While on a recent flight to Johannesburg I was reading a novel and furiously scribbling down notes for a review I was to write.
The gentleman next to me who seemed dashingly sophisticated in a black suit smirked as he whipped out what he claimed was a “smart pen”.
While on a recent flight to Johannesburg I was reading a novel and furiously scribbling down notes for a review I was to write.
The gentleman next to me who seemed dashingly sophisticated in a black suit smirked as he whipped out what he claimed was a “smart pen”.
I made a mistake. I asked exactly what a “smart pen” was.
And I got: “A pen that thinks… obviously.”
I took to further research, and turns out it’s nothing new.
Smartpens, like smartphones, have been around for a couple of years and they come in different forms and have different purposes.
A smartpen is a hi-tech writing device that can record words and allow them to speak in harmony with notes users write on special paper.
Some smartpens don’t even need the special paper.
Smartpens such as this make note-taking an easy process (because it was so hard to begin with, right)?
You’ll even have a digital copy of your notes which are easier to hold on to and share (until your hard drive crashes, right)?
German inventors have created a different smartpen, one I find fascinating and truly useful.
A pen that vibrates every time you make a spelling mistake.
This invention contains real ink, it even resembles your regular pen but within its structure it holds a motion sensor and a small battery operated Linux computer with a-Fi chip. It will even sense messy handwriting – watch out doctors!
So picture a lecture where a student can record everything their lecturer says, and later play any part of the lecture back by tapping the pen’s tip on the words written throughout the duration of the class.
The two will work together in perfect harmony – and it’ll vibrate when the student makes a spelling error – note taken.
I prefer writing notes, making scribbles on the pages of my notebook and referring to them later.
I can keep my note books for years. You know, just in case I need to refer back to those lecture notes I made in my anthropology class way back when.
I’ve also found I make spelling mistakes far too often due to Microsoft Word’s autocorrect tool, so with that in mind a vibrating pen that shouts at me when I make mistakes probably wouldn’t be a bad option after all.
