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Development of communication technologies allowed people to access to others as they are mobile without losing their contact with their social milieu. And last minute meetings, daily changed plans and cancelled appointments became a part of our lives. Most of the time people owning a mobile phone have to explain the reason why they are not accessible. So communication is handled on individual basis, location restrictions gained minor importance. It means that a person does not have to lose contact with his/her social milieu whether he/she is at home, work or in a car.

We do not have much difficulties in using our devices to reach communication technologies as we are at home or walking on the streets. The issue gets tougher when we started to drive our cars. The main actor in the car is the car, making the course decisions and using the in-vehicle devices. Normally a driver’s task is to drive the car safely without causing any danger for himself and the passengers. But a driver is not a robot programmed only to achieve one mission, meaning that human brain has the capacity to carry on more than one job at the same time. Although that situation is in favor of the driver, concentrating on many things can cause deconcentraion on the driver’s seat.

Mobile phones, undoubtedly, remain the most significant device for in-vehicle use. As mobile phone usage brings about questions during the course of the cars, many countries started to discuss this issue in detail. And many countries banned to use mobile during the course of the cars. As some countries allow to use mobile phones with “hands free kit”, some countries banned it in a strict way.

My starting point for my thesis was to establish some projects to solve the problems about the currently used in-vehicle technologies. I already had some questions in my mind requiring answers: How do the in-vehicle technologies affect our behaviours in the car? How better can the interfaces of those devices be designed? How better can i meet the communication demands of the driver?

I started my study to interview with drivers to know their in-vehicle needs.My purpose was to find the anwers to those questions in general: What is the relation of the driver with his car? How often and which purpose does he motivate to drive? What does he need as he drive the car? As well as with my face-to-face interviews i held a survey with similar questions and sent to people to get a mass feedback. My purpose was to acquire a leitmotive that i would like to focus on. The respondents explained that they have one or more mobile phones. Although it is forbidden in-vehicle use of mobile phones in their countries, they did not hesitate to use their mobile phones.

One of my projects is called navigation system interface. Currently used road navigators is based on to trace the map located on the console or the next turn is passed to the driver through a warning voice in some systems. Such road navigators play a significant role for the deconcentraion of the driver as he tries to trace a small display. Mostly used audible warning systems could be disturbing as the music is on the car or passengers are talking to each other. To me the road navigator should function without deconcentrating the driver, as the main target of it is to navigate.

My second project is Pronto, which integrates navigation and communication for in-vehicle use. Respondents underlined that the their most phone calls are intented to know where they are. Such calls can be decreased thrugh the communication of in-vehicle devices. With Pronto, driver matches his mobile phone with the car once and then as he enters his car his mobile phone and in-vehicle system will be synchronized via bluetooth.

My point for both projects was to reshape current technology and devices to match with people’s demands. Now both projects await for the production as feasible and practical systems in the near future.

Closing words are for the users’ now. Drivers having the opportunity to try those projects said they look forward to use those systems in real life as well. If people’s motivations are considered in depth as technology is shaped, it would be possible to launch long life and exciting products.

I was born and raised in Turkey and I traveled around the country since my parents are teachers. Spending my childhood and teenage years reading all sorts of books, eating chocolate and peanuts, listening to first New Kids on the Block, then metal music, studying for the university entrance exam to be a kick-ass economist, I managed to get into a brand new university, moved to Istanbul, never took a single economics class, tried computer science, flirted with cultural studies and art, went to exhibition openings for free booze, met people, walked through every interesting bit of the city, danced like no one is watching, took billions of photographs, eventually ended up getting a BA in visual communication design.

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Flatbed scanners generally deliver the best combination of quality, flexibility, and usability in scanning. They can be used to scan different kinds of media, including photos and film (with the additional use of a transparency adapter); they can be used to scan text for OCR and document archiving; and they can be used to scan material of varying sizes and thicknesses - from small postage stamps to large mechanical blueprints and 3D objects. To determine the flatbed scanner for your needs, this buying guide covers some of the more important flatbed scanner specifications that you will need to know.

Bit depth and color pass

Practically all scanners today are single-pass types with 48-bit color. Gone are the scanners of yore that required three passes to capture the full RGB (red, green, blue) color information from an image in individual, painstakingly slow takes. Gone too are 24-bit and 36-bit scanners that proved sufficient in the past for delivering up to 68.7 billions of color.

Today’s single-pass, 48-bit scanners are fast and can theoretically capture up to 250 trillion colors - clearly more color than the human eye can distinguish or what monitors and printers can reproduce - but impressive nonetheless for the promise of yielding hues as close to life as possible and delivering smoother color gradations. Ignore all but single-pass scanners when shopping for a flatbed, and aim for 48-bit color as well. Consider lower-bit models (such as 42-bits) only if your scanner of choice has other specs that a higher-bit counterpart may not have - such as patented technologies and special features - that more than compensate for the lower bit depth of your selected model.

Resolution

The resolution of a scanner determines the level of detail that can be captured; the higher the resolution, the sharper the scan will be. There are two types of resolution: optical and interpolated, with optical resolution being the more important spec, as it relates to the scanner’s actual optics and amount of information that it can sample. The interpolated resolution of a scanner is helpful only in specific applications - such as scanning line art, where higher resolutions can even out jaggedness and produce smoother contours.

