College student creates paper-based storage system (no, not that kind)

24-year-old Sainul Abideen thinks he's come up with an alternative to CDs and other data storage options that'll allow for greater storage capacities and be cheaper and biodegradable to boot, using a fancy printing technique he's devised to cram loads of data onto a plain old sheet of paper. The trick is to first convert the data into a so-called "Rainbow Format," which is made up of various geometric shapes that can be densely printed onto a sheet of paper; that can then be read by a computer or other device using a Rainbow Card Reader. From the sound of it, the system appears to be somewhat similar to QR Codes and other newfangled bar code-type technologies currently in use in parts of the world other than here, but Abideen's "Rainbow Versitile Disc" can apparently store far more amounts of data than those -- between 90 and 450GB, according to The Arab News. Demonstrations of the technology, however, seem to have only shown much smaller amounts of data being Rainbowfied, including a 45 second video clip and 432 pages of "foolscrap" being stored on a four-inch square piece of paper. Still pretty darn impressive if you ask us, and it sure looks a heckuva lot better hanging on a wall than a CD.

[Via The Register]

[Gil @ Nov 25th 2006 10:56AM]

"Currently, of the several options available for data storage, DVDs are the best mode. But a high quality DVD, which is very expensive"
I don't know... I can get a blank DVD for less than a euro and software publishers must be getting them even cheaper.

[Stephen Yuan @ Nov 25th 2006 3:11PM]

um...you can get 500 sheets of blank paper for 20 bucks in U.S. though.Ｉdon't know about Europe, but that's 5 cents a sheet of paper. That's approximately at least 12 to 20 times cheaper than a blank DVD(if you buck 50 DVDs together). That's pretty damn good~

[pcbuilderchris @ Nov 25th 2006 10:57AM]

I actually thought someone would do this down the line i know many have thought about it

but i was like okay use text and symbols to store data in a smaller form that can be recreated later but then i thought isnt that the same thing as digital anyway 010000 but this guy has it on paper so i can see how it is better but paper breaks down over tyme unless hes gonna elaminate it

[Mike @ Nov 25th 2006 11:03AM]

The whole reason why I use optical discs to store things is because it's a fairly safe way to archive data you don't want to lose. I can just imagine having a large project from work on a paper format and having coffee spilled on it or some other such thing.

"Ooops dear, I just needed some scrap paper. I hope you don't mind i used your doodles!"

On the other hand, this could be fantastic for pirating software, 5 cents a copy at the library!

[Grey Acumen @ Nov 26th 2006 1:48AM]

Thank you for summing up so completely my stance on this particular issue. Sure, I love the idea that you can add space that easily, but there's a reason we went from VHS to DVD, it wasn't an issue of storage as much as it was data preservation. The very issue of biodegradability that he's touting is the very reason that this will never be accepted.

Issues I see from the very beginning:

oops, the paper ripped, I just lost my entire 500 page story and the deadline is tomorrow.

ooops, there's a crease in the paper and now it can't be scanned in properly.

oops, the paper faded and now everything has color shifted towards yellow thereby corrupting my data completely.

ooops, my hands were greasy and it smudged my drawings, etc.

sorry, but in order to address any of these issues, you'll need a type of paper(not even mentioning the requirements of the printer and ink you'd need to be able to write any data) that will need aaaallll sorts of chemical treatments that will boost both your costs and totally invalidate the biodegradability issue.

Besides, even if you could get this to work, how the heck would you be able to make it rewritable? thanks, but I'll stick with my 80gb drive that I can take stuff off and put something new on. I don't need 500GB of space that I can never get rid of anything I put on.

[Josh @ Nov 25th 2006 11:18AM]

Plus paper doesn't burn so pretty in the microwave!

[fubar @ Nov 25th 2006 11:20AM]

Didn't Byte used to do something like this (much lower density, but still a coded digital storage on paper)?

Also, where did "foolscrap" come from?

[Xiete @ Nov 25th 2006 11:31AM]

Here's the new spokesman for the product.
http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2005/08/03/rvd.jpg

[dominic @ Nov 25th 2006 11:34AM]

foolscap not "foolscrap"

[Eric @ Nov 25th 2006 11:40AM]

Do you smell that.... oh yes, it's the wafting odor of BS.

