Google plans to accelerate its massive efforts to scan tens of millions of books and periodicals with the acquisition on Wednesday of a company called reCAPTCHA.

ReCAPTCHA is a well-known provider of CAPTCHA technology, which is used to prevent spammers from using computers to automatically register for online services, such as webmail accounts and Web site registrations.

CAPTCHA, which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart," requires users to type randomly chosen words that appear as images, a process that is easy for humans but hard for computers to do correctly.

More: http://pcworld.com/article/172102/