Evernote is one of those tools I would not be without now that I have used it over the last few weeks. It fits well with a paperless office too. Here is a link to a post on how doctors can use evernote as a professional memory accessible anywhere (part 1 of 2) And if you happen to be lucky enough to have an iPhone, there is an iPhone app for Evernote too.
Painless to Paperless Office
Jul 31, 2008
By Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann of DEVONtechnologies
While working from a home office often means that we deal a lot with electronic information, there is still paper coming in. It’s hard to integrate with the rest of our workflow and it needs storage space — space that many of us don’t have. To get rid of most of the paper is not hard. Here’s what you need:
1) A computer (when you can read this posting, you already have one)
2) A scanner
3) Some software
For the scanner, a document scanner is of course preferable. Good choices are the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners as well as the Avision-made document scanners. But also any flatbed scanner is fine as long as it’s fast enough for the paper volume that you want to digitize. And, of course, you need a driver for it, so make sure the scanner you get is compatible for your computer, be it a Mac, a Windows PC, or a Linux box (e.g. the Fujitsu ScanSnap is available in different Mac and Windows editions.)
Scanning document does not require a super-high resolution such as photos, maybe even a grayscale or black/white scan is fine and consumes a lot less space on disk. Scan with 150 dpi if you don’t want make the content of the document searchable with optical character recognition (OCR) later, scan with 600 dpi for maximum flexibility. See if your scan software is able to scan to PDF. PDF files are standardized, compressed, and can contain more than just one page. Most scan applications also allow to scan multiple pages into one PDF file, document scanners usually pack all pages that are scanned in one batch into one single PDF file (can depend on the settings).
Now you can name the PDF file and save it to whatever place you find appropriate in your workflow, it could be a folder on your hard disk or a network server, an online service, or a document management application such as DEVONthink Pro Office for the Mac Give it a good, meaningful name so that you can easily identify it without spending time to open it in Acrobat. If you want to make the PDF searchable, run OCR on it, then file the converted PDF and trash the raw original.
Some file their incoming paper separately from their electronic documents, some do not. Whatever suits you best. Personally, I am storing scanned papers together with all electronic communication, namely email messages and IM chat logs, in one structure and separated only in a few sub-categories. The easier your system is to use the better. Adding more structure rarely brings much benefit, especially as your computer can easily search for your files regardless of where they are located.
Do you need a document management application? This depends on your needs. DEVONthink Pro Office, for example, comes with an integrated paper capture module that lets you directly scan into the database, runs OCR on incoming papers, has a sophisticated search functions, and assists you with classification and see-also functions based on artificial intelligence. In addition it manages email and chat logs and lets your access your archive from other computers in your home or over the Internet. But if you don’t need all this, simple folders in your file system are just fine.
So, going paperless is easier that it sounds. And if you consequently follow the ‘paperless office’ approach you’ll end up keeping only a few important papers: contracts, invoices, and everything that your tax authorities require you to save for them.
Side note: DEVONtechnologies gives our readers 25 percent discount on all their products. Read more about it here. – Grant Griffiths
The Paperless Home Office - Part 3 — Hardware
Feb 12, 2008
In continuing the series about “The Paperless Home Office”, Part 1 and Part 2 were an introduction and what software you should consider. Part 3 will be about the hardware I use for my paperless home office.
The first piece of equipment is a must have and one I would just not live without. The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner
Next in my list of must have hardware for the paperless home office is a good backup. I use a Western Digital external hard drive. Western Digital has a huge selection to pick from and they all are very reliable. If you are looking at moving to a paperless office or if you are already working in a paperless office, you have to have reliable backup. Back up is a must!!! Backup, backup, backup.
Another piece of hardware that is vital to a paperless office is a second display. Wide screen at that. Since I use a laptop computer as my main computer, a second display is a must. I use the 19-Inch Acer TFT Widescreen LCD Flat Panel Monitor
Biggest reason, it was cheap. I do plan to upgrade in the near future to all Dell flat panel displays. While they are a bit more expensive, the reviews on the displays are usually very high.
The second display works great since you are viewing documents on your computer and not in hard copy. I usually have my word processor open on my MacBook and the documents I am working with on the second display.
Since walls of file cabinets are not present in a paperless home office and since you are not going to keep piles and piles of paper, what is a person to do with it. For me, I have to have a good shredder under my desk. Even if you are not paperless, every home office should have a paper shredder. I don’t have a favorite one. In fact, we usually buy a new one almost yearly. We use them hard and daily.
And finally, my computer is the MacBook. When I decided to move to a paperless office, one of the requirements I knew I had to have was a reliable computer. I had nothing but troubles with the windoze machines, so it was natural to switch to the Mac. It has been five years and I don’t regret it one little bit. While I backup daily all of my client files and all of the PDF’s on my computer, I have not had to worry about any lost data. And, the laptop is also the logical choice for a paperless home office. I am not always in my office. And when I leave my office, I take my MacBook with me and my entire office is also with me. No matter where I am at or where I am working, I have my entire office with me and can conduct business from my laptop.
No matter what computer hardware you decide to use, all of the other hardware options I have mentioned above will work. And, it is not expensive to set up a paperless home office. A paperless office also saves you money. And you don’t need the square footage for all those stupid 4-drawer file cabinets. A paperless office goes hand in hand with a home office.
I would be happy to visit with anyone via email or by phone about a paperless home office. And, please leave your comments here about your own paperless office and what hardware you use. Lets keep the conversation going.
The Paperless Home Office — Part 2 — Software
Feb 04, 2008
Continuing with Part One of The Paperless Home Office, I felt the next step we should take is to talk about the software I use to make the paperless office work for me.
Once again, let me remind you that I use the Mac computer in my home office. So, all of the software I will discuss will be Mac OSX software.
The first piece of software I would not be without is the program I use to work with the PDF’s I get with my paperless office. PDFpenPro allows me to Correct and modify existing PDF text; resize, move, and delete PDF images and create fillable PDF forms. I use PDFpenPro to do just about everything I need to do with a PDF. I even use it to sign all of my documents including faxes that come in which require my signature.
Because I do not even own a fax machine, I had to come up with a computer based program to deal with faxes. For faxes I use PageSender. With PageSender, I can fax or email anything I can print. I use its built-in fax center to manage and automate my outgoing fax activities. And PageSender works with Apple’s built in Address Book. So, I no longer have to look up any fax number as long as the contact is in my Address Book.
For incoming faxes I use a web based application called, MaxEmail. MaxEmail allows me to get faxes anywhere I can get wifi. And, if I don’t have my MacBook with me, I can get my faxes on my iPhone.
Both PageSender. and a web based fax service like MaxEmail. are essential in my opinion to move your office in the direction of a paperless home office.
I also use box.net to share my paperless office with my virtual assistant. With box.net, I just download my client files and other documents to my account and my VA has access to them. In addition to that, I use it as a backup in my office.
Setting up and maintaining a paperless home office is not difficult if you take advantage of the great software which is available. If you are using a paperless home office or working towards one, please post your comments here as to the software you are using. Lets keep the conversation going.
Making Sure Your Data is Safe
Jan 28, 2008
Emoms at Home had a post today called, Recovering from Data Loss in Your Home Business.
From Wendy’s post:
I’m kind of freaking out right now because I believe that my laptop has died. As in, I can’t even turn it on. I’m using my daughter’s computer for now, which is a short-term solution for the bigger problem of losing the one thing that is critical to my doing business. All the woulda-coulda-shoulda’s are echoing through my brain right now, with the most ironic one of all being that a company offered me a computer backup system for review purposes just last week and I hadn’t gotten back to them yet.
While I can relate to Wendy’s problems and I can certainly appreciate it too. I have to say, I have not had such problems since I moved to the Mac OS almost 4 years ago.
However, knowing that even the BEST operating system and hardware can crap out on you, I use a lot of safe guards to protect my data. Here is how I have equipped my office to deal with all the possibilities.
First of all, and I will keep mentioning this until such time as everyone of you use the Apple computer. It is really what I consider my first stage of defense against problems experienced by my windoze using friends.
But, as I mentioned, I know there can be problems. So, I use both hardware and software to protect, maintain and backup my “stuff”. Wendy mentioned that she did not have all of her emails archived on another device. I use a great program to archive my emails called. Mailsteward. It is wonderful. I set it to do a complete archive of my email on a daily basis. I also set it to do this at 10:00 p.m. each and every night and it does it without any further effort on my part. It places the emails in archive folders I have placed on my “desktop” and I than do a backup of those to my external HD. I always have a daily backup of all of my emails. I and others like me live and die by email. We do most of our communications with clients/customers, vendors, and others via email. I have to have archives of all my emails and this was the best solution I found. And with Mailsteward ,I can search through the entire archive for any email I might need.
Next is one of the new features in OS 10.5.0 and that is Time Machine. Leopard’s built in backup feature. Also a wonderful piece of software. It simple does a backup of my computer during the day. And if I need something from my computer that might be gone for whatever reason, I go to Time Machine and it is there. Effortless security for all my “stuff”.
I also use a program that manages all of my passwords I might need. 1Password is the program I am using. And best of all, it syncs all those passwords to my iPhone. And, I backup all those passwords to my external hard drive. The main thing 1Password does is give me a one stop shop way of managing all my passwords. It also will generate passwords for you. I use this feature and have it generate at a minimum 15 letters and/or number passwords. Just a little added security.
For all my documents, I not only backup to my external HD, burn to DVD’s and use an old 2nd generation iPod, I also use an online service called, Box.net. And for an added benefit of Box.net, I can access all my client files, including all their documents from my iPhone. And with that, I can email documents to clients or others from Box.net and my iPhone if I need to and don’t have my Macbook with me.
Finally, I use an old Mac Mini as a file backup tool. I backup all my client files and documents to my older Mac Mini. I can also access this from anywhere with either my Macbook or my iPhone. I use a service called, SoonR.
What is great about all of the programs I use is they allow me to access most of the stuff I need from anywhere. And if something, god forbid does happen, I have all my “stuff”. It also works right into my paperless office setup.
Drop me your comments here and let us know what you use to make sure your data is safe.
