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click.to to OfficeDrop

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

OfficeDrop and click.to are excited to announce the newest OfficeDrop API integration – click.to to OfficeDrop!

With click.to, you’ll be able to CTRL+C (⌘+C on a Mac) any file on your desktop and send it directly into OfficeDrop’s cloud filing system. It’s super easy, really fast and a great new workflow for the power OfficeDrop users.

Get click.to to OfficeDrop for free by clicking the following link:

click.to OfficeDrop Video

Here is how the integration works:

Select any file and press CTRL+C (⌘+C on a Mac). The OfficeDrop logo will pop up; simply select it and the file is stored directly in the cloud. Users don’t have to fumble with multiple open windows, dragging and dropping, or leaving their current screen.

Special for OfficeDrop Users

OfficeDrop is the first click.to partner to have folder integration. This means that a user can choose an OfficeDrop cloud folder to upload into at the time of clicking! We are really happy that click.to made us the first to have this integration, and we know it’s important since our customers are very aggressive folder users.

There is a little set up required at first to get click.to to choose a folder. First you’ll have to type in the name of the folder that you want to upload into. If that folder already exists click.to will put the document directly into it; otherwise click.to will create the folder for you and put the file into it. We know this is a little bit of an effort the first time you try to pick a folder, but we appreciate the development effort that the click.to team put into creating the folder integration specifically for OfficeDrop. They intend to refine the folder selection UI in the future.

Setting up click.to to OfficeDrop

Here is a quick video that helps you set up the click.to/OfficeDrop integration.

Learn more about the click.to OfficeDrop integration here.

Posted in Benefits, cloud computing, Digital Office, Evernote Document Management, Freshbooks Document Management, Google Docs Paper Management, Home Office, OfficeDrop, partnerships, Product, Product Announcements, Product Features, Product Updates | No Comments »

Updated OfficeDrop iPad App

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

The moment we’ve been waiting for has arrived! OfficeDrop’s iPad app is now updated and available in itunes!

Version 2.0 of the OfficeDrop iOS App

With Version 2.0 you now can use your iPad’s camera as a scanner.

iPad as a scanner

Digitize receipts, invoices, contracts – any paper you collect for your business when your iPad is handy! You can create multipage PDFs, either by using the app for several scans in a row, or by selecting multiple items from your iPad’s camera roll. Of course, once uploaded, any and all items become text searchable PDFs in the OfficeDrop system.

Improved folder navigation

The new iPad app makes it even easier to find the exact file your are looking for in the OfficeDrop cloud filing system.

iPad Cloud Folders

We’ve taken customer feedback and dramatically improved the layout, look and navigation that you can use to get to your folders.

Press on the OfficeDrop iPad Update

Tech reporters at Bostinno and Lifehacker have already covered the update to our app. We particularly like the conclusion to the Lifehacker piece, “if you’re looking for an iPad app to scan and save paper documents digitally, OfficeDrop is a good, free alternative.”

Posted in Benefits, Digital Office, Home Office, iPad, iphone, mobile, OCR Scanning, OfficeDrop, Paperless, Product, Product Announcements, Product Features, Product Updates, scanning software | No Comments »

Prasad Thammineni Post on Managing Your Company From Home

Monday, September 5th, 2011

Our fearless CEO, Prasad Thammineni, has another great post on tech tools to help you manage your business from home on SmallBizTrends. Why does this matter? Well, he’s recently had a child and has been managing the office from his home office recently!

I don’t think that keeping things going from home would have even been possible a few years ago before the recent technology revolution. Communication tools and collaboration tools are a lot more powerful and affordable than they’ve ever been. Prasad touches on some of the ones we use aggressively here at OfficeDrop to keep things going smoothly.

