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The newest update to Google Translate for Android adds Google Goggles' optical character recognition (OCR) technology, so you can translate text using only your device's camera lens. Whereas previously you had to type, hand-write (onscreen), or say your text aloud in order to use the app, this new feature requires none of the above.

To use the new OCR feature, just push the camera button at the bottom of the main translate screen. This activates your camera and opens a viewfinder just below the translation field. After you take your picture, brush the text you want to translate, and … Read more

Nitro Pro 7's interface has been completely redesigned with the ribbon-style navigation of Microsoft Office 2010. If you're familiar with ribbon tabs, then zipping around Nitro should be a breeze. On the other hand, if you're new to this style of navigation, it could take some time to get acquainted. The top-level tabs include File, Home, Edit, Review, Forms, Protect, and Help. Click on any one to reveal a row of buttons below it. It's all pretty intuitive, and each tool is accompanied by an icon, which makes for an enjoyably straightforward experience.

As for the … Read more

Modern captchas are effective at keeping bots and algorithms from accessing Web sites made for humans. They also generate collateral damage and keep up to 25 percent of humans out, too, according to Ron Moravek, COO of NuCaptcha. He says he has a better, more flexible technology for filtering humans from bots.

NuCaptcha is a replacement technology for the free, Google-owned ReCaptcha service. There are two major differences between NuCaptcha and ReCaptcha. First, NuCaptcha displays moving text against a moving image. While this makes it harder for computers to discern text from background, it makes it much easier for humans. … Read more

Google Goggles for Android jumped to version 1.4 today, and introduced a few significant features that should improve your overall visual search experience.

Search history now enables you to add personal notes to Goggles results, which is a helpful tool for keeping your search history organized, especially if you're conducting any kind of photo-based research. And when you find something interesting, you can easily share it (with or without notes) via the built-in Share function.

Also, in an attempt to make Google Goggles results more consistently useful, the app is now open to suggestions. By cropping and tagging … Read more

Most consumer level Canon printers use optical character recognition (OCR) to translate scanned images of printer or handwritten documents to editable electronic text, but the latest version of Uniflow, the company's corporate document management system, uses OCR to prevent people from printing or copying documents that contain specific words.

Uniflow is a central management system that allows administrators to keep track of copies and prints for billing and requires an accompanying Uniflow server and Uniflow-ready Canon devices. The latest version, Uniflow 5, can also block documents containing prohibited keywords--sensitive information like passwords and account numbers.

Admins can also configure … Read more

IBM and the European Union are teaming up to offer a better way to scan the massive collection of Europe's treasured historical documents.

Expanding on an existing collaboration project, Big Blue and the EU will now be working with more than two dozen libraries, research institutes, universities, and companies across Europe to help them digitize their rare books and documents.

The project known as Impact (Improving Access to Text), is using new tools and tapping into crowd sourcing to speed up the mass digitization process and ensure that the scanned documents are as accurate as possible. Impact will also … Read more

Creaceed's Prizmo software impressed us a few months ago with an update that added camera tethering support and perspective correction to captured images. But the cherry on top was its optical character recognition (OCR) processing, which would pull out text from whatever had been scanned.

That same technology is on its way to a pocket-size version of the software, which should be available for the iPhone in just a few weeks (pending Apple's approval).

The app's crowning feature is that it can fix bad perspective, just like its desktop sibling, as well as let users snap photos … Read more

Have you always wanted a scanner, but held back because of size and cost? Do you have a Mac and a digital camera? Then good news: Prizmo for Mac offers a good enough solution to let accomplish most of your scanning needs without the extra hardware.

The $40 software, made by Belgium-based Creaceed, has long been offered as an alternative to the pack-in software that often comes with flatbed scanners. Its latest version sports three handy features, one of which can turn your digital camera into a very powerful text-archiving tool.

The first new feature is camera tethering. This lets you attach a tether-ready SLR or point-and-shoot to your computer, then have the app automatically import the shot as you take it. There's not a whole lot of user dialogue here to let you know your camera is attached. In my test, I simply connected my Nikon D90 (which does not feature USB mass storage support) and began taking photos, and it did the rest.

Users can also grab photo files from their hard drives, or from a camera that's attached in USB mass storage mode, although I found the latter a little jittery when trying to browse for a single file on a crowded memory card. The app would only let me see the top 40 shots or so, and I couldn't scroll down--a problem I didn't have when browsing the same set of files from a USB-powered memory card reader.

To go along with the tethering feature is curviture correction; this lets you fix warping due to the natural bend of pages. The tool itself is simple to use, but lacks some much-needed automation. You can, for instance, only work on one page at a time, so if you've snapped both pages of an open book, you have to open each one individually. This isn't a huge dealbreaker unless you're trying to archive something large, but it does slow things down.… Read more

We live in a digital age, so why do business cards refuse to die? They're a hassle to store and an environmental suck to produce. Plus, who among us has time to manually transcribe contact info into a phone, PDA, or PC?

Needless to say, I was geeked to try Business Card Reader, a $5.99 app that turns business cards into iPhone Address Book entries.

Specifically, BCR leverages your iPhone's camera to take a snapshot of a card, then uses built-in optical character recognition (OCR) to convert the image into text and populate the appropriate contact fields.… Read more