Thursday, April 4, 2013
Scanner Mouse
You may recall, back at CES, we got our hands on LGs LSM-100 mouse scanner and were able to try it out for ourselves. Well it appears that you may have that same opportunity soon. The company has announced that it will be "opening a new era for scanners" at IFA in a few days with its mouse that boasts a built-in scanner. Simply by holding the Smart Scan button, youll be able to save or drag and drop scanned images as large as A3 paper size in a variety of formats -- PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and PDF, just to name a few -- by swiping the mouse over it. If that wasnt enough to entice you, the peripheral also features Optical Character Recognition that converts text from said images into an editable Word document. Perhaps lost in all this is the fully functioning mouse bit... which youll probably need as well. No word yet on pricing or availability, but hopefully soon, youll have room on your desk for one of these.
Update: Apparently this bad boy is already available the UK for £89.98 (around $148), via the coverage link below. Also, we added a promo video from the folks at LG showing the peripheral in action -- which you can check out after the break.
We just made our way to the LG booth here at the Consumer Electronics Show and found this multifaceted gizmo that the company is dubbing the Scanner Mouse. It does exactly what you think -- works as a mouse and scanner. You might recall something similar from back in the day, but LG is looking to commercialize the idea. The bottom of the rodent has a clear (glass or plastic sheet, were not sure) packed with five LEDs for the camera to see the image being reflected off of the mirror inside. To kickstart the scanning process on a Widows or Mac machine, you simply press the scan button and huzzah -- the software will activate and display the area the scanner is hovering over. Thanks to the dual lasers found on the top and bottom of the underside, you can actually rotate the mouse in any direction and itll pick up whatever its looking at -- itll even translate copy on a page into editable text within a document editor. It also functions as a proper mouse (duh!), featuring a scroll wheel as well as left, right and back buttons. The software, in case you were wondering, couldnt be any simpler to use. Formats such as JPEG, TIFF, PDF and PNG are exportable to your favorite social networks, and youve got basic editing functions to make your scans just right. Head on past the break to see an in-action demo.
