Image Is Everything.

The imaging market has always had an image problem: document management just isn't sexy. While advances in imaging technology--particularly forms submission and processing via the Web--have brought scores of new companies into the market, the once-vaunted paperless office remains a mirage. Even with nearly-free scanners, digital cameras, and expanding digital storage choices, the vast majority of us still write checks, receive bills through the mail, and waste reams of paper.

Of course, this isn't to imply that there aren't exciting technologies at work in document management; only that they are not necessarily apparent to consumers--many are used in the legal and insurance industries, traditionally the biggest consumers of paper. At this year's AIIM show in New York's Javits Center, both the old guard and the upstarts were in evidence, pushing paper press kits (!) at journalists and expounding on the wonders of everything from Internet printing to high-flow document scanners. What follows is a selection of interesting technology demonstrations and announcements from the show.

Xerox Corp., once the 800-pound gorilla in the document imaging market, has seen its earnings and share price plummet in recent quarters, and rumors of bankruptcy and asset sales have swirled around the company since late last year. In fact, while the company is trying desperately to distance itself from its "just copiers" reputation, Xerox has always been at the forefront of imaging technology; it's just that now, there are lots of other players on the field.

The company is now focusing on secure, wireless access to behind-the-firewall corporate documents, and in this vein has partnered with GoAmerica, the nationwide wireless carrier, to offer an enhanced version of Xerox's MobileDoc. MobileDoc 2.0 with GoAmerica service enables remote workers to connect to a corporate network via a PDA or mobile phone, access documents on the network, and email or fax them to a recipient. Storage on the wireless device is not necessary, but the device must support HTML 3.2 and WML 1.1. Servers must have Xerox DocuShare and Microsoft's NTFS. Prices for MobileDoc start at $12,000 plus $995 (support) for a 50 user license. Visit www. xerox.com for more information.

Several companies at AIIM were demonstrating products based on the Internet Print Protocol (IPP). IPP is an TETF standard that was created by the Printer Working Group, a consortium of printer makers including HP, IBM, and Xerox. IPP is generally implemented on newer, networked printers, giving them a Universal Resource Identifier (URI), an IP address, and the ability to print jobs that users send over the Internet.

PrinterOn Corp. has added a new wrinkle to this technology: it adds a software layer to eliminate potential problems associated with IPP, including proprietary and incompatible drivers, changing printer addresses, and changes in installed page sizes. PrinterOn has created a universal print driver for Windows, called PrintWhere, which allows users to print to any Internet-enabled printer without knowing the details of the printer driver's requirements. It also adds the printer to a global Internet directory of IPP-enabled printers, allowing users to easily find the printer using a Web search. PrinterOn has also created software- called PrintEnvoy-for remote, wireless printing of files located on a PDA. The company has also developed software that IPP-enables legacy printers, allowing older devices to receive print jobs over the Internet. Visit for more information.

Even as DYD-RAM drives continue to price themselves out of the consumer PC market, they seem to be finding a home in near-line storage devices. PowerFile Corp. has introduced the PowerFile Solo Writer, a $3,000 jukebox that reads/writes DVD-RAM discs, and reads CD-R, DVD-ROM, and DVD-R (Authoring). The systems holds 200 discs with up to a terabyte of storage capacity, and supports Windows or Mac and a IEEE-1394 (FireWire) interface. Visit www.dvdjukebox.com for more information.

Panasonic Document Imaging Company (a division of Matsushita) was also showing its newest DVD-RAM offering, the easy-to-remember LF-D201U. The drive reads and writes single-sided 4.7GB DVD-RAM discs, as well as double-sided 9.4GB cartridgebased media. (Note that the drive will read only Panasonicbranded DVD-RAM discs.) The unit also reads standard DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-V, and CD media types. The unit is scheduled to be available in July for $549 (MSRP). The company also rolled out its new portable CD-RW drive, dubbed the KXL-RW21A. The drive offers 6x write/4x rewrite/6x read times and a 2MB buffer. The unit offers a USB interface and is a slim 5.43 x 6.93 x .83 inches (wdh).

