Better Production Ideas

LiveScribe''s Pulse Smartpen uses a camera just under and behind the pen to capture each stroke as you write.

It's that time of the year again when companies begin flooding the airwaves with items designed to draw out your credit card for holiday spending. While much of it can be passed over by anyone determined to keep their focus on business needs, some gear looks innovative enough to be useful any time of the year.

Take the Eye-Fi Explore as a good example. Last fall, the original Eye-Fi (eye.fi) card caught attention as the world's first wireless SD memory card for digital cameras. Without taking it out of the camera, the card could connect to a local Wi-Fi network and upload images. That seemed useful — perhaps for location scouting. But it was rather limited; the card couldn't access wireless networks that required password authentification, for example, such as at an airport or coffee shop.

With the release of Eye-Fi Explore, users now not only have easy access to some 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots via provider Wayport, but the new card also uses Skyhook Wireless' technology to automatically geotag your images with the location of whatever wireless upload site you use.

While such new technology for uploading still images could help organize a shoot, what about all those receipts you collected while on location? A new scanner and software combo designed for just that task might help. Created by The Neat Company (neatco.com), the NeatDesk desktop automatic document feeder (ADF) is a compact device that sits upright on a desk, with unique features including three slots for cash register-style receipts, business cards, and standard sheets of paper.

The idea: get rid of paper-based info as soon as possible, and integrate it with other programs such as Microsoft Excel and Intuit Quicken. To that end, the bundled NeatWorks software (Mac and PC) automatically identifies and organizes various document types, according to the company.

Don't want to be bothered with using a scanner and learning new software? Shoeboxed (shoeboxed.com) allows you to just toss receipts into one of their prepaid envelopes — don't bother sorting. After the company has them in hand, the receipts are scanned and posted on a secure part of its website for downloading in various formats.

A similar approach comes from ScanCafe (scancafe.com), but this time for your old slides, prints, and negatives. Again, instead of worrying about presorting, the company allows you to just dump everything into an envelope or box, and it'll scan, color-correct, dust-bust, and post the results online. ScanCafe's twist is that you can preview everything online, delete what you don't want, and pay for the rest (you do have to buy at least 50 percent of what the company scans). If you're concerned about quality, you can pay a bit more per scan for 4000dpi resolution.

Finally, one gadget: the LiveScribe Pulse Smartpen (livescribe.com), a combo computer and pen — might be just the thing to take on your next documentary or news shoot. The Smartpen uses a camera just under and behind the pen to watch as you write on custom microdot paper. Not only is each stroke and notation captured, but it also records surprisingly good quality audio (via a binaural headset) at the same time. While you can transfer your notes to a computer, the useful part is that you can also go back to the notebook, tap on it anywhere, and the audio created at that moment plays back. No more missed quotes.