Learning Suite
  7. Google Reader
  8. Slideshare
  9. iGoogle
  10. WordPress

One thing that caught my attention was that the organiser has included informal learning – social learning. We started to really get into this space via our partners at Smart Selling and through some dialogue with luminaries like Denise Wood of Uni of SA and David Wilkins during his Mzinga days – we’ll publish some thoughts shortly on his idea of the XYZ axis of learning.

Whilst I’m not sure which of the 25 categories Livescribe would fit into – I’d really like to see the Smartpen make the list. Make sure you check out the Slideshare presentation on her site also.

October 7, 2008

Livescribe Smartpen comes to the fore

I’ve just left Chicago having had the opportunity to attend the Selling Power Sales Leadership conference on Monday. Selling Power assembled a brilliant list of speakers including Neil Rackham – author of SPIN Selling; and one of the founding fathers of modern sales thinking.

With such a stellar cast of thought leaders, I was really looking forward to the event and also using my Livescribe Pulse Smartpen to capture the audio. Starting with Gerhard Gschwandtner’s opening address, I was able to capture each session and across the day captured over 6 hours of notes and audio. Each session has its own page and includes key comments, illustrations and audience questions. In a large room, distant from the speakers, Livescribe really shows its worth.

Given the uncertain times we’re faced with and the climate of fear being propagated by the press mongrels from around the world, Gerhard gave an inspiring address to the audience. It’s a fantastic example of the power of positive leadership – something lacking in political leaders everywhere at the moment. I’m going to upload the opening remarks of Gerhard to the Livescribe website and make the file available by invitation. If you’d like to listen, post a comment and I’ll add you to the access list on Livescribe

Three of the presentations really stand out as being incredibly valuable and I’m extremely happy to have captured them:

  1. Malcolm Rees – Global Head of Sales for DHL Express. Managing a sales group of 6,000 is not without it’s challenges and Malcolm gave a really interesting, detailed insight into how he extracts maximum performance from his global team

  2. Mary Delany – CSO at CareerBuilder.com. Mary chaired a panel discussion on Coaching Salespeople. Her opening remarks were a real highlight of the conference and she went on to chair a very interesting panel discussion on coaching.

  3. Neil Rackham – Author of SPIN Selling. Neil is one of the founding fathers of modern sales leadership thinking. Neil’s comments were very interesting and quite an inspired take on the current situation we’re all facing.

The audio is a bit scratchy at times, primarily as I was on a noisy table, but overall, the quality is sufficient for someone to create transcripts if required.

September 22, 2008

Smartpen is GO with Livescribe

We finally got our hands on the first shipment of Livescribe Pulse Smartpens last week so we’ve been extremely busy filling orders, playing with our new gadget, and getting the word out.

If you haven’t seen the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen yet, have a look at the Smartpen website where we’ve created some content and excitement around this amazing new piece of technology.

Everyone we’ve been showing the pen to has been really excited and has turned into advocates for us – a special mention to Meyrick Adams from Gen3Media who’s determined to sell a million units for us…

We’re hoping Gizmodo will do a review for us soon. I’ve also asked Adam Wallace from Too Easy to drop in here and give us a review as he’s a happy new user.

If you’d like more information on the product, let me know and we’ll get in touch.

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