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?
Updated: Acrobat Applescript for ScanSnap OCR
February 16, 2010
As many of you know, in 2008 I posted an Applescript that will use Adobe Acrobat to make PDFs searchable using Acrobat’s OCR capabilities.
In the comments to that post, user nodis pointed out that adding 2 words to one of the lines can make the PDFs quite a bit smaller.
In my testing, I ran a 1.3 MB PDF through the script. Before nodis’ change, the resulting PDF was 1.7 MB. After the change, it was 424K!
Here is the updated script:
To use it:
- Download and uncompress the file and save it to your Desktop, Dock or wherever
- Drag one or more PDFs onto the icon
- Enjoy
Let me know how it works out for you and if you see similar reductions in file size.
Cool Paperless Setup Video
February 4, 2010
As much of a paperless geek that I am, I normally wouldn’t sit and watch a video of someone scanning and shredding paper.
However, I just wanted to point you to this YouTube video by user allenday. He’s got a really cool setup of a ScanSnap S300M, Adobe Acrobat, a Mac Mini, a wall-mounted Sharp Aquos, the Royal PX1000MX to shred, and uploads everything to Evernote.
To do the OCRing, he uses the Acrobat OCR Applescript Droplet that I hacked/posted about earlier.
Very cool setup, thanks for sharing allenday! Do any of you have a cool paperless setup? Feel free to share pics or videos in the comments.
How To Create Searchable PDFs With The ScanSnap S300M
February 2, 2010
So you read all this great stuff about how the Fujitsu ScanSnap is awesome and creates searchable PDFs, and you’re on a Mac and want a portable scanner, so you drop the cash on a ScanSnap S300M.
Then you get it home and find out – wait a minute – the S300M doesn’t come with OCR software! If you’ve been there (and I have), hopefully this post will help you out, as I get a lot of questions about this.
Mail-In Rebate
Your local Fujitsu website may provide a mail-in rebate for OCR software if you purchase the S300M. At the time of this writing, the US Fujitsu websites has a mail-in rebate for a free copy of ReadIris OCR software
The rebate is at http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/peripherals/scanners/rebates.html . Check if your country has something similar.
Acrobat
While the S300M doesn’t come with Adobe Acrobat, if you have a copy of it laying around, or have access to it, you can use the ScanSnap with it. Here is an example of how I use the S300M with Acrobat 8.
Evernote
Evernote Premium allows users to upload PDFs and they will be automatically OCR’ed and made searchable.
DevonThink
If you use a program like Devonthink Pro Office to manage your documents, they will be made searchable.
NeatWorks
NeatWorks is a software that is bundled with the NeatDesk scanner, but it can be purchased on its own. See this post for how to use NeatWorks with the Fujitsu ScanSnap.
These are some ideas for how to make searchable PDFs with the ScanSnap S300M. Do you have any others? Leave a message in the comments.
How To Encrypt Evernote On Mac OSX
January 21, 2010
In yesterday’s post, we discussed how to encrypt your Evernote database on Windows. Today, we will be going through how to do the same thing using Mac OSX. Unfortunately it is slightly more cumbersome, but it is certainly do-able.
Encrypting Text Inside A Note
The “official” way to do encryption in Evernote is to simply encrypt any sensitive text in a note. This is easily done in the Evernote UI
Step 1: Select the text you want to Encrypt.
Step 2: Right-click (or Command-Click) and choose Encrypt Selected Text.
Step 3: Make up a passphrase that you will later use to decrypt this text. Note: This phrase is never sent to Evernote’s servers, and they have no way of retrieving it for you. If you forget it, you are out of luck. Also, this text can not be decrypted in mobile or web Evernote – just in the Mac client.
Step 4: Your text will now show as encrypted in Evernote. To decrypt it, click it and enter your passphrase from Step 3.
Encrypting Your Evernote Database
Here is where things get fun. Evernote itself does not support any database encryption, so what we are going to do is create what is called an encrypted sparsebundle, then move our Evernote database to it, then trick Evernote into looking there for our files instead of in the normal location.
What is an encrypted sparsebundle? Despite the somewhat wacky name, it’s pretty simple. You can think of it as a file that you are going to create on your Mac’s harddrive that your Mac will treat as a drive. You can save and read files to it just like you can a normal drive or USB key.
When you read this it might look kinda technical, but its not that bad. Ready? Lets do it.
Note: You are going to be be moving around your Evernote files. If this scares you, I recommend you don’t proceed. If you delete everything by accident, I am not responsible!
