scanR in the Fortune 500

scanR is used by 8 of the 10 largest companies in the world, 50% of the top 50, and 22% of the Fortune 500!  These are the top 10 companies, from the Forbes Global 2000 list:

1  Citigroup
2  General Electric
3  Bank of America
4  American Intl Group
5  HSBC Group
6  ExxonMobil
7  Royal Dutch/Shell Group
8  BP United Kingdom 
9  JPMorgan Chase
10  UBS Switzerland

Contest winner - week 2

Tim B. is this week's winner of the scanR contest.  He chose the Nokia N80.

Here is his entry:

"I'm a sales manager at a mortgage company in Garden City, NY. As a mortgage broker, one of my biggest daily headaches is collecting documents from my clients. Obviously, nobody wants to let me walk out of thier house with original tax returns, drivers license, social security card, mortgage statements, etc. And they rarely have a copy machine on hand when I'm on an appointment. In the past, I've gone so far as to walk a half mile from a client's house in Queens, to find a bodega with a copy machine! Many times I've had to convince client's that I will either hand deliver these docs back the following day or pay to overnight them back. ScanR has eliminated all of these problems. Now I can merely take a quick picture of anything I need and get a high quality copy faxed directly to my office immediately. This has saved me countless hours of time previously wasted running around chasing docs. Not to mention the savings on my FEDEX bill. That time and money translates directly into greater revenue for my business!! "

Thanks Tim!

scanR contest :: Win a Nokia N80

Nokia has graciously donated a Nokia N80 camera phone to the scanR contest. The Nokia N80 has a 3 megapixel camera and can use all scanR services with the scanR Mobile application.

So the winner this week can choose from any of remaining phones or the brand new Nokia.

Send your entries to contest@scanR.com.

Contest winner - week 1

We had great response to the contest last week.  There were many strong entries from people all over the world with a wide variety of uses. 

Farbod N. is the winner for week 1 of the contest.  He uses scanR Documents for medical research and Whiteboards for meetings.  Here is his complete entry: 

"ScanR has brought great advantages to my daily work and function. Currently, I am the project director for a laboratory which deals with large amount of clients. Most of my clients are field technicians that are collecting specimens for a specific laboratory analysis on the field. All the specimens are required to be accompanying with a Chain of Custody with all the information and testing code for it. I have recommended your ScanR to my clients and it has made their job much easier to fax me their Chain of Custody from the field. Therefore, when the sample is shipped overnight and received at the laboratory next day, the lab already has a copy of the Chain of Custody to match with the samples. This also tremendously helps the lab to be notified in advance for any analysis preparation. In addition, the whiteboards ScanR is a clever idea for all the meetings and symposium. I mainly use it for research poster symposiums where I can conduct information on the selected posters and centralize them to my email for future references. I only wish I had a better windows mobile smartphone for the best combination of technology and fantastic ScanR service."

Thanks for all your contest entries.  If you already sent an entry, you are still eligible for future prizes and you are not required to send it again.

New uses for a scanner in your pocket

For past year, we've been thinking about all the ways people could use camera phones to convert physical information to digital forms.  Some needs are obvious and have large existing markets.  Others are smaller but have passionate communities.  Still others are completely speculative.

Here's a round-up of some interesting services that address various needs but require users to enter information manually.  The common thread is that most of the information orginates in physical forms.

Books and Media Trading
Bookins
LibaryThing
PaperbackSwap
Peerflix
Zunafish

Comparison shopping
Amazon
Froogle
Shopping.com
Shopzilla

Contacts
LinkedIn
Plaxo
Visible Path
ZeroDegrees

Groceries
IntelliScanner

QR codes
Lots of action in Japan for linking physical information to digital sources. RFID in Japan (formerly QR Codes in Japan) has a long archive of uses.

Wine
BottleCount
Vintrust
WineLog

scanR art

Some people are taking photos of people, places and things and sending them to wb@scanR.com.  The result is scanR art.  Here's an example:

You can see a few more on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/scanr/

Whiteboard example - part 3

Martin Geddes, one of the smartest guys in telecom, posted a review of the Nokia N90 recently.  Among his photos of the ubiquitous babies, pets and sunsets, he included a photo of flipchart he created in his consulting business.  Here is the original:

Here is a thumbnail of the result using scanR:

Yahoo Whiteboards

Yahoo Image Search has some interesting whiteboard photos too.  Here is the original and result after scanR cleans it up.

Flickr Whiteboards

2776, originally uploaded by smalldognet.

Here's a photo of a whiteboard from Flickr and the result after scanR cleans it up.

Testimonial

It's nice to hear stories from scanR users of how the service helps them save time and effort.  Here's a recent one:

"As part of my work, I take whiteboard pictures for my company and work with them in PhotoShop Elements. Your work on my sample whiteboard was excellent, significantly better than what I'm able to do myself, and the format as a PDF (which I can crop) is much easier to use for those whom I send the whiteboard picture to."

Have a story you'd like to share? Send it to help@scanR.com.

Try this

Here are some of the ways people use scanR:

1. Keep digital copies of checks they write
2. Email signed expense reports
3. Send notes to meeting attendees
4. Fax a contract while on the road
5. Save whiteboard drawings without having to copy by hand
6. Scan the cover of a book to help find it later
7. Copy classmate’s notes from a class they missed
8. Send real estate listings to their clients
9. Share ideas written on paper with a remote co-worker
10. Make copies without the trip to Kinko’s

How do you use scanR?

Fax--same in Dollars or Won

For the road warrior, sending fax is both inconvenient and expensive.  Even if you do manage to find a fax machine, it is going to cost you.  It's surprising though that fax costs can be similar on two sides of the globe.

This is a poster from a local Kinko's:

This is a poster from the Inchon airport in South Korea:

Apparently, whether you're in Palo Alto or Seoul, it's going to cost you at least $1 a page.  Unless you have a scanR in your pocket...

What do you want to scan?

People tell us that they use scanR to capture a wide variety of information that is locked in paper and other physical media.  Although scanR is currently optimized for documents and whiteboards, we are working hard to expand the capabilities and would like your input.

Here are some interesting ideas on how people want to use camera phones to capture information. These are links to public Flickr images:

Documents
Fax
Whiteboards
Books
Newspapers
Wine labels

Send your ideas to: help@scanR.com.