VentureBeat

Digital pen-and-paper maker Adapx has received an undisclosed strategic investment from In-Q-Tel, the independent investment firm founded by the Central Intelligence Agency. The purpose of the funding, says Adapx chief executive Ken Schneider, is to increase usage of Adapx’s Capturx platform (pronounced “adapts” and “captures,” respectively) in the CIA and the intelligence community in general.

Even as more documents move into the digital realm, there are still situations when you need good old pen-and-paper. For example, you probably don’t want to drag out your tablet PC when it’s raining. That’s where Adapx comes in — using the Seattle startup’s pen, you take notes as you normally would with pen and paper, but the writing is recorded with a digital camera. Users can later import their notes into Microsoft Office OneNote (documents for tablet PCs), AutoCAD (architecture) and ArcGIS (mapping).

In my small-town newspaper days, I would have loved to get my hands on something like Adapx. Now that I’m at VentureBeat, I do less all-weather reporting, but I still have plenty of notebooks filled with my indecipherable scrawls, and it’d be great to digitize them.

Adapx offers a product for consumers, but Schneider says the company focuses on selling to other companies and to government agencies, where Capturx could be a boon for field work. (Competitor LiveScribe is more focused on building a fancy pen — it records audio as you write — than on software, and more on consumers than enterprise sales.) Adapx has landed around 300 customers so far, including a number in the government, but the In-Q-Tel investment should lead to more growth in that sector.

Schneider says Adapx will continue to focus on its established “beachheads,” as well as add more compatibility with different kinds of forms. The company raised a $10 million first round in December, and plans to raise a full second round in the last quarter of 2008.

You can watch video demos of Capturx here.

updated
Digital pen maker Adapx of Seattle, Wash., says it is changing the way data is captured in the field – by giving you a new-fangled pen.

Nothing works in the field like good, old-fashioned pen and paper. You can chew on the end of the pen, you can use the paper for other things when you’re caught short in the field, and you can replace it all cheaply.

Try those shenanigans with a laptop or tablet PC.

So Adapx has made a digital pen called the Penx. The size of a highlighter, the pen writes with ink on paper maps, forms or journals while simultaneously using a built-in digital camera and image processor to store what it has done in memory. When hooked up to a computer using a docking station, it uploads the captured information into programs like Microsoft’s OneNote, Autodesk’s AutoCAD or ArcGIS for military use, all using its Capturx software.

Adapx (pronounced “Adapts”), has just received $10 million in a first round of funding from OVP and the Paladin Capital Group. It will use the money to further enhance and market its Capturx product to its target markets. Its being pitched for use in battle fields, but also government departments, utility companies, architectural and construction firms – all of which use CAD programs in their work.

The company is eight years old, but has only recently started selling its product. I talked with chief executive Ken Schneider, and he said the company has pre-orders totaling “in the hundreds” of units.

LiveScribe offers something very similar, but it targets the educational market and is even more high-tech (see our coverage here).

Here’s the catch for both of them: You don’t just use any paper, you have to use digital paper. (You can buy regular paper, but you need a postscript printer to place a set of imperceptible dots on it. These dots detect what you’re writing, and can transfer it electronically back into Adapx’s software, similar to the way LiveScribe works.)

Adapx offers a OneNote digital notebook and special ink formulated to write in the notebook with.

The Penx is rechargeable and its built-in battery should last about three years. It can be password-protected so the information it contains cannot be downloaded by anyone else.
This isn’t cheap: The digital pen costs $249.95; a 10-pack notebook kit for Microsoft Office OneNote costs $2,990 (a five-pack costs $1495 so no quantity discount there), ink refill cartridges for the pen cost $175.50 for a 100-pack and $91.85 for a 50-pack; and a mini-dock replacement costs $29.95.