Before we get into the new stuff, a refresher from our original review:

The Livescribe Pulse Digital Smartpen records your notes two ways: it creates digital copies of everything you write by hand while recording audio at the same time. It also goes one step further and links the two together, so you can quickly access audio by tapping parts of your notes. All of this is uploaded to your computer where the Livescribe software archives and makes your notes fully searchable. In addition, it offers features like a calculator, [demo] translator, and a paper piano that plays a mini piano you draw on paper.

That last part, at least at the time, felt like a bit of a tease: the ability to tap on a flat, printed paper calculator or a piano that you'd drawn yourself was plenty cool, but didn't amount to much more than a tech demo. More to the point, it gave an extremely vague sense of potential, since the functions, translator aside, were some of the most obvious implementations of a technology that could clearly do much more complex things. But just what, we had no idea. Enter the application store:
As far as the mechanics go, this is straight mobile app store from top to bottom, from the new SDK to the web interface to the (not yet finalized) 35% skimmed off the top. As far as apps go, this is new territory. Remember—the interfaces for these things need to be drawn on paper by the users, or printed on special cards.

This may sound like more of a nuisance than a feature, but in the demos I saw, it worked. In the translation app, for example, you simply draw a series of buttons to serve as translation triggers, and sloppy or lopsided as they may be, they register just fine. The video poker app, which displayed adorable little cards on the pen's screen during play, demanded a slightly more complicated paper interface, which also worked seamlessly.

The trick will be for app developers—and Livescribe says there are thousands interested—to come up with novel ways to use this bizarre new interaction model. I mean, the way the Pulse can precisely read and distinguish marks on its dot paper means that a developer could theoretically design almost any kind of interface, from the playful and literal—I was shown a crudely sketched guitar that played back various chords—to the abstract—users could simply be asked to draw and assign their own buttons in whatever style they want. This, combined the the Pulse's audio recording, text recording and handwriting recognition, makes for an unfamiliar, but potentially very powerful, set of tools. Speaking of which, back to the store:
It's in beta now, and launched with a healthy selection of apps to sample, mostly ranging from free to about $10. (With one $100 exception.) Apps are run in a Java virtual machine, and built using a spanking new SDK, available for free here. Anyone who has a Pulse can access the store now, though you may need to upgrade your pen's firmware. Have at it, folks. [Livescribe]

For the unfamiliar, Livescribe's pens record your written word thanks to a tiny on board camera. The cameras also allows the user to interact with special Livescribe notebooks that have Play and record "buttons" printed on their pages. Spoken word is captured by a microphone.

According to the folks at Livescribe, the 4GB model is capable of recording 400 hours of audio. Or, if you're the kind of person who likes playing with your pen, the Pulse can also hold a number of proprietary applications from categories like entertainment (because pens are, by their nature, incredibly fun), educational tools and productivity software. The apps become available "later this year," when Livescribe says their app store open for business.

The magic pens aren't cheap, with the 2GB model going for $170 and the larger 4GB model going for $200. The new color is "titanium," by the way.

At last, the $4 The Bank Job Pen fulfills that little part of your brain that's always wanted to walk into a bank, cut the pens away with the assistance of jaws of life and a team of 10 or so highly tactical masked vigilantes, peel out in a getaway car and sell the goods on the black (ink) market.

The story will make you the coolest kid in Mrs. Winger's third grade English class. Guaranteed. [Perpetual Kid via The Green Head]

This fancy pen has a small mic and a tiny earpiece, letting it function as a cellphone that's difficult to detect in class. Of course, you need to whisper in it, which is inherently risky, but not impossible to pull off. What's really going to be foolproof is the next generation of these things, a pen that streams live video from whatever the pen is looking at over the web. Combine that with that tiny earpiece and you've got a pretty foolproof way to stay in touch with someone with a Wikipedia connection and a vested interest in you passing that stupid class. [Mobilewhack via Ubergizmo]

Still, we had to write (type, I should say) about the Circuit Board Pen. Not just some ballpoint coated in a cheap electronic veneer, the pen features a real circuit board painstakingly wrapped in an extremely thin layer of custom-lathed acrylic.

The result is a touchable circuit board pen that hopefully will not cut or poison you. And while its $80 price may seem a tad steep, that's really pretty reasonable when viewed from the admittedly skewed niche of collectible pens. [Pens As Art Thanks Robert!]

This retractable roller ball pen features a "special 'gun sight'-shaped clip," a gun-barrel design and a stand that serves as the grip. It's even made by a company called ACME, which seems very appropriate. On the negative side, the pen does run $130, which makes me wonder how Wile E. Coyote could afford all that crap. [Acme via Sci-Fi Wire]

Using a single rechargeable Lithium-ion battery, the pen can record up to 60 minutes of color video, and can be charged using a USB charging cable or an emergency AC power adapter. Also included is a special stand, which converts the Spy Pen from a simple video recorder into a webcam. And as for hiding all your important documents? Simply unscrew it in the mid section, and voila! The Spy Pen is now a 2GB USB flash drive.

