Pleco's OCR feature for the iPhone is just out. I used it to create flash cards for all the vocabulary from my current Chinese textbook (Contemporary Chinese, vol. 3) in just a little while. Then I exported the flash card list as a text file and pasted it into Skritter (in three sections because there were too many words.)

I bought a used iPhone 3GS to use like an iPod Touch (i.e. with no phone service) to use with Pleco (particularly for the OCR feature). The new iPod touch has an inferior camera (no autofocus) so it won't work for OCR. I found that the 3GS works, but it's best to use something like the Griffin Clarifi case, which has a built-in magnifying lens you can slide back and forth, the camera with or without it. The magnifying lens improves the speed of character recognition and makes holding the phone less of a jittery proposition.

OCR is a very cool feature in Pleco!

Meant to write, "which has a built-in magnifying lens you can slide back and forth, so you can use the camera with or without it."

Totally awesome! I'm not going to buy more Apple hardware though :(

Hey Lurks, why the resolution to not purchase any more Apple hardware. Just curious.

DrGrace, The new Pleco OCR is quite fabulous, I must say. I feel like I'm in Star Trek. I'm waiting for Pleco to add a feature where I can speak English into one end, and perfect Mandarin will come out the other. : )

It certainly is a great day to study Chinese: Pleco, Chinesepod, and Skritter. It can't get much better than this.

I agree, the new OCR feature is wonderful.. It even works fairly well as I was strolling around Kunming today checking out the store signs I don't yet know how to read. Pretty sweet!

That sounds awesome. I have a camera-less ipod though, sadly! Does it work 100%, or a bit hit and miss?

the camera quality and focal length is an issue when trying to deal with small fonts but for large fonts and fonts that are not too 'artsy' it works pretty darn well. But I've just played with it so far. The Griffin case sounds like an interesting addition - maybe I'll try to find one here (fat chance I think).

@Lurks - found a Chinese OCR app for Android yet? I looked last night but couldn't find anything.

Ndsino, I'm waiting for Pleco to offer a Borg-like brain implant, so we don't need external devices at all! We wouldn't really need to learn Chinese, for that matter.