For centuries, we'vebelieved life holds only two certainties, death and taxes. Get ready for number three: sooner or later, everything goes digital.
Proof of this new certainty comes from Anoto, a Swedish start-up that has developed a digital version of an ancient product - paper. Digital paper looks and feels like ordinary paper - it even makes the same noise as ordinary paper if you scrunch it into a ball. But, if you hold digital paper next to paper from a printer or a photocopier, you'll notice it looks grey.
Digital paper is ordinary white paper but with one difference: it's covered in billions of black dots. The human eye sees the combination of tiny black dots and white paper as a soft grey tinge. Digital paper's partner, the digital pen, sees something different. It consists of a ballpoint pen, a tiny digital camera that takes 100 photos a second, and a tiny computer that performs 100 calculations a second. The instant the pen touches the paper, a sensor switches on the camera and the computer.
The camera does not see the dots one at a time - it sees a series of minuscule grids. As you write, the computer calculates a grid co-ordinate for each dot the camera passes over. When you've finished, the computer converts the string of grid co-ordinates into a digital image. Place the pen in a USB cradle attached to your personal computer, and within seconds, via optical character recognition software, what you've written appears on your screen, ready for export to an e-mail package or Microsoft Word.
In other words, it's made for people who take lots of notes - students, journalist, medical professionals or business people who attend umpteen meetings. It eliminates the need to type up jottings, and quickly stores information in two places (the paper and on your hard drive). Still, those who fit into the above categories should not rush to the local stationer or search the web for Anoto products; there aren't any. After almost a decade perfecting the hardware and software for digital paper and pens, Anoto decided not to manufacture or sell anything under its own name, licensing the technology to better known brands, such as the American company 3M, the originator of those ubiquitous yellow Post-it notes. The digital paper version hits the market this year.
In the UK, the best known licensee is Filofax, which will offer a digital paper organiser compatible with Microsoft Outlook. Write an appointment in the organiser's diary section, and the pen transfers the information to Outlook's calendar section. Write someone's contact details in the address book, and they're transferred to the contact section of Outlook. Items written in the organiser's to-do list transfer to Outlook's task section.
Prices are not yet available for all the paper products but on the Filofax website a block of 48 pages of digital notepaper costs £3.95. Digital pen licensees include Logitech and Nokia, who got involved because Anoto developed a way to transfer data from the pens to a mobile and then to another phone or a computer.
A few notes of caution about the pens, however. They're fat, and to work properly they must be held almost perpendicular to the paper. The pen's memory holds 100 A5 pages of text, but needs a recharge after two hours of writing. You can only write in block capitals and the software needs a few practice runs before it's fully "comfortable" with your handwriting. Prices start at £140 and rise to £200.
The most intriguing Anoto licensee is the Swedish Post Office and its digital postcards. Say you're a sun starved Swede about to fly to Mexico. Before you go, visit your local post office and purchase some digital paper postcards, complete with scenes of Cancun. In Cancun, with your digital pen, write a few lines on one of the postcards for Auntie Ingrid back in Uppsala. Be sure to include her address.
Via your mobile, send what you've written to a printing plant outside Stockholm. The plant prints the card; picture on one side and text in your handwriting on the other, along with a first class stamp. The post office delivers the card and Auntie Ingrid knows you're thinking about her.
