Evernote Review

Part of my endevour to go 100% paperless in my home office includes ridding myself of notepads and spiral notebooks.  I order to do this, I need to come up with a new way of quickly jotting down information for later retrieval.  There are lots of "virtual notebook" applications: Notateit, Notebook 1.0, MS OneNote and they're great, specifically OneNote.  I've gotten very used to moving around in this over the last several years.  But the software I've decided to really beat the crap out of on a day-to-day basis is Evernote.

Why Evernote, especially over OneNote, which I'm already intimately familiar with?  One word... integration.  Evernote isn't just a standalone application residing on my computer like OneNote.  Nor is it an "Internet accessible only" application like Yahoo Notes or Google Docs.  No, I can run EverNote on any system I have at any time with or without an Internet connection.

EverNote is also available on almost every single platform out there right now: PC, Mac, iPhone/iPod, Android, Palm, Blackberry, whatever.  It also has a really large selection of add-ons that allow me to do just about anything I can think of with regards to note taking.  I send audio files, pictures, emails, scans, PDF's, and tons of other formats, allowing me to really use EverNote as my personal brain dump area.

It's also completely searchable.  I can create more detailed indexes, or I can just have EverNote look for specific words inside my various notebooks.

The application and basic services are FREE!  You can download it right now and not pay a single dime for it.  Of course they also have a premium version for "power users" and it's only $45 a year.  $45, really?  That's pretty darn cheap when you consider what this system gives you.  So if you've never seen or heard of EverNote, go check them out at http://www.evernote.com/, you'll be glad you did!

PaperlessGeek.Com

OK.  So I just registered the domain the very catchy "paperlessgeek.com" domain. The blog should be available via this address in the next day or so.

Another (Cheaper) Tablet Option

OK, so I've had amazing amount of feedback on my e-reader and tablets post (not really, but thanks for looking, Chirs, my only subscriber right now!) and I think there are some other alternatives out there.  Enter the Velocity Cruz ereader/tablet.

I found this little beauty on sale at Best Buy this weekend for a ridiculously low $120.  That beats the snot of of the iPad on price.  It doesn't have a ton of storage, only 4GB, but with an SD card slot, I can add storage as I need it.  It also has 802.11 b/g WiFi, and up to 10 hours of battery usage time. Plus, it's running Android, so I can get all kind of custom apps for it.  It's not an iPad, but it's good starting device, I think, and with the built in ereader capabilites, and that fact that I can get Kindle and Nook for Android, it may be a pretty good little tool.

The nice thing is, since it's a tablet device, once I do get an iPad, I can give it to my son who'll probably turn it into some kind of brain for some robot he's designing... either that or he'll watch YouTube on it.



Real World Archiving - Day One Results

OK.  So I spent a good couple of hours working on Saturday and I ran into a few issues.

1. Scanner placement - It seems like a simple thing, I can set the scanner right behind me and just roll back and drop the papers in.  The issue is you end up having to do this mutliple times during the entire scanning process.  So I will be moving the scanner onto the desk, right in front of me, making it easier to drop the papers onto the feeder and scan.
2. What to scan - Initially I thought I'd like to scan several different kinds of documents.  Now I'm thinking that I'm going to narrow the scope down a bit more.  I really only care about financial records, contracts, and government documents.  I may keep a few hand-written notes around, for good measure, and probably some of my son's drawings that he gives me, but pretty much everything else needs to go away.  I don't need temporary documents like letters, or print outs of PDF's and word documents, so into the shredder those will go.
3. Document sorting - See this is why we got into this mess in the first place.  Of all the documents I have, some are sorted, but most are not.  This is by far the MOST time consuming part of the whole project.  I spent a good 90 minutes sorting bank statements going back to 2006. 
4. Scanner - The scanner I have is doing an OK job for now, but a duplex scanner with the simple "Scan" button would make things run MUCH more efficiently.
5. Shred Box and Recycle Box - As I stated, I'm not some evironmental, tree-hugging, whacko.  That's not my purpose for doing this project.  But, since I am going through the exercise, I might as well go ahead and sort things accordingly.  So I created a "Shred Box" and a "Recycle Box".  The Shred Box contains documents that I want to shred, obviously. The Recycle Box is really just a paper trash box, things that I know I'm going to throw out, but don't need to go all the trouble of shredding.

After all was said and done, I got through 2007 on the bank statements.  So almost 2 hours and only about 16 bank statements, front and back.  But once I got through opening envelopes, and sorting everything in detail, it really went pretty quickly. 

Real-World Archiving - Day One

OK, so I've done a few tests and archived a 1/2 dozen documents or so thus far and things seem to be pretty managable.  So today, I'm going to spend an hour or so going through my stacks of papers and do some real-world archiving.

The stacks:

So I've kind of already done some weeding through my stacks of the last 10 years or so and, from what I can tell, this is pretty much what's left.  It doesn't look like a lot, but I would estimate that it's probably a good 100 pounds of paper.  At approximately 100 sheets per pound, according to Answerbag.Com and unusually complex mathmatical equations), so this means that I have probably around 10,000 sheets of paper!  Let's hope I'm WAY off on my weight estimates, otherwise it could take me weeks to get through it all.

Now, on to my setup. I have my computer, of course, and I have a Visioneer 9450 USB scanner with an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF).  The Visioneer comes with software that makes it pretty easy to one-touch scan to PDF, which should make the process go pretty quickly.  I also have the option of doing OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scans, but I think I'll forgo that and just develop a consistent naming convention for my files.  I've decided against doing any sort of "document management system", because A)The good ones typically cost a lot of money, and B) I think this can be done with just a scanner, PDF documents, a standard naming convention, and a well structured Windows file system.

