Online service helps students 'capture' class notes

It used to be a notebook and a sharp pencil were all you needed to take notes in class.

But today, many students are turning to their cell phones instead. Walk onto any college campus and besides books and backpacks, it seems like every student has a cell phone. "It's not that noticeable because if you just turned the sound off like it's just you holding your phone up like that. It's not like, too conspicuous," said University of California San Diego student Leah Weinstein.

Instead of scribbling what's on the board or recreating a diagram, Leah takes a picture. "And you just take a picture with your camera phone and you can have it sent to you in email," said Weinstein.

Using an online service called "Qipit," Leah gets a high contrast, easy to read digital copy of her picture. "When I take it with my camera phone I can only see it on this small screen. And when I upload it on the computer just with a cable or something. It's pretty blurry because the contrast on the camera isn't that nice. But when I have it on Qipit, I don't know, somehow it's a lot sharper," said Weinstein. Qipit's Benoit Bergeret says his online company works like a free copy service, turning handwritten or printed documents into high contrast digital copies.

"Qipit transforms the photo of the document into a black and white or black and color copy of that document," said Bergeret.

The french educated CEO says photos sent to his San Francisco based website are turned into traditional pdf files that can be printed out or shared online. "So you don't actually need a camera phone. It can be totally free if you have a digital camera instead," said Bergeret.

Qipit is like having a handheld scanner, a homework partner who takes notes all from your cell phone. Qipit lets you store up to 25 documents on their website for free.

You can password protect your files or in the case of a class project give others access to your notes.

Now using a cell phone in class is nothing new.

What Qipit is doing is turning those photos into easy to read documents.