Coolest gadget of the year: LiveScribe Echo pen (great for back to school, watch the video and see why).

Introducing the new EchoPen Computer from Kalymera.

The EchoPen Computer is an electronic personal learning tool that gives users real-time audio feedback as they touch, write, and draw on special Echo interactive paper. The EchoPen uses an optical scanner that sees everything you scan and write on special dot-matrix Echo paper.EchoPen users can draw a calculator on a piece of paper, touch the handwritten digits and functions to perform an operation -- then hear the answer announced from the EchoPen computer. A student can write a word in English and hear it translated into Spanish with the Echo translation software, do math calculations, or draw a piano keyboard and play it.
The EchoPen is a computer. And like it's desktop cousin, the EchoPen is expandable. The EchoPen can be expanded via specialized cartridges that sell for $9.95 up to $39.95. Many cartridges will be available, including an all ages English-Spanish Dictionary that includes 20,000 words (10,000 English and 10,000 Spanish entries). A student can write the word "cat," for example, and hear "cat; el gato; e-l g-a-t-o; el gato." A test-prep package for math, science, and social studies for grades 6 - 8 that is directly correlated to over 90 percent of all grade 6 - 8 math, science, and social studies textbooks in the country. The student picks the text and chapter, and then plays games answering questions focused on the key concepts for that chapter.



Livescribe’s Pulse smart pen that can automatically digitize written notes is a big hit among students and business professionals who want to move away from paper.

Now the company has introduced a slimmer version of the its pen called Echo that offers more storage and improved features including support for PDF files.

The Echo pen has double the capacity of the Pulse and is available in 4 GB and 8 GB models that record 400 and 800 hours of data respectively. The 4 GB version will cost $170 and the 8 GB version is priced at $200. The 2 GB Pulse pen will cost $130, down from $200 when it was first introduced.

Livescribe has also added a 3.5 mm audio jack so consumers can use their own headphones, instead of having to buy specifically designed ones from LiveScribe.

Livescribe introduced its first smart pen Pulse in March 2008. Users write notes on Livescribe’s sheets of paper, just as they would on a notepad. The Pulse pen captures everything the user hears using a audio record feature. As for the notes, they can be accessed by simply tapping the pen at any point on the sheet of the paper or through a computer using the Livescribe desktop software. The only drawback is that the pen will work only with Livescribe’s proprietary paper. The company also launched an app store that now has more than 60 apps including study aids and dictionaries.

With Echo, Livescribe has updated the user interface so it is easier to access apps, added features such as password protection so the audio recorded on the smartpen can have more privacy, and introduced the idea of custom notebooks so users can group and organize notes more easily.

Later this year, Livescribe plans to add new software called Connect, which will allow users to email notes, audio and PDFs from the smartpen and paper when the pen is is docked to a Mac or PC.

The company also plans to introduce a collaboration software called Paper Tablet, that will allow consumers to communicate directly from a Livescribe notebook to a computer using the Echo pen and a USB cable. That means if you draw an image on the Livescribe notebook then it can directly appear on the screen in real time–a feature that should be very useful for creating graphics and for artists.

Check out Livescribe’s video of the Echo pen and some of its key features: