LaCie bundles Carbonite – Best of Both Worlds
October 29, 2008
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One common argument is whether it is better to back up to an external hard drive, or better to use an online backup service. In fact, I wrote an offline vs. online backup post a while ago.
What doesn’t get mentioned a lot is that a lot of people (myself included) do both. It looks like LaCie and Carbonite are getting together to recognize that.
I haven’t seen anything on their websites about it, but Gizmodo is reporting that any LaCie external hard drives purchased after October 15th are entitled to a year of Carbonite service free.
Recognizing the importance of secure digital media for both consumers and professional users, LaCie has partnered with Carbonite, Inc., an innovator in online backup technology, to ensure that each LaCie drive purchased will be bundled with their award-winning services.
For one year following software installation Carbonite will automatically backup the LaCie drive by finding new and modified files, encrypting them twice before leaving the original workstation, then transmitting them by HTTPS (SSL) to a secure data center, where the information remains encrypted, protecting the user¹s privacy. Additionally, backups are completed only when the computer is idle, so the process never interferes with computer performance.
I think this is a really smart move on LaCie’s part. Online backup services are getting more and more popular, so instead of trying to fight the inevitable they are embracing it. Clever.
Put Receipts (and Business Cards) In Your Shoeboxed
October 27, 2008
A while ago we profiled a mail-in document service called Pixily. For those of you that don’t want the hassle of scanning things in and organizing them yourself, here is another one called Shoeboxed.
Shoeboxed has a much tighter focus. It is going after those of us that have a lot of receipts and business cards that we need to manage. There’s no general document scanning going on here- its just focused on receipts and (recently) business cards.
This could be good for frequent shoppers, but I see it being most useful for professionals that travel a lot or self employed/freelancers that have to manage and categorize their expenses.
How Does It Work?
There are basically three ways of getting your receipts into Shoeboxed.
- For expenses where you have a physical receipt, you can scan it in/take a picture of it and upload it.
- They have a Netflix-like mail-in plan where you stuff all your receipts into an envelope and send it in. The company then scans them in and sends them back to you with a new envelope for your next mail-in.
- For online purchases, you are assigned a private email address that you can send the electronic receipts to
The company has a new feature where it can auto-categorize receipts which is handy.
Can I Get My Data Out?
For receipts, you can export them out to Excel, Quicken, CSV, or PDF. Business card detail can be sent to Outlook, Address Book, Salesforce.com, LinkedIn, Gmail, and other contact info systems.
How Much Does It Cost?
Shoeboxed has a free plan that doesn’t include the mail-in portion.
For monthly plans that include mail-in, it ranges from $9.95/month – $49.95/month for a heavy business plan.
Is Shoeboxed Worth It?
That really depends on how much you value your time and how many receipts you have. If you’re just someone who shops occasionally, it might not be worth it. However if you are someone that wants to focus on your business and not from sitting there messing around with receipts, Shoeboxed might be right for you.
If you’ve tried Shoeboxed or another mail-in service, leave a comment and let us know how you like it.
Rackspace Buys Jungle Disk
October 22, 2008
Wow, there was a shakeup in the online backup space today. Rackspace, a well-known web hosting provider has bought Jungle Disk, an online backup provider. The cloud backup space is heating up.
Jungle Disk provides an interface to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service, which makes this deal a little strange.
Many people think that Rackspace is making this move because they want to better compete against Amazon Web Services, which makes sense, but that is exactly what Jungle Disk uses to store users’ files.
For its part, Jungle Disk says that Amazon S3 will continue to be supported:
Does this mean you will discontinue support for Amazon S3?
Absolutely not. Although Jungle Disk will now also be supporting Rackspace’s Cloud Files, we are still committed to supporting Amazon S3 and other potentially cloud storage providers in both current and future products. Being able to support multiple cloud storage providers is one of the unique differentiators for Jungle Disk and a big reason why Rackspace was interested in acquiring the company.
