One word: iPad
March 11, 2010
So, what do you think about the iPad?
Are you going to get one?
(In case you’re curious, I haven’t decided yet).
Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 Review
March 9, 2010
I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a review copy of a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300, so I thought I’d write up my initial impressions and show some of the new stuff that DocumentSnap readers might find interesting.
As of this writing I have only installed it on Mac OSX, but as I wrote in my initial ScanSnap S1300 announcement post, the S1300 is a “hybrid scanner” which just means it comes with everything you need both for Windows and Mac. Maybe later I’ll do a Windows review too.
Mobile Form Factor
I have to be honest, even though I am a longtime user of the ScanSnap S300M, I have never used it in a mobile situation. I like the mobile ScanSnaps because they take up such a small amount of space, and I personally don’t need the higher speed and capacity of the ScanSnap S1500 and S1500M.
You can see from this side by side shot that the size and shape of the S1300 is basically the same as the S300 series.
All that being said, the S1300 comes with mobile features such as USB power, so you can use it without having to plug into a wall outlet (though if you use it this way you need two USB ports – one for the data connection and one for power).
Installation
Installation was very easy. Just put in the CD, install the software, and then plug in the scanner. Fujitsu does a good job of making it extremely fast from unboxing to scanning.
One really nice surprise was that when I installed the S1300 software, it automatically upgraded all my profiles I had with the S300M. I was not expecting that at all!
Long Document Scanning
The ScanSnap S1300 lets you scan long receipts and documents (finally!), a subject in which I have complained about before. To do long document scanning, just put the document in and hold down the blue power key for 3 seconds. Once it starts blinking, its in long document mode. See the video below for a demo.
Auto Quality
If you have small documents, you can have it automatically detect them and up the quality. This was a feature introduced with the S1500 series and is now on the mobile scanners.
Searchable PDFs
One limitation that the S300M had is that it did not come with OCR software to make searchable PDFs. The S1300 comes with it built in for both Macs and PCs.
You can choose on a profile basis whether you want the document to be searchable, and (similar to the S1500 series), you can have it detect highlighted text on a document and save the PDF with searchable keywords. Pretty cool.
Speed And Capacity
Obviously, the S1300 is not going to be as fast as its cousins the S1500 and S1500M. If speed and capacity are your main criteria, you will want to go for the higher model. However, if 8 pages per minute (double sided don’t forget!) is OK for you, and you don’t need to hold more than 10 pages at the time, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 is a great scanner in a very small and portable package.
Since I know some people like videos, here is a video where I show the ScanSnap S1300, some of its new features, and some of the software that comes with it.
Have you tried the ScanSnap S1300 yet? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Search Evernote Using Google Chrome Or Firefox
March 4, 2010
Recently the Evernote blog posted a really cool tip for searching your Evernote notes from inside your browser.
Basically, you tell Chrome or Firefox to use Evernote as a new search engine, which you can then search with in the address bar.
Google Chrome’s address bar doubles as a search bar, which makes it really easy to search various sites without actually going to them first. Now, you can add Evernote as a search engine in Google Chrome and search your notes from anywhere. Here’s how to set it up:
See the blog post for instructions on how to do it in Google Chrome or Firefox, or here is a video.
Great tip!
Organize And Share Your Information With Shelfster (Free Invites)
March 2, 2010
I was recently contacted by the folks at Shelfster, a service for clipping and sharing information that is in private Beta at the moment. They’re offering 10 free invites to DocumentSnap readers, so I thought I’d check the service out (all you need to do is offer stuff to our readers and I can clearly be bought 
).
Shelfster is an interesting concept. In a way, it is like Evernote (take that as a compliment) but transformed into a social network.
Not only is it designed to capture and privately store whatever information you want to keep, but it gives you the ability to make some of it public, tag it, and follow other interesting users or tags that you want to watch. You can also publish it to various services on the web.
Clipping And Tagging
You can create items with Shelfster in two ways: you can create a new item in the web interface, or you can download their Desktop tool, which is (unfortunately) Windows only.
If you are using the web version, you need to copy and paste in the text you want to clip, or if it is an image, upload it or post it to a URL.
If you’re using the desktop clipper, you highlight the text you want to clip and clip that, or crop the image you want to grab.
One improvement I think Shelfster needs to make is that a lot of the time you want to clip something that is both text and images; not either/or. The most obvious use case is a part of a web page.
Also, a small nitpick, but when you are creating items, it would be nice if the UI told you whether tags are supposed to be comma separated or space separated.
Sharing
Once you have an item in Shelfster, you have a number of options to share it. You can share it with another Shelfster member, with up to 5 email addresses, or you can send it to various social networking sites.
One thing that is slightly odd is that I don’t see an option there to share it with Twitter. Maybe I am missing it though. Surely that’ll be added before it goes out of private beta.
Following
One cool feature of Shelfster is you can follow people who share interesting stuff, or if there are tags you are particularly interested in, you can follow those as well. To set that, you need to go into your account settings and type in the people and the tags you want to follow.
Once you do that, you can go to a “Follow Items” interface and keep track of the things you are following. Here I am following the tag “Seth Godin”.
This is a nice feature but it would be improved a bit if they made it so that when you are viewing a tag, you could just click a “Follow this tag” button. It’s too hard to go into your account settings and type in the tag name itself.
All in all, I think Shelfster is an interesting product and it will be fun to see where they take it after they leave private beta. If you are interested in checking it out, I have 10 invites so the first 10 commenters will get an invite to the beta.
Pixily Changes Names – Is Now OfficeDrop
February 22, 2010
We’ve written a few times here on DocumentSnap about Pixily, a document management and scanning service that will let you physically send your paper documents and upload them to their service, and then securely manage the scanned files online.
We’ve just gotten word that they have changed their name to OfficeDrop. Why did they change it?
We decided to change our name because we found that customers were having problems spelling and remembering the Pixily name. Additionally, we wanted to find a label that helps potential customers understand what we do. We are obviously very attached to the Pixily brand, so this name change is not something that we took lightly. If you are curious, we will be posting articles on our blog talking about how we came up with OfficeDrop and the process we went through to find a new name.
As of now, not much else is changing other than the name. All web addresses should redirect, but if you run into any problems, email them at support@officedrop.com or phone them at 1-888-674-6493.
What do you think of the new name? Is OfficeDrop better/worse/indifferent than Pixily?
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