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59 Comments
- rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11does it come with a set of Ginsu knives? ;-)
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8No no... I meant "conspicuous..." because I would use it to pick up chicks!
(ok, you got me... I actually meant "inconspicuous") - elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I assume you mean INconspicuous.
It changes the entire meaning of what you say. - kendawg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6woah now, slow down!
it's more like 1 page every 2 seconds, not 30 per second. - Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I'd give it three years, and both Sony and Apple will have eBooks that use e-Ink that will be selling by the bucket load, becuase of the amount of books you could easily access on the road with one device. They'll both have online book stores, and people will buy books there, becuase the books will be cheaper to buy, no trees will be felled and the books will be far easier to find, and quicker to get!
- p9s50W5k4GUD2c6, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Great idea.
"And your's too for ONLY: $3,499 USD! But wait! If you call now..." - liquidcoooled, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Rasterbator that sounds like a horrendous way to scan a book.
It might be a pain to manually turn the pages of a book, but I would rather that than your destructive approach.
Books contain all our knowledge and if handled carefully will outlast you and I and many other generations, something I wouldn't trust to a cdrom or hard drive. - MxxCon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5that article and page have inaccurate info.
that device REALISTICALLY can not scan 1800pages per hour.
that's the speed camera can take pictures at, not actual complete scanning process. - Guspaz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Umm, this device involves turning the pages yourself, by HAND, and snapping PICTURES of the pages with a digital camera. Does anybody else think that this thing is useless? Instead of an automated machine that can do the scanning itself (so that one person can have several books being scanned at the same time), this one requires you to sit in front of it, turning the pages and snapping photos as you go.
This thing is really just a $3500 book holder that comes with some software to automate the cropping and naming of files. What a ripoff. - fartingbob, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Why would individuals need it though? Surely you dont have that many old books that require scanning? because 1000 pages per hour will do most peoples entire book collection in a day or 2, then you have a nice $3500 scanner which will get used very occasionally. The way i see it, only libraries / universities and organisations that have large volumes of paper files will need this.
But maybe im wrong. - david76, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Bookdrive > http://atiz.com/bookdrive.php
Automatic page turning and scanning. Now THAT's cool. The whole DIY rig, aka a copy stand, has been used to capture printed photos to film for ages. - noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Any specific electronic copy is less likely to survive than the dead-tree version. Nice thing about digital is that you can *back up* and *copy* the thing as much as you like. If you're allowed to of course....
But my point stands. This is "safety in numbers" and copiability.... though speaking personally, I wouldn't want to destroy the original books either. Wonder how hard it would be to design a reliable "sucker" mechanism to turn the pages automatically and reliably.... (hang on, as I type this I just noticed that mgsloan has already said the same thing). - teh_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Speed isn't everything is it?
Here's the Lego version:
http://www.geocities.jp/takascience/lego/fabs_en.html - mgsloan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Very simply, its called OCR. With a good OCR app and a good quality image, converting to text shouldn't be too hard.
Its not possible to 'scan to pdf', and if you did it would result in pdf pages of images, however some OCR programs can export to pdf. - rm999, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Looks like i could make one for 20$ minus the camera."
How would you turn the pages? That's the difficult part. If you rip or damage a page you could potentially be destroying a book worth thousands of dollars. - liquidcoooled, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3troll, kend is right, 1 page every two seconds maximum, the pages are still turned and positioned manually by the human operator (thankfully, I would never trust a machine to this job...)
- Guspaz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Remind me how taking pictures of a book with a camera "will be ban", and how that has anything to do with ripping digital audio discs (which, whatever you might think, is not "ban").
- solidcube, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Some guy made one of these out of legos. Not near as fast. But hey, it was legos.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Looks like i could make one for 20$ minus the camera.
- BlackPhantom, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Okay, get a few of these to scan the whole library, then input the data in to a database so users not only search the description, tile, author etc... of a book (Using the library database) but also for words within the books the library holds.
- Mynnx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Another thing I just noticed about this "machine" is that it uses ordinary (Canon) digital cameras...mechanical cameras that have a fixed lifetime. After a couple hundred books, this assembly would need a brand new camera as a result of the physical wear of snapping 100k+ shots...I think...
- mgsloan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Good lord, my respect for diggers just dropped yet another notch.
- fifrenzy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Someone should buy one of these and start scanning college text books and share them over bittorrent so I don't have to spend $400 per semester on books that I read a chapter out of.
- noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@mgsloan; I have some simple but useful software that came with my scanner, which lets you scan multiple pages into a single PDF.
Although the pages (and hence text) are saved using what appears to be JPEG compression, it still does some automatic (and fairly crude) OCR of the text. This lets you search on a word and it finds (and highlights) the word in the document. Even though the word appears to be a graphic, we can assume there is some textual representation derived from the OCR also being stored.
Unfortunately, because it's a simple program and the OCR is automatic and behind-the-scenes, it's not tweakable and misses lots of words. Point is, "graphical" scans can be searchable if you have the right software. - cybersamurai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1www.books.google.com
- KJSatz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Cool scanner...but 1800 pages per hour sounds like more than it is. Marketing at work, I guess, but I call it a page every other second.
- sheppoor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2As rasterbator said above: cut the spine. This isn't a solution for rare books, but it is fast and efficient. There are plenty of 1800-3600 sheets per hour duplex scanners (comes to 30-60 duplex pages per minute, or 60-120 sides per minute), although the specs are typically lower when you are capturing full images. Also don't forget the OCR time, and the time to manually correct issues when the OCR software gets confused.
