Archive for October, 2009

The LiveScribe Pulse Smartpen is still very much a part of my gadget arsenal. It’s a superb tool that assists me in gleaning valuable information I may have missed during a meeting or workshop by reviewing the captured text from within the Livescribe desktop software and listening to segments of audio recorded at the time of writing. The desktop software works on both the Mac and Windows and there’s little to worry about with regard to synchronization: the pen can easily be attached to any of my systems running the desktop software and all notes are automatically uploaded. Having my scribbles on the screen at the same time as I’m busy writing a document that refers to those notes is a great time saver and makes me completely independent of the actual paper the notes originated on.

But with a larger quantity of notes that should make their way into a document the typing overhead becomes a bit tedious. There’s direct integration for OCR software built into the Livescribe desktop, but that requires the download of another software package which I haven’t tried yet. With a lot of re-typing to be done (and my motivation level below the requisite median) I decided to take MyScript for Livescribe for a spin.

The software is available as a trial version for both Windows and Mac platforms. The Windows version is a tiny 11MB download and installs without any fuss. I was sceptical about an OCR routine that would be able to decipher my scrawling script with any degree of success. MyScript launches directly from within the Livescribe desktop software once a session has been opened – it’s a simple click away on the toolbar.

Once opened, MyScript shows a thumbnail image of the session from Livescribe desktop. A press of the F6 key starts the OCR process, for which certain defaults and preferences may be set. Individual mileage may vary, depending on the clarity of the handwritten text and what the degree of neatness of that handwritten text approaches. As I speed up my handwriting, the neatness factor is reduced quite substantially. That makes it more probable that the OCR engine won’t be able to decipher all the characters. In my experience, MyScript does a very reasonable job at converting my handwriting to electronic text. Anyone with very high expectations will be disappointed – be realistic with those expectations, and it’s quite likely you’ll be surprised at how well it works, especially since there is no training required to teach the OCR engine anything about the text it is scanning. Once completed, the electronic version is displayed in an edit window alongside the session image.

Very rudimentary editing tools are available to allow the text to be modified and adjusted. Once the text has been processed, there are a number of options: send to a word processor, email or save.

The success rate of the OCR process is pretty good. From this

to this

As I mentioned, it depends heavily on the legibility of the handwriting. Since the software is available as a trial version, I strongly suggest you try it out first to verify how well it works.

Where drawings are included, MyScript is able to convert that to an image for limited editing within Word, for example. Unfortunately, the software cannot mix text and graphics – setting to image scanning results in all text on the page to be transformed into text boxes which can be a pain to edit.

The built-in text editor is very basic and I had constant trouble selecting more than a single line of text with the mouse in the Windows version. Apart from this, I consider the addition of MyScript a very useful addition. The price is very reasonable with the software costing only USD 30. Be aware that the OCR engine cannot be used for any other OCR activities. Download MyScript for Livescribe here.