Text/Symbol recognition or scan

[Shiprat]

Hello, i have been looking around for an app that will let me point the n900 camera on a piece of text, either on a paper or on a screen, and thereby import it to the n900. I havent found one yet.

The use for me is that i HATE needing to write annoyingly long links into the n900 when i stumble across something useful while surfing or if i have a link on some random paper.
Lets just assume that i have good reasons for needing an app like this and not question that.

Another feature i would like is instant following of links.
I was at a microsoft breakfast-meeting sorta thing where one guy gave me his card which had a 3d bar-code. When scanned it directly opened internet explorer and went to the url of his profile on some microsoft windows phone page.

Does anyone know of something which could allow me to just follow any link as long as the camera can actually make it out?

[lardman]

Hello, i have been looking around for an app that will let me point the n900 camera on a piece of text, either on a paper or on a screen, and thereby import it to the n900. I havent found one yet.

There is OCR code floating about (in fact there was a thread about this). Not sure how well it works, but might be something that could be added to mBarcode as a decoder.

Another feature i would like is instant following of links.
I was at a microsoft breakfast-meeting sorta thing where one guy gave me his card which had a 3d bar-code. When scanned it directly opened internet explorer and went to the url of his profile on some microsoft windows phone page.

Interesting. mBarcode will do this with barcodes (though not the 3D multicoloured ones (yet)).

[Rob1n]

There's phototranslator-alpha which basically does this - unfortunately it adds an unnecessary (in this case) translation step though.

[weißelstone]

Another feature i would like is instant following of links.
I was at a microsoft breakfast-meeting sorta thing where one guy gave me his card which had a 3d bar-code. When scanned it directly opened internet explorer and went to the url of his profile on some microsoft windows phone page.
Are you sure it is 3D? mbarcode supports these 2D-barcodes here (this points to t.m.o): http://datamatrix.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d=http%3A%2F%2Ftalk.maemo.org
If they contain a link it will automatically open it in the default browser.
there is also a Firefox plugin that wil create these codes if you right-click on a link so that you can directly scan it from the screen. I guess this is exactly what you are looking for.

EDIT: The code in this post is a DataMatrix code, don't know if mbarcode supports it but it supports QRCodes like this: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d=http%3A%2F%2Ftalk.maemo.org
Now I also saw that 3D means 2D with colors, well, as already said, these are not supported yet (and unneeded for links in my opinion, who uses links longer than 256 signs?).
EDIT2: Just tested, it supports both 2D types.

[Shiprat]

There is OCR code floating about (in fact there was a thread about this). Not sure how well it works, but might be something that could be added to mBarcode as a decoder.

Interesting. mBarcode will do this with barcodes (though not the 3D multicoloured ones (yet)).

I shall have to check it out. It would be a very nice feature to add, beeing able to instantly follow a url on any screen or surface.

Are you sure it is 3D? mbarcode supports these 2D-barcodes here (this points to t.m.o): http://datamatrix.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d=http%3A%2F%2Ftalk.maemo.org
If they contain a link it will automatically open it in the default browser.
there is also a Firefox plugin that wil create these codes if you right-click on a link so that you can directly scan it from the screen. I guess this is exactly what you are looking for.

EDIT: The code in this post is a DataMatrix code, don't know if mbarcode supports it but it supports QRCodes like this: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d=http%3A%2F%2Ftalk.maemo.org
Now I also saw that 3D means 2D with colors, well, as already said, these are not supported yet (and unneeded for links in my opinion, who uses links longer than 256 signs?).
EDIT2: Just tested, it supports both 2D types.

Thanks, this is almost exactly what i wanted!
Thanks for the quick answers guys.. :)

EDIT: I tried mbarcode with qrcode and webrequest plugins, works great! Also mobile barcoder plugin is available for both firefox and chrome :D Thanks again guys!

[BillyTheFish]

Put your URL or text into a generator like this:

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

Use mbarcode to photograph the computer screen.

Works for me!

[Shiprat]

Yes, got it to work now, the mobile barcoder plugin for FF3.x or chrome did the job great, one-click awesomeness :P

[Benson]

EDIT: I tried mbarcode with qrcode and webrequest plugins, works great! Also mobile barcoder plugin is available for both firefox and chrome :D Thanks again guys!
Didn't know of mobile barcoder plugin -- I just use this bookmarklet:
QRcode (javascript:void(location.href='http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=350x350&chld=M|2&chl='+location.href))

The forum seems to be slightly mangling that link, so just paste this (all on one line) in a bookmark:
javascript:void(location.href='http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=350x350&chld=M|2&chl='+location.href)