After almost a year from announcement (see 3 June 07 post ) I received my Pulse Smartpen this week. Livescribe (http://livescribe.com ) has added a recorder to its Anoto technology Pulse Smartpen, as well as additional applications, with a retail price of $149 to $199 (depending upon 1 GB or 2 GB of storage.)

It is fairly easy to see the potential value to students, journalists and administrators or others who need to regularly capture and share or locate notes from meetings or events. But what I didn't readily see until starting to use a Pulse smartpen is the exciting potential for very easy and effective creation of online learning materials.

Documents created using the pen and special paper are automatically transferred to Livescribe Desktop software connecting the pen to the mobile charging cradle and the cable to the USB port on the computer. The documents can then be published on the Livescribe Community with either private or public access.

My initial attempt using the Pulse was while listening to a presentation by Kevin Kelly of Wired fame talking about Web 3.0. You can see and hear it at here. For recording in a larger area, the included earplugs with microphones seem to pick up audio from a distance. You can see and hear other examples here.

Visitors to the site can download the PDF, email the link, or play any audio. There are examples from Star Wars, to Arizona pottery, to presidents, to creating Chinese characters, drawings and audio. Learning materials with steps, timelines or processes, plus mathematics could be easily created and explained using these capabilities.

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