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Google has announced a new technology that allows its popular search engine to index scanned documents.  It uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to convert a document saved as a PDF from an image to words.  Previously the images of text were quite difficult to find via a search because the engine saw the document as an image and couldn’t recognize it properly.

“In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results as we couldn’t be sure of their content,“ Evin Levey, a Google product manager, said in a Google blog post. “We had occasional clues from references to the document—so you might get a search result with a title but no snippet highlighting your query. Today, that changes,“ Levey added. “We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe’s PDF format. This Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology lets us convert a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words—words that can be searched and indexed, so that these valuable documents are more easily found. This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making the entire world’s information accessible and useful.“

Continued after the break.

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Sections: Web, Google

When Google started its Google Book Search Service a few years ago, it annoyed a number of people.  Those people included “the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers.“  On Tuesday the groups involved reached an agreement, and have submitted it to the court. 

The agreement would see Google paying $125 million, but allow them to add millions of books both in- and out-of-print.  Of course, most people won’t be able to read entire copyrighted texts before actually buying them, but they will be able to see a few pages of the book.  Plenty more information after the break.

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Sections: Web, Google

Gadgetell Quick Review: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

What is it?

Lightroom 2 is a program for Windows and Mac OS X designed to help organize, streamline, and develop your photos.  It costs $99 for the upgrade from Lightroom 1 or $299 for first time buyers.

Pros:

Easy to use thanks to clean and organized interface.
Imports all of your files using your preexisting directory structure.
Works with a wide variety of file formats.

Cons:

Does not allow pixel editing.  Requires another program for that task.
Initial use can be frustrating and can cause loss of work.

Does it hit the mark?

Yes.  Lightroom 2 definitely lived up to all of my expectations.  It’s easy to see that this program would be extremely popular with anyone working in the art or ad industry, or someone who does batch work with photos.  The program allows for very controlled editing and is remarkably easy to use.

For the full review, click “More.“

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