IRISPen
Robin Smith, representing IRIS USA, demonstrated the IRISPen. Robin mentioned that the company has 200 employees, is based in Britain, and is the European leader in optical character recognition (OCR) technology. The flagship software product is "ReadIRIS," which is bundled with many scanner models.

IRIS claims to have the best miniature scanning technology (pen scanner) in the universe. The IRISPen product includes a non-TWAIN compliant OCR application, the pen scanner drivers, and the slim, handheld pen scanner. The pen is just a little bigger than a standard yellow highlighter and is used very similarly to how one highlights a line of text on a printed page.

Robin said the instructions claim the pen's drivers do get installed automatically, but her experience indicates otherwise. She had to use Windows' "Add New Hardware" utility to make the drivers hook into the operating system.

The application is able to recognize bar codes, hand-printed letters, and regular type of almost any typeface in grey-scale or black and white. The application recognizes up to 54 distinct languages. The inherent problem is that your computer may not have all the special characters used by languages not local to you. The application also uses a translator—perhaps an add-on at extra cost. The OCR output can be to the clipboard or to any compliant text-editing application. By default, the OCR outputs, in real time, single lines of text correlating to the lines of text being scanned. It can be set, however, to buffer multiple lines and the buffer flushed on command. This permits whole paragraphs to be streamed into the editing application.

Robin also mentioned the application can scan images, but stitching the image strips into a recognizable image is difficult at best.

She said one use of this specific task is to scan in signatures. If one wishes to scan an image, perhaps using a guide or straight-edge can eliminate some of the irregularities that a hand scan produces. Because the pen scanner is hand-held, scanning speed must be constant. This skill comes with practice.

Robin did not know what the scanner resolution is, but indicated that the application can be configured to best recognize scanned material based on the point size of the type—8pt to 22pt. Robin attempted to scan a line at what was estimated to be 6 points and another line at 4 points. Results were "pretty good."

The application can also speak what was just recognized.

While the IRISPen application is not itself TWAIN-compliant, the package includes a 60-day demo of ReadIRIS that is TWAIN-compliant. The software pac–kage also includes "CardIRIS," an application that uses the pen to scan in business cards, the data being placed into a database automatically.

The USB interface makes the pen scanner easy to install, and IRIS says it can give improved reading of degraded dot-matrix documents, can read text on colored backgrounds, and can even read multiple lines at one time.

When used without the pen scanner, the software supports scanners with sheet-feeders and recognizes multi-page documents automatically.

Special prices are offered to user group members.

Mapping Products
SPCUG President Milt Hull compared and contrasted three mapping products: DeLorme's AAA Map 'n Go, DeLorme's Street Atlas USA, and Microsoft's Streets and Trips 2002.

DeLorme's AAA Map n' Go interfaces with your global positioning system (GPS) radio. The display can be zoomed in down to the street level. The AAA display includes indicators at freeway offramps (they look like a pink arrow in a round circle) called "exit services." For each exit service, the display will list the current establishments at that location: gas stations, restaurants, retail stores, etc. The trip planner function will plot and list a route for the quickest, shortest, or other parameters that the user may specify.

DeLorme's Street Atlas USA (De–Lorme has several products similar in nature) has the ability to log a trip in progress and later replay it on the map display. There is a voice feature that will say things like, "Turn right at the next exit."

Milt played a phrase he entered into the program using several of the various voices available. Presumably, once a trip has been logged, typed comments can be keyed to marked locations. Then, again presumably, the log can be given to another person who will replay and retrace the original route, complete with commentary, clues, and hints.

This application also includes a database of interesting sites and services, and can connect via the Internet to obtain the latest information on weather, road construction, and closures.

Microsoft's Streets and Trips 2002 has maps of the entire world but the finest of details are exclusive to the USA. (Perhaps buying this program in Portugal would have the finest details exclusive to that region.) Several views can be displayed: terrain map, flat street map, and even a political map. The application can filter services to match user-specified parameters: 4-star hotels, for example. The user can download custom sections of the entire database to a PDA running "Pocket Streets."

All three of these programs are now available on DVD-disk. Otherwise, on CD, the programs could occupy seven disks—there is so much information.