These days, there are a number of different way to go paperless. Of course, OfficeDrop is one of them, but in this video, Josh Zerkel, a Professional Organizer in San Francisco and founder of Custom Living Solutions, outlines the different options you have when going paperless.
Josh outlines the different types of scanner available, the power of OCR, online backup, text-search, different online applications and mail-in scanning services.
That’s right, OfficeDrop has recently scanned a full print book and converted it to a PDF document that can be viewed and read as an eBook on the Apple iPad. The book is Guy Kawasaki’s The Macintosh Way. Download the book as a text-searchable PDF here: http://freemacway.com/ and you can get the OfficeDrop Paper-to-Go app here.
Here’s the story:
In 1990, Guy Kawasaki published The Macintosh Way. It was a great book that highlighted and outlined the marketing values and techniques of Macintosh back when they were producing and selling the early Mac computers. Sadly, the book went out of print though it had a significant following.
Twenty years later Apple has surpassed Microsoft in value, and Kawasaki’s book is now a way to view the original strategies they employed to get there. After securing the rights to his work, Kawasaki decided to begin distributing his work to his established collection of Twitter followers. The book wasn’t in print anymore, so the only way to do this would be to scan the book and distribute it digitally.
As you might guess, this is where OfficeDrop comes in. Guy approached us with the challenge of turning his print book into an eBook, and we were psyched to attach such an original and exciting project. We scanned the book, organized it in a PDF, and uploaded it to OfficeDrop.
Now, we have our new OfficeDrop iPad app, which lets you open and navigate through scanned pages as you would an eBook on the iPad. With the scanning process complete, Guy Kawasaki was now able to distribute his work digitally, and could even read it on his iPad, the result of the very company his book praised.
The best part - video marketing company, Pixability, took footage of the scanning and conversion process to make a clever video that tells the fascinating story of Guy’s plight from initial problem to finished solution. The video was very well done and is especially entertaining with its feature of various Mac and Apple products that accurately match the chronology of the story.
We’ve got two great ways to learn about document scanning prices. The first is our document scanning price estimator, which will give you an idea of what a scanning project by OfficeDrop would cost. You can visit the estimator:
Get Document Scanning Estimate & Signup
Or you can visit our new document scanning prices page, which has information on … the prices we charge for scanning your documents! Visit the document scanning prices page.
Web how-to blog, MakeUseOf.com, recently polled their readers with the question “Are you paperless?” Obviously our ears perked up to this since the results could tell us the general reception of the concept on which our company is based.
The results came back (pictured below) and we were actually pretty excited about the outcome.
Why should I be paperless? I don’t care. 8% (23 votes)
Yes 100% paperless. I get all my bills online.23% (65 votes)
I am trying. I have gotten more than half of my bills to stop sending snail mail. 50% (138 votes)
I think I might try to go paperless in the near future. 14% (38 votes)
What do you mean by paperless? 5% (13 votes)
Total Votes: 277
As you can see, the majority answer is that people are working towards a paperless environment which, for us, is a best case scenario.
It shows that people are open to the idea of going paperless, but they are hesitant to get started. OfficeDrop helps with this by providing an easy way to start reducing paper in your office. Since we do all of the scanning for you, our mail-in submission system replaces hours spent scanning with a quick trip to the post office.
Congrats to those who have eliminated paper altogether, and as for those of you that are trying to get there, keep fighting the good fight. Going paperless yields a mountain of benefits, and isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. If you’ve hit a wall trying to get paperless, we encourage you to try our document scanning services which is sure to simplify your conversion process, and get you managing digital documents online in no time.
Have you been wishing for a great deal on document scanning and document management? If so, consider your wish granted thanks to AppSumo.
AppSumo is best known for bundling a big pile of awesome web apps, throwing a mawashi on them, and selling it all at heavily discounted prices.
Now OfficeDrop is in the ring, and for a limited time you will be able to get 6 months of document scanning goodness for just $15 dollars. For just $15 you can get six months of our document scanning and document management value plan which includes one pre-paid envelope per month (for 6 months), and unrestricted digital storage access.
