How to Use Your Phone As a Scanner with Scanr

Use your mobile phone’s campera as a sanner where ever you go. ScanR is a service that helps you easily capture information from paper documents or whiteboards and quickly digitalize it.

How does it work?

• Step 1: Use your mobile phone or digital camera to photograph documents, whiteboards and even business cards.
• Step 2: Send all images to scanR (send to doc@scanR.com for documents and to wb@scanR.com for whiteboards)
• Step 3: scanr will send you back nicely formatted PDF versions of documents.

If it’s your first time with Scanr you will need to register for an account. Registration process is simple and won’t take you more then 2 minutes. All you need to do is to provide your email and verify it by entering the activation code. Afterwards you can start using the service by emailing it whatever images you want to get converted to PDF. You can also use your moblie phone to send images and get back PDF versions.

Ooh, I almost forgot to mention that Scanr works on your image to make it look much better. That’s to say, not only it will convert your file but also make them look better. Check out snapshots below, showing scanr in action

Important thing to remember is that the camera you plan to use should have at least 1 mega pixel lens.

Some more things you can do with Scanr

• Get properly formatted PDF versions for captured files
• Save all documents, whiteboards and even business cards in your account
• Easily search through documents, whiteboards and business cards
• Download data to your computer if needed
• Transfer data from the business cards (that you have created from taking snapshots of paper business cards) to preferred contact management application (i.e., Jigsaw, Plaxo, Salesforce.com)

I was impressed by the performance of this service. It actually does what it shows and much more. It is not completely free to use but whatever comes with basic service is more then an enough for an amateur Joe. With basic service you get following:

• Option to scan business cards and convert them into searchable PDF files
• Convert photos of whiteboards or documents into legible PDF files for use in the future

Scanr promises more features, but my guess it will be mainly available for premium members. There you go, here we had another web based service that offers free features and does not require any installation. Try it out and add it to your bookmarks, I am sure one day you will need it.