Any open source /free OCR(Pattern recognition) software? (for mobile platforms?) - iphone

I want to extract the text information (Chinese) from the images that picked by users with their mobiles. So I am here wondering is there any open source/free OCR (Pattern recognition) software for mobile platform. Currently I am doing with iPhone (And android, blackberry platform?)
I've searched stackoverflow but seems there only are some questions about C#/.Net
Thank you in advance~

If you're into writing your own solution, this paper seems to be applicable.

ABBYY even has a mobile OCR SDK for iPhone, Android, and more, so you can recognize text on your device before using web services, at all: http://www.abbyy.com/mobileocr/
However, it is not free and you will have to buy a license for commercial purposes.

GrayWizardx is right there are few servers that provide this kind of services like kooaba
And may be it will be a bad idea to re-invent the whole wheel

Related

MobileESP for Joomla

I can't seem to find a good answer to this anywhere. When using the "none / custom" mobile app service in the configuration for MobileESP in Joomla! it seems like you are required to enter the "device detection functions used".
Instead of entering every mobile device specifically (windows phone 7 os, ios, blackberry etc), isn't there a single setting that covers "all" mobile devices? I haven't been able to find that, but kind of expected it to exist. If not I'd be pretty disappointed...
I have not installed the Weever App, because the only thing I need is to redirect to a mobile site and support mobile devices to also view the full version (by adding a url parameter like "?full=1").
Any help will be appreciated! I have very little PHP experience, and even though I know you can add this functionality with a bit of PHP code in the header I'd rather just use a plugin for now.
Have you contacted the Weever folks yet? That would be the best place to start first.
I'm the founder and maintainer of the MobileESP code library. However, I'm not familiar with how Weever has integrated MobileESP support into their plugin.
If you were interested in MobileESP all by itself, then I would suggest you use one of the generic detection methods, depending on your goals. Specifically:
DetectIphoneTier(): Use this only if you want to detect modern touchscreen smartphones like iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, etc.
DetectMobileQuick(): Use this if you want any mobile phone, including old BlackBerry and Symbian smartphones as well as feature phones.
Links:
Weever on Joomla: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/mobile/mobile-apps/17890
MobileESP API reference: http://blog.mobileesp.com/?page_id=53

Make Phone Applications Across All Operating Systems [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 11 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Write once deploy on Windows Mobile 6, Windows Phone 7, Android and iPhone?
Currently I have created a 2 simple apps for iphone and 1 for windows phone. When I go to promote these apps they usually....well do you have this for android or blackberry or whatever.
Do I have to rewrite my applications in every environment in order to have them compatible across all the operating systems out there? Is there tools that address this or do you guys simply recreate the app in eclipse, xcode, visual studio etc..?
Complex applications generally need to be created with the native environment.
Simple applications can be created with cross platform tools like Titanium and PhoneGap:
- http://www.appcelerator.com/
- http://www.phonegap.com/
#Fraggle (see comment)
I have quite some experience with Appcelerator Titanium. The choice for native v.s. cross-plafrom completely depends on the kind of application you need and your knowledge. General considerations:
Can the application be created with web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript?
What language / environment do I know the best (native vs web technologies)?
How much time and money can I spend?
Do I really need cross-platform compatibility?
Most mobile phone applications only provide an easy interface for internet services like news updates, traffic info, social media and video. Those applications can be easily written with web technologies. Therefor most mobile applications can be written with tools like Titanium. The great thing about Titanium: Get the native experience on multiple devices while only maintaining one code-base. Cheap way of developing cross-platform applications.
Many developers use Titanium because they don't know the native language (objective-C / java), but they have extensive knowledge about web technologies. This way they can create pretty nice applications without learning new languages. Titanium is actually used for many non-cross-platform applications.
Complex graphics, device specific tools and complex interfaces still require the native environment.
Native applications will always perform better and use device specific features, but do you really need that degree of perfection? Yes, develop native applications for every device. No, simply create one cross-platform application.
Check this page to see what Titanium can do:
http://www.appcelerator.com/showcase/applications-showcase/
You may be able to use a third party tool like http://www.phonegap.com.
There are many options for cross-platform app development, but I would suggest Adobe AIR as it is also supported on the Blackberry Playbook by RIM. As far as I know, it's the only cross-platform runtime that is supported by a major platform owner.
I have also seen it do well on Android, and iOS support is also advertized.
Well there are definitely some supposed "write once, run everwhere" solutions out there. Here is one from RhoMobile which specializes in this space. But that is just what a quick Google search turned up. I haven't tried any of them.
I had an app that was developed for Android, and I ended up essentially re-writing it in Objective-C when I wanted to port it over to iPhone. It worked out pretty well and took less time than I thought (considering I hadn't done any iPhone programming prior). But now of course I have 2 code bases that I have to maintain and when I add features I'll have to do it for both the Android and iPhone version.
So having a single code base that lets me build apps for multiple platforms would be great. Do any of the tools out there work well? Not sure. Do they give you full control to make your app look and operate the way you want it, and make us of all the OS's features? Not sure.
Qt (now owned by Nokia) is another provider of a cross platform mobile framework
http://qt.nokia.com/
Even though iphone and android seem to be missing from their official Supported Platforms list I think there is an Android 2.3 release just around the corner. Qt for Iphone also seems to be in the works.
HTML5 may be one solution if the app you providing is simple enough. Google is doing it this way. Otherwise, even you have anything "cross-phone" it may still feels alien.

