Turn your camera into a scanner with Snapter
Using a camera as a scanner is nothing new but it depends on how good the software is that performs the optical character recognition (OCR). Snapter is a program that has just exited a beta program that purports to be the solution for us all. To use Snapter you take a picture of a document with your camera, even phone cameras will do, and bring it into the program on your Windows-based PC. Snapter has three different "project" types to optimize the recognition depending on what you are trying to capture, document (for flat pieces of paper), card (for business cards), and book. The book project handles the curving of the pages into the spine and is used to capture text from open books.
Page orientation doesn’t matter to Snapter, it can detect when pages are sideways for instance and handle them accordingly. What the program sets out to do is provide the equivalent of portable scanning using any phone at hand and lets the user capture those bits of information that are too important to let get away. The program is $49, kind of pricey for a single function program but the type of utility that if you need it you really need it. To use Snapter you must have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed, and they offer a 14 day fully functional free trial.
To give jkOnTheRun readers a chance to give the program a good try the Snapter folks have supplied four free licenses to the program. All you need to do is leave a comment on this thread describing how Snapter could be a useful tool in your mobile toolkit and we’ll pick the best four. Those lucky folks will each get the $49 program totally free so enter right now. We’ll announce the winners in a day or two so don’t delay. Make sure you use a valid email address with your post so we can notify you if you’re a winner.
UPDATE: The winners have been chosen and this contest is now closed. Thanks for participating and visiting jkOnTheRun!
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I do a bit of record paper keeping for home and my church and having a digital copy would be GREAT! I’d really enjoy using this as everything is paper at the moment.
that should be paper record keeping ;)
As an osteopath i have alot of paperwork from my patients eg: doctor prescription , X-rays and MRI scans. Since I do not own a scanner, this program would be great so I could load the image onto my ASUS R2H. This product would make my daily routine truely mobile.
This would be a godsend to me. I’m trying to build an automatic book scanner and I have to say I’m not having much success. I’ve almost figured out the page turning mechanism (only for one book size so far) but I’m loathe to dismantle my scanner for the next part. If I could just use my old digital camera instead that would be a lot easier.
I’ve tried using a camera before but the recognition on normal programs isn’t good enough.
Hi James. As the Founder of Planet Ark, I’m always on the look out for newspaper articles about the environment. So many times I’ve read an article in a cafe and cannot take that newspaper or magazine with me as it belongs to the cafe. Having this would be very useful as it would enable me to scan and OCR that environment article ‘on the run’.
I used to use readiris for this, but results where not always that good. It all depends on how sharp your picture is. Maybe this program does a better job.
Ooh! This would be so cool. I tried scanning pages with my digital camera before, but I just didn’t find that it was all that readable. As a CPA, I work with tons of paper documents. I have a scanner at the office, but my Q1 is my primary computer when I’m out of the office. I’d love to have a mobile scanning solution that I can take with me to clients and for working at remote locations like the home office. Plus, I’m working on an oil and gas industry tax book and a portable scanning solution would be ideal for collecting research materials for the book. I also am a musician and I want to scan all me lead sheets into my Q1. I’d love you to pick me, but I realize that there are lots of worthy candidates. Hmm…save taxes or save the environment…maybe I’ll be paying retail. LOL
Maybe I will use this for posting newspaper clippings on my blog.
I scan in sketches from my sketchbook all of the time. I wonder how this program would handle in scanning drawings, and sketches. It would be nice to try.
James,
How could the paperlessundergrad not have a copy of this? As I live away from campus right now I’m having a real problem getting a hold of critical books and articles. It’s a problem that’s never transpired before but as I’ve moved into 3rd year the shortage of books means that most of them are on short loan i.e. 4 hours max. I partly get around this in a paperless way by using the only scanner on campus but it is located in a room that’s often used for training. Therefore more often than not I either have to skim read it on campus or commit the most cardinal of sins and use the photocopier..gasp!!
However it wouldn’t be all take take take on my part. Snapter looks like an app that’s made for a paperless operative’s toolbox so I’d also provide a full review of this on my own blog and as Snapter also also looks like the ideal app for the TabletPC operative i.e. scan and annotate, I can write a review article at StudentTabletPC too.
Seriously if I had the $49 I’d go and buy it right now. It seems to tick so many boxes for me and gives me that warm fuzzy feeling :o)
I work for a smaller financial institution. The majority of employees still rely on paper. I am trying my hardest get people to change, but I still get the majority of the memo’s, request, and information in paper. This software would let me quickly transfer this information to digital format. (Where I can actually do somehting with it!)
I am a medical student who has to read and present past journal articles from our library. But the library copier commits highway robbery by charging us 15 cents per copy. I would love to be able to snap a picture of the article and read it on my tablet PC. The copy machine savings will allow me to buy another cup of coffee to stay up for my next 36 hour shift :)
As a Homebuilder, we are faced with a mountain of inspection reports, bids, and walk thru lists on our jobsites. I could see Snapter becoming an integral part of our workflow to get these inspections into our TabletPC’s and onto our office network storage… Great idea! Thank you!
I would use this on my Sony UX to capture flyers on post boards around town, so I could remember when events are taking place.
I’m a poor college student who would love to be able to digitize my textbooks without having to tear the spine off to run the pages through an ADF scanner to avoid the curvature effect of scanning a bound book and destroy the resale value of my textbooks at the end of the semester.
As an IT consultant I’m on client site Mon-Thur nearly every week. On Monday mornings I get up get on a plane, live in a hotel until Thursday night and return home.
There are countless opporutnities when I’ve wished I’d had a method to capture various articles, whiteboarding activities, and information when I’m on a plane, in the client office, and away from home when all I have is my phone. This would be an ideal solution.
I’ve got 1 job, 1 wife, and 3 kids so I’m always going from location to location regardless of the time or day. Snapter would allow me to do SO many of the mobile tasks that I now have to accomplish SO much easier from scanning library reference books (can’t check ‘em out) for school projects to scanning that last copy of the hockey schedule (coach didn’t make enough) so someone else can have it to scanning my contacts business cards. It’s a very useful piece of software. SO, please enter me into this contest!
Thanks,
Gene
Hi – a graduate environmental journalism student here. Heading from a science masters this year into a journalism masters in August, I’ll be upgrading (or downsizing) my mobile kit from a fujitsu T4020 tablet to a P1610 (for the just-whip-it-out factor for interviews and contacts) and my digital camera. I’m already trying to live a paperless lifestyle to ease the load on my long commute, but I have trouble when professors saddle me with loads of paper handouts – I end up splitting my notetaking between paper and the tablet. A program like this could solve that problem, as well as:
- make researching for articles a snap (hee) with no photocopying involved
- allow me to develop a really cool contacts file with photo-scanned business cards, pictures of my contacts, and onenote links to interviews and recordings
- reduce the scanning-textbook stress (and soul-deep guilt at destroying books) with the continuous shooting setting on my camera
- allow me to put event brochures and programs directly into my notes
Thanks for the opportunity,
Emily
I have this great big pile of stuff I call ‘My Archive’ where _all_ of my correspondence, receipts, pretty much everything paperized, gets stuffed into. I basically have the policy that I never look at any of it on paper, I scan it all and process it on my PC.
What I would LOVE is to be able to upload photo’s live from my mobile phone (or from camera to SD to web if need be), photographing my documents, sending them across the globe using UMTS and having them end up in my online document storage, all scanned and stuff.
Let me start by saying thanks for sponsoring another awesome contest! I’ve been using the demo of Snapster for the past few days and it rocks! I’ve been using it in conjunction with a digital camera, but I am counting down the last few days before I am eligible for a phone upgrade so I can get a smartphone with an integrated camera (using Snapster and OneNote Mobile to supplement my tablet PC and OneNote 2007—mobile productivity heaven!). I know that I could make very good use of this program at school, home, and, and work.
I am starting an online MPA program from an out-of-state university, so I am going to be really dependant on the libraries at near-by colleges as I research assignments and my thesis (not to mention that I won’t have any checkout privileges). Snapster would be such a blessing in this situation—whip out the smartphone, take pictures of the materials I need, fire up Bluetooth and sync the phone with my tablet PC. I would run the pictures through Snapster to flatten them and then print them into OneNote 2007 for OCR. Fully searchable research notes without those annoying copy charges! Sweet!
In fact, I am thinking about writing my thesis on the topic of how technology can aid citizens in disaster preparedness and a good case study of how folks could use a program such as Snapster in conjunction with an inexpensive digital camera to create a disaster document kit with digitized copies of records such as birth certificates, social security cards, bank records, etc. would be an excellent starting point!
At home I have an antique scanner (it’s got a serial interface, for crying out loud) that’s no longer ideal for document preservation. With Snapster, I could use my smartphone or my wife’s digital camera to quickly digitize important documents. With my old Mustek scanner, it literally takes minutes to scan in one page at an absurdly low resolution. Snapster would rescue me from this situation! I could use this to digitize our records, bill stubs, receipts, and a ton of other paper documents. I could also use this in my role as our congregation’s treasurer—I could snap a picture of documents with my smartphone, file the original at the church building, and go about my merry way instead of lugging documents home to deal with them and then taking them right back for filing. This would be a huge productivity boon for me!
I could use this daily at work in a multitude of ways. I visit job sites to ensure compliance with federal grant guidelines. I could snap pictures of documents from the job site with my smartphone and after flattening them with Snapster, insert them into my OneNote project support files. Again, fully OCRed documents at my fingertips! The usage scenarios are truly unlimited and I’m sure that I could find new ways to use Snapster everyday..
So good luck everyone and I’ll be waiting to see if I’m one of the lucky folks selected. Thanks again!
I’m a spy for the US goverment and everyone knows we never get any good toys…
opps… forget I said that.
;-)
Make it easier to carry around all my books and articles I’ve gotten to work on mhy thesis/Dissertation. My laptop is 5 pounds but I carry another 25-40 books with me almost everyday. Quite Frankly I’m tired of being tired before even starting to work.
I am trying to find all of my greatgrandparents graves and what ever other evidence of their lives. Much of what I search is found in old church records, or register of deeds offices. It is very difficult to copy (xerox)some of these old records. I am using my digital camera now but this software is the missing link in the process. I need a paper record so that future family geneologists will have the reference. I have been on this search for the last 4 years. Getting close.
My son likes to color. While “on the go” he may not have a drawing tool or anything to color. I can use this to capture an image (a picture of my dog), import it and export using the “black and white” feature in Snapter. I would then import the image in Art Rage for him to color on my tablet. This can also help cut down on replacing coloring books.
This software will be excellent for me to use in my current situation working with a a contested Will and surrounding Probate issue. The Wash DC Courthouse only allows you to make XEROX copies of documents, 1 page at a time at .25 per page. Then, to make it even more fun, I cannot remove the documents from the Courts Jacket/ Folder. It is both extremely cumbersome and expensive. This would be the answer to my prayers. All I will need do is sit at the cubicle and snap pictures of the required pages as fast as I can take them. This will save me hours in the future.
Thanks for a great product and giving JKOnTheRun the oppurtunity to lay it on a few readers!
oh boy, you’ve got so many people to choose from.. poor you :P..
oh yeah, i would use it for the usual stuff.. scanning school handouts to transfer to my tablet pc .. boring huh ?
Hello, when I heard about this product i thought it would be great for my friend’s daughter.
She has Epidermolysis bullosa, which is a rare genetic disease characterized by the presence of extremely fragile skin and recurrent blister formation, resulting from minor mechanical friction or trauma.
The skin on her hands are very fragile and her fingers are fused together. She is currently in university and is having a hard time carrying the books to school. She currently has her mom scan the books for her so that it is easier to read. We’ve looked into those pen scanners and other portable scanners with no luck.
We want her to feel empowered. By letting her take the pictures of her books, she can feel like she’s accomplishing something on her own instead of waiting for her mom to do it.
I’m a Script Supervisor for film and video productions. Using a scanner to input various documents such as the script revisions handed to you at the last minute (no time to sit around with a scanner), or handwritten notes taken in conditions too extreme for the computer – just takes too long. If a camera shot could do it instantly — Wow! That would really help!
Cool I’ve been waiting for attol just like this. Forever!
Oh man this would make life easy – I am capturing family/cultural history through old hand written books and letters and I would prefer not to wreck the books or borrow the precious letters to be able to scan them.- I have used portable scans and digital camera snaps before but the results are dodgy or difficult to set up. If this works at all well, I will be able to preserve this knowledge before it is all gone forever.
Wow, Going back to school… still having my library with me on DVD backup.. My uses would include converting my current library to digital format to allow storage of the originals,thus making for an easier move and then not worrying about extra space at school. Sweet.
Not to mention the conversion of texts and handouts.
I am the webmaster and chief programmer/techie for DMAT CA-11, a Disaster Medical Assistance Team. We have a non-profit, 501(c)3, called Sacramento Disaster Medical Assistance Team, Inc. We have essentially zero budget for anything. All my programming is essentially a volunteer effort, using GPL and freeware, such as phpBB, mySQL, etc., to keep them in the 21rst century.
I have need to do field copying, and to make instant PDF’s, prints, etc. This program would REALLY help me to do this while out in the field, since I usually only have my Tablet PC and my camera, in the way of technology.
Please pick me! I (and my team) will be eternally grateful!