Even though S3 will continue to be supported (and it would be pretty brutal for their clients if it was not), you have to think that much of the focus is going on be on supporting Rackspace’s cloud offerings.
We will see how this shakes out. Now that Mozy has been bought by EMC and Jungle Disk by Rackspace, I wonder if Carbonite will be next.
Would you read an electronic newspaper?
October 20, 2008
Electronic books and electronic readers have been promised for a long time, but have never really taken off (though people who have the Amazon Kindle do love it.
Looking at my recycling bin, one area that could really benefit from going digital is the newspaper. Sure you can read it online, but the whole point of a newspaper is that you can take it with you – to the park, to the livingroom, on the train, or even (it has to be said) the bathroom.
A recent BBC report introduces one solution – an electronic newspaper that is as light as a magazine and as thin as a table mat.
Photo by EJeffson
The device was developed by some scientists from Cambridge in the UK and is now being manufactured by a company called Plastic Logic in Germany.
One of Plastic Logic’s engineers talks about some of the benefits in the article.
Mr Baker believes the device will help consign ordinary paper to the rubbish bin of history.
“There’s a huge amount of waste,” says Mr Baker.
“We have paper being distributed all over the country which is consumed on that day and then discarded into the bin. This doesn’t need to be the case.
“All of that content could be transmitted electronically and stored on a single e-reader, with the same visual appeal as paper. “
Sounds good to me. There’s a video of how it all works in the BBC article which they unfortunately don’t let you embed (lame), but here is one from DEMO 08 (which doesn’t show it flex unfortunately):
Assuming it is easy to use and read, would you use an electronic newspaper? Or would you stick to paper?
Online Storage Comparison at Lifehacker
October 17, 2008
Lifehacker has put together a pretty useful spreadsheet comparing a bunch of different online storage providers.
Here’s our feature-by-feature comparison chart of the current roster of online storage services. (All of these services offer some form of security and privacy with uploaded files, along with, in most cases, the ability to share and/or collaborate on documents.)
It goes beyond just backup providers too. Check it out here.
Paper Misfeed Problems With Your ScanSnap? It Might Be Your Consumables
October 16, 2008
Photo by Legozilla
While the Fujitsu ScanSnap might be super-easy to use with only one button, there is a lot going under the hood to make it work that way. When you have problems like paper jams or more than one page getting pulled through, it might be time to replace (or at least clean) your consumables.
What On Earth is a Consumable?
A lot of people don’t know this, but there are a few parts in your ScanSnap that should be replaced every once in a while to make sure that it keeps running in top shape. Consumable is just a fancy word for those parts.
How Do I Know When Its Time To Replace?
The most obvious answer is when you start having problems. If you start getting multiple paper feed problems or paper jams, that’s an alarm.
However, the ScanSnap Manager does tell you when it is getting time to replace two parts in particular: the Pick Roller and the Pad Assembly.
Checking Your Consumables
The screenshots you see here are for the Mac, but it is the same concept with Windows. Just right click on the System Tray instead of the Dock.
First, right-click on ScanSnap Manager (with the ScanSnap open so that it is powered on) and choose Check Consumable Supplies.
Once there, you will be shown some useful information.
This screenshot is from the ScanSnap S300M, so your values may be different. On the left you see the “Target Value to change supplies”. For the S300M, Fujitsu recommends that you change the Pick roller every 100,000 sheets and the Pad Assembly every 10,000 sheets.
On the right, the first box is the total number of pages that this ScanSnap has scanned. The bottom two boxes are the number of scans that have been done since the Pick Roller and the Pad Assembly have been replaced. You can see that I have not yet needed to replace them.
The reset buttons are so that when you do replace a part, you can hit “Reset” to set it back to zero for that new part.
Which Part Do I Need?
