Worth a thousand words

       If you ever scan a book or magazine page, you'll find that the result is a picture of the page, not words you can edit. To make that picture a set of words that can edited and searched,you need an Optical Character Recognition program (OCR), such as OmniPage, Abbyy FineReader or Iris.
       We just got a look at the new OmniPage Pro from Nuance, which is just out in version 17. It has some features that might make the $500(16,778 baht) sticker price easier to take. The Mac version is called OmniPage Pro X.
       The new version lets you upload multiple files much faster than previously and automatically adds clickable OCR commands to your Microsoft Office programs. It now recognises Chinese,Japanese and Korean. You can put a document on your scanner and a few seconds later have it sent to your Microsoft Sharepoint network in any format you want. It comes packaged with ScanSoft's PaperPort 11 and Nuance's own PDF maker. PaperPort is a marvellous way to quickly and easily organise anything that is scanned into the computer.
       The new OmniPage 17 can also convert scanned PDFs into the proprietary format used by Amazon's electronic book reader,Kindle and send them to the Kindle in one step.(If you have the new and larger Kindle DX, you can read PDFs without converting them.)
       Speaking of the Kindle, you can email PDFs to your Kindle without converting them but Amazon will charge you for this. To avoid the fee, email them to yourself at "name@free.kindle.com"where "name" is the name given to you as part of a special email address when you register your Kindle. If you're not sure what yours is, click on "Account" at Amazon and look at the Kindle section.
       Thwarting counterfeiters
       It's estimated that 10 percent of the prescription drugs sold worldwide are fakes.
       But if you could embed a tiny maker's tag in each pill, it could be checked for authenticity. In fact, at least one company has already done it. A company called Cellular Bioengineering has just come out with an edible micro-tag called a "TruTag."
       The TruTag is made from a porous silicon wafer that has been etched with identifying codes chosen from over a trillion possibilities. Unlike the RFID (radio frequency) tags that have come into common today, TruTags can be broken into pieces, or heated to 1,000 degrees and still retain their information.Even after being broken apart, each piece still contains all of its encoded information, much like a hologram.
       The technology has obvious applications beyond differentiating real pharmaceuticals from fake. Many products are counterfeited, from clothes to mechanical parts that could cause critical failure in some situations. More info at TruTags.com.
       Bing goes Cha Ching!
       If you buy things through Microsoft's Bing.com search engine, you can get up to 50 percent cash back on some items,like flowers and shoes.
       There are other sites that do this,such as ebates.com, but Microsoft is the only site that gives all of their sales commission back to the purchaser. We like Bing.com for other reasons, and one of them is the beautiful pictures that are changed every day.
       Washable keyboard and mouse
       The yuck factor in college dorms is pretty high these days. What with swine flu and other contagious diseases, you might want to give your college-bound child a washable computer keyboard.Joy took one look at all the crud that had accumulated in her current Hewlett Packard keyboard and decided she wanted a washable one.
       The new "SpillSeal" keyboard from Unotron has sealed casings that prevent food, drink or dust and dirt from entering the keyboard where they can't be flushed out. The company says you should either immerse the keyboard or mouse in a hospital-grade antibacterial solution or run tap water over it. We just use vinegar from the grocery store.
       Joy finds that she doesn't type quite as fast on this keyboard as she did on her HP,(the keys are a bit stiff) but the cleanliness makes it worthwhile. Bob would rather just cover his keyboard with a cloth when he's not using it.Unotron sells a corded version for $46 (1,543 baht) and a wireless version for $80(2,684 baht), the mouse runs from $50 to $60(1,677-2,013 baht). You can see a YouTube demo video at tinyurl.com/washkey. More info at unotrononline.com.
       If you have a Macbook, iPhone or Blackberry, you might want to check out iskin.com, which sells colourful silicon "skins" for your gadgets.
       Internuts
       switchgames.com is a new online trading site (US only) for swapping video games. You pay $6(600 baht) if your offer is accepted and you get a postagepaid shipping label.
       schmap.com/picks tells you what restaurants and bars are being recommended by Twitter users. It covers 11 US cities plus London and Sydney.The San Diego suggestions don't mesh with those of our man on the ground.Bob used to think the Old Town Mexican restaurant in San Diego's Old Town area was the best restaurant in the world.But our man in San Diego says it has really gone downhill. Other twitters say it's still tops.
       A virtual boomand bust
       If you think the current economic crisis is bad, wait till you've experienced it in the virtual world.
       According to a study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg Communications School, economic fluctuations are far more dramatic in online games than they are in the real world.
       Looking at the role-playing game Everquest, researchers discovered that inflation rose more than 50 percent in a five-month period. Such trends can be calculated because players in many online games can buy and sell items and powers.