Before we get into the new stuff, a refresher from our original review:

The Livescribe Pulse Digital Smartpen records your notes two ways: it creates digital copies of everything you write by hand while recording audio at the same time. It also goes one step further and links the two together, so you can quickly access audio by tapping parts of your notes. All of this is uploaded to your computer where the Livescribe software archives and makes your notes fully searchable. In addition, it offers features like a calculator, [demo] translator, and a paper piano that plays a mini piano you draw on paper.

That last part, at least at the time, felt like a bit of a tease: the ability to tap on a flat, printed paper calculator or a piano that you’ve drawn yourself and get accurate feedback was plenty cool, but didn’t amount to much more than a tech demo. More to the point, it gave an extremely vague sense of potential since the functions, translator aside, were obvious implementations of a technology that could clearly do much more complex things. But what, we had no idea. Enter the application store:

As far as the mechanics go, this is a straight mobile-app store from top to bottom, from the web interface to the (not yet finalised) 35 per cent skimmed off the top. As far as apps go, this is new territory. Remember — the interfaces for these apps need to be drawn on paper by the users or printed on special cards.

This may sound like more of a nuisance than a feature, but in the demos I saw it wasn’t much of an obstacle. In the translation app, for example, you simple draw a series of buttons to serve as translation triggers, and no matter how sloppy or lopsided they are, they just work. The video poker app, which displayed adorable little cards on the pen’s screen during play, demanded a slightly more complicated paper interface, which worked seamlessly as well.

The trick will be for app developers — and Livescribe says there are thousands interested — to come up with novel ways to use this bizarre new interaction model. I mean, the way the Pulse can precisely read and distinguish marks on its dot paper means that a developer could theoretically design any interface they wanted, from the playful and literal — I was shown a crudely sketched guitar that could play back various chords — to the abstract — users could simply be asked to draw and assign their own buttons in whatever style they want. This, combined the the Pulse’s audio recording, text recording and handwriting recognition, makes for an unfamiliar, but potentially very powerful, set of tools. Speaking of which, back to the store:

It’s in beta now, but it’s launched with a healthy selection of apps to sample, mostly ranging from free to about $US10. (With one $US100 exception.) Apps are run in a Java virtual machine and built using a spanking new SDK available for free here. Anyone who has a Pulse can access the store now, though you may need to upgrade your pen’s firmware. [Livescribe]

[Strapya via Technabob via Dvice]

Loaded with an OLED display and an incredible 64MB of storage (further expandable via MicroSD), you simply run the pen (lengthwise) over text and colour images to capture them at 600dpi. But to simplify matters even more, you can either unload images to a PC through USB, or you can just transfer shots to whatever device you’d like over Bluetooth.

According to DVICE, the quality was surprisingly good in testing, though for $US369, it had better be. [PlanOn via DVICE]

For the unfamiliar, Livescribe’s pens record your written word thanks to a tiny on board camera. The cameras also allows the user to interact with special Livescribe notebooks that have Play and record “buttons” printed on their pages. Spoken word is captured by a microphone.

According to the folks at Livescribe, the 4GB model is capable of recording 400 hours of audio. Or, if you’re the kind of person who likes playing with your pen, the Pulse can also hold a number of proprietary applications from categories like entertainment (because pens are, by their nature, incredibly fun), educational tools and productivity software. The apps become available “later this year,” when Livescribe says their app store open for business.

The magic pens aren’t cheap, with the 2GB model going for $US170 and the larger 4GB model going for $US200. The new colour is “titanium,” by the way.

At last, the $US4 The Bank Job Pen fulfils that little part of your brain that’s always wanted to walk into a bank, cut the pens away with the assistance of jaws of life and a team of 10 or so highly tactical masked vigilantes, peel out in a getaway car and sell the goods on the black (ink) market.

The story will make you the coolest kid in Mrs. Winger’s third grade English class. Guaranteed. [Perpetual Kid via The Green Head]

This fancy pen has a small mic and a tiny earpiece, letting it function as a mobile phone that’s difficult to detect in class. Of course, you need to whisper in it, which is inherently risky, but not impossible to pull off. What’s really going to be foolproof is the next generation of these things, a pen that streams live video from whatever the pen is looking at over the web. Combine that with that tiny earpiece and you’ve got a pretty foolproof way to stay in touch with someone with a Wikipedia connection and a vested interest in you passing that stupid class. [Mobilewhack via Ubergizmo]

Wacom has just released their newest pen tablet, the Intuos4, with features that are sure to interest any aspiring digital artist. If you fall in that category, PC Magazine thinks you won’t be disappointed.

While it doesn’t compare to the Cintiq in terms of functionality, it also doesn’t carry the hefty price tag. For $US230 to $US790, Intuos4 users get a pad that features 2,048 pressure levels (with a starting pressure of one gram) and a software bundle that includes Colour Efex Pro and any two of the following programs: Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 for the PC (or Elements 6 for the Mac), Autodesk SketchBook Express 2010, and Corel Painter Sketch Pad. Essentially, the Intuos4 occupies that spot between the low end Bamboo and the high end Cintiq for users that need more than a basic tablet but are not ready to spring $US1000+ for the best of the best. [PC Magazine]

In order for the system to work, a receiver must be placed on top of the screen to capture pen movements, but the result is a decent-sized screen for your doodles. That sounds like a pretty handy device for around $US104. [Hanwha via Akihabara News]

These little robots attach themselves to your wall with suction cups, and guard pens, toothbrushes and other skinny pole-like objects. No not that one. [Mookie Gifts via Nerd Approved]