COLD and Imaging

COLD

COLD is the acronym for "Computer Output to Laser Disc." It's really a description ofr a class of applications rather than a specific technology, although that confuses a large number of people. It is a term used by MIS people more than CD-ROM people, although some CD-Recordable users are very interested in this application, generally businesses with extensive backfiles or a heavy load of forms and other paper-based data they want to archive in an easily-retrievable way.

Imaging

Imaging is part of the COLD application -- it is a term used to describe digitizing data, usually from paper, and frequently using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to generate index-able text, but it usually also involves storing a raster image of the document (hence the name), for legal or administrative purposes, or because some of the information may otherwise be lost, such as drawings, photographs, etc. COLD and imaging include scanning, OCR, indexing, interface design and storage on optical disc (CD-R, CD-ROM, M.O. or Phase-change discs, or even the old analog Laser Discs.)