A handwritten love letter, for one thing. At CeBIT 99, the world’s top ICT event, one of the exhibitors has produced software to reproduce your handwriting online.
PersonalFont will reproduce your own handwriting as a true-type font on a Macintosh or PC. New styles are custom-made for each client. The character of each single letter depends, as it does with normal handwriting, on what has gone before. You type in your text and one click on the mouse transforms it into handwriting. This comes from Softline GmbH.
PC power from a matchbox–Also on view will be the smallest computer in the world, 58 mm long, 29mm across and 10mm thick. This gives you a 100 MHz, 486 CPU, 64 megabyte local RAM, 4 MB flash memory with a real-time clock, interface for LCD display, serial and parallel interfaces, speaker connection and a keyboard interface. It’s from Sorcus Computer, Heidelberg.
Simulated eye surgery allows the surgeon to practice, before going to work on your eyes. EyeSi, the virtual eye operation, to give it a name is at CeBIT too. Normal instrumentation and artificial eyes are used. CCD cameras position the equipment and transfer the image to a PC, giving the surgeon a stereomicroscopic view. Simulated tissue response to the scalpel is included. This was developed by the University of Mannheim’s Computer Science V department.
A video recorder that understands what you say is also on view. If you have problems with programming the recorder for TV feature films with a channel, the time and the VPS code, they will soon be over. You just tell the recorder to record Tatort, (Crime Scene, a detective series), for example, on Channel 1 and the machine looks after it for you. The University of Karlsruhe solved this one.
Micro-holograms recorded on the photosensitive surface of a CD allow an increase of storage space. Quite simply, it means that you can stack your data. Each hologram uses a different color or wavelength for its information. This prevents contamination and means that CDs and DVDs will carry ten times their customary storage capacity. This is from the Technical University in Berlin.
