{"id":1176,"date":"2012-08-21T09:08:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T13:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.equipmentlink.org\/blog\/?p=1176"},"modified":"2012-08-21T09:08:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T13:08:59","slug":"text-detective-8212012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.equipmentlink.org\/blog\/?p=1176","title":{"rendered":"Text Detective, 8\/21\/2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Text Detective\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contributed by Joel Zimba, MDTAP Special Projects Coordinator<\/em><\/p>\n

I am often asked which OCR app for the iPhone works best.\u00a0 There are dozens of apps which claim to perform optical character recognition using the iPhone.\u00a0 Most of them upload text for processing by servers somewhere in the cloud.\u00a0 This of course means you must always be connected to the Internet and you are at the mercy of the speed of your connection.<\/p>\n

While none of the OCR apps I have tested work nearly as well as the now, somewhat dated, KNFB Mobile hardware and software combination, Prizmo was my choice by far.\u00a0 To its credit, the somewhat expensive and complex user interface of Prizmo did produce reliable results on my first attempt to recognize text.\u00a0 Then, everything changed last week when I discovered Text Detective.<\/p>\n

I’m coming a bit late to the game.\u00a0Text Detective has been available for over a month, which is nearly a lifetime in “app years.”\u00a0 The reviews of Text detective from the Applevis website (http:\/\/www.applevis.com<\/a>) were fairly positive.\u00a0 There is also a podcast available which demonstrates the utility and limitations, so I decided to part with my hard-earned $1.99.<\/p>\n

Text Detective is simple.\u00a0 Even without reading the included notes on how to begin using the app, I hit the “Start Scanning” button and got reasonable results.\u00a0 Text Detective works differently from most OCR apps.\u00a0 It actively looks for text, rather than simply taking a picture and rolling the dice.\u00a0 Though I wasn’t using the recommended iPhone 4S camera, the app only took a few seconds to find some text and begin processing. \u00a0While there were some missing words and letters in my initial attempt, I could easily follow the gist of the letter I tried to scan.\u00a0 It was definitely enough to perform my usual printed document triage, which greatly reduces the amount of paper clutter in my life.<\/p>\n

Text Detective has a long way to go before being a replacement for the KNFB Mobile.\u00a0 It will not recognize skewed text, and the print must be right-side up.\u00a0 Also, there is no method of maximizing the scanning area or finding the edges of the document for better scanning.\u00a0 Text Detective is under active development.\u00a0 There was a recent update which implemented use of the flash, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it improve in other ways in the near future.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, Text Detective is much easier to use than most OCR apps.<\/p>\n

It isn’t great, but it makes the best of the camera quality we have in the current iPhones.\u00a0 I think it is well worth the low “introductory” price of $1.99.<\/p>\n

<\/div>