Mobile Scanning by Camera Phone

Camera phones are nice to have and fun to use, but let's be honest: Is there any practical reason to have a camera on a cell phone?

For the most part, the quality isn't great, and most people are just snapping random shots of themselves, their kids or their pets.

Now, a new company called Scanr (pronounced "scanner") wants to provide a more utilitarian use of that camera phone by turning it into a mobile scanning device.

Here's how it works: You use the camera on your phone to take a picture of a document or notes written on a conference room white board and then upload the image to Scanr's Web site. The company uses its technology to improve the image quality and then e-mails it to you in a searchable PDF file.

"We basically allow you to put Kinko's in your pocket," said Rudy Ruano, chief executive of Scanr Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company that is launching its new service tomorrow on http://www.scanr.com/ .

Ruano said Scanr is aimed at the mobile professional, such as a real estate agent or sales representative who needs to quickly exchange and process documents and now relies on the retail copying stores.

The firm already has some experience with the needs of some users, particularly real estate agents. Ruano and several of the firm's employees came from a company called IPIX Corp., which created the technology used to make those 360-degree photos that are commonly used to produce an online "virtual tour" of a home for sale.

Scanr requires users to have a cell phone with at least a 1.3 megapixel-enabled camera, but it recommends at least 2.0 megapixels and regular digital cameras also work with the service. A few of our tests produced surprisingly legible copies of the original, though some phones and some documents work better than others. Scanr created a high-quality image of a newsroom's white board, but a scan of a document with 12-point type appeared out of focus and nearly illegible.

Ruano said the technology works best capturing handwritten notes on paper or on white boards and can vary in quality depending on several factors, including the lighting, the distance from the document and the steadiness of the hands holding the phone.

"The lighting is key," he said.

The company said it will neither retain nor monitor any of the document's content. He also acknowledged that it opens doors to potential misuse, such as workers sneaking a copy of a competitor's proprietary documents or kids snapping a picture of a test to help their friends cheat.

"It's a pass-through service," he said. "We don't keep a copy. At the end of the day, we want to be able to process information for you. At that point, we're basically done."