New Livescribe app adds Wikipedia to your pen

Last year, we reviewed the Livescribe Echo Smartpen, and showed off some of its brilliant features. Since the pen can be expanded with apps, it has the ability to become even better over time.

One of the apps that will definitely help with that is a new Wikipedia add-on. For $1.99 and 49MB of your pen storage, you can add 100,000 of the most visited Wikipedia abstracts. To access them, you simply point your pen to the app (through its menu) and write the word you’d like to look up.

I remember trying to add a compact version of Wikipedia to my phone about five years ago, but never dreamed I’d actually be turning a pen into a complete offline encyclopedia.

Of course, since the display on the pen is relatively small, you will have to wait for the entire portion of text to scroll by, but if you ever need quick access to a definition without the access for a PDA, smartphone or Internet connection, this is the best solution I’ve ever seen. If only I had one of these back in my school days!

The app is available in the Livescribe store for $1.99 (English) or for free (German). If you don’t have a Livescribe pen (yet), you’ll find them as low as $69.95 directly from Livescribe.