Video: Seattle company develops digital pen, paper

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SEATTLE - Over the years, there has been a lot of talk about computers taking the place of good old-fashioned pen and paper.  Now a Seattle company is merging the two. 

The company is called Adapx (pronounced "adapts"); a prominent technology research company recently named them among the 2008 cool vendors in emerging technology. 

From firefighters positioning crews to battle back flames in Southern California to the troops gathering intelligence in Iraq, many are still charting their next moves on a map. 

Now, many of them are doing that with a new digital pen from Adapx. 

"A digital pen is a much simpler thing for a soldier to carry on the ground than a laptop," said Ken Schneider, CEO of Adapx. 

Their capturx software along with a digital pen allows people to print a document off of any normal printer and digitally enable that paper. 

"So what that means is the paper, in effect, becomes the computer and the pen is like a mobile device and it's blue-tooth enabled," said Schneider. 

As you write, all the information is collected in the digital pen. When you dock the pen in a computer, all the information appears on a screen.  Map data that has historically taken days, even months, to update is now done in seconds.  The system can also download handwriting and even doodling. 

If you ask the people at Adapx, all this talk about pen and paper falling out of favor is a fallacy. 

"In many respects, we don't think society has gotten away from the pen at all," said Schneider. 

The mapping technology has only been available for a few months and the company now has clients worldwide.