Step 1: Click on Applications, then Utilities and choose Disk Utility
Step 2: Go to File, then New then Blank Disk Image
Step 3: In the Save As field give your file a name, and in the Documents field choose the folder where you want to save it. You can put it on your Desktop if you want.
Step 4: In the Volume Name field, give your image a name. If you’re just going to use it for Evernote you can call it EVERNOTE or something.
Step 5: In Volume Size, you probably want to give it a size that is a bit bigger than your ~/Library/Application Support/Evernote folder. My folder is 310 MB so I am going to make my image 500 MB. Don’t worry about this too too much as our image will automatically grow as needed. Leave Volume Format as MacOS Extended (Journaled).
Step 6: In Encryption, choose either 128 bit or 256 bit, depending on how hardcore you are.
Step 7: In Image Format, choose sparse bundle disk image
Here is what it looks like so far. If yours looks good, hit Create!
Step 8: It will prompt you to create a password and tell you how strong it is. It would be kind of strange to go to all this trouble to encrypt your Evernote and then use a super-weak password, but do what you need to do.
Step 9: Alright! You now have a new encrypted disk image created! If you go to Finder and look at the folder you specified in step 3, you’ll see your new file.
When you double click it and enter the password you created in Step 8, your new image will be mounted like any external drive or USB key.
Step 10: OK, now we need to move your Evernote stuff to your new encrypted image. First, make sure you quit Evernote
Step 11: In Finder, go to your home directory, then Library, then Application Support
Step 12: Drag the Evernote folder from there to your new drive.
Step 13: Make sure the Evernote folder copied over, something like this:
Step 13: Delete the Evernote folder in ~/Library/Application Support
Step 14: Open Terminal by going to Applications, then Utilities, then Terminal
Step 15: Type this, where the capital EVERNOTE is whatever you called it in Step 4, and yourusername is, of course, your Mac OSX username.
ln -s /Volumes/EVERNOTE/Evernote /Users/yourusername/Library/Application\ Support/Evernote
Step 16: Now when you look at ~/Library/Application Support, you should see the Evernote folder there with a little arrow. That means it has a “symbolic link” to the folder in your encrypted image and Evernote will be tricked into thinking it is reading it from the standard place.
Step 17: Alright! The moment of truth! Start up Evernote. Hopefully all your stuff will be there. If so, good job!
One thing to remember about this is that before you start Evernote, you must mount your Evernote sparsebundle that you created, either by double clicking it or adding it to your login items or something. Otherwise, Evernote will not know where to find your files.
Clear as mud? Do you have any other methods you use to encrypt Evernote? Let us know in the comments.
How To Encrypt Evernote On Microsoft Windows
January 20, 2010
One common comment about Evernote is that the service is awesome, but people wish that it supported encryption of notes or notebooks. To address this, Evernote introduced the ability to encrypt text inside a note, but for those that want something a bit more comprehensive, here is a 2 part guide on how to encrypt Evernote.
Today we’ll look at Microsoft Windows, and tomorrow how to encrypt Evernote on Mac OSX.
Encrypting Text Inside A Note
The “official” way to do encryption in Evernote is to simply encrypt any sensitive text in a note. This is easily done in the Evernote UI
Step 1: Select the text you want to Encrypt.
Step 2: Right-click and choose Encrypt Selected Text.
Step 3: Make up a passphrase that you will later use to decrypt this text. Note: This phrase is never sent to Evernote’s servers, and they have no way of retrieving it for you. If you forget it, you are out of luck. Also, this text can not be decrypted in mobile or web Evernote – just in the Windows client.
Step 4: Your text will now show as encrypted in Evernote. To decrypt it, click it and enter your passphrase from Step 3.
Encrypting Your Evernote Database
OK, it’s time to get a little geeky. Evernote itself does not support database encryption, so we are going to use a free program called TrueCrypt to make an encrypted drive that Windows will treat like any other drive or USB key. The difference is, whatever you save to it will be encrypted.
We’re then going to tell Evernote to put our files in there instead of the C: drive.
Ready? Let’s do it!
Note: This involves moving your Evernote files. If you’re not comfortable with that, I recommend you do not proceed. I’m not responsible in the unlikely event that your Evernote files are lost or something.
Step 1: Download and install TrueCrypt. Go to http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads and download the latest Windows version. Save it to your hard drive and install it.