Posted in cloud computing, Entrepreneurship, Home Office, Press coverage, Small Business | No Comments »

OfficeDrop iPhone App

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

OfficeDrop is very pleased to announce that we have an iPhone app! The new app brings you the power that you would have if you were using your computer’s web browser – but now you can access at any time and anywhere. Best of all, the app turns your iPhone into a multi-page PDF scanner, so you can capture paper documents and convert them into text-searchable PDFs on the go. Create PDFs, search PDFs, view and organise PDFs – all on your iPhone. We know that users of the OfficeDrop Andriod app are really into OfficeDrop on their phone – and we hope that iPhone users will be too!

Get the iPhone app here!

Scan Paper, Text-Search, Browse, Share Documents and More from your iPhone

With the iPhone app, users can snap a photo of a paper document and scan it directly to the cloud. Once an item is scanned, users can browse the document, apply labels, search text using OfficeDrop’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, share and access documents from anywhere with OfficeDrop’s cloud filing cabinet.

OfficeDrop iPhone App Video

Using the App

When you first log in using the iPhone app, you’ll see your OfficeDrop folders. You can browse to specific files just as you would if you were looking for files on your computer’s hard drive. Simply touch the folder and navigate to the document you want.

You can also navigate by labels; simple hit the funnel icon in the top left and select the labels (or folders if you want) and only look at items with those particular labels.

The funnel also allows you to find your favorite or recent documents.

Search

Search is, of course, the best way to find your documents. At the bottom of the app’s screen you’ll see the search button. Touch that to text search within your documents. Since OfficeDrop makes the documents you upload into the system totally text searchable, you know that finding your files is only a quick keyword search away.

Scan from the iPhone

The newest iPhones have pretty decent cameras, which means they can be used as a scanner replacement when you are on the go. Using the OfficeDrop app you can scan multipage PDFs quickly and easily from anywhere.

Push the upload button at the center bottom of the app to start scanning. You can either use images already in your phone’s photo gallery or snap a new photo using the app. If you take a picture with the camera using the app you’ll have the option to crop the image, rotate it, add a second (or third, etc) page. At the time of upload you can select a destination folder and add labels. You can also store the item locally, but it will only get OCR when uploaded. If you are in an area without cell phone coverage the app will store the scan on your phone and upload it when you get back into good reception.

“We’re changing the way people collect and share information on the go,” explained OfficeDrop CEO Prasad Thammineni. “By using the iPhone as a powerful scanning device, our users can share documents with teams in seconds, and search all of their items in the cloud, regardless of their location. OfficeDrop is making remote working easier than ever.”

The OfficeDrop iPhone app is free to download, and connects with OfficeDrop’s cloud filing cabinet. The free version of OfficeDrop cloud filing system gives users 1 GB of storage, 50 pages of text-searchable scans per month and will produce the top three search results.

This app compliments our Android Scanner app; and iPad users should expect a refresh of the existing iPad app in the near future.

Get the app here!

Posted in cloud computing, Digital Office, Document Scanners, Home Office, Marketing, OCR Scanning, OfficeDrop, Organization, Paperless, Product, Product Announcements, Product Features, Product Updates, scanning software, Small Business | 1 Comment »

Mastering the Paperless Office

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Video From The Mastering The Paperless Office Webinar

OfficeDrop was lucky enough to have had Joshua Zerkel, Professional Organizer to the San Francisco Bay Area, share with us his slides on how to master the paperless office. Josh makes it clear that there will always be some paper in any small businesses’ office, but there are a number of smart steps and affordable technologies you can use to reduce your use of paper.

Mastering the Paperless Office Video

Here is the video from the last session!

OfficeDrop also recently had another great webinar with Josh – Get Organized and Boost Productivity

Posted in Benefits, cloud computing, Digital Office, discussions, Document Management, Home Office, OfficeDrop, Paperless, Paperless Champions, Small Business | No Comments »

Last Chance to Show You’ve Got the Messiest Office!

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Messy Office

The application period for entering OfficeDrop’s Messiest Office Contest is rapidly coming to an end! All you have to do to enter is upload a photo of your office. You can win some great prizes, like a new scanner, organizational consulting, a $400 gift certificate to Staples and a subscription to OfficeDrop! You don’t want to miss this!

