Archive for the ‘Pixily’ Category

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

We’re all looking forward to the New Year here at OfficeDrop, but have found ourselves thinking back on the events of the last 12 months. To bring closure to the passing year, we’ve compiled a list of the top 9 most helpful/ popular blog posts of 2009.

Our Top Nine of ’09:

1. OfficeDrop Scans Google QR Code

Google brought about a new level of business advertising with the new QR code. We showed you how to scan your code and spread your business. You’ll be sure to see more of the QR code in 2010.

2. How Long Should I Save Tax Documents?

OfficeDrop makes storage of your tax documents easy and hassle free, but how long are you meant to hang on to this information? This post was especially popular and will become especially helpful come April.

3. Scanning Documents to OfficeDrop using Snow Leopard and Preview

Apple’s new OS made document scanning easier by allowing you to scan, view and correct files through the image preview. In this helpful blog post we provide a video informing you of how to get the most out of document scanning with Snow Leopard.

4. Steps to Create the Paperless Office

Going paperless is both productive for your office, and friendly toward the environment. In this blog post we’ve provided you with some important steps to move you in a paperless direction.

5. Count Your Documents (Series)

In our ‘count your documents’ series of blog posts, we help you answer the question “how much paper do I have?” You can use these guides to determine the paper count in your boxes, shelves, cabinets and unbound paper.

6. Online, DVD, USB, and Hard Drive: Finding the Best Storage Medium for Your Digital Documents

There are a lot of ways to store your digital documents. This post will give you a price breakdown of each option, and description of when each is most effective.

7. OfficeDrop Launches Information Site on Document Scanning Services

Some big news of ’09 was the launch of Documentscanningservice.com. Powered by OfficeDrop, Document Scanning Service is a free resource for those who want to know all the facts on document scanning.

8. Remember Everything, including paper, with OfficeDrop and Evernote

At OfficeDrop, we are really happy to have integrated with Evernote. With OfficeDrop and Evernote, you can get to your scanned documents without an internet connection. Find out how to use OfficeDrop and Evernote!

9. OfficeDrop iPhone Interface: The other side of ubiquitous capture

These days, mobile access is huge. OfficeDrop offers a mobile optimized web page so you can access all of your documents on the go on your iphone.

Those are our top nine of ’09. Hope you found them helpful. Let us know your thoughts on OfficeDrop, blog topics, or the past year by commenting below!

Posted in Document Management, Document Scanners, document scanning service, Evernote Document Management, Organization, Paperless, Paperless Champions, partnerships, Pixily, Product Features, Taxes | 1 Comment »

Pixily Scans Google QR Code

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

You may have heard about Google’s new QR code, an innovation from Google that allows users to learn more about a company by scanning a special bar code with their cell phones. If you are a Google Local enabled business you may have received a Google sticker/decal in the mail recently; we at OfficeDrop did (and you can see our scan of it below.)

What is Google’s 2D QR Code?

Here is the Google Maps sticker, with the 2D scannable QR code, that OfficeDrop got in the mail yesterday. Scroll to see it on the lower right of the image:

This 2D QR code is actually a bar code. A camera phone equipped with the right software can scan the QR code, launch a web browser and pull up specific information relating to that particular code! Of course, the new Google Android (or Droid) phones have the ability to read these 2D codes. The scanner is then directed to the company’s Google Map’s ‘Place Page.’ As you can imagine, this creates a lot of incentives for businesses to duplicate and post their unique code for the public to scan. This will allow customers and potential customers to learn more about your company.

Scan Google QR Code

Google hopes you will place the decal you got with the QR code in your businesses window. Then potential customers will use their Droid phones to scan the 2D code and learn more about your business. But you can scan and reprint this decal, and place it in multiple windows or locations! You should not hesitate to scan the sticker into a PDF for later use. With OfficeDrop document scanning service, you can scan your code and save it as a PDF. The code will be printable so that it can be read by cell phones and other QR bar code readers.

Scan your QR code

Print your code

Post and get found!

You can also have your code read off a computer screen once it is in digital storage – another excellent way to spread your company’s message to potential customers. Try using your Google phone to read the bar code in the OfficeDrop decal we’ve scanned above!

