256GB Geometrically Encoded Paper Storage Device

jrieth50 noted that a method of using geometric shapes combined with color to store up to 256GB of data on a sheet of paper or plastic. The article says "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. The paper can then be read through a specially developed scanner and the contents decoded into their original digital format and viewed or played."

Comments

Robustness & Feasibility

[eldavojohn]

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.

And I'm sure this "Rainbow Technology" is also very wasteful if you would devise a way to encode data on electrons & lay them on the sheet of paper and then read them. The obvious problem being that just exposing the paper to the natural elements would probably render some of the data useless. Now I know that compact disc drives in computers use a form of error correcting codes (I can't recall if it's cyclic redundancy checks or some other form of parity) and I assume that the scheme of this paper technology uses the same (most likely at the cost of a fraction of space). Judging by the word 'rainbow' I'm guessing it uses colorized shapes to encode the data which is a novel idea but what quality must the paper & ink be? Can the paper in my printer be used to encode this data?

My question would be how much wear & tear can a sample of this medium stand before it is rendered unreadable? I would highly doubt one would be able to fold it--however it would be interesting to see whether creating a diagonal read/write scheme would protect from vertical & horizontal folds with the proper ECC. I think the plastic sheets could potentially be as robust as discs but would you be able to bend them? I doubt it though if they allowed it, it'd probably end up being more expensive than a disc.

Interesting technology but I'd sure like to hear a lot more of the details of how it works & how it performs before I make a solid judgment on its feasibility.

hmmm...

[leehwtsohg]

600dpi times 8*11 inches makes 32M dots. To get 26GB you need 6500 bits per dot. This gives either an amazing resolution in color separation (as opposed to, say, 32 bits on a screen - maybe 700 different frequencies, each with 10bit separation), or much higher dot density - something like 50000dpi!