How to scan text directly into Microsoft Word using OCR

One day my boss asked me to get a soft copy of an annual report. He gave a 400 pages report book and he want it done by the end of the day. Luckily he just needed some portion of it but still the amount were a lot and can't possibly done in one afternoon. So I'm thought that it would be better if I can scan the text report directly using a scanner and grab the text and past it into a Microsoft Word document. And that was exactly what I did.

I'll show you how I done it. This method require a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 or later. What you need to do is to install the Microsoft Office Document Scanning tool. It is shipped with Microsoft Office as an optional tool However the tool is not install during the Microsoft Office normal installation.

Step 1: Go to Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs. Search for Microsoft Office 2007. Click change button. Choose add or remove feature on the next screen. Next you will get this pop-up

Step 2: Scroll down to the 'Office Tools' and expand it. Expand the 'Microsoft Office Document Imaging'. You will get the following options feature.
Select 'Run on your Computer'. That's it, you are done.

The new Microsoft Surface

Surface is the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that will “break down traditional barriers between people and technology”. A Surface computer is able to recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. how cool is that? Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

It took them 6 years to materialize this from the concepts and ideas. Perhaps the best way to visualize this is by video below.



Check out Microsoft Surface's Virtual Pressroom for more information. Looks like we're already in the future. I personally would like to have this as my home coffee table.

Snap-in failed to initialize in SQL 2000 MMC

I had this problem recently and this problem causing the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) for SQL 2000 fail to load all database. This is all caused by uninstalling MSSQL 2005 server which was at the same time has another version of MSSQL 2000 server installed. At first I thought the MSSQL is corrupted, however the database remain intact and accessible through SQL service or ODBC. So this must be something to do with MMC alone, and it was. Luckily the solution is simple enough.

All I have to do is reregistering the sqlmmc.dll located in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn\

Just run this command

regsvr32 C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn\sqlmmc.dll

That did the trick for me. There are lot of trouble related to MSSQL that I have not discovered yet, maybe I should take the MSSQL professional course.

Microsoft's New Home Page

If you haven't notice yet or perhaps you are not one of the Microsoft products fans, they have change their corporate website design. The new navigation is aimed at helping their client to quickly find the most sought-after content on Microsoft.com. They start working on it last year and had gather a bunch of beta tester to give feedback on the new design and navigation system since early 2006.

The way I see it, the most significant changes made are on the floating navigation panel and the main content presentation display. If you click on the product menu on the right, the rest of the page will dimmed and can't be click. They must be really want you to concentrate on their products then.

Investigating inside the codes reveals no table layout exist. All layout are controlled by the CSS. Despite the prominent use of Ajax,the site adapts gracefully by replacing the Ajax panel with plain-looking menus on separate pages. However there is no sign of any RSS feeds either button nor the automated "link href=".

Now you might be wondering, does any of the above really matter? Well, the site looks and works great for the most of users. Beside, no matter how good your designs, you still can't satisfy everyone.

Sitemap Protocol - Microsoft & Yahoo Joint Support

Google Sitemap is now getting support from Microsoft & Yahoo. They have moved to a new name space called www.sitemaps.org with now version 0.9.

In case you are new to site map, using a site map not only makes it easy for your users to see the entire structure of your website, but it also makes it easier for the search engines to spider your site.When the search engine spiders come to visit, they will follow all of the text links from your main index page. If one of those links is to a site map, then the spiders will go right to the sitemap, and consequently visit every page you have text linked to from that site map.

Let examine a sample of valid sitemap protocol

<blockquote><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset></blockquote>

Easy stuff