Tolstoy would be amazed
IBM’s Printing Systems Division in Boulder has recently introduced what it calls the world’s fastest printer. The IBM Infoprint 4100 can print Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in less than a minute. The Infoprint is a commercial printer, used by companies such as Merrill Lynch and ADP for payment processing documents. Book printers are also potential buyers. The suggested retail price is $50,000.
“This latest development, a ‘Superprinter’ that’s capable of printing documents spanning the height of the Empire State Building in less than four minutes, is a culmination of two and a half years of development at our Boulder site,” said Karen Fukuma, vice president of production printer solutions at IBM. “You might not know that basically everyone in this country receives mail from banks, utilities and financial services companies churned out by IBM printers developed right here in Boulder.”
— By Kimberly S. Johnson, Denver Post Staff Writer
Birding tools go high-tech
Bird-watching hasn’t changed much in the last century. But now a flock of new technologies is swooping in to invade the quiet preserve of this staid hobby. A Massachusetts
company Wildlife Acoustic sells a sophisticated
box that listens to birdcalls and analyzes their sound
waves. Take the $500 Song Sleuth into the woods, and it
will identify common birdcalls with an accuracy of 80
percent under ideal conditions, the company promises.
MightyPods, founded by a trio of Atlanta bird-watchers,
sells iPods fully loaded with hundreds of digitally recorded
bird calls. And a technique dubbed “digiscoping” lets
you snap a close-up photo as soon as you spy a great
crested flycatcher. “It’s a very rapidly evolving field,”
said Ted Floyd, editor of Birding magazine, the flagship
publication of the American Birding Association.
– By Martha McKay, Knight Ridder Newspapers
