Mirror Imaging Patents

Not exactly sure what this is all about, but it appears two banks have settled with this Michigan-based company regarding the use of patented technology used to retrieve document images in financial environments. Reading the abstract for the patent it appears to be for some sort of hierarchical storage management that enables older documents to be stored on outside storage and accessed directly from there.

McMahan Leaving Kodak

Word has trickled down to us that as part of the recent management changes at Kodak Document Imaging, which were made on the heels of the closing of the Bowe Bell + Howell Scanners acquisition, Don McMahan will be leaving the company. McMahan had been Kodak's VP of sales and regional business manager, for Kodak's Document Imaging business in the U.S. and Canada. As part of the the recent re-organization, for BBH Scanners president Russell Hunt was named regional business manager. We understand that the VP of sales duties will be assumed by personnel already onboard.

McMahan has been a fixture in the document scanner industry since I began in the mid-late 1990s. He is known for his reseller focus and has previously help VP positions at Fujitsu Computer Products of America and Visioneer. He is also a past chairman of the AIIM Board and this year was named an AIIM Fellow.

HSBC redaction issues

Apparently the U.S. arm of international banking conglomerate HSBC had some problems with its redaction software. The bank recently announced it would be upgrading its capture app after at least one person complained that certain elements in their bankruptcy filing, which were supposed to be kept private, were made accessible to the public. We've written about weak redaction software practices in the past, which enable users to cut and paste the redacted material and have it show up in something like a word-processing file. (There was an embarrassing DoD incident a few years back). There is plenty of redaction software out there that can prevent this from happening, but apparently not everyone reads DIR. HSBC could have saved themselves a lot of money.

Apparently, the TSA made a similar screw-up recently as well.

AIIM 2010 Keynote Speaker Announced

Michael Rogers has been announced as the keynote speaker for next year's AIIM event. It seems after a fairly rough show last year, Questex is putting on the full court marketing press to generate interest in this year's event. It will be interesting to see who shows up. From my perspective, at least, Rogers sounds like an interesting speaker. He's listed as "Futurist-in-Residence for The New York Times Company, as well an interactive media pioneer, novelist and journalist. He also writes the popular Practical Futurist column for MSNBC. In addition, Rogers is a best-selling novelist whose fiction explores the human impact of technology."

Questex is also apparently offering educational passes for half of what they sold for last year. Hopefully, they can breathe some new life into the show. As the recent Microsoft SharePoint 2009 event showed, people will still show up in droves at trade shows if they are interested enough.

AIIM 2010 is scheduled to run April 19 through Thursday, April 22, 2010, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.