Qipit turns camera phones into a mobile scanner, copier and fax machine

An online application designed to reduce the cluttered piles of paper documents that refuse to disappear from our lives, mobile service Qipit turns a camera phone into a portable scanner and a mobile fax machine by enabling hard-copies to be digitally captured, cleaned-up and stored on the go. Using patented ink-extraction technology, the application automatically transforms photographs of a handwritten or printed document into a high contrast, easy-to-read digital copy that can then be stored or shared online. Qipit also sends a copy of the revitalized document to the user’s camera phone to reuse anywhere, eliminating the need to carry around a pile of paper documents.

Users take a digital photograph of a document with a camera phone and send the image to one of two qipit addresses (one for color and a second for black and white) where it is transformed into a high contrast, easy-to-read digital copy or “qipit”. Unlike the original photograph of a document, which usually appear as dark, low contrast pictures, scan-quality “qipits” are clear ink-on-white digital copies of the original documents.

Qipit says the text quality and readability is improved while the quality and integrity of the photographs in the documents are maintained, allowing them to be easily read, printed, and faxed. In addition, Qipit copies can be made public and shared via a URL link to the original online document for easy access and sharing.

Qipit will also work with photographs of whiteboards and in black and white or color. The image can be sent to Qipit as a multimedia message (MMS) from a camera phone, via email or a qipit account and is converted into a digital copy, in PDF format, that can be stored or sent to an email or fax number from a mobile phone as a multimedia message (MMS) or mobile email, or on a PC via email or a qipit account. Qipit can also tag documents to make managing your captured information easier. When Qipit documents are tagged, the tags are placed inside the PDF document and are not visible to the casual user but the tagged Qipits become searchable on the user’s computer and can be sorted via a tag cloud on the Qipit website.