Digitizing Handwritten Notes with the AlchemyLanguage API and Noteable Demo

Many people take notes to store information for future reference, but later, when they try to find information in those notes, it feels like a hopeless task. Rather than searching through multiple notebooks, you can digitize old notebook pages and convert the data in real time to fully editable, searchable text using the AlchemyLanguage API from AlchemyAPI.

A demo application called Noteable reinvents note‑taking by fully digitizing handwritten notes. Noteable is a Python‑based application that uses the AlchemyLanguage API. The full Noteable app is available in the jasonbrooks GitHub repository. This tutorial focuses on a subset of the demo app that runs on Bluemix, showing how to develop a small language‑processing program, add calls to AlchemyAPI, and build and deploy the project using DevOps Services for IBM Bluemix.

The demo app uses two APIs from AlchemyAPI:

The Concept Tagging API provides a ranked list of relevant concepts in the document, using rich‑text analysis to identify concepts that aren’t explicitly referenced and offering links for quick data location.

The Taxonomy API provides a nested categorization of concepts in the document, allowing users to quickly scan and focus on their chosen topic.