Cheap and hundreds of times more dense than the DVD format.... yeah right. All you need to do is first convert all your data to "Rainbow Format". This is a scam to encourage environmentalists and technologists to invest money in research. I will basically guarantee that this will not hold up to peer review.

[Andrew Cooper @ Nov 25th 2006 12:01PM]

there must be some new printing technology to go along with this, so add a special printer to go along with that new scanner you'll add to your machine. Not to mention those damn ink cartriges. I 2nd the BS.

[David Smith @ Nov 25th 2006 12:04PM]

Absolute bullhockey. Just take a piece of paper size, multiply times the best printing technique; perhaps 300 pixels/inch and 256 distinguishable levels per location (remember - something that a scanner can read with no/low errors!). 9 x 12" = 108 sqin x 90,000d/sqin = nearly 10million locations with 1 byte of data (probably high error rate). 10Megabytes - matches a high quality photo print by about a factor of three, considering that the printer tries to print 24-bits in the space of a pixel, but probably only 256 real combinations of density and color could be scanned with low errors.

Now, say that I'm wack and that I'm off by a factor of 10. It's still only .1 Gbyte total per page... and I'm pretty sure that the system would have horrbile error rates.

Comments?

[shamael @ Nov 25th 2006 12:28PM]

Yeah, that's weird...I mean, optical media is already "optical" right? So where's the innovation?
Furthermore, why didn't anybody mention read/write speed? It's no use to store hundreds of gigs on a piece of paper if it can be read only as fast as a floppy...

[SloppyJoe @ Nov 25th 2006 12:48PM]

Hmm, so it seems like it's just a different way of compressing data. If the printed data can be photocopied and still works, then here's an idea. Instead of printing to paper, save the output as a vector file, shouldn't be too big since it's vector, and then burn the output onto a dvd or something. I'd imagin you can store a couple hundred if not thousands of these "pages" on a dvd-r. Instantly multiplies the capacity of dvd-rs by ten folds. Anyone see anything wrong with this idea?

[shay @ Nov 25th 2006 1:04PM]

What about the fact that once a page is printed you can't write over it. What good would a 5gb rainbow card be if it was read only?

[Sid @ Nov 25th 2006 12:58PM]

SloppyJoe,

Your idea is against the Shannon entropy. It won't work

[Leoedin @ Nov 25th 2006 1:26PM]

what good would a 5 gig DVD-R be if it was only read only?

Wait a minute...

[Jon @ Nov 25th 2006 1:07PM]

I have yet to see any printing technology that is 100% accurate. Cool concept but I have doubts.

[Loudog @ Nov 25th 2006 1:41PM]

It would be interesting to have something like this for one reason: archiving. CD's and DVD's don't last the hundreds (or thousands) of years that paper does. We know a lot about how to make paper last, and the access time isn't an issue. Embossed on stainless steel, it may last a very long time.

If it ain't bogus, that is.

[Hel @ Nov 25th 2006 2:04PM]

This would work. Think of a barcode.
Scanning it would only take a few seconds.
I you think barcode, then add a few colors and instead of just lines use different symbols. it works. and It makes sense.
Look at the ups barcode thing, with all the dots.

If you put it in terms of binary, but instead of just 1 and 0, you can use short cuts, a red 6 would be the equivalent of 20 different 1s and 0s... This make sense, i don't understand why any of you are that skeptical. throw in 10 colors and and the alphabet and numbers, you could make a lot of WORDS.

Think about it, its like writing "apple" and the computer sees "apple"
instead of 010110010100101001010010101001010100101010 for the computer to see apple.
Its not that big of a deal.

[npChaos @ Nov 25th 2006 2:22PM]

Lol, what if your printer smears?

[treetrunk @ Nov 25th 2006 2:32PM]

No way this can work. He claims he could get "131 times" the capacity of a DVD on an "RVD" by using numerous shaped/coloured symbols printed onto a paper disc.

Firstly, the use of "symbols" in communications is nothing new - for example, instead of transmitting one signal for 0 and other for 1, you could define four signals for 00,01,10,11 and transmit them instead. You've doubled the number of signals you need to be able to distinguish (so reduced accuracy) but doubled the amount of data you can send at a given symbol rate.

DVDs are just binary, so use two symbols for 0 and 1. To get "131 times" the capacity on a disc the same size with such a symbolic techinque, you could either use lots of different symbols of the same size, or alternatively use just a few symbols and also make them smaller.

