Archive for the ‘Pixily’ Category

Pixily Partners with ScanDigital to Offer Photo Scanning

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

ScanDigital Offers Special Pricing to OfficeDrop Customers for Photo, Slide, Negative, Video and Reel to Reel Film Digitization

Scandigital Logl

At OfficeDrop, we understand your desire to reduce clutter and take advantage of the convenience of digital file conversion to preserve and protect your important documents. That’s why we are pleased to partner with ScanDigital, the photo scanning and photo preservation expert. ScanDigital offers a simple, speedy and safe photo and home movie transfer service that allows you to preserve your most important memories. ScanDigital has received some impressive press, having been features in Inc. Magazine, Redbook and Reader’s Digest. As part of our partnership, ScanDigital is offering OfficeDrop customers up to a 10% discount on photo conversion services. Use the coupon code PIXILY10 to receive this special discount!

Similar to OfficeDrop’s easy-to-use document scanning and document management service, ScanDigital does all the grunt work for you. Simply place your order online and ship your photos to ScanDigital with a UPS label generated on ScanDigital’s web site – ScanDigital does the rest. Everything is secure and fully trackable with ScanDigital’s EssentialTracker System. For photos, the company will scan and optimize them with editing software to crop, color correct, and remove red eyes. Your pictures are uploaded to your own custom online gallery on ScanDigital’s site where you can share them with your loved ones and can order reprints and other print products, and the originals and the digital files are returned to you.

how-photo-scanning-works

Why we are excited to partner with ScanDigital to offer you photo scanning services

  • Speed: ScanDigital guarantees the fastest turnaround time in the industry. Most orders are completed in less than one week!
  • Commitment to Security: Like OfficeDrop, ScanDigital is committed to keeping your photos secure. ScanDigital operates from one central facility in Los Angeles. ScanDigital’s proprietary EssentialTracker system coupled with an integration into UPS ensures materials are fully trackable from start to finish.
  • Superior Professional Technicians: ScanDigital has developed top of the line technology to scan and edit photos, negatives, and slides. The company only use highly trained professional to process orders.
  • Easy-to-use Process: ScanDigital’s online process is simple to use and the company’s world-class customer service team is always here to help you with any questions.
  • Online Gallery: ScanDigital is the first and only service to give you your photos on CD/DVD as well as in your own free and unlimited online gallery. You can organize your photos, share with loved ones and order reprints and other great photo products.

Visit ScanDigital learn more about ScanDigital and take advantage of the discounts offered to OfficeDrop’s users. We think you’ll love the benefits of converting your old photos into shiny new digital files!

Conquering the clouds – How to position your product to win awards

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Amazon just announced their annual web services Startup Challenge. The prizes include $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in AWS credits, mentoring sessions from AWS technical experts, and AWS Premium Support Gold for one year. OfficeDrop was a finalist in in this competition last year, and it helped us get some of our initial traction and press. We definitely recommend that other startups apply for this year’s competition. OfficeDrop has also had a fair amount of luck winning/making it to the finals in several other cloud computing awards, including winning MITX’s 2009 Cloud Computing Award and being announced as a winner of the 2009 AlwaysOn Global 250 in the category of cloud computing.

We are very excited to have been so successful in these competitions, and thought it might make sense to share some of our game plan for entering these competitions. Here are the steps we take when approching a competition that might be a good fit for OfficeDrop:

1) Research the award.
a) Understand the awards’s mission statement.
b) Who are the judges? What are their backgrounds? Media-types? VCs? Technologists?
c) Who were the past winners of the award? Do you see your company standing on the stage with them?
2) Develop a clear positioning statement on how and why your company is right for this award. Come up with 3 to 5 sentences. Combine the core mission of your company with the angle that the award judgement panel will eat up.
3) Ask questions. For many competitions, the coordinators are very helpful and want to try to encourage cool startups to participate.
a) Develop a dialog with the person organizing the competition. Organizing the event is probably both fun and stressful. Keep your interaction enjoyable and don’t over-do it.
b) Always thank the person once you’ve submitted your application.
4) Have a demo account for the judges. Ensure that the way you’ve set up the demo reinforces your positioning statement and play well to the award judges.
5) Use customer testimonials/case studies that reinforce your positioning. Judges like hearing about users who are having success with your service. Be specific. Judges like concrete data and metrics. If your product / solution saves time or money (whose doesn’t), don’t just state it. Quantify it.
6) Set up a timeline for completing the application.
a) Positioning statement – 3 weeks prior to the deadline
b) First draft – 2 weeks prior; get comments from the rest of the team/advisors
c) Final draft – 1 week prior; this draft should include all comments/revisions. Yes, this should include those painful edits needed to stay under the word limits.
d) Final proof read – Couple of days before the application is due. Don’t look a the document for a few days, and then read it end to end. Look for a logical flow/structure and make sure the application fits the positioning statement.
7) If the submission also includes a presentation, practice, practice and practice. Know thy audience. It is really important to have a crisp presentation that stays on message. Make sure you present why you are the most eligible to win the award. This is involved enough, that it is worth an entire blog post (or a book) by itself. I’ll do a follow-up blog post on the art of making the sell, later on.

