New spy cam software has been compared to scramble suits worn by narcotics officers in Philip K Dick’s novel/movie A Scanner Darkly. No one wants their own mug shown in some criminal surveillance video simply because you became an anecdote for “the wrong place at the wrong time.” With this new software, faces will be blurred and encrypted; protecting the identity of anyone innocent that is caught on camera. So, just because some other guy seems to be proceeding through life like “a cat without whiskers perpetually caught behind the refrigerator” doesn’t mean you have to suffer for it.

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I don’t know how Friedrich Kirschner pulled this stunt off but it’s one of the best DIYs I’ve seen in a long time. He essentially constructed a 3-D scanner out of LEGOs, a webcam and milk. Watching the above video, you can see how Friedrich places a figurine into a vat of milk. A picture is taken and a spoonful of milk is added to the vat. The process is repeated until the object is fully submerged in milk.

Once that’s done, the object can be imported into a 3-D software program like Blender for manipulation. It’s pretty amazing stuff and allows for total three-dimensional scanning. Right now, the process can only be done with Windows. Keep your eyes peeled though as a cross-platform version of the software could be heading to OS X and Linux very soon.

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We love LEGOs and while we’re partial to the Mindstorms set, Anders Søborg has built and programmed his own NXT scanner comprised mostly of these bricks.  For those not familiar with NXT scanners, they’re a “standalone” scanner that can scan and save images as BMP-files.  The images scanned can be saved in either 24-bit true color, 8-bit color or gray scale.

Although the device isn’t faster than any other scanner on the market (it’s quite slow actually), cut it some slack: it’s made out of toy blocks.  Anders was also nice enough to include DIY instructions on making your own, complete with programming instructions and all, on his website.
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Most of the scanners in market nowadays have OCR functions, that is, they can recognize the alphabets on the paper and convert them into texts (not graphics). More advanced scanners can scan documents and safe them directly as PDF or MS Word files. PFU, a subsidiary of Fujitsu Japan has just brought out a scanner that can scan your graphs into MS Excel. The new ScanSnap S510 can scan paper sizes from small business cards up to A3. Scanning speed at 150dpi is 18 sheets per minute, it can also perform scanning at up to 600dpi but at a much slower speed obviously. Bundled with the $500 kit is Adobe Acrobat Standard, ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap and a couple of more ScanSnap softwares. The ordering opens today, but the scanners will be shipped in early February. — Sam Chan

Press Release [PFU]

While scanners haven’t really been in the forefront of technology innovations and annoucenments as of late, this full page scanner sure does find a place in anyone’s heart who has had to carry around bags of press releases lately (CES and Macworld anyone?). This wand is very simple to use. All you do is run it over the page you wish for it to scan, and it stores the page in full color in about 4-5 seconds. The DocuPen RC800 can store up to 100 pages in its internal memory. So many people have been calling for the abolishment of paper for so many years, and this device sure isn’t going to make paper a thing of the past overnight. But it’s all baby-steps, each new device that allows for more market saturation makes more and more people realize the benefits of having digital copies that weigh next to nothing when compared to that 20 pound bag they have been carrying around all day. It is able to read nine different types of memory cards with a Universal Mobile Charger. The DocuPen is currently being sold for $300. — Nik Gomez

DocuPen RC800 [via CrunchGear]