So here's my initial plan for scanning.

1) - Start by sorting the papers into logical groups that match my folder structure in Windows.
2) Next, sort the papers themselves into some kind of order, most likely chronological, making things go much more smoothly when the actual scanning starts.
3) Scan the pages.  (Note: Unfortunately, the 9450 is a simplex scanner, meaning it can only scan one side at a time, in order to scan two sided documents, I'd need a duplex scanner.  Of course duplex scanners are considerable more expensive and, since this is really a "home" project, I think I can magage just running the scans through twice and then combine the documents in Adobe Acrobat.  This adds a couple of extras steps, and they'll be out of order - 1,3,5,7,2,4,6,8 - but I think I can live with that.)
4) Create fire-starting and packaging material!  Once the documents are scanned, I'll be cramming through a shredder (yet to purchase, by the way), producing a beautiful pile of little bits of paper that I'll never have to mess with again. :-D

Digital Readers and Tablet PC's

OK.  So I'm a guy with a limited budget and I want to go paperless.  Here's where it get interesting.  Obviously if I'm going paperless, I'll be limiting or eliminating books, address books, binders, journals, and notepads.  So what do I do for all of these things that are so integral to life?

For books there are a few good options.  There's the Amazon Kindle, for abotu $150, the B&N Nook, also for aroud $150, and several other also-ran devices ranging in prince from $50-$300 or so.  Since Nook and Kindle are at the top of the food chain, it seems that these would be the contenders.

The Kindle:


The Kindle is really the market leader.  With almost 1 million titles available through Amazon, and a ton of extensions that allow me to take my library pretty much whereever I go (i.e. an iPhone Kindle App, a PC Kindle App, a Mac Kindle App, etc.) it's a very versatile product.  It can store about 3,500 books and it's new battery supposedly last for a month, meaning I'd almost never have to charge the thing. It also allows you to read PDF douments, read blogs (though you apparenly have to pay for a subscription for somethingyou an get on the web for free), and get magazines and newspapers.

The Nook:

The Nook offer some pretty exciting options. It can do really everything the Kindle can do.  Interestingly, the color version can be rooted, meaning you can install and run Andriod O.S. on it.  Yes, the same Android OS that runs on tablets like the Samsung Galaxy and the Archos.  So this adds an interesting dimension.  Because not only can you get everything the Nook can do, and everything Android can do, but you can even install Kindle for Android and get everything the Kindle can do as well.  The only problem with this, really, is the price.  At $250, it's a little hefty.

Now, for full-on tablets, I think that there are really only two contenders.  The iPad, of course.  And the Samsung Galaxy Tablet.  Of the two, iPad is definitely king of the hill.

The iPad:



OK.  Slight bias alert.  I'm a iPad fanboy.  So in all honesty this is the one I REALLY want.  But it's a bit out of my price range right now.

The Galaxy Pad:



Samsung appears to be the only player with an actual product on the market that competing with the iPad and making headway. So far they sold about 1 million of them. It has a 7" screen, as opposed to iPad's 10".  It runs Android, which is quickly catching up to Apple's App store.  But at $400 withg a two year contract, I might as well wait for the iPad.

Lastly, I started thinking how I could get rid of the paper address book sitting next to phone in my living room.  The Sony Dash looks like a possible contender.  It has a number of cool features including a real-time weather station, news, calendar, Facebook, email, and it apparently can sync up with and displat my Gmail and Yahoo contacts, thereby eliminating the need for a paper address book and allowing me the opportunity to only have to enter my contact information in one location and then sync it up everywhere else in my universe.  At $150, it's really not a bad deal at all.. 

So it looks like I can get a pretty good collection of gadgets to help me achieve my paperless vision for under $1500, and that's if I get all the higher-end gear.  If I go with the Kindle, the Galaxy, and the Dash, I'd be looking at around $700 all-in, not too bad.

Signed up for MyFax Online Faxing

I don't use a lot of faxing technology (it's kind of outdate with email) but many people still use it so I thought I'd check out a few of the online faxing technologies out there.  I've decided to initially check out MyFax.  They have a free trial and it's dirt cheap to keep it if I decide it's something I'm going to use.

The way it works is very simple.  When I want to send a fax, I just send an email to <faxnumber>@myfax.com, or use their print-to-fax tool (kind of like print-to-PDF).  When I recieve faxes on my personal fax number, it goes straight to my inbox.  Seems like this would be pretty difficult to screw up.

Check them out at http://www.myfax.com/ for more information, and no, I don't make any money off the link.

Going Paperless - The Story Begins

I hate paper.  Not because of all the environmental save the trees, save the planet stuff but because it's such a pain in the arse to deal with.  You have to print it, and fold, and mail it, and stack it, and sort it, and file, Agh!  Enough already!!  So I've decided to go paperless and this blog is about my challenges and struggles as I unlearn what I've been told my entire life regarding this now grossly outdated resource.

So here's what I know I'm going to need in order to make this happen:

A computer, obviously.
A scanner, sure.
A large amount of storage capacity
Possibly some type of offsite/online backup subscription
A Laptop, for doing some note taking work, occassionally
An iPad or some other tablet PC that has the resources I need for note taking and the like
An eBook reader
A smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, etc)

That's about all I can identify right off the bat.  Luckily I have almost ALL of these things already.  So now I'll begin my adventure.  You should come with.