2 replies to this topic

[Maps.com Bryan]

Hope everyone is well.

I've been looking into scanning pens and was hoping someone out there can shed some light on the subject for me. These "pens" are used to scan typed or written text, the "pen" then translates that writing into digital format on your PC. We deal with many clients who require geocoding yet they don't provide us with digital spreadsheets. We end up having to manually type in sometimes hundreds of addresses. I am looking into ways to automate this process. Any ideas on shortcuts other than the scanner pen? Anyone have any pens/wands they can recommend?

Thanks for your time,

Bryan

[benbakelaar]

Bryan have you ever dealt with OCR on a flat-bed scanner? If so, I think you already have the answer for your question. AFAIK, unless you are willing to invest $1000+ in OCR software, you are not going to get good results (usually even with computer-printed text!). And that's talking about flatbed scanners, not even wand scanners which I am even more dubious about. AND I'm talking about computer-generated text, forget handwritten stuff.

From my experience, the time you will spend correcting the scanner and software mistakes will be not much improvement (and possibly more frustrating) over manually typing.

[travelbug]

My experience with OCR on flatbed isn't that wonderful either. From what I've heard, the accuracy of a pen scanner is even lower than that of a flatbed. Voice-recognition is better, but that requires a context. A list of addresses is not a very meaningful way to train the software.