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PROGRAM CONVERTS HANDWRITING TO WORD PROCESSOR

Ever since the dawn of Apple's now defunct Newton PDA, a machine able to transcribe handwriting into typewritten text has remained pretty much a dream. Today's popular PDAs like the Palm use a shorthand form of handwriting called Graffiti. It takes a while to learn because some letters and punctuation must be formed differently. The Palm also requires you to enter each letter in the same surface area rather than along side of each other. So instead of the natural movement from left to right as you write, your hand remains stationary as you overwrite each character. And of course, you must carry the PDA wherever you plan to use it. But now there's another way.

SoftWriting is a remarkable new program that reads handwriting in much the same fashion as OCR software scans typewritten text. With SoftWriting, you simply place your handwritten document into a scanner and watch your words appear typed into your word processor. You can even stylize your writing. For example, words you underline will appear as underlined typewritten text. Or you can instruct SoftWriting to apply most any style such as boldface or outline to anything you underline.

If you've drawn something such as arrows, a picture or anything else on your paper document that you don't want to be transcribed, you can instruct SoftWriting to keep it as a graphical image and move it into the final electronic document just as it appears on the scanned paper.

SoftWriting requires no training out of the box. As you continue to use the program, it continues to learn your handwriting and accuracy improves. All of this occurs in the background without requiring your attention. According to the company's CEO, SoftWriting uses a proprietary technique that metaphorically, extracts each character's DNA and is able to identify it even if it is formed differently. That's a good thing because we all know that even the same character will look a little different each time we write it. Claimed accuracy is around 98 percent. One thing you will have to learn is that each character you write must be disconnected from the others. You don't have to print although printing will work as well. You write cursively but just don't connect the letters. Downloadable from the Charactell web site, SoftWriting is fully functional for 14 days so you can try before you buy. If you like it, $59.95 buys the unlocking code. Requires Windows.

www.softwriting.com

New Firewire CD-RW drives are fast

Ready to burn your own CDs? No room in your computer to add a drive? Forget USB because it's too slow. Firewire is around 40 times faster and the new VeloCD (pronounced "Velocity") drive from TDK will burn your disks fast. Currently specs are 16x/10x/40x/40x which means it will write at 16 times, rewrite at 10 times, read at 40 times and rip songs from a music CD at 40 times. These speeds are impressive relative to other drives on the market, and TDK will be introducing one that writes at 24 times by next month. BURN-Proof technology is built in and insures a perfect CD even if the burning process is interrupted which would normally toast the disk. The external model works on both PC and Mac platforms and comes with burning software for both as well. The external Firewire drive's case is highly stylized and the electric blue 6 inch "light pipe" flickers when there's drive activity making the VeloCD a very cool drive to watch. $399.99.

www.TDK.com