Livescribe
 |
|
| Private | |
| Founded | January 2007 |
| Founder | Jim Marggraff |
| Headquarters | Oakland, California, U.S. |
|
Key people
|
Gilles Bouchard (Chairman and CEO) |
|
Number of employees
|
approx. 100 (2011) |
| Website | livescribe |
The Livescribe paper-based computing platform consists of a digital pen, digital paper, software applications, and developer tools.
Central to the Livescribe platform is the smartpen, a ballpoint pen with an embedded computer and digital audio recorder. When used with Anoto digital paper, it records what it writes for later uploading to a computer, and synchronizes those notes with any audio it has recorded. This allows users to replay portions of a recording by tapping on the notes they were taking at the time the recording was made. It is also possible to select which portion of a recording to replay by clicking on the relevant portion of a page on-screen, once it has been synced to the Livescribe Desktop software.
Jim Marggraff, inventor of the LeapFrog FLY Pentop computer and creator of the LeapPad Learning System, left Leapfrog in 2005 to form Livescribe.
In November 2015, Livescribe announced its acquisition by Anoto for $15m.
A Livescribe smartpen is about the size and weight of a large pen (5/8" x 6 1/8"), and is equipped with a removable ball-point ink cartridge, a microphone to record audio, a speaker for playback, a small OLED display, an infra-red camera, and internal flash memory that captures handwritten notes, audio and drawings.
The user can choose to record audio in addition to the handwritten text. Recorded audio is kept indexed with the handwritten text—tapping on a written word starts playback of the recorded audio from that part of the recording.
The smartpen allows the installation of as many applications as there is memory, and ships with several applications. If tapped on the correct images, it can function as a calculator, for example, or can translate words (the translator software as shipped includes only 21 words in a small selection of languages - as of September 2010 there are no public plans to make a full version of this translator available ).
Livescribe has made four versions of its smartpen: Pulse, Echo, Sky Wi-Fi (or Livescribe Wi-Fi), and Livescribe 3. The pens can store about 100 hours of audio per gigabyte.
The product was initially available only for use with Microsoft Windows-based computers, but version 1.0 of Livescribe Desktop for the Mac was made available via download in March 2009. It requires OS X 10.5.5 or higher, and was one of nine products designated as "Best of Show" at Macworld Expo 2009. There is no official Linux version at this time, however, there have been efforts to make the product work with Linux, such as LibreScribe and Smartpen-Browser. Livescribe has provided a user forum at the request of Linux users.
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Wikipedia