Think about that for a second. DVDs use pits of the order of a few microns in size, which are read by reflecting a laser off them. Do you honestly believe for a second that you could replace each of these TINY pits with a coloured, shaped symbol, replace the pressed plastic disc with a printed piece of paper, and replace the laser reading system with an optical scanner with dozens of possible values per bit and still have a feasible system? Ridiculous.

[pcbuilderchris @ Nov 25th 2006 3:17PM]

whats that in the paper shredder

"OH NO"
lol

[Liam McNulty @ Nov 25th 2006 3:37PM]

I'm sure the seek times for these will be FANTASTIC.

[tekdroid @ Nov 25th 2006 7:21PM]

i hear if you put a hole near the top edge of the paper you get double the density.

[cjrenaud @ Nov 25th 2006 10:42PM]

I bet that completely flew over the heads of anyone under 30 :)

[Mosey @ Nov 25th 2006 8:01PM]

Gotta love how people love to dismiss, pooh-pooh ideas out of hand - while offering nothing of their own. Then again, people laughed at the idea the world was a sphere. It's flat you fool! *rolls eyes*

You could be using disposable paper card storage in 10 years using special printers that print and seal the cards. The disposability may be its greatest asset

What makes you think the *mature* version of the technology would be any less reliable than optical disks? - every single one of us has had scratched disks.

[Bucket @ Nov 25th 2006 8:24PM]

I can already see the long-term implications of this. The next step in storage technology: wax cylinders!!

[pcbuilderchris @ Nov 25th 2006 8:40PM]

actually i went and got me a cheap patent on storing data on dust particles and air :)

never got around to finishing the product though

[john r @ Nov 25th 2006 9:28PM]

Actually, I think this is a good competitor in certain areas, like for HP's Smart-Dot technology. Imaging a textbook with Martin Luther King, but being able to scan it and actually hearing the recording... and we wouldn't be slaves to HP. It would be great to release an encoding like this as open source, kind of like a data-PDF format for the masses.

[jeremiah johnson @ Nov 25th 2006 10:00PM]

Rather than binary data printed, you could print in full color. So rather than one bit per area of paper, you could have 24 bits of data, just by going full color.

Its not random access, so it would probably only be practical for archival purposes.

If you're worried about printing with a printer that smears: A) buy a new printer, i got mine for $5 at a yard sale, and it prints beautifully; or B) print with larger dot sizes: you'll use more paper but gain error correction.

The data you could put on a piece of paper is limited by the resolution of the printer, and there are some *very* high-resolution printers out there. a 2400 DPI printer that can print full color on any of those dots can print 16.48 megabytes in one square inch with no encoding-level error correction. Multiply that by the printable area of a piece of A0 paper, and you get 24 gigabytes on each side. roll that up, stuff it in a tube, and put it in a fireproof safe. that, my friends, is longevity. Technology's ability to read that paper in the future will only improve.

Its not the most practical way to store data, but it is a valid storage mechanism.

[cloud811 @ Nov 26th 2006 12:06AM]

good idea, but i still prefer CD's. they can take abuse and damage and there water proof

[furatail @ Nov 26th 2006 2:25AM]

You guys aren't getting this. Don't compare to technology of dvds, or any other digital media.

Digital media reads as 1'2 and 0's. One bit per character. In digital media, everything must be either a 1 or a 0.
This "rainbow" technology is completly different. Instead of just defining everything by two characters, you can now define by (number of colors x number of symbols)

Lets say, 10 colors and 100 symbols)
1000 characters to choose from, instead of just 2.

So one red square could hold 1000 bits of info or 125 bytes. Combine this with location of each character and the capacity amplifies.


Think of this like compression. Take any text file and compress it. You loose no data as all the information lost is regained through the uncompression process. Compressers simply remove redundent information and combines frequent bits of information into one. I'm not going to explain this in complicated details, but hers a good idea: Each letter is 8 bits or 1 byte. A compresser can simply see each letter as 1 bit of information by simply adding a-z to its library. Instead of 1 and 0, the decompresser will see (0-9 + a-z + etc)

[romanempire @ Nov 28th 2006 11:13AM]

Woah there Tiger. 1000 symbols != 1000 bits. Choosing 1 of 1000 symbols will give you log_2(1000) or almost 10 bits of information each, assuming that the symbols are uniformly distributed.