Any idea how to write code that can be easily ported to iphone, android and blackberry?

I'm looking for a way to easily port content driven applications from one mobile platform to another. Currently HTML5+js seems to be the only language that can be easily reused.
Can you share your experience? I'm looking for a way to go forward.
Have you taken a look at Titanium Mobile?
http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile-application-development/
You can build apps for iPhone/iPad & Android using JavaScript - doesn't support blackberry (yet), though.
You are right. HTML5+CSS+JavaScript is a viable and recommended solution for cross-platform mobile apps. If you're already familiar with these technologies there is no reason for you to learn a new one (such as Titanium Mobile as was suggested by someone else).

What cell phone has the widest potential market for software?

I developed a flashcard program a while back for learning Japanese. I've been considering porting it to a cell-phone. What is a good target platfrom? I'm thinking about iPhone, HTC Touch HD (system software: Windows Mobile) or a Nokia (system software: Symbian). Since I know a bit of JavaME, something that runs that would also be cool.
Here's the most recent market share data. Have you considered building a web-based product consumable by all smartphones with decent web browsers? Sites like x.facebook.com are not OS-specific but are app-like enough to provide a good user experience. Building such a site and charging a subscription would be one approach to serve all markets.
Well the Apple store just celibrated its 1,000,000,000 download the other day, so I would say that the iPhone is the largest and easiest phone market to target. Also the Apple store makes it extremely easy to sell your application (they keep part of the revenue of course).
Perhaps you might like to ask which phone has the largest market share in Japan?
Also I understand Microsoft has plans to start an app store for Windows Mobile.
Since you know JavaME, take a look at developing for Android. It doesn't have a large market share, but at least you'll be able to leverage your existing skills.
You won't be able to find a common language and development environment that works on the majority of phone platforms. Once you select a platform, you're kind of committed to it unless you want to port your app to an entirely different language.
Nokia has started heavily pushing a mobile development platform based on Qt. Nokia sells a LOT more phones than Apple does.
Why write iPhone app #1,000,001 when you'd be lucky to get $500 for your investment?
There's a huge craze around iPhone apps... at this point it's totally unjustified from a developer point of view. (It's great for the users)
Qt is a really amazingly well done C++ platform (Nokia bought it, obviously :). I'm having a good time writing PC apps with it... I plan on buying a Nokia phone I can write Qt apps for soon. At that point, I'll be ditching my old iPhone (original unit, not 3G).
When the SDK came out, I thought the world of the iPhone. I even bought Apple stock. However, no Java & no Flash because Jobs is a control freak is just plain stupid. GPL incompatibility really hurts, too. I'm also not buying a Mac just to develop software for the thing.
A few weeks ago I was reading an article about a product called "rohmobile" that was a custom Ruby framework that run's on a micro ruby web server. It allows you to compile your application against all the popular mobile phones (Apple, Microsoft, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian). It seemed like a very cool idea and it's open source actively under development. The framework comes with a sync soltuion, so you can persist data to the local device using REST/SOAP. As I explored the product a bit more, the only thing that seemed like it would be a pain is the setup of the enviroment(s) needed to compile the code for the various device.... if you could make it past this, then you'd have a solution where you could support a bunch of difference devices with a single code base!
http://www.rhomobile.com/
** I've never programmed in Ruby but the syntax and the demo made it look really simple, since it's really just a local web page running on the micro web server installed on the device! The UI is HTML/CSS based. I think the product is still in Beta...
Just my 2cents~
Well I would start to find a system / programing language which is available for the top phones on the market.
I think a good go is python for that. Which makes it easy to use large portions of the same code on all of the phones which are going to be supported.
Then I would probably start with the iPhone, because I believe its userbase is still demanding for new toys :)
Creating a webapplication would be another way... but that would mean you need to be online. if you are not using flash or some other possibilities of persistent storage.
P.S.: I would not use javame :) .. I still don't like anything java at all

Beginner Help for Developing Web Pages for Smart Phones

I have just started authoring web pages for use on "smart phones". I need to target Blackberry, WinCE, iPhone, etc. What resources or books would you recommend for someone with ample web and software development experience but no experience developing UI for these devices? What emulation kits would you recommend, and how accurately do they represent the real thing?
Edit: To clarify, I have a web application built in ASP.Net. I want a limited subset of the functionality available in the app to be available to mobile devices. I am writing a separate set of pages to accomplish this. I am starting with two, simple chunks of functionality. In the future I believe I might get requirements for more functionality to be ported.
Check out WURFL - the Wireless Universal Resource File
The WURFL is an XML configuration file
which contains information about
capabilities and features of many
mobile devices.
The main scope of the file is to
collect as much information as we can
about all the existing mobile devices
that access WAP pages so that
developers will be able to build
better applications and better
services for the users
Also Checkout the Wireless FAQ
Telling us the language you are using/know would be very helpful.
From an emulator standpoint, there are good ones out there, but honestly NOTHING beats having the actual device, yes it is expensive, but the user experience on a mobile device is much different than any emulator can illustrate. if you are serious about this, get a device or two for testing!
Documentation on developing web pages for iPhone can be found at Apple's iPhone Dev Center
You can test your site with the iPhone Simulator to get an idea of how it will look on an actual iPhone. Note: You need a Mac to run the iPhone Simulator.
If you are serious, you really need to test on actual devices.