qipit

Qipit is a free service that allows camera-enabled cell phones to send PDF copies of digital images to anyone over email. You simply take a photo of something with your cellphone and then, using your cellphone again, email it to qipit. When you include a friend's email address in the message body of that email, qipit emails the image as a PDF to your friend.

Voila! You’ve just shared a PDF copy of something you captured via your cellphone to someone’s email account. (For those needing a visual explanation, watch this short qipit video demo on YouTube.)

So … suppose you are attending a business seminar and one of the handouts you receive contains something interesting about a competitor. With qipit, you can use your cellphone to take a photo of that document and send it to a colleague at headquarters as a PDF file.

You with me? (Good.)

I’m not confused about what qipit does ... but I am confused as to what problem qipit solves.

Sending images captured via cellphone to people is somewhat commonplace. What qipit will do that’s different is it’ll clean up the digital photo and make it crisper (see below). And, by turning the image into a PDF, qipit makes it easier to share the image. (Understood.)

Where I'm confused is what image is so important that it must be captured by your cellphone and shared using qipit’s brightener technology as a PDF? Don’t get me wrong, I think qipit is snazzy. I just believe qipit is a solution in search of problem.

So tell me … what problem(s) do you think qipit solves?

Comments

[Michael K.]

Dear John,

I think this is a perfect example of product developement that HAVE NOT taken into consideration that consumer behavior (and thus motivation for buying) - in my opinion - almost always takes its point of departure in what you can achieve or avoid for yourself or with regards to others.

Best Regards,
Michael Kowal

[Chris]

As a former educator, (sadly) I would say that a huge market for qipit includes much of my former clientele: cheating students. Discretely taking quick snapshots of tests to be distributed to others taking the same test later in the day is becoming more common among students. Qipit will simply make the reading of said snapshots even easier, especially at large, techno-saavy schools like the one I was at.

[NW Guy]

The one area of interest would be capturing images of the board after meetings. I've done that with a camera phone and it really could use enhancement.

Why have this as a hosted service and not as an integration into either the phone or PC so that users can control the timeliness of delivery?

[Alan]

Uhh, maybe this is for folks who know how to open PDFs but can't open an image attachment? Yeah, I got nothing...

[finn mckenty]

I work in product development and see this happen CONSTANTLY. It's way, way too common. Usually what happens is that the company buys or develops some technology that they're jazzed about, then force it on consumers. If the company is big enough (for example a Unilever or P&G), they stand a good chance of being successful simply because of the massive infrastructure they can bring to bear on it. Even then, though, there are plenty of failures, because the truth is that consumers don't care at all about technology for its own sake (aside from certain enthusiast or hobbyist markets).

The reason for all this is simple: technology is easy to quantify and understand. It's much harder to put a number on or make a prototype of a consumer insight, trend, or abstract idea like "authenticity" that might become the basis of a powerful brand. Companies listen to technologists because it's easier.

[Conrad Hametner]

John,

Thanks for the post about qipit (www.qipit.com). Qipit is new way of doing things that we do each day, such as making personal copies, faxing, and sharing documents. Qipit puts this capability into your pocket and enables you to share information on the spot from anywhere, whether you are at your desk (30 feet from your office equipment), in your car (hopeful not while driving), at home or at school.

Qipit also creates a completely new use for a camera phone or digital camera, turning a picture taking device into an information gathering device. This is a new concept for consumers. In our daily lives we all encounter loads of written and printed information that is not in digital form. For those Sopranos fans imagine this, in the last episode, Tony Soprano was waiting in the lobby for his weekly session with Dr. Melfi (his Therapist). We’ve all had plenty of time, waiting for doctors. He reads a magazine with a great recipe for steak. So, what does Tony do, he rips it out and puts it in his pocket. Later, this becomes an issue as Dr. Melfi confronts Tony for tearing up her magazine. But what if Tony simply pulled out his camera phone and captured this recipe using Qipit. A crisp clean digital copy would be sitting in his Qipit account when he returned to his office at the Bada Bing. He could even share it easily with the rest of the gang.

Qipit enables the masses to digitize the world’s printed and written information. In the same way a camera allows you to capture a moment when it happens, as clearly and vividly as possible, often so that you can share it with others. Qipit allows you to capture information, when you encounter it--as clearly and vividly as possible, in a format appropriate for sharing, and you can even share it right on the spot.

We appreciate all of the comments; we are always interested in what people have to say about Qipit. We are constantly making improvements and adding new features to make the service more useful and convenient and welcome all suggestions.

Here is our presentation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdHvVMlHnUA) from the Demo Fall conference; it offers a little more detailed explanation of Qipit than the holiday card use case video. Also, keep an eye on our blog (http://blog.qipit.com/) for new announcements, use cases and camera phone reviews.

