According to NYT, researchers at Xerox Research Center Europe (located in Grenoble, France) are working on the means to transform the diminutive camera in your cellphone into a portable document scanner.

"When we give it to test users, they appreciate it easily," said Christopher Dance, senior scientist and image processing manager for Xerox Research Center Europe. "Even the simplest of applications, just sharing the documents and storing the documents you have captured. You could even handwrite a message and send it to someone's phone." (...) Xerox researchers believe the technology will be useful for just about anyone with a job that requires research in the field. The theory is that someone attending a trade show or conference, for example, could capture and store pertinent documents in their cellphone.

What is even more interesting is:

Xerox researchers are also working on complementary technology for cataloging these and other digital images. Although it's part of a different research project that hasn't come to fruition, the technology will sort through and group images using histograms, which chart the pixels associated with a particular part of a digital photograph. In some instances, text descriptions will be tied to these histograms.