Imagine this: I create four symbols, called 00, 01, 10, and 11. Clearly the choice of one of these symbols carries only two bits of information. But wait I have FOUR symbols and so now each carries FOUR bits of information! Come on. If that were true you would have revolutionized information theory.

This story is completely bogus, by the way.

Oh, and responding to another comment above: if you have a printer with 2^24 = 16777216 ink cartridges, then perhaps you can make a decent claim that your printer can print in 24-bit "full color." In fact, printers typically print dots in one of four colors (CYMK). So each dot can represent at most two bits of information, not the three bytes you claim. (Not to mention the fact that even if your printer DID print in 24-bit color, my scanner would have a pretty hard time correctly identifying each of your sixteen million colors).

[Gryzor @ Nov 26th 2006 2:46AM]

So what's new with this? I remember seeing a software/handheld scanner combo with the exact same functionality back in 1996 - probably he's upped the compression ratio, but that's not very original...

[Rex @ Nov 26th 2006 3:15AM]

plz, do comment on whether the tech is fake or not, but don't go into racism...btw, IMO, paper just isn't durable, though it may re-invent newspaper,"get all the days news on a thumb sized cardboard...."

REF:
Xiete @ Nov 25th 2006 11:30AM

Here's the new spokesman for the product.
http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2005/08/03/rvd.jpg

[treetrunk @ Nov 26th 2006 5:59AM]

@Jon Doezal, Mosey, jeremiah johnson, furatail, and anyone else who still thinks this would work.

I think the problem you guys are having is that it seems quite feasible to imagine a piece of paper, printed at say 12pt, with a bunch of coloured characters on it. You might even be able to squeeze whole megabytes out of it, at least till the ink faded, it got smudged, or you spilt something on it. Given that all he's apparently demonstrated is the storage of "400 pages of type" (plain text is NOT a big file) or "a 45 second video clip" (of unspecified size/quality) both of which could easily be stored on a floppy disc this is probably what he's done. This is nothing you couldn't conceivably do yourself with an ordinary printer, scanner, and a bit of programming knowledge.

The problem lies in the translation of this into useful technology. furatail- the guy himself compares his "technology" to DVDs. You're also wrong about the definition of digital- BINARY data is only 1/0, DIGITAL just means represented by (discrete) digits. A system with 1000 different possible states is still digital because each one is discrete - there's no "in-between" as with an analogue system.

As I said in my earlier post there is absolutely no conceivable way one could scale down this technology to DVD scale and expect it to work. A laser is fine to distinguish between two possible states a few microns across, but 10 different states? 100? 1000? Simple not possible. We're talking about a laser with wavelength in the nanometres being reflected by pits of a few microns. The difference between pit and no pit is already inconceivably small. You want 1000 different values of shapes and colours of pits instead? Good luck with that!

[Luke @ Nov 26th 2006 7:02AM]

Most of the complaints about the reliability of paper has already been addressed by the Epson Corporation.

Fade Resistance: Pigmented Archival Inks lasting 100-200 years.
Water Resistance: Pigmented Inks are inherently water resistant and smear/smudge resistant.
Scratch Resistance: Far better than CD/DVD's that for sure. Pigmented Inks can be glossed over, or Die Inks are naturally scratch resistant.

A user burned CD/DVD is rated to last, what, less than 10 years? I don't think Epson makes any printers these days that have fade resistance of less than 90 years. And even HP is getting up there if you use some of their special (non-water resistant unfortunately) paper.

Professional Photographers already know how good some of the archival technology out there is getting.

[treetrunk @ Nov 26th 2006 7:30AM]

That's great about ink. Shame paper isn't very water resistant, stain resistant, scratch resistant, tear resistant, fold resistant, discolouration resistant, or any of the multitude of other things which could render a hypothetical multi-coloured-micro-symbol-dotted piece of paper unreadable.

But anyway, you've missed the point. To obtain the sort of "131 times DVD" capacities claimed we're talking about MICRON SIZED coloured symbols. As far as I'm aware there's simply no way to: A-print that accurately, B-store that accurately (paper isn't THAT smooth or stable), or C-retrive that accurately (scanning?).

