Captricity Announces the Public Launch of API at Code for America Demo Day

BERKELEY, Calif., Oct. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Captricity (http://captricity.com) announces the public release of its API. Captricity's web-based data entry technology captures handwritten data from paper documents, transcribing it into digital, structured spreadsheets and data sets. The announcement comes today at the Code for America Demo Day.

"When Captricity first launched, users could access its technology only through our web portal," said Kuang Chen, founder and CEO of Captricity. "Recent integrations with a number of cloud-based services have taken the technology one step closer to a goal now fully realized with the release of the API: integrating Captricity seamlessly into end-to-end processes bridging paper-based workflows and digital data processing."

The just-launched RESTful API can pull images of paper documents from almost any source and push digital data into databases, websites, and apps, making Captricity's award-winning service an integrated part of a complete data management solution.

Captricity was one of seven start-ups selected to participate in Code for America's four month Accelerator program, and the Demo Day is a chance for each to share its product with investors and civic leaders. The Accelerator program reinforced the need for Captricity to produce the API.

"Captricity is a game-changing company. With the release of their API, users will be able to have an even more direct connection to Captricity's data entry transcribing technology," said Ron Bouganim, director of the Code for America Accelerator. "Captricity reflects a new generation of startup -- the civic startup -- that can deliver disruptive technologies to government and enterprises alike at a fraction of the traditional cost."

"What we have seen again and again in speaking with civic leaders echoes what we've heard from business owners, researchers, and nonprofit staff: One stand-alone solution for data entry is not enough," said Brian Busch, Director of Business Development at Captricity. "We knew that for Captricity to truly address needs across sectors, it had to plug directly in to existing processes and workflows. The API allows for that."

Captricity's API will be put to its first test this weekend at the Code for America hack-a-thon, where CfA fellows, members of the CfA Brigade, and a  community of programmers focusing on civic technology and open data initiatives will come together to hack on Captricity's API and open data sets. These particular data include declarations of the financial interests of California judges, provided by the Fair Political Practices Commission of California - http://www.fppc.ca.gov -- recently released publicly on Captricity's Open Data Portal (http://captricity.com/opendata).

About Captricity

Captricity is an award-winning Berkeley, CA–based company that offers a completely self-serve data entry service for digitizing paper forms. Captricity extracts data off of paper and into digital tables quickly and cheaply, via captricity.com for end users and via its API for developers. Captricity is not OCR; it is human-quality (double-key) data extraction, even from free-form and cursive handwriting. More information at http://captricity.com/press-center.

About Code for America

Code for America partners with local governments to foster civic innovation. Through its Fellowship program, Code for America provides an opportunity for the web generation to give back by embedding developers and designers in city governments to collaborate with municipal leaders. Through the Accelerator program Code for America supports disruptive civic startups, and through the Brigade program Code for America encourages civic participation by organizing local groups of civic technologists to take action in their communities.

Contact:
Captricity
[email protected]

SOURCE Captricity