Pulse SmartPen

While I was at JavaOne this year, I saw a demo of a pen that can record your written notes and play them back (including audio) just by clicking on them. I thought: neat idea, but why would I buy that? Then I learned it also lets you play music on a hand-drawn piano, translates your written text into other languages, and integrates with a desktop to let you manage your notes. OK, pretty cool but keep talking. They announced that the pen runs on Java Mobile Edition and has a software development kit available. Too cool--I want one! So I bought it. Its the Pulse SmartPen by LiveScribe.

Comparison

There are other Pen devices on the market, so I thought I'd do a brief comparison of the most widely known models.

	Pulse SmartPen	Fly Fusion
Price	$149(1gb), $199(2gb)	$79
Uses special paper	Yes	Yes
Paper price	$20/4 spiral notebooks	$8/25-pg spiral notebook
Software authors	Many	Fly only
Handwriting recognition	Yes	Yes
Desktop software	Yes	No
OS support	Windows, Mac, Linux	Windows
Audience	High School & up	K-8
Software development kit?	Yes	No
Processor	ARM-9 150MHz	Proprietary 96Mhz
RAM	1gb or 2gb	64mb (+ 64mb add-on)
Digital display	Yes	No

So you can see the Pulse SmartPen is a superior technology. More importantly, its made by the inventor of the Fly Fusion. He left LeapFrog to form his own company, as detailed here.