Tips To Learn How To Go Paperless | DocumentSnap Paperless Blog

Hello all,

As promised on the blog back in February, the first DocumentSnap product is now ready to go.

The Paperless Document Organization Guide helps answer the question “now that I’ve scanned my documents, what the heck do I do with them so that I can find them again?”

Learn more or pick it up here.

What It Is

Good question. The Guide starts with a 10,000+ word PDF with tips and strategies to help both Mac and Windows users figure out how to organize their electronic documents once they have been scanned. The guide covers folder and naming conventions and compares and contrasts the major paperless software packages for Mac and Windows, including “what’s not so good” and “who should buy it” for each one. It also covers tagging and how to secure your documents on your computer.

Since I know you are all sick of hearing from me, I have also done seven (and counting) audio interviews: four with DocumentSnap readers just like you that have gone paperless (or are well on their way) and three with professional organizers.

Finally, if you are like me you learn visually. I have recorded six (and counting) video screencasts showing how to do a number of going-paperless activities in Mac and Windows, as well as one that takes you through my workflow and how I do things.

Who It’s For

You have started down the path of going paperless and are stuck, or are not sure where to start. You have a scanner (or know which one you want to buy). You are tired of looking all over the Internet for bits and pieces of information and would like to just have everything consolidated in one place.

Should you use folders or software (or both?). Which software is the best for you? How do you keep your documents secure? These are the kinds of questions that we look at.

Who It’s Not For

This guide won’t tell you which scanner to buy or go through every single backup option. Those are very important, but not the focus of this guide.

No guide or piece of software is going to “go paperless” for you. At the end of the day, you have to actually do the stuff outlined. If you are not at the place to be able to do that yet, this may not be for you.

That’s it! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you.

Here’s the link again if you are interested.

Let me start by saying I don’t yet have an iPad (darn that need vs. want distinction). Therefore, this post is not a review of these different iPad apps for PDF viewing and document management, but more of a roundup of apps I have coveted from afar.

With that said, I have used some of them, but on my iPod Touch, not an actual iPad. If you have anything to add about any of these apps, definitely leave a note in the comments.

Ready? Lets go.

To start with, what some people don’t realize is that you don’t need to find a “PDF reader app” to have a good document experience on the iPad:

Dropbox (Service free up to 2GB, App is free): I am sure you are saying “what the, isn’t Dropbox a file syncing app?’). Yes, yes it is. However, it is also my favorite PDF viewer on the iPhone. If there are any PDFs or other documents I want to be able to access on the go, I throw them into my Dropbox folder and it syncs it up with the app. It’s really great.

Evernote (Service free to store PDFs and images and transfer 40MB/month, App is free): Any regular readers know that I am a fan of Evernote, and they recently released an iPad version of their great app. Free users can sync individual notes/documents for offline viewing, and Premium users can sync entire notebooks and store any type of document.

Box.net (Service free up to 1GB, App is free): Similar to Dropbox, it is a cloud-based service that stores all your files and then you can view them on the app. Box.net also lets you share files with other users. One thing it doesn’t have is local storage which Dropbox and Evernote do have.

Of course, if you just want an actual PDF reading, “there’s an app for that”:

PDF Reader Pro (.99 on iTunes): Allows you to view a bunch of document formats and syncs via Wi-Fi or USB.

GoodReader (.99 on iTunes): Syncs via wifi or USB and has “automatic reflow” to automatically wrap words. It integrates with Box.net, Dropbox, and Google Docs which is pretty cool. GoodReader also views Office, iWork, images, audio, and video.

ReaddleDocs for iPad (4.99 on iTunes): Pretty similar to GoodReader from what I can tell.

iAnnotate PDF (9.99 on iTunes): It’s not just a PDF reader, but it also will let you actually mark up/annotate/highlight the documents. It integrates the PDF annotations right into the file so they carry over to Acrobat or Preview if you send the document to someone. One thing it lacks is integration with Dropbox/Google Docs etc. You have to transfer the files by USB, iTunes sync, or a desktop transfer software.

