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, we're 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 it'll pick up whatever it's looking at -- it'll 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, couldn't be any simpler to use. Formats such as JPEG, TIFF, PDF and PNG are exportable to your favorite social networks, and you've got basic editing functions to make your scans just right. Head on past the break to see an in-action demo.
posted Jan 7th 2011 11:28PM
