Welcome

Lifedrivedoc.com began as a place to talk about the Lifedrive. It soon became apparent that it was much more than that. Since moving on from my Lifedrive, I am engaged in more avenues of technology. That technology has intersected with my professional life - Medicine as well as my social life.

As noted above, the blog is about a lot of things in relation to technology. If you are looking for Lifedrive related material, I am currently dividing the blog so that those searches will be easy for you to find. Most of them will be pre 2007, that should help. Additionally, if you are looking for the links that used to be on the left border. They will be back up in a different format soon. I do enjoy reading about new things to do with the Lifedrive, so you can feel free to let me know about those. I will also post those on the site.

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Enjoy.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Google OCR. One word: WOW!

Either I have been hiding under a rock for the past few months or Google just placed a gem into the documents market.  Placed above the menu of Documents was hidden a highlighted "New Features" section.  The section was laden with new additions to Google Documents, including a curved line feature.  But nothing stood out as much as the OCR feature.  According to Google, one can upload a PDF file to the Google Documents section and have it converted into a Google Document that is ready for editing.

I tried this today and noticed a near flawless result, with preservation of layouts etc., from a relatively complicated PDF document.  It was a poster on Psychiatry and it was reproduced flawlessly.  To prove that it was a google document and not a picture, I was able to edit the document.  I tried again, this time uploading a picture of a billboard with words on it.   The picture was of a billboard and Google Docs translated the words (sans the picture of course) flawlessly. 

Color me IMPRESSED !  Unfortunately I cannot upload the examples because the two documents have copyrights.  But again, that may be an issue that Google may have to deal with some time in the future.  I wonder if this was the same software that Google used in its book conversions? 

You owe it to yourself to try this one out.  It is truly brilliant.