Diary of a Mad Editor

Japanese researchers at Tokyo University have developed a new scanner that can take 500 pictures per second and scan printed pages as pages are flipped. According to professor Masatoshi Ishikawa:

"As it can film while understanding the underlying shape, it’s very easy to then take the pages that are being scanned and save them as a normal flat copy."

The current system is able to scan an average 200-250 page book in a little over 60 seconds using basic computer hardware that is available off-the-shelf.

While it now requires extra time to process the scanned images, the researchers hope to eventually make the technology both faster and much smaller.

"In the more the distant future, once it becomes possible to put all of this processing on one chip and then put that in a iPad or iPod, one could scan just using that chip. At that point, it becomes possible to scan something quickly to save for later reading."

I’ve been talking about this kind of technology for ten year — the ability to scan books quickly, if not instantaneously and how that could fuel better print-on-demand processes in the future. Seriously, how would you like to have that scanner as part of your office supplies? Technology is changing publishing faster than publishers can adapt to the changes.