#5 Optical character recognition

Now you can convert images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, just by your web cam. Your webcam can double as an OCR reader.

To do this, you can take an image of the document you wish to convert it into text, and then use the software like Microsoft Document Imaging, Google Docs and Abbyy FineReader Online. You can also try Evernote, free software from www.evernote.com, which reads the image from the webcam and converts it into searchable text in real time.

You can use it to save notes, book pages, reports and many other text oriented things.

#4 Bar code reader

You know how easy it is to read bar codes and QR codes with your Smartphone, thanks to bevy of free apps. But you can pull off the same task with a web cam too. All you need to do is, download and install bcWebCam, a free software from www.bcwebcam.de, and start scanning. Mac users can use Evobarcode at 15-day trial & $30 after that, from www.evological.com or QuickMark (Rs 220) from the Mac App store.

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