this is a little blerb from a newsletter called "The Rapidly Changing Face of
Computing."  http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc


          Bud Kennedy

* Scan It Again, Sam --

        [Image] Scanners have become so common and so inexpensive these
        days that they're generally nothing to write home about. Even
        small handheld scanners can do a good job (assuming you can
        work around their cable's limitations and you can carefully
        align the several scans it takes to capture a full sheet of
        paper.) But that's about to change, because HP's new $699
        CapShare 910 (http://www.capshare.hp.com) dispenses with the
        wire (it will hold about 50 pages before sending them on to
        your PC via its infra red or serial port). And, most
        interesting to me, this monochrome scanner accommodates its
        human user, rather than the other way around.

        Let's say you're going to scan a standard page. Instead of
        (trying) to make sure that each stripe of the page you scan is
        parallel to the last one and just barely overlaps it, you just
        roll the CapShare around over the page in any random fashion!
        So long as you roll it over EVERY portion, regardless of when
        or in what direction, when you finish, the CapShare will
        instantly reconstitute the entire image -- seamlessly!

        The scanner did a fine job, but what REALLY impressed me was
        HP's use of processing power to do the difficult tasks of
        matching up the pieces of an image -- so that we humans didn't
        have to. Instead of coming up with a user interface that did a
        better job of cajoling us to "scan between the lines," they
        used processing power and "smarts" to make the "lines"
        irrelevant.

        As Moore's Law continues to make ever-more processing power
        ever-less expensive, there are tremendous opportunities to put
        it to use, as HP as done here, to put the "complexity burden"
        on the appliance and not on the user. I wouldn't be at all
        surprised to find that such innovative "user friendly" features
        make, or break, future computing appliances.


Bud Kennedy
email: [log in to unmask]


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