April 2007

Here’s a video of an incredible talk Hans Rosling gave at last year’s TED conference. On one level it’s a talk about trends in world health (Rosling is a professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden), but at another level it’s about the need for much better visualization tools so people can make sense out of all the data we already have freely available in public databases. The whole talk is an example, using tools developed by the non-profit Rosling founded called Gapminder.

After watching the video, check out Gapminder World, being hosted by Google.

(Thanks to my dad for the link!)

Wells Fargo is using optical scanning and OCR to improve how their customers deposit checks in ATMs. No more empty envelope drawers and out-of-ink pens; now you just put all your checks and cash in a stack and insert it into the slot. The ATM automatically scans each one in, does optical character recognition to tell how much each is for and puts up a verification screen. After you correct the amounts, the machine will either spit out a receipt with a summary line for each transaction or a printed image of each scanned check. From their press release:

“With the new technology, you don’t need to spend time writing on an envelope or keying in a deposit amount. You just insert your money into a slot and the machine sorts, counts and verifies it,” said Jonathan Velline, head of Wells Fargo’s ATM Banking division. “Our Envelope-Free ATMs also converts paper checks into a digital image which then appears on the ATM screen and receipt, so you know your check was received. You can’t get this in the traditional envelope world.”

I used one of their machines in Alameda recently and it was pretty slick, though I had to insert each of my three checks individually since it couldn’t handle my differently-sized and somewhat wallet-wrinkled stack.