Livescribe, We Want The Developer’s Program Back!

As most of us know, back in July 2011, Livescribe closed their Developer’s Program citing a change in company policy aligning them with a new cloud initiative.

As of July 29th, Livescribe will close its third-party developer program. With cloud technology and mobile information access becoming increasingly important to our customers, Livescribe is realigning its focus and resources on cloud access, storage and services. Our recent introduction of Livescribe Connect, which enables customers to easily send notes and audio, as a pencast PDF, to people or destinations of their choice like Google Docs, Evernote, email, and Facebook, is an important step in this direction.

Applications in our online store will remain available for download and purchase pending compatibility with future Livescribe software updates. We will continue to accept applications submitted for publishing in our online store, as well as pattern credit requests through July 22nd. At this time, the SDKs and developer website will no longer be available. If your application is close to completion and you would like to have it posted in our store, please contact us at[email protected] for support.

We greatly appreciate the time, effort and support you have given to Livescribe and our platform over the past three years.

Thank you again for your contributions.

Sincerely,

Joyce & Michael, Livescribe Developer Programs Team

Byron Connell, Livescribe CMO

The full announcement is available on Livescribe’s website here: http://www.livescribe.com/errors/developer.html As one of the major custom paper developers, I was rather disappointed with Livescribe’s decision as Livescribe’s platform is one that I have greatly enjoyed developing for. I get between 4-5 thousand page views a month on this website and at least half of those are from people who are interested in using my custom paper products. Within the weeks that followed, I saw many, many forum posts, emails, and comments on this website all filled with one message:

I’m a new Smartpen user. Now that Livescribe’s closed the Developer Program, is it over? Am I too late to join in and use Custom Paper?

The preceding is my paraphrased version of several Private Messages sent to me through the Livescribe Forums. Unfortunately a recent forum overhaul has prevented me from accessing any of those Private Messages and I was forced to paraphrase from my memory. At first, I was forced to tell them that yes, they were too late. But that soon changed with the release of my Custom Paper Deployment Tool. Since then, I have been getting many requests from users to develop different kinds of custom paper including music staff paper and I have been forced to tell them that I cannot simply because I do not have access to any additional pattern license. I have been directing users to this thread on Livescribe’s Get Satisfaction page: http://getsatisfaction.com/livescribe/topics/tommy-1l7gjj and asking them to add their voices to the people asking Livescribe to bring the Developer’s Program back. Jeff, a member of Livescribe’s customer support team is working internally to make sure that people inside Livescribe know that we want this. If you want the Developer’s Program back, which will allow the creation of additional applications and custom paper products, please go here: http://getsatisfaction.com/livescribe/topics/tommy-1l7gjj and tell Livescribe that! The more people that voice this sentiment, the greater the chance that Livescribe will listen to us and bring back the Developer’s Program.

9 thoughts on “Livescribe, We Want The Developer’s Program Back!

  1. Martin Haagen

    Hi Rohan,

    I just wanted to thank you for your work with the Livescribe pens and the struggle to get the SDK back. I voiced my opinion at getsatisfaction.com. I also made a small donation for your which I hope will help you keeping the tools and papers online!

    Have a great 2012!

    /Martin

    Reply
    1. Rohan Kapoor

      Thanks Martin for voicing your interest and sending the donation. It will most definitely help with the ongoing costs of keeping everything online.

      Hope you have a great 2012 as well!

      Thanks,

      Rohan

      Reply
  2. @vampyre5

    Hello Rohan
    I am enthusiastic about tech stuff but still easily intimidated by it. The custom deployment tool worked first time and I am delighted. I got very brave and have activated the calculator card.
    I was wondering if there is any chance of a metric grid notebook, A5 size, 5mm squares? I did get a set from amazon but would love the print my own option. If they are there already I'm sorry but I just haven't found them.
    Many thanks for your work with the livescribe.
    Kiran

    Reply
    1. Rohan Kapoor

      Hi Kiran,

      I'm glad to hear that it worked well for you! As for the metric grid notebooks: unfortunately there are none of them with the print your own option (and as you can see above), Livescribe has closed the Developer's Program which would allow their creation. The only thing I can suggest is that you follow the link above and tell Livescribe that you want the Developer's Program to come back allowing the creation of such items.

      Reply
  3. goraek

    Hey Rohan,

    I'm sure you get asked this a ~lot~
    Did any copies of the Livescribe SDK make it out alive? living somewhere in the backwater pools that make up the internet?

    I've been trawling to see if any might have been leaked, with no success.

    I did find a way to access the developer forum (it's all still there). While it contains plenty of links for stand-alone LD desktop installers, no-one ever posted one for the SDK…

    any thoughts?

    Reply
  4. Nymph

    I read something about you working on something to work around the custom dot paper issue, but I can't seem to find that post anywhere. Any news on that?

    Reply
  5. Ian

    A new comment from the Director of Customer Service on the getsatisfaction.com post seems to imply an "Yes we hear you & No we do not care" attitude.

    JasonH – "… Yes, the Developer program that existed previously for the Pulse & Echo pens has been discontinued, and now Livescribe has shifted focus to leveraging the Evernote platform to work with limited partners with our mobile SDK to provide applications that integrate with Evernote. …"

    The SDK is also posted a few comments above (See the Krokman_21 comments), however without the livescribe servers, would we be able to use the SDK to program for the pen? Is it foolish to assume that like chipos81 (zork 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf0XAf8_mLI) we can upload our own programs to the pen for "testing"?

    Reply

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