Hand-held scanner

Computer giants Hewlett-Packard have released a new hand-held scanner that is as easy to use as a kitchen sponge. The scanner uses the scanned document's texture as a road map and its optical sensors track the location. Wiping its flat edge across a page a few times is enough for its microprocessor to reconstruct the whole picture. These can then be transmitted to a computer. The device can hold up to 50 pages in its memory ( Communications of the ACM , Vol 41, No 12).