Viva Las Comdex

Now we get to one of the really cool things: Digital paper. While people happily run around with their PDAs surgically attached, most of us still have a weakness for good old-fashioned paper, from legal pads to Dayrunner-style planners. I took all my Comdex notes on a little spiral-bound memo pad-it's just too cumbersome to quickly scratch notes into my Palm III.

Swedish company Anoto is looking to bring your basic piece of paper up to speed with the 21st century. The technology requires the use of a special Anoto pen and special paper. The paper is imprinted with a gazillion tiny dots that tell the pen where it is on the paper. It looks and feels like regular paper, but with a very slight gray tinge. The pen itself Bluetooth-enabled to wirelessly transmit the data.

One example of how it works: You could be sitting in your living room, writing appointments on your paper calendar and they would automatically show up in the calendar program on your desktop computer in your office. Look for Anoto technology to start showing up on shelves in late 2001 and early 2002.