Palm Reader

Two years ago, IBM researcher Ismail Haritaoglu found himself at a Tokyo train station, unable to make heads or tails of the kanji lettering in the posted routes and timetables. Next time he will be ready. His InfoScope snaps a picture of a street sign and ships it over a wireless network to a remote computer that extracts the text and beams back a translation—all in less than fifteen seconds. Haritaoglu is working on a similar service for GPS-equipped cell phones that would offer travel tips.