Livescribe, the pen with ears, gets big boost
Livescribe, the company that has developed a computer pen that listens to what is said when you are using it, and which will let you post to your blog straight from your paper, has gotten $23.2 million in venture financing.
On Monday, at the DEMO conference, Oakland, Calif.-based Livescribe will share more details about its pen, and the tools that developers will be able to use to build applications on its open platform. The pen has not yet been made generally available, though you can pre-order it at Livescribe’s site for $200.
VentureBeat learned of the funding news separately. The round is led by VantagePoint Venture Partners.
Livescribe’s pen records audio and syncs it to what is written. So if you take notes with it during a lecture, and then stumble over your bad handwriting later when reviewing your notes, the pen can play the audio back to you at the part of the lecture where you stumbled. This lets you retrieve everything that was being said, even if you spaced out during the lecture admiring the birds and the bees outside.
That’s just the beginning of its capabilities. It does things like upload its stored information to your computer — text or audio — and so you can share it all with friends, or post your pen notes immediately to your MySpace page or blog with a few tap on your notebook. See our original coverage here.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
