A portable document scanner (PDS) is provided that need not be in communication with a local computer. The PDS includes an image scanner for scanning an input document to generate a scan image, a processor, a wireless communications port that enables wireless communications with remote computing services, and a memory that stores instructions for execution by the processor to locally process the scan image. Such processing includes, for example, extracting identity, position, and/or orientation of one or more optical semaphores from the scan image, where the extracted semaphores include (1) optical characters including letters, numerals, and/or punctuation, (2) informational indicia including bar codes, data graphs, pictures, and/or icons, and (3) document formatting indicators including lines, bars, arrows, and/or grids. The extracted semaphore data is communicated to a remote computing service via the wireless communications port. The processing operations may be managed by the user through an integrated display interface.