[drt @ Nov 26th 2006 7:48AM]

Been there, done that

This came out in the late 80's or early 90's if I remember correctly. The paper was on a spool, like a cash register receipt and was printed via a special printer and spooled back up. To read it you ran it through a special reader and your data was restored! Amazing! Of course what do you do now with all those spools of useless paper, no reader, no driver and you'll have to dig hard through your treasure chest to find that old copy of Dr. DOS.

[Jon @ Nov 26th 2006 8:54AM]

You cannot recursivly compress data over and over again and expect much reduction after the first time...

Does it not make the most sense to compress your data independently from the storage medium?

So why not just use a super software compression algorithm and store the output in the most discrete and simple manner possible (i.e. a sequence of TRUEs and FALSEs)... then come up with a means to reduce the physical realization of that sequence using technologies that operate on a nano scale... like a laser (e.g. DVDs) or magnets (e.g. hard-drives/flash memory).

Surely at some point in the scaling down of paper as a data storage mechanism, the non-crystaline compisition of it would become a major problem...

I could accept that this technology has some relavance/benefit to already existing solutions... like barcodes, or maybe some fancy data attachment to a mortgage document, or blueprint or something... but as a replacement for long term mass data storage... no frecking way.

[dreamer @ Nov 26th 2006 12:17PM]

On an interesting sidenote I may direct your attention to the "Arab News Photo": The Windows XP Screenshot has been inserted into a completely different photo using a similar technique called "Rainbull Format". It involves a pair of nail scissors, two '80s Glam-Rock mixtapes ... and absolutely no skills in Photoshop whatsoever.

[Kevin Wang @ Nov 27th 2006 6:22AM]

Um... sounds like a punchcard to me.

[Mark @ Nov 27th 2006 8:37AM]

http://semacode.org/

A similar idea has already been done but on a smaller scale. It uses a barcode-like image that contains data, and when scanned by a camera phone or whatever it can be decrypted. Never seen one on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper but I would assume one that large could hold a sizable amount of data.

[David Coppit @ Nov 27th 2006 10:19AM]

It also supports perpendicular recording. You just cross your eyes and an image jumps out at you.

[Jon Doezal @ Dec 7th 2006 8:08AM]

I think this is an absolutely brilliant idea. Imagine, printing out a credit card (with the same size, shape, and materal), but its like a floppy, but you can simply pass it through the reader and have it come out the other end, the data now in RAM. Instant data transfer, about 50 mb of data without a drive.

I think it may be the wave of the future. Heh. Heh. Bad, very bad pun. Infact, don't look for the pun. Its not there. heh. heh. *run*

[Patty @ Jun 5th 2008 8:12AM]

this is a good idea but lets think of it like this. The smallest printer can print 600 dpi k? now my calc tells me thats ~1gb of storage. They are assuming we can do 2000 dpi which is relatively impossible (for now)

now the writing speed of a DVD? 30mins to max capacity
write speed of "Rainbow Shit" 30seconds to max capacity

but! read speed of a DVD? like 2 seconds
read speed of "Rainbow" 45 seconds

For data processing, its alright in someways but complete rubbish in others.

for reliability of paper? if we make the paper only 0's and 1's then be can print in black and white pixels. There for, we can have software to recognise creases as darker shades. in between black and white theres grey

now certain shades of gray could still be read as 0's and 1's but not accuratly. So? we laminate!

But can we laminate? a laser on a printer would refract on the plastic and f*** up your data. so that leaves one more option! compression chapers. a small box at 64 psi will force the paper not to crinkle whilst killing all the bugs that break it down.

but i still find my self strangly doubting this stuff. 0's and 1's were chosen to represent charecters in a sequence for a reason! now we just wanna change it to rainbows? good that will increase papers read/write time to:

90/30 seconds

where as DVD boasts a one time 30 min but max 2 second read after that. and extremely long data storage over what? 1 year? even with a compression box (whole new meaning for compressing your files)

this compression box will cost ~$80

so i need to buy a super printer-$1000 , compression box-$80 super scanner-$500 and for 1 gb of storage!!!??? FUCK YOU!

[Paper Shredders @ Jun 10th 2009 6:21AM]

Thanks for the tip. I stayed up until the wee hours chunking and sorting all the crapola to be shredded. When I got to my Office Depot, not only was there no truck but nobody in the store knew anything about it.
Wow what a great selection of crafts you can do with paper shreds. I have been researching composting and paper shredding and you have given me more ideas on what to do with those shreds of paper. Thanks.