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TECH SUPPORT desk to get the basic operating charac- teristics down. Ever since then, it's been clear sailing." Anderson was also impressed by how simple the system was to implement and how easy it is to manage. "When I look at all the technology products we support, this one is a long way from the most painful," he says. The impetus for the project came from the lawyers and the firm's director of oper- ations who brought it to Anderson when they realized digital transcription was the wave of the future. Before that, dictation had been analog so outside his purview. The firm hired a consultant, Vancouver- based Speakeasy Solutions Inc., a special- ist in digital dictation/transcription and speech recognition systems. "They were pretty good — they held our hands from Day 1. It was easy to install the software, and it doesn't require much [computing] horsepower," says Anderson. The implementation was done remotely by Speakeasy technicians in Vancouver. It took about an hour, says Anderson. Consultants trained users in web conferences. "They did a good job." The Winnipeg firm started piloting the Olympus system in 2006 with a few lawyers using it. By 2009, it was virtually firm-wide, with about 65 of its 75 to 80 lawyers using it. Some of the younger lawyers who are adept at the keyboard rarely if ever dictate so don't need it. To equip a team of lawyer and assis- tant, a firm needs to purchase one dicta- tion kit and one transcription kit. The LIVESCRIBE ECHO SMARTPEN T horoughly modern lawyers may already be scratching their heads, wondering why anyone would want to dictate when they can type. They'll be even more baffl ed as we turn to the Livescribe Inc. Echo Smartpen, another technology for converting analog content to digital. Livescribe has been making its digital smartpens for a few years. They function as regular old pens with ballpoint nibs. But if you write on paper specially printed with a superfi ne grid of dots, the pen uses a patented infrared sensing system to record everything you write as graphics in on-board memory — which you can later transfer to a PC or Mac over the included USB cable. Livescribe, predictably, sells the paper in several notebook forms and sizes, but you can also print it yourself if you have a colour laser printer of suffi ciently high resolution (600 dpi). The pen includes desktop software for PC and Mac for receiving and displaying notebook pages. The Echo pen is the latest incarnation of Livescribe's technology and something of a break- through. It off ers an improved form factor — a pleasingly fat shaft with a rubbery grip — and adds audio recording, third-party "apps," and, through one optional third-party app, handwriting recognition. It also incorporates a refi ned and improved version of Livescribe's unique touch interface. You control the pen by tapping preprinted or even hand-drawn graphics on notebook pages. For example, to control the pen's audio recording features, you tap with the pen point on printed record, pause, and stop "buttons." One of the really cool capabilities is that you can take handwritten notes — at a discovery, for example — and also record audio simultaneously. The built-in micro- phone is reasonably sensitive; the audio quality surprisingly good. The cool part is that later you can jump to exactly the part of the recording you want to hear by tapping in that part of the notes you took. The Echo Smartpen comes in three versions with varying amounts of on-board memory: 2GB ($129), 4GB ($169), 8GB ($199). The add-on handwriting recognition software, which also worked surprisingly well in our limited testing, is $29.95 from Vision Objects. — GB ntitled-4 1 28 NO VEMBER / DECEMBER 2010 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com 10/20/10 4:15:52 PM Gadget Watch