Click here to enter…

Posted in Home Office, Organization | No Comments »

Messiest Office Contest

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

OfficeDrop is please to announce our first ever Messiest Office Contest! Is your office way too messy? Got too much paper? Total disorganization? Let us see how bad it is!

Submit a photo of your cluttered space. Show us your office at its worst! OfficeDrop will select the top five submissions and let the Facebook community vote on the messiest!

Enter the Messiest Office Here. messiest-office-makeover The most chaotic office wins:

A $400 Gift Certificate to Staples, a Coaching Session with Professional Organizer Joshua Zerkel of Custom Living Solutions to assess your needs and lead your office away from the clutter, and an OfficeDrop Subscription to help you go paperless!

There are great prizes for the second most messy office as well:

Win a Canon imageFORMULA P-150 Portable Document Scanner and a subscription to OfficeDrop to help you go paperless!

Third place wins:

Win a $50 Gift Certificate to Staples and a subscription to OfficeDrop to help you go paperless!

Posted in cloud computing, Customer Satisfaction, Home Office, OfficeDrop | No Comments »

3 Ways to Use Labels

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Storing documents online with OfficeDrop is a great way to manage your information. Not only can you view and search your digital and converted paper documents, but you can organize them, adding context and making them even more productive.

One of the best and easiest ways to do this is by applying labels. A label, usually a word or description relevant to a document, is much like a tag and shows up in the gray area under a document in list view or on the right in the individual document view. Once created, you can filter documents by label and quickly see all documents that share a label you’ve created.

If you don’t already use labels, or aren’t sure how, here are some example uses for labels that we’ve found especially useful.

1. Document Type

Contracts, bills, invoices, receipts, forms, deposits, articles, and anything else that might be in your account should be classified by applying labels. If you aren’t sure how to organize a document, applying a label classifying the document type is always a good start. That way, if you need to find a receipt, you can at least click your “receipts” label and all receipts are listed instantly.

2. Paid/Unpaid

If you’re storing bills and invoices on your OfficeDrop account, labels are a quick way to indicate the status of that document. Now, if you want to view all the bills you have yet to pay, all you have to do is click your “Unpaid” label, and you have them all right there to review. The same can be done to review paid documents, and payment notes can also be added as annotations.

3. Client Names

For use with documents when it isn’t clear who sent it or who it has to do with. Punching in a quick label will forever prevent questions like “who the heck sent me this?” and “why didn’t I just add a name label?” Once labeled, just click the name to see all the documents related to that person.

So if you find yourself staring at documents thinking “this is that…thing, from Bill…someone, that I…paid?” then labels are your new best friend. Take just a couple seconds to add the power of context with labels and you’re instantly informed of the who, where, what, and why for all of your documents.

Posted in Benefits, cloud computing, Document Management, Home Office, Product Features | No Comments »

Tips for Home Document Scanning

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

At OfficeDrop, we happily do all of your document scanning so you don’t have to. That being said, we realize that some people are perfectly content doing their own document scanning at home or in the office.

If you would rather do document scanning yourself and then upload or store on a DVD, we think that’s great. In fact, to help you with your scanning, we would like to offer some document scanning tips you might find helpful. We’ve scanned a lot of documents over the years, and we’ve learned a few tricks we’d like to share with those of you scanning yourselves.

Document Scanning Tips

Scan in Oder

If you know there’s a specific organization you would like for your documents once they are scanned, you should scan your documents according to that organization. Organizing and grouping paper documents previous to scanning can save you a lot of digital organization later, and will also ensure that you don’t forget any important documents during the document scanning process.

Scan Similar Sizes

If you’re scanning different sized documents, be sure to scan documents of similar size together. If your scanner can be fed stacks of paper simultaneously, smaller documents like receipts may shift between larger documents being loaded, leaving you with sideways or disoriented scans. To prevent this, scan only documents of similar size and, if possible, adjust the guides on your scanner to the size of the documents you are scanning.