The easiest way to find your part is to Google the part number. The prices vary wildly but are not too expensive. Click on the part number to do a Google search to find places in your area that do mail order. You can also ask the place where you bought the ScanSnap too, but I am guessing online is cheaper.
| Scanner Model | Description | Part No. | Recommended replacement cycle |
|---|---|---|---|
| ScanSnap S300/S300M | Pad Assembly | PA03541-0002 | 10,000 sheets |
| Pick Roller | PA03541-0001 | 100,000 sheets | |
| ScanSnap S510/S510M | Pad Assembly | PA03360-0002 | 50,000 sheets |
| Pick Roller | PA03360-0001 | 100,000 sheets |
Pick and Pad What?
A Pick Roller is what does the pulling into the document feeder. It works with the Pad Assembly to pull the paper in. The Pad Assembly is like the brake pad in your car. It is what separates the pages.
If either the Pick Roller or Pad Assembly are worn down or excessively dirty, you are going to get multiple pages pulled through the ScanSnap.
Cleaning and Replacing The Pick Roller And Pad Assembly
The best way to clean and/or replace the parts is to follow the instructions in the Operator’s Guide. If you can’t find yours, here are links them on Fujitsu’s website. You’ll want to look at Chapter 8 and 9.
- ScanSnap S300 Operator’s Guide
- ScanSnap S300M Operator’s Guide
- ScanSnap S510M Operator’s Guide
- ScanSnap S510M Operator’s Guide
- ScanSnap general documentation page
How many pages does your ScanSnap’s Total Page Count show?
New Version of Carbonite On The Way
October 15, 2008
A new version of Carbonite (3.7) has been announced.
Here is the PR-speak:
“We spent a significant amount of time talking with customers for this upgrade of Carbonite,” said David Friend, founder and CEO of Carbonite. “We’ve always had the goal of Carbonite being the simplest online backup to use and we’ve been lauded for our success in that goal, but we are seeking perfection for the day-to-day experience of using Carbonite. We found that our users had some great feedback that, when implemented in Release 3.7, makes Carbonite even easier to use.”
Carbonite also spent time honing performance for version 3.7. Through a series of improvements to the way Carbonite monitors computer resources, Carbonite will offer better system performance during the initial scan and backup upload.
It will be released over the next few weeks. As soon as I get more details on what is actually in there, I’ll post more.
Source: Sys-Con
Don’t want to do the scanning? Try Pixily
October 13, 2008
As everyone knows, I am a pretty big fan of scanning in documents. But what to do you do if you don’t have a scanner, or don’t want the hassle of actually sitting there scanning stuff in?
Pixily is a service that will take care of that for you.
For documents that you already have digitized, you can upload Word docs, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and Powerpoint presentations. They will then OCR them on the server and store them so that you can search and retrieve them later.
Where Pixily differs from other similar services though, is their mail-in option. You can subscribe to a plan where they give you pre-paid envelopes and you can send them your documents. They’ll take them, scan them and OCR them, and mail you back the originals (they say they’ll have a shredding option soon).
Obviously there is a cost to this, and the usual security concerns that people have about putting their stuff in the cloud, but if something like this is appealing to you it might be worth checking it out. I’d love to hear from someone who has actually used it what their experience is.
Mozy Discount Code for October
October 2, 2008
If anyone has been wanting to sign up for Mozy’s Unlimited Service, I have a coupon code for you. It’s for 10% off all annual and bi-annual signups.
To get the discount, click here to go to the MozyHome Unlimited signup page, and then enter the coupon code OCTOBER (really sneaky).
Of course, if you don’t need more than 2 Gigs right now, there is always Mozy Free.
(Note, I do get a small tip if you use that link, so if you’re interested in buying me a coffee, there you go. Either way Mozy is great).
In The UK? Win A ScanSnap S300 From GadgetSpeak
October 1, 2008
If you are in the UK, I noticed today that GadgetSpeak is offering a Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 as their prize draw for the month of October.
This month we’re really lucky to have Fujitsu sponsor the competition. They will be providing the lucky winner with one of their excellent ScanSnap S300 scanners.
Looks like registering is free and existing members just need to log in during the month. If you are in the UK and have been coveting a ScanSnap, maybe it’s worth a try?
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