Free services like Qipit and Evernote are awesome for academia, and the Google Phone really unlocks their power. It’s like having a high quality Xerox machine in your pocket.
How These Services Work
I’ll focus on Qipit. First, set up an account with Qipit and give them your email address. Next, snap a picture of something you want to copy. As an academic, you might want a xerox of a book page, a handwritten note, a white board, or a conference handout.
Email it to copy@qipit.com, and Qipit formats it into a nice PDF for you. The result is much better than the original photo because Qipit corrects for potential sources of distortion (e.g. glare, folds in the book, etc.)
You don’t need a Google Phone or an Iphone to utilize this service. Any phone with at least a 1 MP camera will, but the 3 MP camera on the Google Phone probably helps a bit, plus it’s quick and easy to move from taking the picture to emailing it to viewing the result when Qipit emails it back to you.
My Experience
How about a demonstration? I grabbed a copy of Richard Taylor’s Metaphysics textbook. I snapped a picture of the first page of the Freedom and Determinism section. I made the copy public on qipit so you can see the excellent results for yourself.
Thanks for the post, Andy. I’ve been meaning for some time to try out services like Evernote for a variety of reasons, but was always skeptical that my iPhone’s camera would take good enough pictures. Granted, it might now – I’m pretty sure the G1 camera is way nicer – but now that I see your very impressive photo/scan I’ll have the motivation to finally try them out.