CES: The write product to watch?

As we come to the end of yet another Consumer Electronics Show, many attendees often walk away with having seen at least one memorable product or development. Certainly, there was a lot to choose from among the thousands of exhibits occupying nearly two million square feet of show floor.

But for me, some of the most impressive things I've seen were the prototype product and technology concepts unveiled behind closed doors away from the main trade show exhibits.

One particular item that remains pretty memorable in my mind is a so-called "digital pen" developed by an Israeli company called EPOS. Like the Logitech io2 pen we recently previewed for the January 2007 issue of Consumer Reports, it's designed to capture handwritten notes and convert the scribble into digital data for use on computers.

Unlike the Logitech offering, however, EPOS's device doesn't require special paper to work. Instead, the pen contains a tiny ultrasonic transmitter powered by two tiny watch batteries. A separate rectangular USB device (see picture, right) contains two tiny microphones that track the pen (using triangulation) as a user writes across any standard piece of paper.

The scribbled data is stored in the device much like any other file on a USB memory stick. Plug the device into a computer's USB port and its built-in batteries are charged while the files can be transferred over and converted into word processing text using a third-party handwriting recognition program.

The accuracy of any handwriting recognition solutions — something that we noted was a bit amiss in the Logitech digital pen — remains to be seen. But the potential of the device is quite interesting.

For example, EPOS's CEO Oded Turbahn told me that the pen could also double as a computer mouse. And the company is already working on a wired version (see picture, left) that may be able to clip on to a computer screen. That would mean users could turn almost any notebook computer into a tablet PC-like portable, where moving your Windows pointer, entering text or even doodling is as easy as waving an EPOS stylus across the screen. 

EPOS is partnering with French company Dane-Elec Memory to bring the digital pen and USB device to the U.S. market later this year for about $80.

— Paul Eng, Web Senior Editor

—Paul Eng