There's software to clean up these pictures (remove glare, correct perspective).
I've thought about software that goes further... I'm thinking for instance, vectorize the image, OCR the text, convert sloppily-drawn lines into actual arrows. Whiteboard-photo-to-Visio, so to speak. It won't be possible to do this fully automagically of course, because of bad clarity of writing and drawing, but a tool could be made that assists the user to do this rapidly. Not easy, but not undoable either.
Would you think there's actually a business for software that does this? Or is it just a silly geek "solution looking for a problem"?
At my last startup, I used to be a heavy user of "Whiteboard Photo" software, and I'd definitely pay for software that does what you suggest (assuming the right price/features/value proposition.)
To be perfectly honest, I can't see a use for it. You WANT to have it in handwriting because it reminds you who wrote what, which helps you remember what they said while writing it. Sure, you can't really show these things to outsiders, but I don't think automated tidying would help that much.
For my mISV I wrote PhotoNote to clean up whiteboard images. I wrote it to scratch a personal itch, but I think it's useful and competitive in the market.
I've thought about software that goes further... I'm thinking for instance, vectorize the image, OCR the text, convert sloppily-drawn lines into actual arrows. Whiteboard-photo-to-Visio, so to speak. It won't be possible to do this fully automagically of course, because of bad clarity of writing and drawing, but a tool could be made that assists the user to do this rapidly. Not easy, but not undoable either.
Would you think there's actually a business for software that does this? Or is it just a silly geek "solution looking for a problem"?