Digital Practice of Law

Searching "Pictures" and Cell Phone OCR

Xerox Tech Indexes Images, Turns Cell Cameras Into Scanners.  "Xerox Corp.'s research departments have made public two imaging technologies, including a new image indexing service and technology that could turn a mobile phone into a document scanner.  Like its other research discoveries, Xerox and its scientists are trying to license the technology to other interested parties, for a fee. Naturally, Xerox has developed technologies that take advantage of the imaging technology the company helped pioneer. On Tuesday, Xerox will unveil its second technology, an "image dictionary" that attempts to identify the subject of a picture from the picture itself, without any clues hidden in the title or other metadata. On Monday, the company disclosed a method by which a camera embedded in a cell phone could be optimized to send images back to the server for optical character recognition, essentially turning the phone into a scanner. . . "

Google Adds More Search Features

Google continues its dominent ways with the addition of the the following search areas:

"Parcel tracking IDs, patents and other specialized numbers can be entered into Google's search box for quick access to information about them. For example, typing a FedEx tracking number will return the latest information on your package. Other special search by number types include :

• UPS tracking numbers example search: "1Z9999W999999999"
• FedEx tracking numbers example search: "999999999999"
• USPS tracking numbers example search: "9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 99"
• Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers example search: "AAAAA999A9AA99999"
• UPC codes example search: "073333531084"
• Telephone area codes example search: "650"
• Patent numbers example search: "patent 5123123"
Remember to put the word "patent" before your patent number.
• FAA airplane
registration numbers example search: "n199ua"
An airplane's FAA registration number is typically printed on its tail.
• FCC equipment IDs example search: "fcc B4Z-34009-PIR"
Remember to put the word "fcc" before the equipment ID."

Comment: Broadens your search capability for various litigation support and factual research projects.

OCR - OmniPage Pro 14 Released

Just Released: OmniPage Pro 14 - Works with your scanner to convert paper documents into digital files you can edit in the format of your choice, including Microsoft Word and Excel.

You can also turn PDF files into into Microsoft Office files (or any one of 20 other formats) that you can then edit. This new version of OmniPage also offers PDF Output, so now you can turn paper documents into PDF image files, which are then searchable by keyword and can be viewed by anyone with a PDF viewer.

Other Features:

- Voice Read Back – The Voice Read Back functionality literally reads your recognized text for you so that you don’t have to proof your documents visually.
- Correct Words by Voice – allows you to correct words by voice instead of typing text – proofing is now faster than ever!
- Turn Articles into Audio Files – you can scan in the article, convert it to an audio file, burn it to a CD, and listen to it in your car on the way to work.
- Vertical Dictionaries – In addition to Legal and Medical dictionaries, new version includes a Financial dictionary.
- Double Page Scanning – you can scan 2 pages of a book in one pass, with each page saved as separate output.