Use Flatbed Scanners for Antique or Fragile Documents

Whenever you scan documents that tear especially easily, you should use a flatbed scanner rather than a scanner with a sheet feed. Whenever a scanner automatically feeds documents from a tray or stack, there’s possibility for a jam. You can avoid jams, but in the unfortunate case of one, you want to be sure flimsy or especially thin documents don’t get torn to pieces in the scanner. To avoid this, scan things like tracing paper and ancient documents on their own in a scanner that scans single documents laying flat.

Remove Stickers and Tape

It seems obvious, but it’s easy to forget a label or piece of tape you may have left on a document before scanning. Stickers and tape can ruin your document scanning with jams and can also damage your scanner. They can also make documents stick together which causes both jams and missed scans. Remember before document scanning to remove anything that might cause a jam and make sure pages are not stuck together.

Hopefully these tips will be helpful to your document scanning experiences. If you get sick of scanning yourself, you can always mail it to OfficeDrop where we do all the work for you. Otherwise we are happy to upload your documents once you’ve scanned them. Happy scanning!

New from OfficeDrop

ScanDrop scanning software is OfficeDrop’s newest product. ScanDrop makes it easy to scan paper directly into popular cloud services. Here is where you can self-scan with ScanDrop: Scan to Google Docs, scan to Evernote, Scan to Dropbox, scan to OfficeDrop, soon scan to gmail, scan to local disk. ScanDrop also offers powerful PDF tools like preview, page reorder, rotate, delete, and more. When scanning to the cloud, add metadata like tags, labels, notebooks, and folders/collections.

Posted in Home Office, Organization | 2 Comments »

iPad Apps for Business We Can’t Wait to Start Using

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Many businesses use the iPhone in their business. With the release of the new iPad, we think there are many applications that if specialized for the iPad, could make Apple’s new tablet a valuable asset for small businesses. We are currently developing our own iPad application, which we think would be a great way to view, organize, and search your documents with the new iPad.

Though the iPhone is designed more like a consumer good than a business tool, the personality of the device didn’t hinder app developers from making a boatload of iPhone apps that make life around the office easier.

All the great business iPhone apps can be downloaded to the iPad, but the iPad will just be a big iPhone until app developers start taking those iPhone business apps and making versions specifically for the iPad. Here is a list of business-focused iPhone apps that we would like to see made into full blown iPad versions.

FreshBooks (Billing and Finance)

We love FreshBooks for our online billing and invoicing, so obviously we would love to see the FreshBooks application on the iPad. Paired with the slick multi-touch features of the iPad, online billing would never be easier or more fun.

Zoho CRM (Customer Relations)

We use Zoho CRM to keep track of all of our customers and leads. If you were taking your office to go with an iPad, you would want to keeps tabs of all of your customers, and react quickly to any questions or problems. Thought the Zoho team is just working on an iPhone app currently, we would really like to see that functionality ported to an iPad-specific application.

iWork & Keynote (Production)

The Apple equivalent of Microsoft Office, iWork will allow you to word process, make spreadsheets, and put together striking presentation with Keynote (Powerpoint for Mac). This application will be made to fully utilize the multi-touch features of the iPad, and will also be compatible with Microsoft-created documents.

WordPress (Blogging)

As you can see, we like to keep our company blog active and up-to-date. The WordPress iPhone app lets us manage our blog from anywhere, and an iPad app would make blogging on the go even easier. Benefits would include the large display and full touch screen keyboard for added convenience.

Chartbeat (Analytics)

What better way to watch over your site’s analytics than on the rich graphical display of the iPad. With the chartbeat iPhone app you access your Google analytics account, and get real-time alerts on stats like average page views, uniques, and sources to see when you’re site is getting hit, and when you’re falling behind.

Those are the business apps we’d like to see on the iPad. iWork and Keynote are already available, and we hope that the iPhone apps mentioned roll out iPad equivalents.

Posted in Freshbooks Document Management, Home Office, Marketing, Product Announcements | 4 Comments »