Do users in your company need to fill out forms away from the workplace? New technology could let them skip the paperwork and send digital docs straight to the office.

Here’s the scenario: You are an insurance claims adjuster. You drive up, inspect a cracked windshield, a dented fender, or house damage from a fallen tree limb, enter the relevant data onto a paper form (in triplicate) that will be used to process the claim, and authorize the repair.

In most cases, you’d have to get the data back to the main office, and that means having someone type the data into a computer. In a now possible scenario, you could simply send the data from your pen to the central office (through your smartphone, for example) and have it immediately and automatically transferred into digital form in an Excel spreadsheet or a database.

Yeah, right.

Those old enough may well remember Apple’s Newton MessagePad fiasco. Introduced in the early 1990s, the Newton had a stylus and built-in handwriting recognition — a feature that worked poorly except in canned demos, and soon became the butt of jokes (see this Doonesbury cartoon).

The Newton was laughed out the market.

But times have changed. The latest generation of digital pens and handwriting recognition software has profited from two decades of research and improvements in processor speed and memory. Handwriting recognition has gone from a joke to a very capable strategic product, one that can analyze writing not just letter by letter, but can process whole words and phrases, making increasingly smart and accurate interpretations of even hard-to-read writing.

One exciting product in this line is one called Capturx from a U.S. company called Adapx.

Here’s how it works: There are two components — a smart digital pen and software that lets you to print forms on ordinary paper while the user’s handwriting is interpreted and integrated into Microsoft Office.

The pen looks and feels like a regular ballpoint pen, but it adds powerful features: a built-in sensor, good memory (capable of storing around 50 pages of handwritten content), plus Bluetooth and USB connectivity. As you write, the pen stores the movements you have made, and can download the data to centralized software which converts it digitally, either as freehand notes or a structured entry form.

The form entry is where the Capturx product shines. You can create and print out a paper form in Microsoft Excel, for example, and have it filled in, box by box by workers in the field or on the shop floor, then transfer their writing strokes into an Excel file or a SharePoint database. (Some other products demand that you write a customer program interface to accomplish this.) What’s more, you can specify data types for each field, so that typically hard-to-distinguish letterforms, such as the number “1” and the letter “l” ca be correctly interpreted.

The product has been gaining traction in a number of areas. One is the construction trade, where forms and invoices need to be filled out on the job site. Another area jobs that involve mobile work, like inspectors, salesmen and survey takers. Finally, the pen is being used widely in court systems, where information about crime scenes, evidence, and witnesses has to be collected far from the nearest computer. Similarly, for police personnel, it can mean more time on the street and less time in the office typing up forms.

As often happens in technology, new advances can be oversold, fail, and then seemingly disappear. They can later sneak back into market with less fanfare but better implementation. That is what has happened to handwriting recognition and digital pen technology. It may be time for a new look about how it can help your business.

Other similar products to check out: Iogear’s Digital Scribe, Logitech’s io2, and Livescribe’s Pulse.

Tags: Adapx, Capturx, digital pen, Iogear, Livescribe, Logitech