OCR!

mikelove said:
they've done everything short of approving it now, so the next update we get from them should be to tell us it's approved, but that could happen 5 minutes or 5 days from now.
Click to expand...

I just bought my new iPhone... that means they'll delay it indefinitely. :-/

~ Kiran
 
dustpuppy said:
Does it help if we send an email to apple to complain?
Click to expand...

It's unlikely the people who make the authorization decisions will even see an email complaint about that kind of thing.
 
Perhaps of interest: "iPhone Focusing Mod".
It's an article on how to re-focus the lens of an iPhone 3G so it takes close-up pictures. You can take some spectacular macro pictures this way. Allows to tune the focusing distance to less than an inch, if desired. Requires opening your iphone; is reversible. Applies to fixed-focus lenses; not to auto-focus lenses.

http://www.eastrain.com/?p=73
http://www.flickr.com/photos/defor/sets/72157606981066775/

Can this be applied to the iPod Touch? Looking at the insides of the iPod Touch 4:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPod-Touch-4th-Generation-Teardown/3562/3

The iPod Touch 4 camera looks very similar. However, opening an iPod Touch is not for the faint-hearted. This is not something for the average end-user to try. However, if you run, say, a mobile phone repair shop you should be able do this (or even offer this as an aftermarket service).
 
kun4 said:
It's an article on how to re-focus the lens of an iPhone 3G so it takes close-up pictures. You can take some spectacular macro pictures this way. Allows to tune the focusing distance to less than an inch, if desired. Requires opening your iphone; is reversible.
Click to expand...

Wow, that's really clever. I might be willing to do that with my old 3G.

But, I still think the use of an external lens would be more practical.

~ Kiran
 
mikelove said:
Artistic characters in a standard font might work (the database has coverage for a few of the big ones) but I certainly wouldn't count on it for any particular document / sign.
Click to expand...

Presumably stroke-based HWR is a much more tractable problem (the Newton team did cursive HWR in the mid-90s, and by 1997 had even solved the printed HWR problem, but I digress) so, why not allow the user to import a picture and trace over it, thus converting the OCR problem to an easier problem?

~ Kiran <entropy@io.com>
 
Entropy said:
So maybe this is what people need in order to use their older iProds (this one is designed for a 3G/3GS) with OCR. 6x zoom lens... bigger than the damn phone! Someone posted a sample photo to Flickr. Reviews say it works well until it breaks.
Click to expand...

I'm not even sure if this would work, actually, since they don't mention macro focus capability and it's going to be optically challenging to support it on a cheap lens with a big zoom - the lens we need is something much tinier.

Actually I almost wonder if a contact lens would help, since it would be fixing the same basic focus problem - have to see if anybody here is a far-sighted disposable contact lens user... If this works, it'd be a great little hack, since it's generally pretty difficult to find iPod-sized focus-correcting lenses without buying them in huge quantities from a factory somewhere; only problem would be finding a way to affix the lens to the iPod, but since the iPod's camera isn't useful for that much else you could probably just glue it on (with some kind of glue that wouldn't be impossible to remove later in case you changed your mind / the lens got badly scratched / etc).
 
mikelove said:
[...] only problem would be finding a way to affix the lens to the iPod, but since the iPod's camera isn't useful for that much else you could probably just glue it on (with some kind of glue that wouldn't be impossible to remove later in case you changed your mind / the lens got badly scratched / etc).
Click to expand...

Leaving aside the lens' fitness for OCR, this mounting idea is good:
http://gizmodo.com/5119678/magnetic-mou ... the-iphone
 
If this works, it'd be a great little hack, since it's generally pretty difficult to find iPod-sized focus-correcting lenses without buying them in huge quantities from a factory somewhere
Click to expand...
You can buy lenses in qty. 1.

I'm toying with the idea of buying the mount from Hong Kong for $11 ( http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.14953 ; cheap but shipping takes a month)
and replacing the lens with an achromatic lens (e.g. from http://www.macony-design.de/catalog/ind ... h=21_24_41 if possible; from http://www.edmundoptics.com/onlinecatal ... egoryid=11 if all else fails).

A $25 contraption to get the iPod Touch to focus at 30-40mm ought to be feasible.
 
YoshiCookie said:
Still no OCR? ... Sigh ...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm starting to worry they may be about to reject it for something, either because they think we're violating their guidelines when we aren't (I sent them a note preemptively addressing a few possible rejection causes - downloading executable code, for example, when we're actually just downloading the template database and all of the code is built into the app) or because we're actually violating their guidelines and don't realize it. There's nothing about our OCR that inherently violates them, though (lots of other OCR apps on iPhone and lots of video-capture-based recognizers in the form of barcode readers), and the rest of our app has already been approved on the first try for 8 consecutive versions, so if they reject it I'm sure it'll be for something we can easily fix.

kun4 said:
You can buy lenses in qty. 1.
Click to expand...

Sorry, quantity was the wrong thing to highlight - "without having to mail-order them" would probably be a better distinction, you can buy disposable contacts at a corner drugstore. (though they may not be ideal optics or durability-wise)

kun4 said:
A $25 contraption to get the iPod Touch to focus at 30-40mm ought to be feasible.
Click to expand...

Sure, but the question is whether we can make it accessible to people who don't have the time / inclination to source a bunch of parts from Hong Kong and assemble the thing themselves - really a shame that there isn't anything like the Clarifi case for the iPod.
 
I should add that I'm pretty happy with Apple this week in general, since a few days ago they finally started correctly factoring In-App Purchases into their Top Grossing rankings, causing us to claim a long-overdue spot at / near the top in Reference. All I need now is for them to start giving free-with-in-app-purchase apps the same weighting as paid apps in search results and I'll finally be satisfied with our iTunes exposure level. So I'm more willing than normal to cut them some slack, though I can't pretend the delay isn't aggravating on this end too...
 
mikelove said:
Yeah, I'm starting to worry they may be about to reject it for something[...]
Click to expand...
The reviewer started using OCR to read a Gu Long novel he'd been meaning to try to read, and hasn't been able to put it down. :wink:

If there's a concern with it at Apple, my guess would be with the amount of focusing live OCR requires. It might exceed some internal guidance they have on use of autofocus by apps.

The alternative is that Steve Jobs realizes how Pleco OCR makes the new iPod Touch look lame and wants to hold the feature until the fifth generation is released in September 2011. :roll:
 
character said:
If there's a concern with it at Apple, my guess would be with the amount of focusing live OCR requires. It might exceed some internal guidance they have on use of autofocus by apps.
Click to expand...

That would make sense - battery life would be the other possible hardware concern. Though there are other apps with similarly heavy use of autofocus - barcode-scanner apps designed for batch input rather than just looking up a few products' prices, continuous-capture Google Goggles apps, augmented-reality card games - and battery life is an issue in most video-related applications... it may just be a problem of unfamiliarity, they've never seen this exact use of the camera before and they want to run it by a hardware engineer / run it by some higher-level person who's been on vacation for the last week / etc before approving it just to make sure it's OK.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top