ScanR
Somewhere or other (I can’t remember where, unfortunately), I heard about ScanR.com. It provides an interesting service whereby you take a picture of a whiteboard or document (with a phonecam if you like), then email it (or MMS it) to one of ScanR’s email addresses (there are separate addresses for whiteboard and document photos). They then perform some image manipulation voodoo on it and return you a PDF via email. You can see some examples on their site, but they can correct for weird perspective, bad white balance and a host of other photographic blunders. In addition, if you send them a photo of a typewritten document, they do some OCR on it to extract some text.
I tried it today with a whiteboard and was quite impressed with the result. I’m fairly sure that I could probably get a similar result if I spent hours messing about in Photoshop, but this is just much easier (and free!). I can see myself using it a lot for whiteboards in particular, to capture ideas in a very clean form before I accidentally erase them. I might even use it in the library when I remember—-too late—-that my photocopy card has no credits left on it.
1
There's also a free little app called Save My Whiteboard that does similar work. Maybe try it first.
by Derek K. Miller @ 19/05/2006 6:06 pm • Permalink •
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I have used software for whiteboard correction called Whiteboard Photo from Polyvision. It works great but unfortunately is Windows only. It is one of the few programs I miss after switching to Mac. Anyway, it works great and in a similar way to the service you are describing. It is a much lower cost alternative to the expensive and complex electronic whiteboard systems.
by Bill @ 20/05/2006 12:05 pm • Permalink •
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I must admit that I am having a problem with this one. A question, well two questions, spring to mind - no, three.
1) Why
2) If the information on the blackboard (I'm old, haven't caught up with whiteboards yet, when I was at school in 1950 blah de blah) is so important, why not copy it onto a notepad.
No ...... 4
3) Why would you trust such important information to someone you don't know, and
4) Why do they do it for free?
by Jonathan Briggs @ 21/05/2006 7:06 am • Permalink •
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Derek. K. Miller: Nice! I'll take a look at that.
Bill: Yes, I can never be bothered with those. That's why this service appealed to me for the few occasions when I'd find it useful.
Jonathan Briggs: Well, copying stuff down is so 20th Century
. I'm not sure that I would trust important (or at least sensitive stuff) to someone else, but it's OK for everything else. They do it for free (currently) because they are planning to launch additional 'premium' services, and it provides a way for people to try the service out.
by bsag @ 22/05/2006 5:06 pm • Permalink •
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I came across this the other day (www.clicktoscan.com), it's currently in Beta format, seems to work well, might be worth a look. Does the same as ScanR with the added bonus of being able to do it all from your mobile phone handset.
Great for taking photos of whiteboards and revision notes without having to write them yourself. The image is really sharp.
You can send scans directly to email addresses (no need for a PC) and it even lets you convert pictures taken on a camera phone into .pdf - pretty cool
by Mark Howes @ 12/07/2006 7:08 am • Permalink •
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i need it for my nokia6630, please somone mail me attached with this soft ware, regards, dhpmet@yahoo.co.in
by dhpmet @ 28/07/2006 8:07 am • Permalink •
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