This would be pretty cool if I could play around with the range.

I really hope this incident doesn't break her spirit. As someone who's been shot at, beat up, robbed, held up, and still trusts people: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

That said, I also rent out my place through AirBnB. (http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/106355) I interview everyone who stays with me through Skype before confirming any reservation. AirBnB, has a very classy membership, and we've had great experiences with all our guests, but due diligence is still a must. Communicating with your potential guests is essential, as is reading between the lines. You should also make an effort to look at their face at least once before booking. Skype is perfect for this and AirBnB doesn't block it.

The Late great Mich Hedberg: http://www.break.com/usercontent/2006/9/28/mitch-hedberg-on-...

We'll have the android app out probably within the next couple of months. In the meantime we're working on a submit by email utility which should be ready much sooner.

Can you explain what you mean by submit by email utility? Do you mean a web app that allows you to submit receipts via email?

Yup, we extract the Venue, purchase total, and assignit a category, in about 3 minutes. We're working on an android app, but before that we'll probably have a submit by email solution. Would that be enough for you if it were available?

Yeah would be great. :) I like getting stuff by mail. As long as its in a format I can easily store/process I mean.

would be for me

Awesome. We'll double our efforts!

Hi HN, I'm part of the team here at receiptloader. if you have any questions, please ask anything you'd like.

App is nice, but pricing is out of control.

Change all instances of "/ month" to "/ year" and you've got a customer. Or better yet, just charge 0.01$/scan in $1 increments, or $5 increments.

Your top plan costs as much as my internet!

I could scan a thousand receipts to my FREE gmail or dropbox, for, um, free; so you can't sell the data storage element.

Sweet project, been thinking of doing the same thing myself.

I guess since most don't care about privacy this is a niche question. But I'd like the option of processing the images myself. If the phone is to weak for it send it directly to my PC (or sync when I get home) and keep everything there.

Although the potential for this is huge I just will not use it if it is stored/processed in the 'cloud'.

Is it possible to extract the names of individual items as well? I keep a food diary and it would be amazingly helpful if I could have an automatically compiled list of foods in my fridge (by scanning my grocery receipts).

I would switch to an iPhone for that.

There's lots of people out there that simply don't use cash anymore. Does this service have anything to offer people like me that mint doesn't already offer? I see the use if you make most of your purchases in cash...just not otherwise.

Besides extracting the data from the recipt we also keep the image. From beta testers this has been useful for expense reports which require evidence, as well as for returning items at stores. Of course returns depend on the original vendor, but we've had beta testers return stuff at grocery stores, brick and mortar tech stores, and such.

Ultimately this is useful for submitting tax returns come April.

I dunno about you, but while my credit card company does itemize my transactions, they don't provide any sort of reporting tool to track how I spent my money. (They do provide a CSV export, which is suddenly looking like something I should try to analyze.)

Mint does a pretty good job in analysis. It categorizes anything I spend at Schnucks for example as "Groceries" and allows you to track how much you've spent this month compared to previous months and such. It only fails in purchases from places like Wal-Mart, where what you purchase can vary wildly.

Well, it offers a lot to people outside the states for whom nothing like mint is available.

Nice work, it's an great app for people like me. Juz curious, how this technology works?. thnx

The core service behind this is the Amazon Mechanical Turk. We've been working with amazon for years (on this and other projects) and they've helped us create a solution that keeps the user anonymous and helps return quick results.

well done!! keep it up, it has a great scope.

These are great observations. I visited your website, and you have a pretty cool, trajectory. I'm gonna shoot you an email, I'd like to pick your brain a little more.

There might be something there, thanks for the suggestion.

Hi everyone I'm Pablo Tirado, the bald guy on the right with the glass of bourbon.

First of all I'd like to thank everyone who has voted for the story, and particularly to the commenters, which we'll be responding to individually; because we really want more feedback.

Second I'd like to give some background on what this is.

Last weekend we spitballed a list of 37 ideas which we thought could be made into something. Some were brand new, some we'd worked on for some time but most were harebrained.

This list of 5 are the survivors of our own elimination process. We made this landing page to send to friends in the industry whose opinion we trust. Giovanni (flexterra) decided to post it on Hacker News to see what the community thought and here we are.

We have other projects that are very close to launch (receiptsloader.com [if your purchase receipts are a mess, you want this]) and this 5 piece voting site, is to help us decide on what to concentrate our efforts on next.

Again, thanks to everyone for commenting and voting.

Add to the site a textbox where people can add their own ideas. Allow them to make it public or private(hidden).

Personally I think you'll get much better ideas than the ones you've listed.

I agree, the related article adds a lot. Having free users is only cool if you can both; afford it and have it add to your bottom line. But I think the old-fashioned idea of receiving income for delivering value, should make a prompt comeback.