Camera phones have been regularly been both lauded and reviled; they have hit the news as a security risk, a threat to privacy, as creators of pop-art, and as the main type of phone now being sold. (Although we'd argue that the last was not because of consumer choice, but due to a lack of it.) In any case, they're here, now, and novel applications are being imagineered.
Camera phones have been regularly been both lauded and reviled; they have hit the news as a security risk, a threat to privacy, as creators of pop-art, and as the main type of phone now being sold. (Although we'd argue that the last was not because of consumer choice, but due to a lack of it.) In any case, they're here, now, and novel applications are being imagineered.
Xerox made the news awhile back by touting the ability to turn camera phones into image scanners; but the product has yet to see the light of day, while a couple of their competitors have already released products which basically works on the same premise.
The first is e-ceipt. (Update: This does not do OCR, so we didn't review it.) This basically attempts to reduce paperwork by serving as an automated repository for all your expenditure, and leveraging upon the camera and voice recording capabilites in your phone to provide the documentary evidence. It is compatible with the Symbian Series 60 platform, including the Nokia 6630 and 7610.
The second application is actually even more interesting. Samsung failed to note this in their "announcement" of new phones yesterday, but at CES they are demonstrating a phone which can actually use Optical Character Recognition technology to automate the addition of contacts.
[Pictures are thumbnails from Phonescoop. Visit their CES Coverage for better shots.]
So you snap a picture of a business card, the text it becomes recognized, and you have a new contact on your phonebook. This sort of technology might be seen to be merely a gimmick, and to a certain extent, it is. OCR technology is not even perfect on computers, and having to edit makes the process more convoluted than simply creating the contact yourself.
This is all well and good, and as the technology improves, it is inevitable that these applications become more polished, and have greater capabilities. This will generally be easily accomplished; all that really has to be done is that 5 megapixel camera phones have to become widely available. (and this was part of Samsung's announcement yesterday ) This will make document scanning a breeze, and probably create new security nightmares for those so inclined. But think of the other possibilities: I remember four years ago I was terribly intrigued by the C Pen, a little tool which you could bring into the library with which to extract notes easily. You activated the c-pen, and moved it over the text, and the little pen-sized device recognized and saved all the data. It was like highlighting for the new generation. (I didn't buy one myself, partially because I never actually read anything in the library and partially because it was shockingly expensive )
Now imagine if your phone was capable of this, at no significant added cost...