So there you go, a list to get you started. Any killer apps that I missed? Any good/bad/otherwise experience with any of these? Leave a note in the comments.

Update: I am adding Fast PDF as a write-in vote from people in the comments.

So, what do you think about the iPad?

Are you going to get one?

(In case you’re curious, I haven’t decided yet).

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.

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.

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.

Back in October, Amazon released the International Wireless version of their blockbuster Kindle, but it was only the 6″ version. The larger DX was still just for the US Market.

Well, as of January 19, 2010, the Amazon Kindle DX is now available in a Global Wireless version.

The Kindle DX is 9.7″ and holds 3,500 books.

Before ordering, make sure you check the Kindle DX page and see what restrictions (if any) there are for your country and where there is coverage. You can also compare it to the Kindle and see which one is right for you.

If you order a DX outside of the US, let us know how it works in your country!

Photo by leokoivulehto

According to this article in the Herald & Review, a study was done by IDC that shows the amount of paper being printed is actually going down.

“It was like going over a waterfall,” said Wang, an analyst for the business consultant and market-research firm IDC. “Starting with the fourth quarter of 2008, we saw a definite drop in page outputs,” which nonetheless totaled 1.5 trillion pages for the year – or 5,000 sheets of printouts per man, woman and child.

That number will be lower this year, perhaps by more than 10 percent, though it had been climbing steadily since 2000. A temporary effect of the slow economy, or the beginning of a society truly less glued to paper?

Obviously 1.5 trillion pages is still nuts, but it is still a positive sign. For those of you who work in offices, have you noticed a trend to print less?

Chris Blatnick over at the Interface Matters blog has just done an absolutely epic post about his paper processing workflow.

He has included a diagram in which he mapped out his process, and two great videos in which he explains and demonstrates the whole thing.

So I recognized a problem: too much paper. That was the first step. Now I needed to make an actionable plan to deal with it. That’s where the ScanSnap came in. I started using it to scan papers in when they came in the mail. As soon as I came across something I needed to keep (my monthly bank statement, for instance), I digitized it and stored it on my hard drive and then shredded the document. Ah…a great feeling. I’ve been doing this for several months now and it has been very successful. However, nagging at the back of my mind (even though it was on my Someday/Maybe GTD list) was the massive task of tackling those file cabinets. Over the Thanksgiving break, I finally took the plunge and mapped out my paper processing workflow.

If you are curious about how different people handle their paper (and if you’re not, why are you here? ), I highly recommend checking out the post and associated videos.

The tools Chris uses are the ScanSnap S1500 and, a personal favorite, Dropbox. He is also a fellow GTD devotee.

His next step will be to send the documents into Lotus Notes. If you don’t already use it, that’s a little hardcore, but if you already in Notes all day like he is, why not.

Great post Chris!

Let’s face it. A lot, if not most, of the online cards that we receive are cheesy.

There are two classes of invites and cards out there: handwritten cards, which are seen as “nicer” and more thoughtful, and online cards and invitation which are seen as quick and disposable.

A brother-and-sister founded company out of New York called Paperless Post is trying to create a third category – online cards and invitations that are beautiful and special, but at the same time have the environmental and convenience benefits of online.

It works like you’d expect – you design your card, add a logo, “envelope”, photo etc., then send it to your recipients, and then (and this is a big plus over paper cards), you can monitor who opens and replies to them.

Each card you send costs a “stamp”, and you get 25 stamps for signing up. After that it costs about .12 per stamp if you buy 40 down to .05 per stamp if you buy 500.

Even though these are nicer than normal e-cards, I am sure there are some people who still want to keep it old school and do paper cards. How about you? Would you use something like Paperless Post, or do you feel that nothing replaces a handwritten cards? Or are e-vites and the like good enough for you? Let us know in the comments.