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Hi, I'm Ina Fried with CNET News here in San Francisco. I'm with Jim Marggaff the CEO of Livescribe, which makes the Pulse digital pen, which records both ink as well as audio at the same time for those who haven't seen it. The Livescribe's been out for a few months now, Jim. ^M00:00:21 Where can we find it? What's the response been like?
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>> Thanks. Well, it's -- so it's -- right. So the Livescribe, well, it's a little Smartpen, and it's available now at Target nationwide, at Costco nationwide, also at Amazon.com and at Livescribe's website. ^M00:00:36 And as you know -- you know we've talked about this before, but it's a pen that captures ink as you write on paper. It will capture audio, record it, synchronize [inaudible] audio, so when you go back to your paper notes you can tap and play it back. ^M00:00:47 Also, it will upload it to a Mac. ^M00:00:49 Up until now it's just been a PC. ^M00:00:52 And now today we've just announced that we support Macintosh. ^M00:00:54 So every pen that anyone has purchased, or that people purchase now, will work with a Mac as well with the free software download that will be available in a couple weeks. ^M00:01:02 We were able to leverage the Mac toolkit in a development environment to make a couple things people have asked for instantly available. ^M00:01:08 One of them, aside from the pen, you can take a look. So we have a page here that's a college student took notes in a class. And you can see we have ink that I can click on. It'll play the ink back. Get the speaker plugged in. ^M00:01:21 Play our audio for this as well. Okay. So this is real playback. What we have also is a means to be able to let you take a PDF instantly of this page and share it with your friends as a PDF, or to be able to take any of the audio that you've recorded.
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>> A couple of other things in addition to the Mac support that you guys are announcing. One of them is that you can now print your own paper, is that right?
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>> That's right. So you know the paper has small dots that allow it to work with ink, but I can print the paper now. And for free, you'll be able to go to our website, be able to download files, and print this on a laser jet printer, 600 by 600 dpi Adobe postscript compatible. ^M00:02:01 Most printers, color printers, will print this for free. So you can print your own paper out if you don't have a notebook, or you'd like to get more paper.
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>> But it does have to be a color laser?
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>> Must be a color laser printer, that's right. That's right.
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>> So that might knock a few college students out of the running.
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>> It may take a few out. What we found is -- we polled and generally there's an available printer within reach. You can dock your pen and then if your handwriting is legible -- I'll say that because neat handwriting works well. ^M00:02:25 If you can't read it, the software probably won't read it either. But legible handwriting will instantly be taken off a page, converted to text. ^M00:02:31 You can then click on your handwriting -- on your handwriting on an icon and send it as an email, or send your text as an email. You can edit this as well. ^M00:02:39 You can drop it into a Word document. Take it as PDF. You can edit either one. ^M00:02:43 Now, some things that are unique to the Mac is -- both PC and Mac will show you your audio files. So you can click on an audio file. ^M00:02:51 It jumps you right into your ink. But we have AAC access directly to the audio file on a Macintosh. ^M00:02:56 So you'd be able to take the file, take it off your PC. Share it. And save it and send it to someone else. ^M00:03:02 So very excited to be able to pull up both ink as PDF and audio as an audio file out for sharing. What's important as well is -- back to the Mac, any pen that anyone has purchased to date, any pen that anyone purchases now works with the Mac with free software that will be available on the 24th of the month. ^M00:03:20 So very excited to make this all available and to respond to people's requests as we continue to grow the platform. ^M00:03:26 And we're very excited. This has been a feature that people have been asking for from -- for the last several months.
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>> And how large is the user base for all these? Tens of thousands, is that right?
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>> So we haven't announced it, but we just did a survey, and we just took ten thousand of our user base, which is larger than that, and queried them on their usage. ^M00:03:43 And they told us some amazing things. One is they use it extensively. They demo it -- about 92 percent demo it to at least 10 people. ^M00:03:50 We asked college students how much they use this, and over 70 -- 86 percent of them said they will use it for the rest of their college learning years. ^M00:03:59 So the usage among college students that -- they've discovered this is phenomenal, and they're very, very pleased with it. And they -- about 78 percent of people plan to recommend it to other friends or colleagues. ^M00:04:08 We expect that number to grow now that we have Macintosh, and now that we have transcription software as well.
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>> Great. Thanks, Jim.
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>> Thanks, Ina.
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>> Ina Fried with CNET News in San Francisco.
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