The digital revolution means all sorts of things become electronic, and that includes paper and pen. Livescribe seems to have one of the best implementations of this, and the product is getting better as the company adds transcription to its feature set.
For this to work, Livescribe is joining forces with TranscribeMe, a company that will do what its name suggests: transcribe audio into written word, something the Livescribe doesn’t do by itself.
From this week on, owners of Livescribe pens (and future owners) will be able to take down the notes with the pen’s microphone, upload them to a computer through either a wired connection (traditional Livescribe) or WiFi (Livescribe Sky), and either upload them to TranscribeMe’s website or stick them in the TranscribeMe folder in Evernote, with the company then charging a small fee to translate voice to text.
The service is done through two methods of transcription, with both speech recognition software engaged as well as people working to transcribe the bits the software doesn’t like, but you will have to pay for the privilege.
Those costs come in at $1 per minute for one speaker, or $2 per minute for multiple speakers, so it’s something to factor in if you’re attending lots of meetings and lectures and you desperately need speech to text.
