First introduced this May, Livescribe Connect for the Echo and Pulse smartpens makes it simple for business professionals, educators and students to send their handwritten notes and recorded audio, as interactive pencasts, to the people and online applications of their choice - all from paper.
“Written and spoken information are two powerful communication tools; however, most of this information is largely inaccessible in a digital format. Livescribe fills this void by enhancing the capture, access and sharing of written and spoken information both on paper and electronically,” said Byron Connell, Livescribe co-founder and chief marketing officer. “Adding support for Google Sites and OneNote to the Livescribe Connect suite provides our customers with two more valuable ways to organize, access and share important information from meetings and lectures.”
Google Sites is an online tool for building and sharing websites, such as company intranets, team project sites, classroom and student club sites, which can easily incorporate content from Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube, Picasa and now pencasts created with a Livescribe smartpen. Now anyone can access and interact with a pencast from a class, conference, or meeting from within a Google Site website.
"A major focus of Google Sites is to make it easy for users to bring together all types of content into a single place," said Scott Johnston, group product manager for Google Docs and Sites. “Livescribe Connect provides users of Google Docs and Sites with a sophisticated, dynamic and fresh way to integrate the written and spoken word with all of the other assets available in their Google site.”
A part of Microsoft Office, OneNote is a free-form digital notebook that provides a single place to store, organize, and share text, photos, audio, video, and now digital handwriting with Livescribe. With Livescribe Connect, people can send pencasts of their notes and audio recordings to the OneNote desktop application, helping make all their important information available and searchable in one place.
“The marriage of pen, paper and OneNote opens a whole new way of capturing and organizing information,” said Jason Bunge, senior director, Microsoft Office. “More than 750 million people worldwide rely on Microsoft Office to stay organized and help make life easier. Livescribe Connect improves digital note taking by making it simple for people to move handwritten notes, with audio recordings, to OneNote so they can recall every meeting, lecture and discussion.”
In addition to Google Sites and OneNote, Livescribe Connect also allows customers to quickly send pencasts from paper to other applications such as email, Google Docs, Facebook, Evernote and mobile devices, including the Apple iPad and iPhone.
In addition to the new connectors, the update to the Livescribe Connect software (version 1.1) includes two other important enhancements. The Facebook connector now allows users to post pencasts on friends’ walls in addition to their own, as well as Livescribe’s fan page. And, for Mac customers, Livescribe Connect now supports the recently released Mac OS X Lion.