A few tips if you are going to scan your businesses Google Local 2D QR code:

Image quality matters. Scan you Google decal at at least 200 DPI. Anything less could result in an image that your customers are unable to properly scan with their phones.
If you have multiple locations, and have received multiple decals with 2D codes from Google, you should be careful not to mix up the decals. You don’t want place a code for one location at your other place of business.

Posted in Market Research, Pixily, Product Features, Small Business | 1 Comment »

Pixily @ Xconomy Cloud3 Forum and Unpanel

Monday, December 7th, 2009

I am very excited to be a part of the Xconomy Cloud 3 Forum this Thursday (Dec 10). I will be speaking about our experiences with the Cloud and subsequently be a part of the Unpanel. I am especially excited about the “Un”panel, inspired by un-conferences. The unpanel will start with a general theme: the practical realities of cloud computing, with an emphasis on the various types of cloud services available today, who’s offering them, how to use them in your business, and maybe how to grow your own cloud services company. But the specific questions will be up to the audience.

I have just put the finishing touches to my talk. I will be sharing our experiences with the Cloud, and specifically the Amazon Web Services, and provide details on how the cloud helps us keep our fixed costs low, scale easily and most importantly, pass on those cost savings to our customers. I have also taken out the crystal ball and ventured into some predictions for the future and identified a few key learnings that anyone new to cloud computing can take advantage of.

There are only a few seats remaining, so Register now to attend what promises to be a great day of learning, sharing and networking. See you there.

Posted in Events, Pixily | No Comments »

Count Your Documents: Unbound Paper

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Estimating how many documents you have is the first step in starting to convert your paper documents. However, with paper hiding in all sorts of forms, it can be difficult to know how much paper is in each store. Here is the second of several posts to help you estimate the paper volume in your office.

Paper Piles

Maybe you don’t exactly have your papers stored in a box or cabinet. Maybe they’re just…in piles. No need to worry, we have you covered. Paper stacks can be measured and estimated by the inch so you can start scanning them away.

Unbound Paper

Unbound paper piles have approximately 150 to 175 pages per inch.

Posted in document scanning service, Paperless, Pixily | No Comments »

OCR Software: Giving You The World’s Greatest Filing Assistant

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Every business wants to be organized. When it comes to paper documents, it used to be that organization was proportional to hours of meticulous filing and labeling. After all, what good is storing a file if you can never find it again?

OCR Software Makes it Easy

Nowadays, we have OCR software to find documents instantly, no matter how it’s stored. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) means that, once scanned, the words on a document can be recognized, searched, and retrieved by a computer. Think of it as an assistant who has every word, phrase and topic of every document you have ever filed memorized. Not only that, but this assistant can retrieve any document you’ve described instantly, along with others like it.

Document scanning services like OfficeDrop provide you with that very assistant. Hours spent organizing paper documents physically can be replaced by sending them to OfficeDrop for digital conversion. The best scanning + OCR projects need:

High quality OCR. Without highly accurate OCR software, your text will not be searchable. Our tests have shown that Abby’s OCR engine is the most accurate.
Intelligent index. The index is just like the index in a book; it references where the words, characters and numbers appear in your set of documents and can point you to them.
High enough DPI. DPI is an indication of the detail of the scan. We recommend 200+ DPI. With 200 DPI, your images will be clear enough so that your OCR can cleanly read the words in your documents.
Central digital storage. If you are going to easily search your files, you need them in a single location. The best scanning and OCR aren’t helpful if you have to search through dozens of DVDs to find file that you are looking for.
Easy to use search. Complicated search (highly structured search) works for some engineering intensive fields, but is usually not user friendly enough to be helpful for the typical small business. A simple search tool (think of it as your own personal Google search box) is the easiest way to sort through your files.

Once stored, you are able to search all documents via search terms, and never have to stress about organizing or finding those documents again. Document storage and retrieval is easy with OCR and OfficeDrop.

Posted in Document Management, document scanning service, Organization, Pixily | No Comments »

Trade Show Document Management

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Have you ever come back from a trade show with a bundle of interesting papers, pamphlets and business cards – but not know how or where to store them? At OfficeDrop, we are always amazed at the uses our customers are finding for our document management service.

