"Suddenly???"

1998? I had a GPS for several years by then, and my buddies had LORAN even before that. How could anyone patent the notion of "display[ing] information specific to the location the device is in," after consumer devices have been doing it for years, and military/commercial devices doing it for decades?

I'm on my second LiveScribe pen (Pulse this time, lost the Echo) and my wife just one for herself. I use it ten hours a week at work in various meetings. So much more pleasant than a laptop (and I am not bashful about taking a laptop to a meeting when it's useful), more expressive, audio recording indexed to each word you write. Couple that with Evernote, and you're in business.

The only downside is that ink and audio is all you've got until you dock. It would be KILLER if you could dock to an iPad or Android on the go.

...officials at the Institute for Medical and Biological Problems praised the experiment as a success and promised to conduct a 500-day simulation experiment later this year...

Nice trick. Maybe they rented 100 capsules for a week...