
The coolest thing from JavaOne 2008 - nreece
http://blogs.sun.com/drapeau/entry/the_coolest_thing_i_saw
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nickb
I have something similar... it's called Paperium (<http://paperium.com/>) and
it's very similar to Livescribe. It uses the same type of paper (probably not
the exact pattern) and I think all these pens with camera + special dotted
paper are using the same licensed tech from Hitachi. Paperium also has special
areas where you can point with a pen and send stuff over bluetooth over to
your computer. Bluetooth connectivity was the reason why I didn't consider
other USB pens (Livescribe seems to be USB). It gives you feedback as a series
of short vibrations. Once it's on your computer, you can do all kinds of
things including change the thickness, change the level of smoothing of the
lines, export to Illustrator etc. This is all easy since the pen captures the
vector data.

I've also started using Evernote which is this cool app that allows you to
archive and search stuff within notes, pictures etc. It works really, really
well. Even though I have a writing style of an old doctor, it recognizes my
writing just fine.

The audio features of Livescribe don't appeal to me much but whatever works
for you..

Paperium has solved my throwaway paper napkin doodlings problem quite nicely.
I used to take a pic of my sketches/explanations with my phone and send it
around that way but this is so much better. Can't recommend this type of tech
enough!

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frouaix
Ok - yet another licensee of Anoto. Not sure why people haven't yet seen one
or the other incarnation of this technology. LeapFrog had a product out one or
two years ago. There was a startup at DEMO this year selling a product for
students. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoto>

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markbao
Paper Replay is absolutely amazing.

<http://livescribe.com/smartpen/videos.html>

The SmartPen itself is only $150... 4-pack of notebooks is $20. Experiencing
GAS - gear acquisition syndrome.

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browngeek
The SmartPen is really cool. Unfortunately, it works on Windows only. No Mac
support (yet), not even Parallels compatible.
<http://livescribe.com/smartpen/techspecs.html>

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PieSquared
Now all they need to do is add a wireless transmitter, and give these out in
U.S. embassies... The price was what amazed me - I knew this was possible, but
at that price? Pretty cool.

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Tichy
Why couldn't the headline be "lifescribe pen" or something like that? Editors?

More descriptive headlines would increase the value of news.yc greatly.

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xirium
Can you do handwriting recognition with this pen?

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jrockway
Well, you can run arbitrary code on the device, so sure. I assume you can also
upload images recorded on the device to a real computer, so double sure.

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aschobel
The coolest thing from JavaOne had to be getting Effective Java 2nd edition.
Being able to meet the Guice guys was also great.

