Rainbow
Technology,a breakthrough in digital data storage enables us to store up to a
massive 450GB on just a piece of paper. Rainbow Storage is a group of
techniques to store digital data in some colors, color combinations and some
symbols known as rainbow format, and therefore a rainbow picture will be
generated. The technique is used to achieve high-density storage. With the help
of Rainbow system we would be watching full-length high-definition videos from
a piece of paper!
The
main attraction is the cheap paper. The Rainbow technology is feasible because
printed text, readable by the human eye is a very wasteful use of the potential
capacity of paper to store data. By printing the data encoded in a denser way
much higher capacities can be achieved. Paper is, of course, bio-degradable,
unlike CDs or DVDs. And sheets of paper also cost a fraction of the cost of a
CD or DVD.
How Is It Possible?
It uses geometric
shapes such as squares and hexagons to represent data patterns, instead of the
usual binary method that uses ones and zeros to represent data. Besides, color
is also used in the Rainbow system, to represent other data elements. Files
such as text, images, sounds and video clips are encoded in "rainbow
format" as colored circles, triangles, squares and so on, and printed as
dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch. An RVD therefore
looks like a print-out of the modern art.
The
paper can then be read through a specially developed scanner and the contents
decoded into their original digital format and viewed or played. The Rainbow
technology is feasible because printed text, readable by the human eye is a
very wasteful use of the potential capacity of paper to store data. By printing
the data encoded in a denser way much higher capacities can be achieved. The
retrieval of data is done by scanning the paper or the plastic sheet containing
the data into a scanner and later reading it over monitor. Instead of using 0s
and 1s, we use color dots where each color dot can represent minimum 8 bits (1
byte). The rainbow picture will be highly compressed and can be represented in
any color medium. For retrieving the contents from the medium, picture can be
captured and data can be generated from the color combinations. "Although
environmental light differences and color shading is a problem, it can overcome
up to a certain limit by using efficient mapping functions".
Implementation Requirements
In
order to read the Rainbow prints, all that is required is a scanner and
specialized software. Smaller scanners
could fit inside laptop computers or mobile phones, and read SIM card-sized
RVD's containing 5GB of data. The recording media could be either paper or
plastic sheets. The piece of paper or even plastic sheet storing the data has
just to be scanned in the scanner and read over the monitor. A scanning drive
based on the Rainbow software has simultaneously been developed which will come
in smaller sizes to be initially carried with the laptops and later to fit into
their bodies.
The
developer is simultaneously moulding the technology into 'Rainbow Cards' which
will be of SIM card size and store 5 GB of data equivalent to three films of
DVD quality.
As
'Rainbow Cards' will become Popular, Rainbow Card Readers will replace CD
drives of mobile phone and computer notebooks and will enable more data in
portable forms for mini digital readers. Large scale manufacture of the Rainbow
card will bring down its cost to just 50 paise.
Demonstration
The
reporter of Arab News claims to have seen 450 pages of fully printed foolscap
being stored on a 4-square inch piece of Rainbow paper. The reporter also
claimed that he was shown a 45-second video clip that was stored using the
Rainbow system on a plain piece of paper. Abideen has demonstrated a 45-second
video clip being encoded on paper, termed by him, a rainbow video disk - RVD -
and then played back through a computer with an RVD scanner attached. In
another demonstration he has shown 432 A4 pages of paper rainbow format-encoded
and stored on a two-inch by two-inch square of paper.
Once
the Rainbow technology is in, soon we would be watching full-length
high-definition videos from a piece of paper! With the popularity of the
Rainbow Technology, computer or fashion magazines in future need not carry CDs
in a pack.
One
of the major advantages of the Rainbow system is the fact that it should cost a
lot less to produce than the typical polycarbonate DVDs, CDs and now Blu- rays.
Huge data banks can be constructed out of Rainbow-based storage medium.
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