Scanning trade show materials

One of our most recent scanning projects involved scanning materials our customer picked up at a series of trade shows. We are now scanning these documents into his secure document management portal. Since he’s got the files named neatly according the to show he visited we are able to label each file according to the trade show where he collected it. Now, he’s not only going to be able to file and organize all of these materials in his online OfficeDrop account, he’s also going to be able to text search within all of these materials for specific terms or products.

Another cool use of OfficeDrop’s document scanning and document management service!

Some trade show materials may require hand-scanning for an additional charge.

Posted in Document Management, document scanning service, Paperless, Pixily | 1 Comment »

Document and Photo Scanning Collaboration Interview

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Deb Lee, a well known professional organizer, recently posted an interview she had with me (Healy Jones, marketing guy @pixily) on OfficeDrop and ScanDigital’s collaboration to help small businesses and consumers scan their documents AND photos. Check out Deb’s interview and the discussion on OfficeDrop and ScanDigital here!

Posted in document scanning service, partnerships, Pixily, Press coverage | 2 Comments »

Pixily in BusinessWeek – How Our Document Scanning and Document Management Service Was Started

Monday, October 26th, 2009

BusinessWeek Asks “How was your business idea hatched?”

OfficeDrop founder Prasad Thammineni talks about the moment when he came up with the idea behind OfficeDrop‘s document scanning and document management service with BusinessWeek reporter, Amy Barett. Amy’s article, “Beyond Eureka,” lays out five steps for starting a business from interviews with 20 serial entrepreneurs. Amy suggests setting parameters for the business, brainstorming potential ideas, picking a winner idea, assessing feasibility, and testing a prototype.

Prasad explains how he was overwhelmed with paper during his MBA as Wharton and created his own system to scan, store and shred it. He realized that there was demand for this sort of a service when other students him to borrow his system. Realizing he was onto something, he interviewed a number of small businesses are discovered that there was a market for digitizing and managing small business’ paper. Thus, OfficeDrop’s document management and document scanning service was born!

A wide variety of companies are profiled – everything from clothing companies for people with limited mobility to an online service for creating computer games – including Cooper Martin, Sensible Garden, Sharendipity and Weardrobe.

Posted in Document Management, document scanning service, Entrepreneurship, Pixily, Press coverage, Shredding, Small Business | No Comments »

Pixily Attends the Massachusetts State Legislature’s Innovation Day at the State House

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

On October 15th, the Massachusetts State Legislature hosted Innovation Day at the State House. The event presented a unique opportunity for Massachusetts-based technology companies to showcase their contributions in technological innovation as well as for the legislative body and staff to see how this innovation is relevant for economic growth in the Commonwealth. Special thanks to Senator Karen Spilka, Rep. Brian Dempsey and Rep. Michael Rodrigues and the New England Venture Capital Association for sponsoring this day.

OfficeDrop was one of a select group of technology companies invited to participate at Innovation Day. We are very proud to have been invited to this event! It was great to see how excited Massachusetts’ politicians are about the health of innovation and startups. OfficeDrop garnered a large amount of interest as a prime example of both technological innovation in the Boston area, and as a “real labor” employer with aggressive expansion plans over the next 12 months. Also of interest to the legislators and staff was OfficeDrop’s work with Boston-area public schools like Belmont Public, with whom OfficeDrop has been working to streamline files and paperwork , making access to student information more efficient and cost-effective.

Some of the other really cool companies in attendance included:

Also, it was nice to see that irobots have a good sense of civic duty – here is one of their robots throwing away trash inside the State House.

iRobot picking up trash

The event centered around a panel discussion moderated by Scott Kirsner(The Boston Globe), in which Massachusetts technology company CEOs and venture capitalists discussed the impact of policy issues on venture capital as well as the importance of continued technological innovation that helps drive the Commonwealth’s economic growth. Scott did a nice job leading a conversation that touched on the difficulties of starting a company in Massachusetts, the unique advantages of the region and the excitement felt by the CEOs who were aggressively growing despite the tough economic environment.

Posted in Document Management, Entrepreneurship, Pixily, Press coverage, Small Business | No Comments »