Question about digital pens

I've been using the Dane-Elec digital pen for a while now.

Results vary: sometimes it's brilliant and transcribes my rather scribbly writing without a fault; other times I can barely understand the transcription, and end up having to type it all out again. It helps if you write at a desk, rather than with your notepad balanced on one knee, as that means the pad bends a little which leads to curved lines appearing in the image of your writing; which confuses the transcription software (so words appear on wrong lines, etc).

It also gets confused if I cross anything out, or make any sorts of corrections; and the pen itself is a little bulky and cumbersome compared to the fine-point gel-pens I prefer. But overall I think it's a useful tool rather than a fancy gadget, and they can only improve with time.

I heard many good things about the Pulse smartpen, which is also a digital record (which actually synch your recording to the notes).'

http://www.livescribe.com/

It actually makes your handwriting searchable, without converting it to text first (there's a separate application for handwriting to text conversion). How they do it, I don't know. It works even for a person with bad handwriting...

do these pens "learn"? like if they're consistently confusing your e and a and you're correcting it will they eventually be able to transcribe your handwriting flawlessly?

The livescribe pen is on sale at Target this week, according to their Facebook ad. $99 for a 2gb, $149 for 4gb. Has anyone actually tried one of these?

I watched their sales video and it looks intriguing. Although I'd like to be able to turn off the audio record mode and just record my scribblings, and it doesn't say anything about that.

http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/

I'm trying to do more writing on my job, during down time, but they're tightening the rules on internet use which means I may not be able to use Google docs anymore.

I don't want to write by hand and then have to type it into the ms later. I'm rather broke, however, and $99 seems too steep for me right now. And I don't know how much the special spiral notebooks cost.

I know this thread is old but I'm looking for a birthday/Christmas present for myself and want to get a digital pen that will do conversion to text.

Livescribe pens are considered the top in the market but they need special paper AND don't do conversion without you buying another separate program.

Any suggestions (in 2012) for digital pens (that you've tried, that don't need special paper (or do) and (especially) do convert handwriting to text)?

defyalllogic said:

Any suggestions (in 2012) for digital pens (that you've tried, that don't need special paper (or do) and (especially) do convert handwriting to text)?

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The ZPen might be what you're looking for.

I have heard a lot of complains about all the digital pens, including Livescibe; I suspect that's just where the (lower priced) technology is at this point.

Still, if you have relatively clear handwriting, and are something of a patient person, then the ZPen might be worth a shot (I think it's less than $100).

Edited to add: The ZPen is made by the same company Old Hack mentioned in her post above. Since she posted that almost three years ago the technology may have improved since then.

I've got a slightly newer Z-pen now, but I get better results with my AceCad pen which uses a clipboard instead of a clip for the top of the paper. I think it's because it holds the paper more solidly, so the page distorts less.

I have a couple of friends who have pens which require special paper and they are both unhappy with the cost of the paper and so on. I bought my AceCad for £50 (I think) from eBay and it's been brilliant.

Very helpful. I tend think if I've heard of the brand it'll be better but this is definitely an area that requires hearing from people who've used it.

defyalllogic said:

I know this thread is old but I'm looking for a birthday/Christmas present for myself and want to get a digital pen that will do conversion to text.

Livescribe pens are considered the top in the market but they need special paper AND don't do conversion without you buying another separate program.

Click to expand...

There's software to print the faint dots needed by the pen on any paper.

The software that does the conversion is "teachable"; you correct its mis-readings of your particular handwriting, and it learns to interpret your particular handwriting.

The printer needs to be PostScript capable and a laser jet, not an inkjet, but yeah, you can print your own and the software's free. There's also a script to text software package, but it's about $30 (still reasonable). I've been meaning to check out a few of the newer pens that don't require special paper.

The Galaxy S3's digital pen is also pretty good and feels more natural. I've been meaning to upgrade my old Targus stylus for my iPad to a newer pen-style stylus too for my handwriting recognition apps.

The script-to-text software that I've seen will only work with text captured with a digital pen, Greg, and all the digital pens I've seen provide it as part of their package.

I'd love to be able to use such software with things I've written without a digital pen.

Oh, yes. Sorry, OH. Mine only works with what I've written using my Pulse smart pen. It's pretty accurate though. Didn't mean to imply anything else.

Supposedly, a few years ago, there was software in the works that was being designed to translate handwritten text, scanned into a computer, into text. I'm not sure what ever happened to it.

Ah, we are in luck. EverNote, most modern OCR programs, WritePad (for the iPad), and many other programs will convert scanned or direct input handwriting into text. There are a number of Mac applications.

In addition, I had a program on my old desktop that would convert voice recordings from a digital recorder to text. I'm hoping I can recover that program.

Dragon Naturally Speaking is also good at that (transcribing voice dictation to text), but I know a lot of people (me included) who still like to write longhand.

I don't see anything about OCR on the Evernote site and the Livescribe directs you to another program for that even though they bundle with evernote.

But if there was a pen that worked like a livescribe but with OCR because otherwise the pen isn't super useful to me as I can just write anything on any paper as long as I have a scanner and a program.

I think the z-pen or AceCad might be my best bet.

FOTSGreg said:

Ah, we are in luck. EverNote, most modern OCR programs, WritePad (for the iPad), and many other programs will convert scanned or direct input handwriting into text. There are a number of Mac applications.

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Are you sure about this, Greg? I suspect they might be able to recognise single characters, but whole paras of handwritten text? I'm not sure that's the case.

I wish it were, though.

I do a lot of writing longhand. Then I input it into a word-processor, using that as the initial editing pass, taking care of minor stupidities of grammar, etc. Works just fine for me. I don't think I'd find much advantage in a digital pen device that was sufficiently accurate (which I'm not convinced yet exists, at least for me, given my atrocious handwriting). If anything, I'd prefer voice-recog software to this.

caw

LiveScribe's pens require the secondary program to transcribe, yes. The other stuff about EverNote and OCRs (some, like OmniPage, are very accurate, but also pricey) I found via an online search.

There are digital/smart pens available that don't require special paper, but LiveScribe's is still rated top of the line.

I've now looked at Evernote and it does not produce a text file from scans of handwritten documents.

It scans them and performs a very wide-ranging sort of OCR on the text in order to index it, so that you can search your JPEG for various words. It does not provide you with a word-processing document at the end of this: just the ability to search your JPEG for various keywords.

OH, that's what I found as well.

And most of the ORC programs don't do script to text. I didn't realize this was such an under developed market.

This is the only one I've found and it seems to require a livescribe pen to do the conversion :http://www.visionobjects.com/en/webstore/myscript-for-livescribe/description/