The OCR Software Blog

Update May 1, 2015: (a9t9) launched its very own free and open-source Online OCR service - try it out and let us know how it compares.

What is the best free optical character recognition (OCR) service to convert (text in) images to plain, editable text? This review compares the recognition accuracy of free and commercial cloud OCR offerings. No-name OCR beats Google Docs OCR is just one of the surprising test results.

Usability, speed, formatting, non-English language support are not rated. This market overview is all about finding the best online service to convert images to plain text.

Six documents that are gradually more difficult to recognize serve as OCR benchmark: A screenshot, two scans, a mobile phone camera picture and, as highlight, text of an XKCD comic and readings from the image of a gas meter. The test results were not what you would expect. Read more about the five OCR surprises.

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The answer is in the log file… in Google Analytics, if you go to Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization (SEO) > Queries it gives you an overview what search engine queries/keywords blog readers use to find this “Autonomous  Technology” blog.

Here are the current entries - Fun with Google Analytics:

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I released the Download Speed Tester project on GitHub  and created a website for it. The full application source code is available as Visual Studio project under the GPL open-source license. So have fun with it!

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Upwork, Elance and Freelancer.com provide on-demand access to more than 1 million technical workers – but how good are they for outsourcing  C# development projects for the Windows desktop? On which portal to do you find the best C# experts in 2015? This review gives some hints.

As test project I created a specification for an Internet speed test application as I needed one to trouble-shoot my flaky internet connection at home. The available speed test websites do not allow you to run speed tests periodically (say every minute) over an extended time period and to automatically resume the speed check_s after a reboot.  Based on these personal requirements (and with a sense that I might not be the only one who needs it) I created the specification and posted the request on the three major outsourcing portals.

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The purpose of this application is to automate internet speed tests and assist in trouble-shooting intermittent, flaky connection problems. The open-source Windows app tests your download speed on a set interval, logs the test results to a CSV text file and generate download speed over time graphs. The logger also monitors service interruptions (PC offline/online) and IP address changes.  In other words: Monitor, log and benchmark the speed and reliability of your DSL, cable, fiber, Wifi or mobile internet connections.

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