Livescribe Pulse Pen

Its features are rather unique, so let's take a "real-life" example where this device might be useful for a student or professional at a lecture or meeting. This user would turn the pen on at the beginning of the meeting, press the "record" button that appears on each sheet of notebook paper with the tip of the pen, write a bullet point in large print. With the pen still recording the meeting, the user will make several additional bullet points on the notebook paper. At the end of the meeting, the pen is turned off.

When the user wishes to review her notes, she turns on the pen, and touches the pen to any one of the bullet points written, and the pen automatically locates the audio recorded at the time the note was written.

This type of organization is intuitive to users who are not computer users—there is no need to look for digital audio files on the pen, just touch the paper and the pen finds the file associated with the note.

For users comfortable using a computer, all audio may be transferred and stored on the computer, and anything written in the tablet will be stored as a PDF file. This is a particularly handy feature for low vision users who need to magnify their handwriting on the computer to reread it. Just as with the paper tablet, if you click on the written note in the PDF file with the mouser, the audio associated with it will play.

One of the best features of the Pulse Pen is that it really isn't considered adaptive technology so they are relatively inexpensive and available at a variety of retailers such as Target and Amazon. The Pulse Pen comes in a 2 GB version that retails for $129.95 and a 4 GB version that retails for $169.95 (this author purchased the 4 GB version at Target for $163.95).