New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email • Hacker News Board

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#41

Post by kyleburton » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 5:58 PM UTC

ydant wrote: post #40

It fails miserably on my chalkboard photo test (it doesn't claim to support chalkboard, but it seems like it should - it probably doesn't take much to determine the background is all dark and run the appropriate scripts) Your 4 step instructions have doodle@, but the actual mailto: is for wb@. It's a minor thing, but you should be consistent. Cool idea. I think you could run pretty far with a posterous style lazy sig…

Yeah, right now the algorithm subtracts out smooth areas, leaving sharply defined areas mostly alone. I could look into handling blackboard drawings if there is enough interest. Good point about the consistency with the email, I'll have to make them the same. Thanks for the feedback and the ideas, thanks!

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#42

Post by albemuth » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 5:59 PM UTC

Here's a before and after test, looks like it needs some tuning for images that are not as low contrast

http://sprng.me/154k6

p.s. that's a springpad link, awesome to just share those stuff from your phone

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#43

Post by ydant » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 6:08 PM UTC

kyleburton wrote: post #41

ydant wrote: post #40

It fails miserably on my chalkboard photo test (it doesn't claim to support chalkboard, but it seems like it should - it probably doesn't take much to determine the background is all dark and run the appropriate scripts) Your 4 step instructions have doodle@, but the actual mailto: is for wb@. It's a minor thing, but you should be consistent. Cool idea. I think you could run pretty far with a posterous style lazy sig…

Yeah, right now the algorithm subtracts out smooth areas, leaving sharply defined areas mostly alone. I could look into handling blackboard drawings if there is enough interest. Good point about the consistency with the email, I'll have to make them the same. Thanks for the feedback and the ideas, thanks!

My source (chalkboard) image wasn't great (dark, low contrast), but I got better results from the service by doing an "invert" before sending it on.

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#44

Post by ydant » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 6:11 PM UTC

jamesjyu wrote: post #18

kyleburton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aware of that, thanks for the link! Looks like it's more advanced than what I'm doing at the moment... Thanks, Kyle

Yes, scanR may be more sophisticated in their image processing technology, but their system is just not as easy to use (the last time I checked it out). My suggestion to you is to keep running with your idea of making your service dead simple to use. I love the idea of just sending it to an email address -- reminds me of posterous, but for image processing.

Yes, like Posterous has shown, simple can win you converts even if it's lacking functionality.

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#45

Post by kyleburton » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 6:13 PM UTC

ydant wrote: post #43

kyleburton wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, right now the algorithm subtracts out smooth areas, leaving sharply defined areas mostly alone. I could look into handling blackboard drawings if there is enough interest. Good point about the consistency with the email, I'll have to make them the same. Thanks for the feedback and the ideas, thanks!

My source (chalkboard) image wasn't great (dark, low contrast), but I got better results from the service by doing an "invert" before sending it on.

Awesome! Would you be willing to share a chalkboard pic? I don't have access to one...thanks for the invert tip!

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#46

Post by ydant » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 6:27 PM UTC

kyleburton wrote: post #45

ydant wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My source (chalkboard) image wasn't great (dark, low contrast), but I got better results from the service by doing an "invert" before sending it on.

Awesome! Would you be willing to share a chalkboard pic? I don't have access to one...thanks for the invert tip!

You know this already, but I sent them to your email as in your HN profile.

I have no idea how important blackboard is - probably less so for the business world, but plenty of students use/encounter them.

If it's easy to work out a algorithm that cleans up the blackboard but harder to work out detecting the blackboard, your idea of two email addresses (doodle/wb@, and blackboard/bb@) would probably be a good solution.

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#47

Post by alabut » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 6:54 PM UTC

I really like this trend of Posterous-inspired web apps that don't require setting up an account, just emailing into a public email address. It's what changed my mind from "eh, looks nice, might try it later when it's more robust" to "oh why not, let me email something in and see what happens".

And now the demo of your web app generates a mailing list of potential future customers along the way. Smart.

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#48

Post by dinedal » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 7:02 PM UTC

kadavy wrote: post #25

I'm surprised Evernote doesn't handle this - or does it? Maybe they'd like to buy the technology.

Evernote does parse the text out of photos of my home whiteboard.

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#49

Post by madmaze » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 7:23 PM UTC

this is awesome! i was brainstorming about how to do something like this a few weeks ago when one of my fellow students brogth his digital slr in instead of taking notes..

we started as a group of about 20 or so comp sci students, taking joint notes in google wave for 2 semesters now.. it works great except if there are alot of diagrams.. and ascii diagrams just take too long and dont do the original justice. so we started adding pictures..

i am excited to have a tool to clean them up now =)

ps anyone else doing this joint notes thing? if not you should try it.. it works wonders for studying for tests

Re: New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

#50

Post by jsb » Mon, Jun 28, 2010, 7:31 PM UTC

It would be neat to consider other types of images you could "clean up" or alter for people - sort of like a Posterous-meets-Photoshop app. An obvious example that comes to mind would be to remove red eye from pictures. I know a lot of photo editing apps can do this already, but just think how much easier it would be for most people to just send an email and get a cleaned up version back. Boom, done.

Don't know how feasible this is, and you've got a lot of room to grow in your current segment already, but would be neat to see where else this could be applied to!