Step 2: Start up TrueCrypt. You’ll see a blank list of drive letters. Click Create Volume.
Step 3: Hit Next for Create an Encrypted File Container and Next for Standard TrueCrypt Volume.
Step 4: Hit Select File and choose where on your hard drive you want your TrueCrypt image to be saved. You can think of it as a container that you are going to put other files into. For simplicity, I will put it on the Desktop and call it EvernoteVolume.
After hitting Save, hit Next when you are back at the Wizard.
Step 5: Choose the type of encryption you want. If you’re not sure, the default should be fine. Just hit Next
Step 6: Enter the size you want your new TrueCrypt drive to be. Obviously you will want to make this somewhat bigger than your existing Evernote database to allow for growth. To find out what your existing database size is, go to Tools and then Options in Evernote and then hit Open Database Folder.
Mine is about 77 Megs so I will put 150 Megs for my TrueCrypt volume. Why not. Hit Next.
Step 7: Enter a volume password that will be used when you mount this drive. It doesn’t make sense to go to all this trouble of encrypting Evernote and then choosing a weak password, so choose a good one. Hit Next.
Step 8: If you know that you need to change the Volume Format, do so here. Otherwise try the defaults.
Step 9: Hit OK and then Exit. You’ve got a TrueCrypt volume! Yeah!!
Step 10: Go back to your main TrueCrypt window where all the drive letters are. Pick which drive letter you will want to use. For this example I will use N, but use what you want.
Step 11: Click Select File and navigate to the file you specified back in Step 4.
Step 12: Hit Mount and enter the password that you created in Step 7.
Step 13: Check your Windows Explorer. You now have a new drive! Yeah!
Step 14: At long last, go into Evernote and got to Tools and then Options. Click Change to change the location of your Evernote files.
Step 15: Navigate to your N drive, or whatever drive letter you chose in Step 10. Hit OK. Evernote will now move all of its files to your new, encrypted drive.
You’re done! Awesome job!
One thing to note about this – from this point forward, you will need to have your TrueCrypt drive mounted before you start Evernote – otherwise Evernote won’t be able to find its files!
Over at 40Tech they have a handy TrueCrypt/Evernote batch file that might make this easier for you. I have not tried it myself, but give it a go if you’d like.
Do you have any other tips for encrypting your Evernote files? Leave them in the comments.
Windows 7 Update For Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 and S500 Is Now Available
January 15, 2010
As we posted earlier, Windows 7 support wasn’t quite there for ScanSnap when the new operating system was released, and the Windows 7 Update for ScanSnap S1500 and S300 was released in December.
Yesterday, Fujitsu sent out a bulletin that the updates for the ScanSnap S510 and S500 have been released.
From the email:
The compatibility update for Windows 7 with ScanSnap S510 & S500 is now available for US based customers.
Please visit the on-line form link below and fill out the form completely.
https://www-s.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/peripherals/scanners/w7_compform.htmlAfter your submission is verified, you will receive an email within one business day with detailed instructions on how to download and install the ScanSnap applications for your Window 7 operating system.
So, for whatever reason, it looks like they are doing things differently this time and you have to fill out form to get sent the instructions.
What About The f-Series?
According to this support bulletin, the S510 update is due “end of January 2010″.
As always, let us know in the comments how your update goes.
Doing OCR Batch Processing Using The ScanSnap And ABBYY FineReader
January 5, 2010
Sometimes, when you have to scan a large number of documents at once, the step of doing OCR (making the PDF searchable) after each document can really slow things down. It may be preferable to scan them all in and then OCR them all in one big shot.
In the past I have posted about how to do batch OCR using Adobe Acrobat and have posted an Acrobat Applescript.
Over at the Optimality! blog, Tobi has posted a walkthrough of using ABBYY Finereader, which comes with the ScanSnap S1500M (and S1500 for that matter) to do batch OCR.
The problem is that in the default setup, each scan is OCRed right after the scan and depending on the age your machine (my G5 is getting a little long in the tooth) in can take quite a while. When you’re in the process of scanning many hundred’s of pages of paper documents, you don’t want to have to wait for the computer to do it’s OCR recognition, you’d rather feed it all the documents and let it do OCR while you’re doing something else.
Fortunately, this is possible. Reading all the way through the handbook as well as through the ABBYY online help I found out that you can scan to PDF only, and then afterwards convert the PDFs with ABBYY FineReader.
Check out the post here. Do you have any other tricks for doing batch OCR?
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