I happened to be watching UK Terrestrial channel ‘Channel 5‘ the other day, and came across this neat wireless gadget, which provides a neat way to get your scribbles digitised! It’s name is the Dane-Elec Zpen, and consists of a receiver (the elipse-shaped item in the pic), and the transmitter – which is, surprisingly enough, a pen.
I was sceptical about how well it would perform, but from the test they did on TV (screenshots here), you can see it worked pretty well. Expansys (UK), my fave gadgets/devices website, emailed me to let me know they have it in stock too, so for £80 it can be yours – description from the Expansys site below:
Write with Zpen and Note Search seeks through your notes. Innovative and useful – the Zpen is a flash memory based digital pen that allows you to :-
- Write notes, drawings and tables with Zpen on any type of paper
- Download your notes, direct onto your computer (PC/Mac/Linux) in order to read them on screen
- Find keywords easily in your handwritten notes thanks to Note Search – a cutting edge software, a real search engine
Convert: in one click your handwritten notes into digital text
Zpen is also a 1GB USB key, useful for carrying files, videos, photos and music.
If you want to check videos, go to Dane-Elec’s website, here.
If you want to buy it (in the UK), go to Expansys’s website, here.
And if you want to go to the homepage of Channel 5’s Gadget Show, go here.