The Evernote-Livescribe Connection

Partners | 14 Oct 201014 Oct 10 | By Andrew Sinkov

88 comments

For the past couple of weeks, I have been doing the unexpected: writing all of my notes…with a pen…on paper. Guess what? I’m loving it. To be fair, this is no ordinary pen—it’s a Livescribe, the electronic pen that magically digitizes your handwritten notes.

Today, we have big news. All of those Livescribe notes can now get the Evernote treatment: cross-platform sync, text recognition and search. It’s all thanks to the new Evernote-Livescribe integration, part of their latest software update. If you don’t have a Livescribe pen, you can get one now from the Evernote Trunk.

Livescribe and Evernote

Livescribe pens are popular among students, doctors, lawyers, creative professionals, and just about anyone else that takes notes as part of their everyday lives. Coincidentally, Evernote is popular with the same types of people. So we thought, wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to choose between digital and analog note taking options? Now you don’t. Simply handwrite your notes, connect your Livescribe pen to your computer and those notes are sent into Evernote as high quality images. Next, Evernote processes the handwriting making it searchable, and synchronizes the notes so they’re accessible from every computer and phone you use.

And don’t forget, Evernote’s text recognition can be configured for handwriting in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, and Russian. You can set you preferred language in the Settings section of Evernote Web.

How LiveScribe pens work

The Livescribe digital pens use a built-in camera to track and record their position on special paper. You then connect the pen to your computer and upload all of your notes. It even lets you simultaneously record audio—perfect for classes, meeting and conferences.

We love this integration not just because it’s super cool, but also because Evernote and Livescribe users have been asking (read: begging) for the two companies to partner. It’s happened, and there’s a lot more to come.

Today and into the future

The Livescribe team used the Evernote API to build this integration into the Livescribe Desktop software (both Windows and Mac). The software can now be configured to send Livescribe notes directly into Evernote. Once set up, select the desired notes and audio recordings, right click and choose Save to > Evernote. They will then be sent into your default notebook, and synchronized across your Evernote-enabled devices.

This is only the first step in our partnership. In the near future, getting your handwritten notes from Livescribe into Evernote will become an entirely seamless process. Stay tuned.

Get your Livescribe Pen

Livescribe offers a variety of pens and notebooks to meet you needs. Check out the options by visiting the Evernote Trunk.

There’s an update to the Evernote/Livescribe integration. Find out more.

Evernoter

Why do all the selected pages in Livescribe get split into individual notes on Evernote?

Pages shared within the same session should really be combined into one single note on Evernote, not spread across 50 new notes on Evernote, which is a nightmare to clean up (going into each and every note to cut and paste and then having to delete 49 blank notes).

It would drive be very inconvenient if one had to transfer several hundred or thousand pages onto Evernote, just image having several thousand new notes created on your Evernote account?!!

Are Evernote and Livescribe aware of this issue?
- Andrew Sinkov
  
  Thanks for the feedback.
  - Todd
    
    So – any updates? I’m thinking of getting a livescribe pen just to use with evernote, but I’m concerned since I’ve seen evernote promise and never deliver (by never I mean with things like sharing notes on the iphone app which if I’m right was promised almost 2 years ago).
- Note
  
  Select the notes you want together, right click, merge notes.
http://codeologist.com Mike M

I would pull the trigger on this but it doesn’t seem to have had the issues with audio resolved. Does anyone know if the titanium edition 4gig pen have these issues? what about the 69$ refurbed pens. Do they work with evernote?
William

I’ve just been sent ‘spam’ from you guys trying to sell me a livescribe pen. All great, in theory until i saw the comments on this blog!

I tried the Logitech IO pen (1 and 2 versions) years ago. It’s the same brain – from Anoto. Shame Logitech abandoned us and didnt update the software so we’re left with worthless hardware. Shame there’s no way to link this to you guys. Then again, if i get reassurances about the live scribe issues i may bite the bullet again..
- Andrew Sinkov
  
  Stay tuned. Improvements are on the way.
  - Jen
    
    I also have a couple old logitech pens (with horribly limiting software). I’d love to be able to use them!
Tanya

Was looking into one of these after your email about the pen, but I can’t pay so much money for something that only 1/2 works! I could really use this, too, as probably many who use Evernote.
Jen

I was soooo excited when I got the e-mail from Evernote about this pen! I ordered my pen the same day. This is my missing link for going digital. I have to take notes at meetings. I don’t like to type them, but I need to be able to store and reference my notes digitally. The software works perfectly! Unfortunately I really need it to partner with my ipad (through evernote). This means I desperately need two things- 1. Files to transfer into Evernote in one chunk, not several, and 2. Handwriting to be searchable in Evernote. My hope is to take my notes at meetings, have them transfer to Evernote & reference them on my ipad, iphone, or computer. Only having livescribe desktop software is very limiting. The partnership with Evernote is only helpful if I can access my content in the same way. I’m hoping that updates are coming!
Rusty

Unless you need to save the audio along with your handwritten notes, you’d probably be a lot better off to just scan the notes into Evernote with a ScanSnap scanner. Simple and fast.
- Jen
  
  Seriously? It’s much easier to just plug your pen in. The problem with syncing to Evernote is that it breaks apart the files. A work around for this (still presuming you don’t need audio) would be to print to PDF first, and then drop it into Evernote.
Dirk

Why are the livescribe notes becoming dead notes in evernote?

You should tear the pages from your notebook when synced with evernote. Adding written comments on a formally written note is hard to manage and organize. I think it could be better.

I use evernote to store and organize my stuff. I use dot paper pages that are put as notes in books. When I add something to the dot paper I want this to show up in evernote, without having to
(1) send the updated page to evernote,
(2) search for the old note and remember the notebook you put it in ,
(3) delete the old evernote note, then
(4) add the note to the right notebook in evernote.

It would be great is to have a real synchronization of the handwritten pages to the right notebook in evernote. It would boost the synchronization between paper and cloud working.
Ted

Using my Windows XP Pro system, I’ve found that when you select, then drag and drop multiple notes onto the Evernote connector the Evernote connector will merge the notes together on the Evernote website. If you drag and drop them seperately then they will upload as seperate files. So far, so good. Hand Written Recognition and Search work very well. Evernote and Livescribe have done an outstanding job of making this system seamless. But there’s still good work to do to make this product the invention of the decade.
John King

I like the pen and Evernote is the strongest tool I use in my business. Evernote and Livescribe together is a slick idea but is missing one peace…synchronization. I would find it better if once a Livescribe ‘note’ was modified using livescribe itself it would update itself in Evernote. If I have a small project I will take notes at the beginning of the engagement and upload the Livescribe notes to Evernote. I draw check boxes in my written notes so I know it is an item to complete. If I check them on paper I want to see the completion on my computer or phone. I also add some typed notes, screen shots, etc. to the same EN note. When I meet back with the client I write notes on the same livescribe paper pages. Currently I have to remember to delete the original attachment and re-attach the new pdf. If only the two could identify that it is the same livescribe notebook and page and ask to replace the current one. I like the pen and live daily by Evernote.
http://www.officepro2010key.net/ office 2010 professioanl

Amazing things here. I’m very happy to see your post. Thanks a lot and I’m taking a look ahead to touch you. Will you kindly drop me a e-mail?

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