Tips To Learn How To Go Paperless | DocumentSnap Paperless Blog

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Have you ever wondered what makes up a PDF document? What the inner workings are like? OK probably not, but Tad over at Paper Jammed has, and he has put together a delightfully geeky rundown of some of the internal workings of the PDF document that allow for multiple changes.

(I bet you thought PDFs were read only, didn’t you?).

It was at that moment that I recalled a peculiar feature of the PDF file format: it is designed to support nondestructive updates, allowing people to make vast changes to a PDF document while still retaining the original document, fully intact. I did a few experiments and was surprised with the results.

His point: If you want to make sure that your stuff that you thought you removed WAS removed, use a redaction tool. Good advice.

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Even the best scanners or copiers with document feeders can jam or pick up double sheets sometimes. Aside from picking a great scanner, there are some things you can do with the paper to get it ready to scan.

Our friends over at the ScanSnap Community site have posted a primer on what to do with your paper to keep your ScanSnap scanning in tip-top shape. Of course, this would apply to any document feeder equipment.

You watched the video on how to clean your ScanSnap. You saw how to change the consumables. But you still experience occasional double feeds. Believe it or not, you could be causing the problem!

Preparing your paper for scanning is just as important as keeping your ScanSnap clean, so we created this short three step primer on paper prep.

So, do you have any tricks other than “The Fan”, “The Taper”, or “The Wrinkle”? Let us know in the comments.

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It’s a little known fact that Canadians are in fact very jealous of Americans. Why? Not because of any political or economic reason, but because they always have to sit and watch as those south of the border get cool stuff like Hulu and the Kindle.

Well, at least one of those problems is solved. Recently I posted about the international launch of the Amazon Kindle, which at the time excluded Canada.

Today it was announced that Hosers from Coast to Coast can get their own Kindle love. The US and International 6″ Kindle is available in Canada, effective immediately.

It’s still $259 US, and you can pick it up at, of course, Amazon.

Here is the Canada coverage map as linked from Amazon’s Kindle page.

Any Canadians taken the plunge yet? Let us know how it works out for you.

Many people think that there are two classes with respect to the Amazon Kindle: those who don’t understand it, and those who can’t live without it. However, there has been a third group that doesn’t get talked about as much: those who live outside of the US that covet it from afar.

Well, now for many of you in the third group can rejoice: Amazon has released a “US and International” version that will work in around 100 countries, and Amazon will ship the Kindle to those countries as well (!).

The US and International Wireless version is the same as the 6″ US Wireless version (not the DX). It has the same 8″ x 5.3″ x .036″ size, and (at the time of writing this) it is $279 USD which is a $20 premium over the US version.

Alas, the Kindle is not available in all countries. I went through the DocumentSnap server logs to see what the top countries that people come from, and decided to check out if the Kindle is available.

Keep in mind that this is as of October 14, 2009. So if you are reading this after this date, you should go to the Kindle page and check for the latest information.

Canada: No (really?!)

United Kingdom: Yes!

Germany: Yes!

France: Yes!

Switzerland: Yes!

Australia: Yes! (you need to order from a special page though)

Japan: Yes!

Netherlands: Yes!

Belgium: Yes!

China: No

Italy: Yes!

Sweden: Yes!

For your country, or to check the wireless coverage map for where you are, check Amazon’s Kindle page and search for your location.

Sorry Canada, along with having no Hulu, no MiFi, and no Obama, you still get no Kindle love.

For you users from the rest of the world, are you going to jump on getting a Kindle now that you are able to? Anyone in a country that doesn’t have the Kindle yet? Any US Kindle lovers want to share their experiences?

Via @JordanBrown on Twitter, I came across this document signing service called RightSignature.

As much as we like to promote being paperless around here, there are some things that you just need paper for, and a signature is one of them. Or do you?

RightSignature is a startup that is trying to tackle that space.

Let’s say you have a document that needs to be signed. Here’s how it works:

• You upload the document to RightSignature and enter the recipient’s email address
• The recipient gets an email. They click the link
• They go into RightSignature’s interface and use their mouse or other input device to put their signature into the online signature pad
• You then have a legally binding agreement (according to them they comply with US and EU directives)

It’s a pretty cool service for small businesses that don’t want the expense of couriering documents all over the place or (ugh) dealing with a fax machine.

