scanR continues to grow in the enterprise.
About a year ago, we analyzed how the world's largest companies were using scanR. The latest analysis shows that scanR is used by 9 of the 10 largest companies in the world, 66% of the top 50, and 35% of the Fortune 500!
A lot of effort goes into prioritizing development at scanR. The market opportunities and the technical challenges span many areas and thus it takes great discipline to remain focused. One area that has remained a lower priority is color document scanning. scanR is committed to providing the highest quality services and we don't want to release an enhancement that doesn't meet your expectations. In the case of color documents, your expectations are set already by the expensive color copier you have plugged into the wall. To meet those expectations, there are several important technology challenges that must be overcome.
scanR Documents currently removes all color information. The result looks like a black and white copy. Here is a color document processed by scanR Documents:
However, we could just add back the color information. In fact, some competitive technologies do this. Here is a sample of a color document processed by a competitive technology using this simple method:
As you can see, there is some color, but the result is not satisfactory. The most noticeable problem is that the photos look bad. Other problems include poor color matching and primitive lighting adjustment. And this example is easy because the original image is high-quality, in-focus and relatively evenly lit.
To properly process color documents from camera images, the service must deal robustly with segmentation and color correction. Segmentation is the process of identifying regions of text, graphics, background and photos. Once these regions are correctly detected, each region must be separately processed according to the characteristics of its type. Color correction may be different for each region and must be able to adjust to the correct colors in the presence of off-white lighting, shadows, sensor noise and compression. Here is the result from the scanR labs:
As you can see, there really is no comparison. Color documents require sophisticated technologies to give the results that you want. We don't think adding few specks of color really improves the quality of your document scans and so we'll wait until we have it right.
On a recent trip, we passed by this store, filled with scanners, copiers and fax machines.
With scanR available on all the great new phones from Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Apple, how do they survive?
We've been spending a lot of time in Japan lately. The people are nice, the food is great, but what really gets us excited are the PHONES! Every phone has a camera and most of them are high quality. Camera phones have been in Japan longer than anywhere else and their pervasiveness has created a culture of capture. Recently at a conference, we saw a speaker give a demo of a mobile service. To get the audience to try it, he displayed a barcode on the screen and asked people to capture it. In many Japanese phones, a QR code reader is available that will turn these barcodes into web addresses. Amazingly, a lot of people did it.
So rather than type 12 characters on their phones, many people chose to use their cameras to snap the photo and get the URL automatically. It's nice to see what happens will great camera phones reach mass market adoption levels and introduce new behaviors. Needless to say, the scanR team loves Japan.
Japan continues to lead the world with the best camera phones. It appears that the UK is catching up. However, the US continues to lag substantially. Here is a comparison of available camera phones for a leading mobile carrier in each country.
It's a mystery why the US mobile carriers have the worst phones. With the largest mobile market and four major competitive carriers, you would think that the US phone lineups would be on par or better than the rest of the world.
The need to convert paper into digital information has existed for a long time. There is a long history of attempts to solve the problem with dedicated hardware devices. Take a look at a few:
My favorite is the $35,000 book scanner on the top middle part of the image.
Why are their so many attempts? I think it due to the pain involved in organizing physical things. Search allows us to pile all of our digital files on our computers and the web without much thought to organization. There is no analogy in the physical world. It simply takes a lot of time to write or type lists of physical things. As a result, companies keep trying to make it easier.
Why have so many failed? Some of these devices make you wonder who would ever buy them. Yet others are nice solutions but expensive and not flexible. Most of them can only capture one type of information: a book, or a whiteboard, or a bar code. Outside of their specific use, they are as good as door stops.
In-Stat published a report that people want camera phones to offer many of the features of digital cameras and higher picture quality. The good news for the phone vendors is that 50% of survey respondents said they would only purchase a camera phone with at least 2 megapixel resolution, which shows the demand is there for better phones.
Read Camera Phone Demand Soon to Peak; Low Picture Resolution and Other Factors Fail to Meet Users Expectations here.
A new study shows that 25% of US Internet Households want to use a high-resolution camera phone as their primary camera and 52% plan to purchase one in the next 12 months. The implication is that soon large numbers of people will have a very capable digital capture device in their pocket at all times. The difference between camera phones and digital still cameras is that people carry their mobile phones everywhere and always.
Another interesting point in the study is that the demand for high resolution camera phones is higher than music phones and smartphones. Here's the chart from Park Associates:
The full press release is available here.
NEC announced that it has developed technology that enables camera phones to function as text scanners. The only hitch is you'll have to wait for 3 years.
A new software application from NEC and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan can turn cameraphones into text scanners...The designers say they do not plan to release the software for about 3 years.
More information is available here.
My desk is covered with piles of paper. I'm drowning in it. According to Berkeley, there's a good chance you are too. Here is an excerpt from a study that analyzed just how much paper we produce:
Contrary to notions of paperless offices floated in the late 80s and early 90s, the consumption of office paper has gone up substantially in the recent years, especially following the move to laser/inkjet printers from dot matrix printers. Paper use in offices has further risen with the increasing speed of laser printing coupled with its decreasing cost. Each year, almost 500 billion copies are produced on copiers in the United States; nearly 15 trillion copies are produced on copiers, printers, and multi-function machines. (Source: XeroxParc).
Check out the full report here.
