8/27/2010
Few people can say they’ve written an iPhone application that’s both made it to the top of the charts in iTunes as well as appeared in Apple’s “What’s Hot” section. If you’re looking for someone who has, look no further than Engineering at Illnois' alumnus Bruno Virlet (MS 2010, Computer Science).
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Few people can say they’ve written an iPhone application that’s both made it to the top of the charts in iTunes as well as appeared in Apple’s “What’s Hot” section. If you’re looking for someone who has, look no further than Engineering at Illnois' alumnus Bruno Virlet (MS 2010, Computer Science).
Virlet is the creator of the application Genius Scan, “a portable scanner in your pocket.” Genuis Scan combines a simple interface and quick processing that allows it to, as Virlet puts it, “satisfy the most common use cases.” What makes Genius Scan special other than it’s focus on simplicity and speed, is that it also takes care of cropping and correcting the perspective of any documents the user snaps with the camera on their iPhone. It can then be converted into a PDF and sent to anyone.
Genuis Scan almost eliminates the need for a scanner all together, and can even eliminate the ubiquitous stack of receipts and business cards that inevitably have to be carried back from business trips.
“It's quite convenient when you have to email back signed documents and have no scanner at hand,” claims Virlet.
Another aspect driving the popularity of Genius Scan is that its applications reach all sorts of different people. Virlet has received feedback from professions ranging from lawyers to social workers. The app review site AppPicker.com gave Genuis Scan five stars and declared, "Next time you plan to hit the road don't forget to download a copy of Genius Scan to make life easier for yourself and your accounting department.”
However, to Virlet and his roommate Guillaume Gigaud, Genius Scan was simply a way to test the iPhone App market in their free time while earning masters degrees in computer science and electrical and computer engineering respectively.
“Of course, what I was studying [parallel compilers under Prof. David Padua] definitely helped me: all my research and most classes here focus on going faster and we worked a lot on making Genius Scan run fast.” Looking at their success, it seems like that was a good concept to have learned.
Following their recent graduaton, Virlet will move on to work for Amazon in Seattle while Guillaume will go on to work for a software company in France. They both plan to continue development of Genius Scan by adding more features to satisfy the large amount of feature requests they receive.
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Contact: Jennifer LaMontagne, associate director of communications, Department of Computer Science, 217/333-4049.
Writer: Josh Holat, Department of Computer Science.
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.