Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

I am currently singing the praises of the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. It ranks right up there with my iPhone, mino HD Flip videocamera, and TechSmith's Morae software .... in making my life simpler; yet, significantly more productive. If you aren't familiar with it, you can see a full demo of its capabilities at www.livescribe.com.

Key features of the pen include but are not limited to the following:
- Capturing what is written in a Livescribe specific journal via an infrared camera
- Capturing audio via a speaker
- Allowing users to upload their notes to a desktop application via a usb cradle
- Giving users the ability to review their notes and the corresponding audio post-session
- Providing users with a friendly approach to sharing session notes (pdf) and/or the corresponding audio publicly or privately
- Providing uploading capabilities for users to share their session with their Facebook friends

How Is It Making Life Easier?
1. Brainstorming Sessions. This allows me to capture team meetings and then share the notes + audio immediately after the session (vs. our current approach of taking a picture with a smart phone, typing up the notes and then emailing them).

2. Usability Testing. It allows me to take notes while moderating usability tests and then share them with team members immediately after each interview. It also makes it easy to search my notes for specific consumer quotations.

3. Doctors' Appointments. It allows me, with the preapproval of my Mom's physicians, to record appointments with specialists that my mother sees for some chronic health issues. As her caretaker and legal guardian, these visits can be stressful and prior to now I was always worried that we might not have caught everything the doctor had to say - compromising her care in some way. On my personal blog, I give some additional tips on how the pen can be used by caregivers.

4. Radio Programs. At lunch today, I heard a great program on Sirius radio about happiness. I took notes in my Livescribe notebook and was then able to load the audio onto my computer when I returned to the office so that I can hear the program again.

I can't wait to see what they come up with for future versions. I recently allowed Russ Hopkinson to play with it. He commented on how nice it would be if there were whiteboards with the same functionality? Think it's in the works....?

So far, my only regret is that I didn't purchase the 4GB version!!

Laura McGowan

Notes: I would like to send a special "thanks" to David Berney who familiarized me with the Smartpen at Forrester's Consumer Forum. You can follow him on Twitter @dberney.