1. A system for automatically connecting a communications device to a remote site identified in printed text, comprising the combination of: a handheld scanner including a housing adapted to be held in the hand of a user and scanned over a line of printed text, and containing an image scanning device for converting optical images of text scanned by said scanner into electrical signals representative of the optical images, a memory for storing said electrical signals, a character recognition engine for converting said stored electrical signals into data representative of characters of text, a display unit providing a visual display of the characters represented by said data, a wireless transmission device for transmitting said data to said communications device, and a set of user controls for manipulating the display and transmission of said character data; and a software agent that operates on said communications device for receiving the data transmitted from said handheld scanner and controlling said communications device to initiate a connection to a remote site that is identified by the characters of text represented by the transmitted data.
1. A system for automatically connecting a communications device to a remote site identified in printed text, comprising the combination of: a handheld scanner including a housing adapted to be held in the hand of a user and scanned over a line of printed text, and containing an image scanning device for converting optical images of text scanned by said scanner into electrical signals representative of the optical images, a memory for storing said electrical signals, a character recognition engine for converting said stored electrical signals into data representative of characters of text, a display unit providing a visual display of the characters represented by said data, a wireless transmission device for transmitting said data to said communications device, and a set of user controls for manipulating the display and transmission of said character data; and a software agent that operates on said communications device for receiving the data transmitted from said handheld scanner and controlling said communications device to initiate a connection to a remote site that is identified by the characters of text represented by the transmitted data. 5. The system of claim 1 wherein said software agent causes data to be retrieved from said remote site and provides said data to an application program that is executing on said communication device.