Working with text on your computer offers a range of possibilities in searching and editing that simply aren’t available with hard copy text. Check out these five text recognition tools to get your printed text into your computer.
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Windows only: HP announced earlier this year a specialty line of printer/scanners that will connect to Google Docs. ScanDrop enables the scanner you already have to do the same kind of seamless uploading, too, to Google Docs, Evernote or ScanDrop itself.
If there’s one prevalent cause of clutter in most office workspaces, it’s paper. Try as you may to eliminate it, the papers are always piling up. Fujitsu’s ScanSnap portable scanner turns your papers to PDFs in one step.
Windows/Linux: Tired of fiddling with scanned pages to remove borders, correct alignment and otherwise prettify them before storing or emailing them? Then Scan Tailor could be right up your alley.
If your scanner doesn’t really go with your office décor, why not camouflage it to look like something else? Here’s a great example of spending very little to give your workspace a unique look.
You might need a scanner every so often, but they’re far too big for their occasional usefulness. If you’ve got an iPhone and some time to cut cardboard, you can ditch some paper and capture documents without the glass bed.
If you have an old flatbed scanner laying around or you’ve decided your scanner is a useless gadget, repurpose it weekend. The industrious tinkers at Make magazine have put up a tutorial on turning your scanner into a primitive camera. The results have a distinctly spooky appearance, almost reminiscent of vintage daguerreotype photographs. The project doesn’t require taking apart the scanner or permanently altering it in anyway, so you can experiment freely without actually sacrificing your scanner to the tinkering gods. You’ll need some inexpensive parts like black foamcore board, a magnifying glass and razor. For an overview of the process and a list of necessary parts check out the video below:
Got a bunch of scanned documents in PDF format but lack for good text-converting OCR software? Google is now indexing their text conversions of PDFs, which means anyone with access to open web space can let their monstrous servers do all the heavy lifting. The Digital Inspiration blog recommends putting your PDF files in a folder and creating a page that links to all of them. If you’re a bit concerned about dropping all that text into the public’s search results and you own your space, you can use Google’s Webmaster Tools to reign in what gets scanned and indexed on your site, although you should assume anything you put online can be found by those looking for it. Convert Scanned PDF Documents to Text with Google OCR [Digital Inspiration]
