Pleco Chinese Dictionary

Demonstration of the new OCR feature for our Pleco Chinese Dictionary software ( http://www.pleco.com/pleco2ip.html ), which allows you to instantly look up words simply by pointing your iPhone's camera at them. You can try this out in the latest version of Pleco (2.2); search for "Pleco" in iTunes to download our free basic app, open it, tap on the menu button at the bottom right corner of the screen, tap "Add-ons," tap on "Optical Character Recognizer," then tap on the button to download and try the demo.

This works best on the iPhone 4, but should work quite well on the 3GS too (as long as it's been upgraded to iOS 4); unfortunately, it won't work on the iPod Touch 4th-gen or the iPhone 3G, as the cameras on those devices lack autofocus and so can't see characters clearly enough to recognize them.