Use your Phone as a Scanner with scanR

If you are at a library or archive and need to make a copy of a document, don't forget that you probably already have a digital scanner with you: your cell phone. If your "smartphone" has a digital camera and can send pictures you take via email, you can use scanR to create PDF files of any document.

The process is simple:

1. Use your mobile phone or digital camera to photograph documents, whiteboards and even business cards. It won't work too well with microfilm images, however. It does work well with paper.
2. Send all images to scanR (send to doc@scanR.com for documents and to wb@scanR.com for whiteboards).
3. scanR will send you back nicely formatted PDF versions of documents.

The software works well with iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and other "smartphones" that have cameras and can send email copies of the pictures taken. You can optionally even send FAXes directly from your smartphone. You can also store your scanned images online, either on the scanR web site or copy them to your favorite cloud computing online storage service. Of course, you can also (later) store the images on your own computer's hard drive.

You do need to register for an account before making your first scan. The registration process is simple and won’t take you more then 2 minutes. All you need to do is to provide your email address 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.

scanR also "improves" your image to make it look better. It will attempt to improve contrast and sharpen the image if the picture you take is lacking in quality. However, the camera you plan to use should have at least a one megapixel lens. Anything less will result in "grainy" images.

scanR is available free of charge. When you sign up, the web site will ask for payment. However, if you read the wording carefully, you will notice that payment is not required. You can ignore the request and all the free features will be available to you. Some advanced options, such as sending a FAX, will require payment of fees, however.

For more information, or to create your free scanR account, go to http://www.scanr.com/

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