APEN: A pen that digitalizes your writing.

Recording anything in a digital format is always the best way, not only to preserve data but also to make it portable. Ever wondered if you could save hand written notes or hand written notes on your digital photos straight to your mobile phone or your computer in real time? An Israeli company, Pegasus Technologies Ltd has made it possible by what is called APEN.

APEN is basically a standard shaped digital pen ­that also writes on paper and comes with a transmitter and easy to use software for PC, Mac and popular smartphone devices.

A Silver Ballpoint Pen to Draw Functional Electronic Circuits on Paper

Wouldn't it be fun if you could make working circuits on paper by just drawing them on  that paper? That's what Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have made possible. A  new type of liquid metal ink that stays liquid in a pen, but dries after being applied to paper, wood or any other writable surface.

The pen looks like a Ball point pen and in fact writes like a silver colored ball pen, except that it has a real silver solution in it. The silver solution dries to leave electrically conductive silver pathways. These pathways maintain their conductivity through multiple bends and folds of the paper. This enables users to personally fabricate low cost, flexible and disposable electronic devices.

Flexible array of LEDs mounted on paper over a circuit drawn with the Conductive silver pen