ISR Group Ltd of Danbury, Connecticut has signed up Fuji Film of Tokyo as a licensee of its software development kit for interfacing to digital cameras in a move that could boost consumer acceptance of digital cameras. Called the ixla Digital Camera Interface, it has been designed to automatically detecting a digital camera regardless of which manufacturer it is from. Currently a software driver is needed for cameras from different vendors. At present digital cameras rely on the Twain interface, which was designed for scanners and can only manage a single image at a time, while digital cameras work with multiple images, explained Shane Workman, product manager at ISR. The ixla DCI to overcome these problems. Fuji intends to create store front kiosks that connect to any digital camera and allow a range of consumer functions such as printing pictures and email. The ixla DCI means that Fuji do not have to collect Twain drivers for every camera that an end user may bring to them to have photos printed. In addition, for them to be accepted in the market, such kiosks must be easy to use. The consumer needs to be able to literally plug the camera in and print the photos. ISR now hopes to license the interface as a software development tool for software developers so that photo editing software, for example, can automatically work with a digital camera without needing a software driver. Revenue will be generated through an annual licensing fees and/or royalties from the applications created with ixla DCI. ixla DCI currently supports 50 digital cameras from major vendors such as Agfa, Casio, Chinon, Epson, Fuji, HP, Kodak, Konica, NEC, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Ricoh, Sharp and Sanyo.
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