It runs under Windows 98/Me/ 2000 and is priced at $449 (MSRP).

Unfortunately for Panasonic, the company may be bailing water on a quickly-sinking ship. While DVD-RAM for proprietary storage jukeboxes may be a viable prospect, the technology is losing ground in the optical standards race. The optical industry appears to be moving away from DVD-RAM as a universally accepted format for high capacity rewritable media. The DVD+RW standard is now supported by virtually all the other major optical players, including Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, and Yamaha. While DVD-RAM offers larger capacities (using based, double sided media), the format has been hampered by a lack of read compatibility with early DVD-ROM; DVD+RW drives read all CD/DVD media (except DVD-RAM). DVD+RW also does not use cartridge media, an advantage for most consumers, who have no experience with such media types.

Many observers have complained that the introduction of XML has signaled the death knell for the creation of Web documents by the non-professional, non-technical user. But regardless of its implications for consumers, there's no question that XML has the capacity to revolutionize the conversion of paper documents to digital formats. XMLCities Inc. of Milpitas, CA believes it has found the most effective way to do so. At AIIM the company introduced XMLCaprure, a suite of applications that converts both paper and digital content into rules-based, auto-tagged XML documents. The suite includes OCR software; converters for PDF, Word, RTF, and HTML documents; an editor for creating DTDs (document type definitions); software for defining pattern rules for XML auto-tagging; validating and proofing modules; and a batch processing and workflow management engine. (Mitsubishi Corp. recently made an undisclosed equity investment in XMLCities.) Visit www.xmlcities.com for more information.

JPEG, Millennium Edition

By the time you read this, the JPEG2000 specification will probably have been released (scheduled release date at press time was June 1). JPEG2000 represents the first major overhaul of the ubiquitous standard used for high-resolution images and photographs on the Web. JPEG (an acronym for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, a consortium of many companies) is a lossy standard: this means that some bits are lost during compression, a necessary tradeoff in the file size versus image resolution compromise. But because it is lossy, JPEG is not suitable for the digital storage of very high resolution photographs and images.

JPEG2000 is a wavelet compression technology which offers both lossy and lossless compression within the same mode, and offers additional features such as image zooming, panning, and tiling. Claims of images being compressed to 2 percent of their original size using JPEG2000 have been made, although these seem unrealistic. JPEG2000 will also be used as the basis for a new specification called Motion JPEG2000, or MJ2. MJ2 is a standard for images that allows one or more JPEG2000 compressed image sequences, audio, and metadata to be stored as a single file. MJ2 is likely to be compatible with MPEG-4 and will support lossy and lossless compression in a single codec. The standard is expected to find a home in digital cameras of the future, which will support full-motion images and sound.

LuraTech, which contributed parts of its compression technology to the JPEG2000 standard, demonstrated LuraWave JP2 at AIIM. The software is a beta version of the company's JPEG2000 implementation and allows software and hardware devices to compress and decompress lossless or lossy image data. The software enables imaging software, digital cameras, scanners, Internet browsers, mobile devices, and various hardware with small storage requirements to compress and decompress high-quality digital photographs without data loss. Visit www.luratech.com or www.jpeg.org for more information.

AIIM has always been--and to some extent continues to be--a showcase for IT's professional paper pushers: enterprise-class hardware and workflow management systems designed for large corporations. But more and more, document and image storage are becoming increasingly mainstream issues, and the technologies that drive them are moving into the consumer market. (Remember when flatbed scanners could be had for "only" $5,000?) In contrast to shows like PCExpo and Internet World (and of course Comdex), AIIM is still a niche world, catering to computer professionals and techno-journalists. It will be interesting to see if this remains the case for much longer, as storage is no longer simply the service that everyone loves to hate.