There is also an iPhone app that lets you sign the document using the iPhone’s touchpad.

Another cool feature is that RightSignature interfaces with FreshBooks, so you can create estimates or invoices in FreshBooks and send them to clients for them to sign in RightSignature all with a few clicks.

RightSignature has a range of plans from free for 5 documents per month and 1 user, up to $249/month for Unlimited documents and 50 users.

Would you use an online signing service, or do you still need that pen-to-paper?

So I was about to do a post about how Earth Class Mail has changed their pricing plans, but I then realized that I had never actually written about this service before. I’ll have to remedy that right now!

What Is It?

You can think of Earth Class Mail like an online post-office box. Instead of giving out your address, you give them your special PO Box. When mail gets sent to that PO Box, Earth Class Mail will do one of a number of things with it, and you can then access it all online.

As you can guess, this is awesome for people who travel or who want to have a “virtual address”.

How Does It Work?

This graphic I ripped off from their site explains it well:

Sounds Good But I Don’t Want A PO Box

PO Boxes do have some limitations. FedEx & UPS won’t deliver to them, you can’t use it to register a company, and in general a street address just looks “better”.

Instead of having a PO Box, you can choose to have an actual street address in the following cities:

• New York City, NY
• Los Angeles, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Portland, OR
• Bern, Switzerland
• Geneva, Switzerland
• Zurich, Switzerland
• Dietzenbach, Germany

How Much Does It Cost?

Earth Class Mail uses a monthly pricing plan that goes from from $19.95/mo to $59.95/mo depending on the amount of mail, number of recipients, etc.

If you want a street address instead of a PO Box, it ranges from Free (if you use the Portland address) up to $29.95/mo if you want a NYC one.

I can see big benefits of using Earth Class Mail if you travel or even if you don’t want the hassle of dealing with paper mail at all. Have you ever used their service? How do you like it?

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When you have an office, buying a printer usually isn’t even something you would think about. It’s just one of those things you need. Or do you?

The Paper Jammed blog has a series of articles asking that very same question.

To me, Part 2 is the most interesting one. If you only print occasionally, the author makes the case that you can get away with not having a printer at all.

The first option he goes through is printing online, and does a runthrough of using Fedex Kinkos and Staples online printing services.

The second, of course, is taking your thumb drive to the local office center.

In my opinion, he makes a pretty compelling case. Have you ever used an online printing service? How did it work out for you?

Just thought I’d post about something a little different today. One blog I really like (no surprise) is Unclutterer.com. There is a great range of posts on a lot of different topics.

A few recently caught my eye:

Could your productivity benefit from a professional nagger? talks about one situation where nagging is a good thing: when a pro does it! We all know how bad procrastination can be, and we all do it. What if you could have a neutral third party step in and give you the push we all need from time to time.

I honestly can’t say I have ever heard of nagger as a profession (though I can think of a few people that would excel at it…).

Ask Unclutterer: What should I do with old journals? polls the crowd about that old stack of journals or diaries that is taking up space in a box or at the back of your closet. Keep or trash?

Both are interesting posts that I had never thought too much about before. How about you? Would you ever hire a professional nagger? Do you hang on to your old journals or did you have a diary-burning party? Let us know in the comments.

Mike Elgan over at Computerworld has written a pretty good article about taking the paperless concept out of the office and into his every day life.

It’s a good overview of how he does it and the tools that he uses. There are some DocumentSnap favorites in there.

As a kind of “lifestyle experiment,” I’ve been trying to completely eliminate paper as a data storage medium for the past six months. I’ve gotten rid of most check-based bill paying, moved most of my reading to digital forms, nearly stopped paper mail from coming to my house, eliminated paper records and nearly purged all paper-based files. I’ve gotten into the habit of literally photographing anything with words on it that I might want to remember later, and uploading them on a service I’m going to tell you about.

I’m now ready to declare my experiment a success.

The biggest upside to going paperless is that finding information is more like a Google search and less like a scavenger hunt. But I’m also a lot more productive and waste a lot less time, and my life is a lot less cluttered.

The tools that the author uses to take his life paperless are Evernote, Shoeboxed, Earth Class Mail, reQall (that one is new to me), and of course the Amazon Kindle.

Great article. Check it out here.

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?