Also keep in mind that this is what AppSumo calls a snowball deal, which means the more people buy, the lower the price for everyone!
The offer isn’t going to last long, so take advantage of this giant AppSumo discount and start crushing your document problems today. Also please note that this offer is only for new OfficeDrop customers.
DPI and what it means for your scans
DPI (dots per inch) is an important value when you’re talking about document scanning. It affects the quality of the image on different displays, OCR accuracy (which determines text search), the file size, and also determines possibility of resizing. DPI is especially important with respect to images if they are to be printed.
More Isn’t Always Better
Although documents can be scanned anywhere from 75 to 300 DPI, bigger isn’t always better. Different DPI values have different uses, and while a high DPI may be necessary for some projects, a lower DPI may be ideal for others. For example, the file size of an image scanned at 300 DPI is much larger than one at 100, so if you aren’t going to view your document on a high res display as with simple text documents, 300 is overkill and a waste of disk space. For descriptions of DPI values and their suggested uses, you can consult the free resource DocumentScanningService.com
Understand DPI with This DPI Guide
Also provided on DocumentScanningService.com, this free DPI guide will walk you through the difference in DPI values complete with image comparisons, and help you decide on the value that’s right for you. You can also visit the DocumentScanningService learning center for more general information about DPI and many other aspects of document scanning services and document imaging.
In our first ScanDrop video, we showed you how you can scan directly to Google Docs with a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner. Though the ScanSnap is a great scanner, there are a lot of other brands that use a different software protocol called TWAIN, and the ScanDrop scanning software works with all of these as well.
Basically, all you need to know is that configuring ScanDrop will be a little different if you aren’t using a ScanSnap. It’s still easy to do, so if you’re scanning with a scanner that isn’t a ScanSnap, see the following video to get ScanDrop up and running on your TWAIN scanner.
OfficeDrop and Intuit, the nation’s number one selling accounting software package, want small business owners to know that getting organized and going paperless is easier than you think! OfficeDrop will be showcased among the Intuit Marketplace’s best organizational tools in Intuit’s “Get Organized. Get Rewarded.” event this month. OfficeDrop’s mail-in scanning service and online document management are offering a free trial through the Intuit Partner Program.
The Intuit “Get Organized. Get Rewarded” Campaign offers customers limited-time deals on web apps focusing on office organization. OfficeDrop’s free trial is a great opportunity to see how document scanning and online document management can save money and improve productivity. In addition to the exclusive deals featured with the individual apps, those who sign up for an app will have a chance at winning a free Kindle e-reader.
We’ll be updating our blog with more organizational tips and tricks and more happenings as the “Get Organized. Get Rewarded” event continues this month!
On our website, we talk about how the IRS accepts scanned and digital tax documents. That’s right, as long as your digital documents are accurate re-creations of the paper document, the IRS is happy to have tax documents submitted electronically. This being the case, document scanning is a great way to backup, organize, and submit all of your important tax documents.
Have hundreds of receipts packed away in a filing cabinet? Unless you’ve spent a lot of time doing some extreme organization, it’s probably going to be a challenge to round all those guys up for tax season.
With OfficeDrop, you can scan all of your receipts or other tax documents to our online document management system. From there, locating and organizing documents is just a simple matter of entering terms into the search bar (e.g. “2009″), organizing with folders or labels (e.g. “business receipts 2009), and sending them off to the IRS. By scanning tax documents as they enter your office, you can keep tax documents organized the whole year, and have everything ready to go come next year.
Scanning your tax documents saves space, time, and money. It also helps you stay organized for tax season, so that you make sure to get all those deductibles. What have you got to lose but write-offs? Scan with OfficeDrop and dominate this tax season.
OfficeDrop is proud to announce that our award winning document scanning and online document management service is now available in Google’s App Marketplace! You can find OfficeDrop’s listing in Google here. This is another way for customers to find OfficeDrop, making it even easier to help you go paperless and get organized.
We would love it if any of our users would review us in the marketplace! Our application is exactly the same, so your experience with us is what new users who find us via Google’s Marketplace will have.
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