This process has worked out pretty well for us, but does require real commitment. However, given the press that we’ve received and the positive attention and feedback we’ve gotten from customers after we’ve won these awards we feel that the work was worth it! Here’s to your chances in the next competition that you enter!! Good Luck!

Pixily in PC World

Monday, June 29th, 2009

pcworldlogoYesterday, PC World’s blog The Cost Cutter encouraged businesses to use document scanning as a means for “saving time, space, and ultimately money.” Zach Stern discussed the necessary work involved in scanning your documents but suggested OfficeDrop‘s award winning service as one way to eliminate that overwhelming task.

To better understand how our service can help you save time, check out this video on our document management service and how it functions like a search engine for your valuable digitized documents.

Please be sure to post any questions you might have or let us know if OfficeDrop has enabled you or your business to become more organized, productive, and efficient while saving money.

Search Engine for Paper Documents

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

OfficeDrop has just recently published a demonstration video of how the OfficeDrop document management service allows users to text search within their paper files. OfficeDrop document scanning service uses state-of-the-art optical character recognition. This means that once paper files have been processed into the OfficeDrop service, users can search for specific pages, information or keywords just like they would use a search engine to search for web sites or information online.

At OfficeDrop, we believe that this search feature will unlock the information within you paper files, saving you time and helping you get better organized. If you haven’t do so already, please sign up for a free trial and see the power of the OfficeDrop document management system for yourself! Watch the video below to learn more about how the search feature works.

OfficeDrop’s Document Management Service is a Search Engine for your Paper Documents

Announcing a Pixily Webinar for Professional Organizers

Monday, June 8th, 2009

OfficeDrop for Professional Organizers

How professional organizers can offer digital file management services with OfficeDrop: A free webinar

June 19th

1:00 pm EST

Sign up for the webinar here

You can now see a video recording of the OfficeDrop for Professional Organizers’ web conference by clicking here.

OfficeDrop is excited to announce a webinar for Professional Organizers who are looking to better help their clients organize their paper. Paper documents and files are one of the most challenging aspects of any organization system. The OfficeDrop electronic file management system converts paper files into text-searchable digital documents – included in the price, OfficeDrop handles the difficult job of scanning paper files and converting them into digital PDF files. OfficeDrop’s award winning online document management service is an easy, quick and affordable paper management solution for consumers and small businesses. Learn how OfficeDrop integrates with a Professional Organizer’s business and how OfficeDrop can generate affiliate revenue for organizers.

In this webinar, we will discuss:

  • the basics of how the OfficeDrop service works – the paper mail in system, our document scanning system and more
  • how your clients can get their paper piles into the document management system
  • how document labels can help them make order out of their paper chaos
  • the advantages of the OfficeDrop search feature, and how it will help clients quickly and easily find the information/document they are looking for
  • how you as a Professional Organizer can develop a recurring relationship with your clients and how you can not only help them keep organized every month but how you can earn money every month they are using the system.

Including questions this paper management webinar should take just under 30 minutes.

Inc. Magazine encourages you to share your documents for free with Pixily

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

inc.OfficeDrop’s document scanning and sharing service appears in April’s Issue of  Inc. Magazine. The entrepreneur’s resource lists our service in a section titled “Your Business Toolbox–THE GOODS.”

The spot highlights OfficeDrop’s free user plan (which since the write-up of the article has changed slightly). Users may now sign up for a free account and receive 1 free trial envelope in the first month.

Listed under the subheading “taxes” you can read the rest of the article here and see how useful online document storage can be.

Has OfficeDrop helped you out this tax season? Please, share your stories with us.

Kim Komando says Pixily is the easiest way to manage receipts & documents

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Kim Komando ShowWe are very excited to share some great news. OfficeDrop was featured this morning on the Radio. Kim Komando show, the nationally syndicated and the #1 weekend talk radio show, mentioned OfficeDrop as the easiest solution in response to a listener question about how to access documents and receipts online.

Here is the audio recording of the radio segment:

How envelopes are accounted in each billing cycle?

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

We have had some questions on how envelopes are accounted for each month and what the cut-off is for theEnvelope envelopes to reach us in a given month. Like most things OfficeDrop, we have tried to keep this as simple as we can.

