elainegrey

I'm giving my fancy recording pen to a colleague to use in our kickoff meeting because New Director sent instructions for the presentation preparation for the 9 am meeting tomorrow at 8:31 today, and wants the work done by the end of the day. I feel for my colleagues in the Eastern Daylight Time zone.

The cool thing is i get to listen (whatever is recorded) in the meeting i missed.

My pretend boss called me as soon as i sent her a "huh???" about the instructions. New Director isn't on skype so i am txting him.

I am sufficiently amused by the comedy value here to not be bent out of shape. Also, still have the "nothin' to loose" attitude i developed in January.

So my livescribe smartpen arrived yesterday afternoon. It is rather magical to go through the guide book and be able to tap areas and have explanations read to you or directions provided in the tutorial. The pen has a camera focused on the tip, the camera interprets the dots as both instruction and location. There are special printed buttons that the pen interprets for recording and playback of audio, other buttons, like calculator keys, that can be pressed to interact with programs on the pen and results are displayed on the pen's display (calculator results). As an audio recorder, it can also be an mp3 player and has an audio jack for headphones.

I can imagine an alternative universe where instead of QR codes and camera phones, the dot paper technology and these pens had become pervasive. The pen, given a wireless connection, has the audio capabilities to be a phone, and once the pen had that wireless capability, i could imagine the dot paper technology being a far more elegant interactive interface than the QR codes that are printed hither and yon. A culture that adopted the pen as its interface would be far intimate than our culture that uses the phones and the cameras. You need to bring the pen/stylus in contact with the surface to register the coded dots. Blaring visual advertisements wouldn't be interactive, but any surface could speak to a person and could be interactive.

But these pens will not be pervasive, so i'll be a lone user. I think i'll find it useful, but i do hope that i'm able to resolve my current issue which is getting the pen to register over its desktop interface. I will use it tonight in note taking and see how it goes.

--==&infin==--

Meanwhile ... Oh LOOK! Another post i wrote in the morning and forgot to post!