So how would you all use qipit to improve your daily life?

~ Conrad Hametner on behalf of the qipit team .

[D.K. Sutton]

One of the things I have "preached" about during workshops, presentations and in my latest book is that you must "Get to the why before others do". That is, if they (consumers)don't know why you want them to take a specific action, they won't care how. The other lesson is "You must control your comparisons". What I mean here is that whenever something new is introduced, it will automatically be compared to what currently exists. That's our way of making sense of a new offering. However, if we can't make the comparison, we will drop it and move on. It seems Conrad has made an attempt to at least answer both. Thanks. I must admit that I was a little confused about the product as well.His comments did bring some clarity.

D.K. Sutton

[Nikolaus]

One of the first things i ask myself when i encounter new technology is what are the real user cases and where lies the money? So, where is the product useful, does it save time, money and how does it bring value?

Marketing departments can always come up with great stories but the question is how can people use this technology and use it a lot.

I had the whiteboard problem for some time. Also to capture information when you encounter it is important to me as i travel a lot and don't always have all my office resources.

What i liked with qipit is how instead of carrying my camera i could do the same thing with my mobile phone. What i didn't like is that my private information stayed somewhere on a server and the data costs i had for sending at least 1MB with my mobile phone.

qipit and scanr do pretty much the same thing. I've switched to another product (comombo) that processes pictures directly on my camera phone. This cleans the picture but also compresses it to only 50KB reducing sending costs 20 times. I can then fax it or email it, PDF quality is the same as with scanr or qipit. In my case costs and an integrated mobile phone solution were the arguments to switch to another product.

Now back to my question - who will use this and who will pay for it enough to make the business profitable? Most consulting firms strictly prohibit cameras and camera phones . Students can't afford large data costs so the mobile advantage is here gone. Using a camera, then connecting it to a PC, downloading files, then emailing them..... too many clicks for the 21st century.

On top of all, there is a strong direct competitor. I'm really curious how will this develop!

[Rosemary]

Seems like this would be a great tool for students who are not able to write legibly or fast enough to take good notes in class. I'd like to see schools offer this as an accomodation in student Individual Education Plans or 504 plans.

[Sarasin]

Hi, you might want to check out similar software called Snapter.

http://www.snapter.atiz.com

Instead of having to send your personal documents to a third party, all the image processing can be done on your desktop with Snapter.

1. Safer.
2. Faster because you don't have to wait for email sending/receiving.
3. You can use Snapter to scan books, which can't be done on other free online services.

Sarasin Booppanon.
Snapter Team

[Conrad Hametner]

Hey John - I want your readers to be the first to hear that qipit has made another leap forward in mobile scanning technology. We have just released an upgrade of our scanning engine that maximizes the readability of scanned text and preserves the integrity of photographs in “qipit” copies. Whether used for documents with graphs, magazine articles or real-estate fliers with pictures, qipit is the first and only scan-on-demand service capable of converting photos of color documents into high quality digital copies.

Several of our competitors have either commented on their technology, or ours, following your original post. We invite everyone to check them out. They are Scanr (www.scanr.com) – server based processing like qipit; Comombo (www.comombo.com ) – processing on the handset; and Snapter (www.Snapter.atix.com) - processing on your PC. I think you'll find that we have the best product, the one that will eventually marginalize the desktop fax, scanner and copier.

So what makes qipit better? It’s the algorithms and the architecture. Because we process the images on our secure enterprise grade servers, we can run more advanced processing to deliver best-in-class quality. Further leveraging our server based architecture, we are able to update these algorithms as our PHDs in mathematics make breakthroughs. In this recent update, we are able to recognize pictures, diagrams and graphs in documents and reproduce them exactly, while still optimizing the text on the page. Qipit delivers the highest quality digital reproductions of the originals in the industry.

Don’t just take my word for it, check out this qipit of a recent Business 2.0 article about Seth Goldstein, The Man Who Started the FOODFIGHT. While on the public qipit page, be sure to click on the “original image” tab, to see everything qipit does on the fly.

When you click on the link, you will also see something else that makes qipit better. Qipit lets you share documents with nothing but a link, you can even include your qipit in your blog and post a description. Compare qipit to the others, we know you will find our solution is the best, and yes we are still passionate about making you a believer in mobile scanning.

btw – Check out our new facebook applications Qipit NoteShare and Qipit PimpArt. Thanks for the input in selecting the names.

~ Conrad

[ali]

Well for one, you can get rid of your land line... the only reason I have a land line of for sending faxes. With qipit, I can lose the fax machine and ditch the land line. I don't receive many faxes, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

[Joel Hickman]

I think that this might have application to professions that need to document field findings. Examples might include nurses documenting wounds or insurance adjusters documenting damage.