Pulse Pen by Livescribe

Recently, I was telling Yamashita, a friend of my husband’s (and the largest supplier of Japanese noodles in the U.S.) about all the notes I took at a recent Tony Robbins business seminar. I said my hand hurt from all the note-taking! He told me I needed a “smart pen.” He went into his bag, pulled his out, and gave it to me! He said it was the best thing ever and just what I needed (that he would get another for himself).

I’ve had it for about a month now and he is right! It’s just like my iPhone – I don’t know how I ever managed without it.

It records audio, but small audio recorders have been around for a long time, so that alone isn’t anything new. What makes this insanely different and great is that as you take notes, the pen links your notes with the audio it recorded as you jotted, so your notes are connected with the audio recording. Later, as you review your notes, the pen will play back the audio that’s tied to each of your notes. In other words, it’s a structured recording that you don’t have to fast forward through, or search! You just point the pen at your notes, and you get the audio snippet that goes with that particular note.

The pen uses special paper that comes in a spiral notebook (that doesn’t cost any more than regular paper). Functions are printed on the bottom of each page: record, pause, and stop. Each page also has a calculator and records the date and time notes were taken. In a meeting, I just hit the record button and start taking notes. Those notes can just be an outline because the pen will sync what its recording with what I’m writing down. When the topic changes, I just write down another heading. After the meeting is over, I just touch the pen tip to any of the headings and the audio that was happening at that time starts playing!

I’ve used it to record important meetings: sales training, line introductions, sensitive license negotiations, and more. You know how you get into a great meeting with a lot of enthusiastic people talking at once and you can’t keep track of all the conversations or possibly write it all down? Well, the great thing about the Pulse Pen is that it can record it all. I plug the ear phones into the pen while I’m on the train going home and replay the meeting and hear all that I missed! As I listen, I’m reminded about all the things that I promised to do – I can pause the recording and take action on the spot.

Of course, it’s not always convenient to take notes. Recently, at a lunch meeting, I was negotiating a very important contract. Taking notes would have been distracting. But, I was talking about percentages and royalty payments – things I needed to document. The room was so noisy, I could barely hear the person who was talking so I was worried about what I might have missed. After the meeting, I plugged the ear phones into the pen, and I heard the conversation even more clearly than when i was there in person! While I was listening to the playback, I jotted down a few notes – and the pen synced the existing audio to the new notes I was taking…hmmmm…how did it do THAT!

The microphone that is built into the pen is great! It works for regular meetings, and even phone conversations! Recently, when discussing those contract negotiations on the phone with my husband, I had my iPhone on speaker. I wanted to make sure I captured all of his thoughts, so I held the pen up close to the phone. When I listened to the playback (and took notes), the sound quality (through the 3D earphones) was even better than the original phone conversation! The 3D earphones work for large conferences.

This incredible pen connects to my computer and loads all the notes and audio into a very simple software application. The notes that have accompanying audio appear in green and the notes with no audio are in black. I can send exported audio to friends and co-workers. I can search electronically through all my pages of notes. The software on my computer keeps every page separate and numbered just like in the real notebook.

I recently had an important strategy meeting for the launch of my Spring 2010 collection. Some of my staff could not attend the meeting. I now have that audio and my notes that I can send to them instead of having to repeat everything that took place at the meeting. They get to hear who said what and EXACTLY in what context – and they can access my notes to get my thoughts.

Did I mention I don’t know how I ever managed without it?

You can learn more about Pulse Pen from their website: http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen