ScanR (Beta): This stuff really works

"Scan documents or whiteboards, anywhere, anytime, using only your camera phone. "

This is a neat idea and really simple to use. I must say I am amazed with the result. I have seen similar stuff being done before. In asia (read japan), some phones come pre loaded with this feature but again these are phones that are years ahead of the devices available here in the states.

The only issue with this type of service is that the user has to be smart enough to get a good shot of the material to be scanned. I tried the service out with document and white board snapshots and got excellent results for whiteboards and documents (A4 size) with limited data. Haven't actually got a good shot of a complete A4 size page whose PDF came out with readable characters.

The image processing logic running behind seems pretty good and fast. I get the PDF in my email within 2 minutes of actually sending the MMS out. The adaptive thresholding that they are running on the images is pretty robust and does take care of shadows and residual noise pretty well.

I have a demo account with the service and I get the PDF document sent to my email address (entered during registration). I would really like to have the feature of sending a PDF to some one else's email directly from my cell phone without having to open my email and forward the email to a bunch of people. To do something like this, they might need to come up with a client application which leads to a lot of complexity(1: User has to install the app 2: get megapixel shots on devices using camera API).

More Information : ScanR
Original Post at : alarm:clock