There are some truly awesome fast machines out there - check out http://www.drs.co.uk/pdf/PS900%20spec%20sheet%20v0105.pdf (pdf warning) which is 4800 sheets per hour or 160 sides per minute, and http://www.pearsonncs.com/imaging/5000i.htm which is up to 150 pages per minute, or 300 sides per minute. Both are designed for OMR (bubble tests) but do a great job with images. I'm particularly a fan of the first company. There are others, but these are the two I know the best. - noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If you have a moderate amount of patience, you can do that with an existing scanner and the appropriate software anyway; it's just a bit slower, depending on the level of quality you want.
- rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6All of the books printed today are printed form digital files (since the 80s). So this would be useful only for books printed prior to the establishment of desktop publishing. For having to turn pages by hand, not good. If someone could design a feeder, then you could just cut the book at the spine and feed the pages into position for digital capture. Feed them through once per side, and then collate the pages in layout program and save an archival high resolution PDF.
- toadster123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0it seems like the dude who made the automatic book scanner out of legos and a flatbead scanner [some what of a english translation found here: http://www.geocities.jp/takascience/lego/fabs_en.html] already did a pretty darn good job (with alot less money)...
i wonder what you could do by combining both these ideas (the digital cameras the page turning and stuff with legos) ... seems like u could make ur own high-speed automatic book scanner for alot less than $3,500 .. and it flips pages by itself...
for the software part.. there already is OCR software out there obviously.. is just doesn't seem to do that good of a job alot of the time.. cropping the picture and naming the files can easily be done automatically with freeware..
so basically what i am saying is the dude who made the lego scanner could just add camera mounts instead of using a scanner, add the 'shades' and 'smart lamps' and you would have something better than the BookDrive DIY for alot less money if u actually 'Do-It-Yourself'.. and by better i mean that you dont have to flip the pages yourself..
maybe??? possible?? - Solidcell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Still would take forever at my University Library, 6 huge stories. Pq takes a wing by itself. I'd hate to be the guy in charge of that task.
- sbovisjb1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2This is awsome!!! ppl like the DCF will the pirating e-books like this in no time!!! with a few Mods, this baby could be copying the latest books, comics and other hardcopy data in seconds this would make it soooooooo easy for the scanning communtiy to become full blown. THANK YOU!!!
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6If it was battery-powered, and conspicuous... I might use it to browse my campus bookstore every once-in-a-while... ;)
- technorues, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Surely many people could build one like that. Just like you could build your own desk and cook your own food for a lot less money than you can get from the market.
That because you didn't factor in the cost of your time. Once you realize that your time and effort should be spent on sth. rather than building a desk, then you realize it's better for you to go shop at IKEA.
Average librarians are not geeks, so they would rather buy it than going through sourcing, manufacturing, and software work to be able to scan books.
But yes, they should bring out an automated one. - mgsloan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This is a pretty dumb automated book scanner. I suppose it might be a nice base for a true automated book scanner, and it would allow for quality images. I think that a software approach to quality images is what is really required. Vectorize line drawings, touch up images, automatically undistort picture, OCR the text, and combine into a quality document format (ODF).
A cheap page turner should be possible, just basically a suction thing mounted on a spring loaded pivot with forward/back movement and rotation around the book spine. Could hack one up with some servos and a vaccum cleaner. Pages aren't that hard to lift, so you could probably have a small sucker area (so only a bit of in-out is needed), and lower the power on the vaccum (and thus noise). - johnas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I have a visually impaired family member who could really benefit from this. While we have assistive technologies that make brailleing and scanning documents easy, this would be great for digitizing books and things that he has created.
- brandonr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Scanning in books is only about 10% of the work. The rest is correcting the image to text errors, getting line numbers in the right order, and converting to different formats. If the software used to actually process the book into a digital format were better this device would be useful.
- fume, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2one of the harvard schools i use to work for was planning on getting this scanner for $150,000
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/bown/2003/article/0,18881,537110,00.html - Sabin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Very nice for scanning bound documents. I don't know much about book scanners but the Xerox Nuvera 120 is capable of 7200 scans per hour to pdf if you are willing to unbind the document.
- BlackPhantom, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Yes as out of print books can be converted into digital format as the original digital versions may have been lost too.
- Warrzie, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3You have to turn the pages yourself. What is this, the stone age?
- mojaam, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Sounds really cool, they should have some kind of movie or flash animation showing it at work.
- vuedoo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I am wondering how Google is doing it to develop the product for Google Book Search? You can use this tool to do full text search in the original version of the printed book, (not e-book version), so if you need to footnote a thesis or research paper you have the correct information.
- vranghel, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2IRex (http://www.irextechnologies.com/home.htm) already has such a device scheduled to go on sale this month(hopefully). E-ink is already here.
- Egoist, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1PDF will be more likely, and text is searchable in PDFs.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5In Soviet Russia book scan you!!!
- cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1"This would be extremely useful for libraries and companies seeking to put out of print books online."
Really? - trollenlord, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Interesting. I was expecting for a lot more expensive device. If that really works I have to keep in mind that such devices exist. You can actually put in a book, not just detached pages. That's very nice.
- fmayson, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I'd like to see Kellogg's "Eggo" division build a waffle maker out of Lego's. Just for kicks.
- yourwar, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I'll sit at home and scan my books page for page on my ordinary scanner before I spend 3-5k on a machine that does it for me.
Then I will get that 3-5k I just saved and buy a suped up Alienware laptop. -
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