When a company like IRIS Inc. step up to the mark to offer Mac products and applications, they don't give us a half measure. On offer a Mac Expo was their well established Readiris Pro 11, IRISCard mini and IRISPen express. It is not often that one company has three products that interest me, so I found myself engrossed for quite some time.
Readiris Pro has been around for a while now and is now up to version 11. The software offers the main ability to scan and transform a printed page into a file that can be edited, archived and shared. The accuracy on the demo I had was pretty impressive. I especially liked the scanned document, which then had an area highlighted. The text that fell within that area was then copied and pasted (fully editable) into an email. It was very easy and I could see myself using that feature a lot.
IRISCard mini is, as the name suggests, a miniature scanner. It is designed to organise those pockets of business card into useful and searchable information. The software cleverly pulls the information into MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Address Book and Palm Desktop. This has the added appeal, that once the information is in Address Book it can be synced with your iPod for portability.
I would much rather have this, than all those business cards that just end up getting lost.
Last up is IRISPen express, which is a truly portable USB pen-sized scanner. It recognizes multiple languages and transforms printed type into editable text. Again integration is good and includes Word, Excel and Outlook to name just a few.
IRIS' ethos seems to be, that once something has been typed and printed, there should be no need to type it again.
I would like to really thank IRIS for opening my eyes and offering review units of all their products, so I can bring you full reviews very soon.
Take a look at their products now at: www.irislink.com