Fuji Xerox expects to make shared office equipment, such as fax machines and printers, as easy to personalise as popular Web pages.
A technology developed at Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Lab (FXPal) in Silicon Valley enables individuals to gain access to information stored in personal computers or a corporate network from any shared electronic public device.
If plans by the Tokyo-based office equipment giant materialise, people may soon be able to sample this technology through 7-Elevens.
Jonathan Trevor, FXPal staff scientist, said Fuji Xerox planned to introduce this 'Personal Interaction Points' (PIPs) technology in Japan, where the 7-Eleven chain operates DocuCentres inside its stores.
These broadband-connected DocuCentres are equipped with Fuji Xerox-brand multimedia machines, on which users can check their e-mail as well as scan, print and fax documents.
Mr Trevor said: 'With PIPs, people can access what we call their personal information cloud via those devices wherever they go. Your preferences become the default setup at these PIP-enabled devices, similar to when you open your personalised Yahoo! account. You can open your recent PC documents, edit them and save these changes back to your PC.'
PIPs use Windows operating system file-monitoring capabilities, eliminating the need to install any other software.