It'll cost you $99 for the 5-in-1 Spy Pen, but if you pay just 10 bucks more, you can own one with 4GB of memory. Listen and sniff closely, do you hear/smell that? It's a collective orgasm from millions of spies around the world. [Product Page via Red Ferret]

And at $7, it's never been easier to dispatch an adversary with a writing utensil. The product description, provided by maker Cold Steel, is as cold and ruthless as the pen itself:

“[The Pocket Shark] features walls that are 4 times thicker than similar markers. This means it’s built for impact and, in a self-defense emergency it can become an efficient Yawara stick for driving off an attacker. Plus, the screw-top cap will stay in place and won’t pop off like a regular marker’s cap would when you strike a percussion blow, or when obtaining joint locks or submission holds."

Great for firing off an expense report and defending you in a dark alley after leaving the office, all in the same day. Sign me up. [Cold Steel via technabob]

But I'm skeptical as to whether or not you can fit all the parts and electronics needed into a usable pen. You'd need room for a power source, refillable ink cartridges and a chamber for mixing ink. Still, the idea is pretty neat, is it not? Marker companies would become obsolete. [I new Idea via Oh Gizmo]

Furthermore, the entire pen has a nautical design with rivets, propellers and funnels dotted about. The theme continues even inside, where a ship's wheel-shaped gear operates a propeller that pushes ink to the nib, all visible through a little sapphire-glass porthole.

There're only 88 in existence, and considering the Titanic metal, and the gold and palladium elsewhere in the construction, we can only imagine that the price would've surprised even Titanic's owners. [Vialuxe via Born Rich]

The Price: $199

The Verdict: I like the Livescribe Pulse quite a bit. I think it performs as advertised and is relatively easy to use. That said, this doesn't offer anything enticing or groundbreaking for people who don't use a pen and paper on a regular basis. It's a product for the likes of students, journalists, or even doctors, who are constantly scribbling things down with a pen. Here's a quick rundown of the pros and cons of the Pulse.

As a quick refresh, the Livescribe Pulse uses special dotted paper for spatial recognition to digitally replicate the notes. In one regard, this is good, because it doesn't require any secondary hardware. On the other hand, you cant just use any old piece of paper to make this thing fully functional. each sheet of paper has controls on the bottom, allowing navigation of the pens menu system, recording controls, bookmarking, playback controls, and speaker volume.

The note-taking/digital recording/replay function works smoothly. You hit the record button on the paper before you begin to write, then as you jot down your handcrafted masterpiece, it simultaneously records the audio and keeps the two linked. When you stop recording, you can tap anywhere in the vicinity of your notes and it will playback the audio from that moment when you were writing. It's awesome.

These can also be uploaded into Livescribe's Desktop software, which archives your notes according to the notebook they were written in and the page it was on. Text with audio linked to it appears in green, and when clicked, plays back the audio. There is also a search engine with handwriting recognition that works exceptionally well. I laid some chicken scratch on the page and it picked every word up, save for one word I couldn't even recognize. It doesn't currently support OS X right now, but they say its in the works.

Many of the secondary functions are neat, but I don't know I would use any of them on a regular basis. The Paper Piano is novel. The written calculator seems semi-practical, when in the middle of note scribbling, but the printed material on the inside cover of notebooks just isn't that useful. There's another calculator, a visual keyboard (which isn't yet supported) and status buttons for time and date. Also strange is that the settings can only be adjusted by the interfaces printed on the inside covers of notebooks. There's no on-screen system for adjusting this using the cross-based navigation.

The highly touted translator is also missing (though promised in the future), replaced with a demo that translates 20 words into Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish or Swedish. And one issue I had with the written calculator and translator was that I tend to write without picking up my pen between letters, and it couldn't recognize what I was writing. They say cursive support will come, but I'm not sure it will fix the recognition for people with poor handwriting.

The build quality of the pen is good, with a metal exterior that doesn't feel too light or heavy in the hand. It has an OLED screen that brightly displays pertinent info, stereo microphone, a loud speaker, and a magnetic dock/data connector. However, it's closer in size to a magnetic marker than a pen, and you have to hold the pen relatively high so as not to block the sensor. This feels a little cumbersome in the hand, but you mostly get used to it. Mostly.

The Livescribe Pulse is an amazing piece of tech, and I enjoy using it, but has an admittedly limited appeal. I'd love to see more creative and functional uses implemented with future "apps," and a touch of refinement in the current interface. But this is recommended for anyone who takes a lot of notes. [Livescribe on Giz]

[Product Page]