OCR on the go

ABBYY has introduced a new series of mobile mini-applications for the Apple iPhone. ABBYY LinkGrabber, ABBYY MailGrabber and ABBYY PhoneGrabber each capture one specific type of contact data—a link, an e-mail address or a phone number respectively—and transfer them from a magazine page, an ad or a billboard directly to the iPhone for further use.

ABBYY Mobile OCR Utilities for the iPhone capture data by using the device’s camera or retrieve them from photos stored in the device’s memory. The OCR technology ensures accurate recognition of all characters that typically occur in links, e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Upon receiving the recognition results, a user can immediately open the captured link in a mobile Web browser, dial up the new phone number or send a message using the new e-mail address.

The utilities also allow users to save newly captured data to the address book, copy them to another application or send them via e-mail or SMS right away. In addition, each product has a visual history of contacts that helps users to easily restore captured information and eliminates the need to keep seldom used contact data in the iPhone contact list.