E-Beam and U are U

Headlines:
EBeam is an electronic whiteboard and U are U is a fingerprint recognition system for PCs.

Ebeam

We do a lot of brainstorming at work and this seems to work best when you write on a whiteboard. The problem always was that someone (usually me!) had to copy everything on the whiteboard down, type it into an email and circulate it after the meeting. This is why I was so attracted to the concept of E-Beam (www.e-beam.com). E-Beam is a combination of hardware and software that records every stroke on the whiteboard in electronic format on your computer. It works by tracking the position of pens over the whiteboard. It’s easy to set up: you have to install the software, connect the computer to a couple of detectors on the top left and top right of the whiteboard, and clip four marker pens into special holders which allow the system to track their location and whether they are writing or not.

The whole thing is remarkably clever. Once set up it’s no different from using a regular whiteboard except that the computer screen captures a perfect facsimile of the whiteboard. From the computer it’s easy to print out or email copies of the whiteboard.

There are a handful of minor irritations – but none of them are fatal. The first is that it requires a computer to work – the cables are long enough to run around a small office to a desktop. The second is that the two sensors are attached to one another and to the computer by cables and they look a bit untidy. The sensors are attached to the whiteboard by little suction cups and they come unstuck quite often. My final niggle is that, because the software only records your writing when the pen is pressed to the whiteboard, it misses a tiny amount of subtle detail when you start and stop each stroke. It doesn’t affect the legibility of any writing but until you get used to it and correct for it, the printouts look slightly too crisp. One of my colleagues asked if it does text recognition, but since he has the worst handwriting since Attila the Hun, I think this question was more in hope than expectation.

The system costs $xxx and is currently available by calling xxx. This seems remarkably good value in comparison to the more elaborate white board printers that are out there. It is possible to buy direct from the website in the US. I hope that they get a UK distributor and that we start seeing the system in shops over here. I think

U are U

Some time ago a friend told me a story about his work. One day he had had a problem with his computer and one of the computer support people came over, logged in and fixed the problem but forgot to log out. Because the technician had an access-all-areas administrator password, my friend was able to browse through all kinds of sensitive files on the server. He even found a spreadsheet with a table of all the salaries of people in his department. As the MD of my own business, this is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night with worry.

I can’t remember how I came across U-are-U (its website is www.digitalpersona.com) but it struck me as a very useful solution to this problem. It plugs into a USB port on a PC and lets you use your fingerprint as a password. It works for logging into a PC and can also be programmed to act as a password entry system for websites and other programs. Setting it up and using it was very easy and it worked very well for about a month.

I don’t know if I was doing something wrong, like not cleaning the device, but it suddenly stopped working one day. Whereas previously it had recognized my fingerprint first time, every time; now it took twenty or thirty tries. Luckily, the U are U software asks for an ‘emergency’ password and I was finally able to remember what it was and log in. I had been very frightened by the prospect of being locked out of my computer permanently and my first action was to deinstall the software.

The idea of fingerprint recognition is a fantastic idea – indeed it would be great if you could have a recognition device built into keyboards – but because of this experience I don’t trust it yet.