Today while dodging carts and eating tasty hot dog morsels at Costco, I spied… the RoboPen.

Not only does this pen record what you write so you don’t have to type it in later, but it combines the note taking with audio recording.  It associates your written notes with what was said when you took them!  Whoa!!

It is not called the RoboPen of course, but the LiveScribe Pulse Smart Pen.

I write a lot of notes.  I meet people and make notes.  I have to-do lists.  I love paper!  I have piles of notes on my desk that are sitting there waiting for me to do something with them.  A lot of the notes have great ideas on them.  I know that when I go back over them, sometimes months later, I will not remember the context of why I wrote that particular note.

I want this pen!

It also is number 4 on Popular Mechanics Top 10 Most Brilliant Gadgets of the Year!

Seems like you could use it for NANOWRIMO so you could write your novel and not have to transcribe it.

Then, I got to wondering.  What if I could use this in my Toastmaster meetings?  I could make some incredible notes.  I could use it for evaluations.  Instead of trying to write down exactly what the speaker said, I could spend more time listening.  For example, if they did a nice alliteration, I could just write “alliteration”.  Then, when I go through my notes, I could “click” on the word and hear the alliteration as it happened.  Crazy!

In an officers meeting I could use the pen to take notes.  Then, when we are done, I can just upload the notes and the officers can listen to the meeting as they read the notes.

I do wonder if the LiveScribe pen could be used for evil.  What about in an Evaluation Contest?  It seems like it would be an amazing aid.  I don’t recall rules forbidding recording of the model speech.