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Indirectly related, but can anyone recommend a service to do OCR+tagging of documents? I frequently run into situations where I know I have that important lette

by psuter 13y ago

Indirectly related, but can anyone recommend a service to do OCR+tagging of documents? I frequently run into situations where I know I have that important letter somewhere, but just cannot put my finger on it, then start daydreaming about grep'ing for it in ~/snailmail.db. A possibly good way to package this would be a smartphone app where I can scan my letters with the camera, and have them OCR'ed, tagged, and uploaded to, e.g. DropBox.

rb2k_ 13y ago
Probably not 100% what you're looking for, but I just use http://www.pdfscannerapp.com/ http://www.pdfscannerapp.com/ for a subset of that usecase. There are a lot of smartphone apps that probably do this too, but I'd rather do it all on the laptop. (As a scanner I use some cheap multi-function printer/scanner that OS X automatically detects and scans from over wifi) I just sort all of the things in folders. I haven't seen a need for more advanced tagging yet.
toomuchtodo 13y ago
I pay $45/year for Evernote; they OCR everything I put into them, and I put all of my paper mail into it. Also, I configured a fax number from Phaxio, which pushes the PDF right into Evernote (for those who won't email me something). It doesn't have automatic tagging, but the OCR is very good.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  I was using Evernote, but then I saw how much the upgrade is (and it is a subscription too). Is it worth it over the totally free OneNote? I do see that OneNote mobile doesn't have OCR, but I wonder if you could rely on your desktop to perform OCR for you, and then the phone could search the results?
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    For $50/year, I get Evernote on my Nexus 5, my Macbook Air, my iMac at home, web browser, and my most favorite component, the Evernote Chrome Web Clipper. I pay more for Netflix, and I get so much more out of Evernote. I'd prepay for life if I could. So, to answer your questions: > Is it worth it over the totally free OneNote? For me, most definitely. I've built it into my workflow. For you, that depends on value. > but I wonder if you could rely on your desktop to perform OCR for you, and then the phone could search the results? As I mentioned, for $50/year (which I make in less than half an hour), it just works.
darklajid 13y ago
I'm interested in the same thing. Just recently I had enough and started investigating. Ordered a nice (Linux supported) document scanner. Checked out solutions online. So far, nothing prebuilt seems to do what I want: - full page ocr of everything I throw at it - tagging for a basic workflow ('bill', 'payed at $date') (bonus points for ways to extend the tagging programmatically, for example based on the ocr result) - completely self-hosted (but not a desktop app) My conclusion right now is that I need to pick up a language I like/I care about and build it myself.

by psuter 13y ago

rb2k_ 13y ago

Probably not 100% what you're looking for, but I just use http://www.pdfscannerapp.com/ http://www.pdfscannerapp.com/ for a subset of that usecase. There are a lot of smartphone apps that probably do this too, but I'd rather do it all on the laptop. (As a scanner I use some cheap multi-function printer/scanner that OS X automatically detects and scans from over wifi) I just sort all of the things in folders. I haven't seen a need for more advanced tagging yet.

toomuchtodo 13y ago

I pay $45/year for Evernote; they OCR everything I put into them, and I put all of my paper mail into it. Also, I configured a fax number from Phaxio, which pushes the PDF right into Evernote (for those who won't email me something). It doesn't have automatic tagging, but the OCR is very good.

sliverstorm 13y ago
I was using Evernote, but then I saw how much the upgrade is (and it is a subscription too). Is it worth it over the totally free OneNote? I do see that OneNote mobile doesn't have OCR, but I wonder if you could rely on your desktop to perform OCR for you, and then the phone could search the results?
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  For $50/year, I get Evernote on my Nexus 5, my Macbook Air, my iMac at home, web browser, and my most favorite component, the Evernote Chrome Web Clipper. I pay more for Netflix, and I get so much more out of Evernote. I'd prepay for life if I could. So, to answer your questions: > Is it worth it over the totally free OneNote? For me, most definitely. I've built it into my workflow. For you, that depends on value. > but I wonder if you could rely on your desktop to perform OCR for you, and then the phone could search the results? As I mentioned, for $50/year (which I make in less than half an hour), it just works.

darklajid 13y ago

I'm interested in the same thing. Just recently I had enough and started investigating. Ordered a nice (Linux supported) document scanner. Checked out solutions online. So far, nothing prebuilt seems to do what I want: - full page ocr of everything I throw at it - tagging for a basic workflow ('bill', 'payed at $date') (bonus points for ways to extend the tagging programmatically, for example based on the ocr result) - completely self-hosted (but not a desktop app) My conclusion right now is that I need to pick up a language I like/I care about and build it myself.