Billing cycles are 1-month intervals based on when you sign up and/or when you upgrade (if applicable). So, if you signed up for OfficeDrop on Oct 4th, your monthly cycle will be from the 4th of each month to the 4th of the following month. Let us follow through this example.
Consider the billing cycle from Nov 4th to Dec 4th, for the Value Plan (which allows for 1 envelope per month), this is how it works:

  1. Every month, we replenish your envelopes such that you get them by the beginning of your billing cycle (Nov 4th). When you sign up for the very first time, we send you one additional set of envelopes so that you always have one set handy.
  2. Envelopes for that month, can be sent by you upto Dec 11th, allowing for a grace period of upto 1 week from the last date of your billing cycle (Dec 4). This is to ensure that someone who mails it on the last date of their billing cycle (Dec 4th), still gets a chance for the envelope to be counted for that month.

As long we receive your envelope between Nov 4th and Dec 14th, it will be counted for the cycle from Nov 4th to Dec 4th, and you will not be charged anything additional over what is covered by your plan.

Simple, right? We wish it were simple enough to not warrant a blog post, but hope this clears things up.

Wish you all a happy and Organized new year

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

To say that 2008 has been an exciting year would be, well, the understatement of the year. 2008 is when we made the leap from being an idea to being an awesome service with tons of happy customers. None of this would have been possible without the support and encouragement of our customers, partners and the extended OfficeDrop family. So, a heartfelt Thank you, from all of us at OfficeDrop.

We look forward to an exciting year ahead with dozens of great features planned. Happy Holidays and we wish you all a happy and “organized” 2009.

January is National Get Organized Month. To celebrate our association with the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) and as a sponsor of National Get Organized Month, we are offering our members the ability to mail or scan in an extra 50 sheets of information during the month of January. This special offer, available until January 31st, is designed to help consumers and small businesses get a jump start on their New Year’s resolutions to get organized and clear out the backlog of paper clutter in their homes and offices.

Stay tuned for more ways to get organized and stay organized. Happy 2009.

Get a head start on your New Year’s Resolution with Pixily

Monday, December 8th, 2008

1) You are halfway across the country attending a meeting for work, or visiting family, and for someYour Child\'s Art reason you need to find a file — a tax form, a newspaper clipping, your kids’ artwork, an essay you wrote — but you don’t have access to it, and now there’s a bit of a damper on the rest of your trip.

2) You look around your desk and filing cabinets, several times a day, and it’s painful to see how the papers have piled up over the years, you wish you could just make it all go away, or at least appear a bit more organized and accessible.

3) You have so many documents, so many papers, all important for one reason or another, because, like mom and dad always say, “keep everything for seven years, even your receipts”. But it just seems so tasking to save everything, how do you collect so many pieces of paper and still keep it in order???

4) You worry that your computer might crash, that your hard drives and flash drives will get lost or broken, and that your important documents aren’t safe from water or fire damage, but don’t know what to do to prevent the irreparable damage that would come if you lost everything.

 

If any of those describe things that you think about, then you need OfficeDrop.

Click Here to get a head start on your New Year’s resolution. Go paperless, get organized, get OfficeDrop!

 Look around your desk. Open your drawers and look inside. How many filing cabinets do you have? How many boxes do you have in storage, or the attic or basement? How much of your home and office do you take up with paper? If you’re feeling like it’s too much, then you might find what OfficeDrop has to offer interesting. OfficeDrop is a personal assistant. OfficeDrop is a safeguard against losing important information. OfficeDrop is a tool that allows you to safely and securely digitize your paper documents and store them in a personal password-protected account online, allowing you to recycle your paper copies and reclaim lost space in your home or office. For every 10,000 pages you recycle, you save one tree. Compare the amount of time it would take you to search through filing cabinets and boxes for one piece of paper, to the amount of time it will take you to type in a couple of words and hit a search button.

 With OfficeDrop, you can use keywords and phrases to search your account for specific documents. Send your papers in a prepaid scanvelope and we’ll scan them into your online account, where you’ll be able to find them anywhere that you have internet access. You’ll receive your original papers back within 3-5 business days, ready to be recycled. You also have the option to have your documents securely shredded at OfficeDrop, and we will recycle the paper for you.

 OfficeDrop isn’t something that you need to think about every day. It’s not a bill you need to worry about coming in the mail every month. OfficeDrop is your personal assistant, your extra set of hands and eyes. You can send as many scanvelopes in a month as you like. And in the meantime, you can start to collect papers and documents for the next scanvelope you’ll send. And there’s no need to worry about losing papers or having a hard drive crash, your documents are stored in “the cloud”, and available for you to access anywhere. (You do have the option to download your fully-searchable documents to a harddrive once they are saved to your online account.)

OfficeDrop also has a staff that is ready to respond to any question you may have about OfficeDrop, your account, or how to go paperless and get yourself organized.

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