Most flatbeds today feature respectable specs for optical resolution, ranging from 2400 dpi to 4800 dpi. Any scanner with such resolution figures would prove a respectable choice, since these specs are more than capable of delivering sharp detail or enlarging images for most print applications. Remember, too, that scanning your images in the full resolution of the scanner is likely to yield file sizes of unmanageable proportions - without delivery any discernible benefit towards increasing image clarity or quality. So forget the resolution wars of the past when manufacturers trotted out their resolution specs to trump their closest rival. Instead, look for other features today in flatbeds that may be more important for your needs, or consider the resolution spec TOGETHER with these other features when choosing your choice of flatbed.

CCD vs. CIS Sensor Technology

Image sensors in flatbed scanners can be of two types - CCD or CIS. Scanners with CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors use a system of mirrors and lenses for redirecting light reflected from the original document to the CCD array. Because of the required optics, CCD scanners are more expensive to produce and result in bulkier scanners, compared to their CIS counterparts. The image quality produced by CCD scanners, however, is far superior to that produced by CIS scanners.

CIS, or Contact Image Sensor technology, is a more recent development in which the sensor array lies just under the scanner bed, so that the sensors catch reflected light directly. Since CIS scanners do not need a complex optical system, they are cheaper to produce and are smaller in size, resulting in portable, lightweight models that may be prove ideal for cramped desktops. CIS sensors also contain on-board logic that consumes less power than CCD. But because the on-board logic utilizes space that would normally be used for the mirrors and lenses in a CCD to sense light, scans from a CIS scanner are lower in quality. As a result, most people tend to forego the slight savings that can be obtained from a CIS scanner in favor of getting higher-quality CCD models instead.

Connectivity & Interface

Most consumer-level scanners today will feature USB ports - either Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0) on more recent models, or the earlier USB 1.1 standard. Hi-Speed USB is backwards compatible with the USB 1.1 and has a data transfer rate of 480 megabits per second (Mbps). Higher-end scanner models are likely to include the FireWire interface as well, allowing scanners to be used in advanced, professional such as audio/video transfer and data storage. Scanners with either USB or FireWire interface are hot swappable - which means the scanners can be plugged or unplugged from other devices to which they are connected without having to turn the scanners off and on. Older scanners will include SCSI or parallel ports, but you shouldn’t have to consider these legacy-type models - unless you are using the scanner to connect to older computers. When shopping for a flatbed, any scanner with a Hi-Speed USB port should be purchase-worthy, but consider getting a model with dual Hi-Speed USB and FireWire interfaces to expand your range of possible connections to many other devices and peripherals.

Scan Speed

Speed specifications in flatbeds are hard to determine - unless the scanner manufacturer provides the specs or the exact conditions in which material is scanned. Scan speeds can run from seconds to several minutes, depending on a wide variety of factors. For instance, to compare scan speed between two comparable models, one will need to know the size of the material being scanned, the resolution setting, the interface being used, and the processing speed and power of the computer to which the scanner is connected. Check speed claims carefully if these are made at all; it may help to do an actual or sample scan with the model of your choice, and see if you are satisfied with the speeds of the preview and actual scans. You could also check to see if your flatbed model has been reviewed in computer magazines or sites and rated for speed, as benchmark tests may give a more comprehensive picture on how fast the scanner runs.

Size of Scan Bed

Most flatbeds today will start out with a standard scan bed size of 8.5″ x 11.7″, approximating the dimensions of a letter-size image or document. From there, various bed-size configurations could come into play, including 8.5″ x 14″ to accommodate legal-size material, and 12″ x 17″ for large, tabloid-size scanning. It’s usually a good idea to consider a flatbed with a bed size that’s beyond the bare minimum - in this case, larger than the barebones 8.5″ x 11.7″. Not only can you fit larger-sized material onto the scan bed, you can also group several smaller pieces on the scan bed and perform batch scans (scanning in groups) to save time and effort. Dynamic Range

The dynamic range of a scanner measures how well it can capture the tonal range of an image, ranging from the brightest highlights to the darkest shadows. Dynamic range is measured on a scale from 0.0 (perfect white) to 4.0 (perfect black), and the single number associated with a scanner indicates how much of that range it can tell apart. The minimum and maximum density values that can be captured by a scanner are called Dmin and Dmax, respectively. If a scanner’s Dmin was 0.2 and its Dmax was 3.0, then its dynamic range would be 2.8.

While dynamic range is a term often bandied about, in truth the spec is more important for film scanners used to scan slides, negatives, and transparencies - as these types of media have a broader range of tones compared to photos, and for which a scanner’s higher dynamic range can make a difference. Most flatbed scanners will have a dynamic range of 2.8 to 3.0, but don’t be surprised if you can’t find it in the specs, as this is not critical information needed by the average user looking to scan photos or prints.

Software

In selecting the scanner of your choice, consider the software that comes with it. Software will always include the scanner’s own driver or scanning software, as well as a host of complementary programs such as image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop to which the scanned image is delivered; optical character recognition software like ABBYY FineReader Sprint for text scanning and OCR; color calibration software for higher-end scanner models; and even photo-repair software like DIGITAL ICE. Check for extras as well, such as proprietary or exclusive technologies.

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