Today, Grinder is looking at the humble pen; mightier than the sword, yet needing to be chained down in most bank lobbies. Sure, you could go out and get yourself some pricey, gold-plated Mont Blanc limited edition, but we buy those and lose them all the time. Besides, we prefer pens that do more than just write. Check out these hyper-literate gizmos.
Above is the Mobile Digital Scribe, the first ever device to capture natural handwriting from any surface and store it for future use. Using ordinary ink to write on any paper, the Mobile Digital Scribe stores handwritten notes, memos or drawings for easy upload to your computer. No special digital notepad is required. If the Mobile Digital Scribe is connected to a computer, handwritten text and drawings ca be displayed directly on the computer screen.
Smartpen Livescribe is little different. It works like this: You turn on the pen and record whatever is being said in the room, taking notes on special paper you can buy or print out. Then, when you go back to check your notes, the pen will playback what was being said at the time you took them. (It makes a lot more sense if you watch the video.) Complicated, but we could see how Livescribe would be incredibly useful for students or people who take lot of notes in meetings.
The Covert Camcorder Pen Camera lets you see and hear. This James Bond-worthy video camera pen, with built-in 4GB of memory, provides 16 hours of audio/video recording and saves files in the popular, easily-to-edit AVI format. Oh yeah, and you can also write with it.
