The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : A Pen-Sized Cure for Writer’s Cramp
For legions of college students and other information junkies, the lowly colored highlighter pen has long been a crucial information management tool. But now, this simplest of technologies is getting a digital twist.
The IRISPen, a unique single line scanner, is wielded just like a highlighter pen, but it enables you to transfer the material you want to highlight directly into whatever computer application is appropriate--word processor, spreadsheet, database or personal information manager, for instance.
That means you could scan research notes into your report, or information from a business card into your organizer program.
The base model IRISPen 3.0 is available for either Windows or Macintosh at $249, and an enhanced “executive” version for Windows only costs $349. These are newly introduced models of the Belgium-designed device that has been on sale in the U.S. for about two years and are available directly from manufacturer Image Recognition Integrated Systems in Boca Raton, Fla. ([800] 447-4744).
The IRISPen is 1 1/2 inches wide, seven-eights of an inch thick and 6 inches long, with a 6-foot cord--a little too stiff for my liking--connecting the pen to an adapter, which in turn connects to a printer port.
The scanning software is quite versatile. It works with a wide variety of fonts from 8 to 22 points (about 0.1 to 0.3 of an inch), recognizes the character sets for 11 languages, and can operate in alphanumeric or numeric-only modes. You can train it to recognize fonts that it has trouble with, which is important if you are going to be scanning the same kind of document frequently.
In addition to text and numbers, it can scan an image, allowing you to insert a small logo or even a signature into a document.
For an extra $100, the executive version has software enhancements that enable bar code reading, speech synthesis (it reads back what you scan if you have a computer with a sound card) and numeric handwriting recognition. It also comes with more linguistic databases.
The speech-synthesis feature is particularly useful for data-entry applications because you can hear whether there are errors.
Scanning segments from a textbook was easy. And it’s an excellent tool for scanning portions from a printed form into a database or spreadsheet, provided that the original form has good type quality.
The IRISPen comes with a 30-day, money-back guarantee. You need to give it a thorough test during that time to see if it can meet your particular scanning needs.
Business Computing welcomes your comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or message oreilly@latimes.com on the Internet.
