Are You A FOODIE?

Taking notes is easy. Organizing them after the fact can be difficult. If you’re like me you go through reams of paper every week, jotting down ideas, using your own personal shorthand and maybe even drawing arrows all over the place to get ideas onto paper. Now imagine if that paper could help you remember what was going on when you wrote down that sentence which now appears to have no context. Livescribe changes all of that.

What It Is
Livescribe (www.livescribe.com) is a note taking system that lets you use a special pen with special paper (yes, paper) to easily cross reference conversations to the notes you’ve put on paper. The Pen has a small but powerful microphone in it and a flash drive that is used to record conversations. On the bottom of the paper is printed what looks like MP3 player controls…that is in fact what they are. But they are printed on the paper. When you touch the pen to the RECORD “button” that is printed at the bottom of the page, then touch your pen in the margin of the paper next to a note you’ve taken (or are in the process of writing down), the pen springs to life and begins recording your conversations. When you’re finished you hit the printed STOP “button” printed next to the RECORD button. Your conversation is now cross referenced to the notes you’re taking at that point on the paper.

Why It’s Cool
Whenever you want to play back a given conversation that occurred while you were taking notes, simply touch the pen to the point in the margin next to the notes in question then touch it to the PLAY “button” printed at the bottom of the page. The pen now plays back that conversation. Essentially, while you’re writing Livscribe’s pen is listening. The result is a fantastic new way to take notes and organize them later with far less pain. Students and business people alike can benefit from this unique marriage of multimedia and plain old pen and paper.

What it Costs
There are different versions of Livescribe and there are educator discounts available (these are significant discounts). The system starts at around $100.00. Far less money than it costs to hire someone to take notes for you (or bribe them in the case of college).