A pen that more than meets the paper

IT’S been a hectic year since Jerry M. Hultin took on the presidency of Polytechnic University in Brooklyn— a year packed with meetings and all the notes taken at them. The yellow pads have been piling up. But recently Hultin made a small, effective change in his note-taking life: he bought a digital pen. The device looks like a slightly plump ballpoint, and works like any ballpoint. But inside this gadget are a tiny camera and an optical sensor that record the pen’s motions as he writes, and a microprocessor that digitises the words, sketches and diagrams that the optics detect. When he docks the pen in its cradle connected to a USB port, the handwritten notes flow in a digitized stream into his computer and are processed by software, reappearing almost immediately on his monitor in his handwriting. “All the notes I’ve written are sucked into the computer, and there they are on the screen,” he said. His pen, called io2, is sold by Logitech of Fremont, California. The optical pen holds a rechargeable battery and enough memory to accommodate roughly 40 pages of handwriting, said Mark Anderson, a senior manager at Logitech. Hultin carries the pen with him all day, then plugs it in to be recharged at night. —NYT

A ‘green’ diesel-electric hybrid light truck

Mitsubishi Fuso of Tokyo has introduced a “green” diesel-electric hybrid light truck Wednesday that it said will deliver top fuel efficiency among rival hybrid commercial vehicles on Japanese roads. Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus Corp said that the Canter Eco Hybrid, which goes on sale in Japan, is “a pioneering hybrid electric commercial vehicle for the Japan market” and meets the latest stringent Japanese government emissions regulations. Mitsubishi Fuso, 85 percent owned by DaimlerChrysler AG of Germany, plans to sell several hundred Canter Eco Hybrid trucks by the end of 2006, with numbers picking up in coming years, it said. The company is beginning customer delivers in Japan, it said. —PTI