Paperless with the Kindle

James Harris has some interesting thoughts on going paperless when it comes to magazines. In particular he looks at how his Kindle has changed the way he reads. I have a Sony Reader which uses a similar screen and I agree with him that it is a very pleasurable way to read. Here are some quotes from his post.

We are really very close to having a paperless society that pundits have talked about every since I can remember. People always exclaim they hate reading off the computer screen even though they spend hours a day doing so. Now the Kindle offers a better way to read, even better than paper, and that starts to suggest going paperless is possible.

I’m a little less optimistic. I think we have a long ways to go before the infrastructure for really being paperless is in place. I agree that all the technology is there, but things have to hit a critical mass before they really become useful and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Paper is still very inexpensive. The used paperback I bought for $1.00 is very durable and I could go through 300 of them before approaching the cost of an electronic reader. Even more important, the books still retain some value after I read them. I can give them away, sell them, or trade them in for other reading material.

I think electronic readers would start making sense if a $15 book was now $3 or $4, but they aren’t. Publishers are trying to keep the prices only slightly lower than the print editions even though they are basically one-time-use.

Consider a DVD, you can buy it for $15 or rent it for $2.50. (I know that technically you can read your electronic book again, but in actual use you probably won’t read an electronic book over and over again.) The use of an electronic book is more in line with renting a DVD. However, to buy a book for the Kindle, you’ll pay $10 while a hardback will typically cost $15 to $17. Paperbacks will usually run a bit less and if you buy the book used it can be substantially less. You read the book and then eventually delete them if you run out of space on the Kindle–or you keep it around indefinitely. With the physical book, you can resell it, if you purchased it used, you’ll probably only be out the shipping costs to purchase it–maybe a bit more. You can share your ebook with other people who you trust to use your $300 digital reading device, but that is about it–oh and you can’t read something else while they read it.

When it comes to magazines and newspapers the economics are a bit different. A newspaper typically has very little value a few days after it is published (unless you keep birds and need something to line the cage). So there is pretty much no resell value in a newspaper and it is unlikely that you will loan the paper to someone else. The Wall Street Journal on the Kindle costs $10 per month. At $120 per year it is about the same cost as the physical edition along with the online access option.

I feel like I’m getting more for my money with paper but I actually read more stories when I get the Kindle edition.

That is an interesting observation. Based on the numbers above, he is getting more for his money when buying a book. It would probably be a better test to see how he feels in 18 months after the novelty of the Kindle wears off a bit. One of the nice things about something like the Kindle or Sony Reader is that they are limited use devices. When you try to read on your computer it is easy to jump around opening other browser windows, looking things up, and clicking on interesting advertisements or links. The electronic readers are much more focused on reading, so it tends to be easier to read longer stretches at a time with them than on the computer.

An interesting side note is what Steve Jobs said about reading books on the iPhone. He basically said, “people don’t read any more”. Interestingly enough people do still buy books. So even if reading is going down book purchases are still going well. But if people are buying books they aren’t reading, they are probably going to be more interested in something that will sit on their bookshelf than a file that other people can’t see.

Do you use a digital reader of some type? What do you think it would take for digital books to really take off?

Group Interview - Dealing with Paper

We asked a number of professional organizers to be part of a three question interview. This is the first of those questions that we will be publishing over the next few weeks. Thank you to everyone who participated and shared their perspective.

What is the single most important tip you would give to someone who is having trouble managing all the paper in their lives?

“Recycle most of it as soon as it comes in the door.”
Melissa Michaels from The Inspired Room (rss)

My trash can is right next to the mailbox. I’ve found that I can often get by without even bringing junk mail into the house. I’ve heard other people recommend that you open your mail over the trash can or recycle bin to help make it easier to throw things away by making it the default behavior.

Stop doing everything you are doing at the moment of complete mental breakdown. Take a large breath, put on some fun music and start sorting. Pile every single paper in one spot, grab the nearest empty trash can and sort into three sections: TRASH, PROJECTS, TO FILE. Trash goes into the trash can, your To File pages go into a designated area and your Projects or To Do’s sit nicely next to wherever you are going to work on them at. Once the chaos is gone, it will be a lot easier to implement a system that is customized to your organizing style: Inspirational, Logical, or Visual.
Suzanne Babb from Let’s Talk Organizing (rss)

Good point. I think a lot of people keep trying to plug away operating an very low efficiency because of their mental and physical disorganization.

Keep as little paper as possible in the first place by setting up an effective system for the complete lifecycle of your paper. I also have a Paper Retention Guide which advises on what papers to keep and for how long in a very easy to read and reference chart format. All of my guides can be accessed at www.neatandsimpleguides.com
Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed. from Neat and Simple Living (rss)

When I’m working with clients on technology needs, I encourage them to think about the the entire lifecycle of the technology they purchase. For example, when they create a plan to buy a computer, they should also create a plan for how they are going to replace and dispose of it in the future. Ariane’s suggestion is to do the same thing for paper and think in terms of how the paper comes in, what happens to it and when it eventually goes out. When you think in these terms it is much easier to design your system effectively because it maps to your plan.

Ask yourself “Do I really need this?” before hitting the “print” button or bringing flyers or other printed information back to your home or office.
Janet Barclay from From the Desk of Janet Barclay (rss)

Something that I use with businesses that are trying to lower printing costs is to make it “hard” to print. For example, putting a shared high speed printer in the workroom instead of giving everyone their own inkjet printer reduces printing cost by being more efficient and because people are less likely to print something they don’t need if they have to go into the other room to get it.

Have less of it. Be ruthless and selective about the paper you bring into your life, whether it’s mail, free publications or otherwise. That might sound like a generalization, but having less paper means less time managing it.
Brandie Kajino from The Home Office Organizer (rss)

This is a very important point for paperless systems as well. Just because it is easy to scan something doesn’t mean you should keep it. I think it is easier to manage the scanned documents than the paper ones–at least it scales much easier. But at the same time, it is easier to manage 1,000 digital documents than 100,000.

Limiting free publications is pretty important too. There are a number of magazines available that don’t actually charge any type of subscription fee. They want as much distribution as possible because they make money of advertising. While these can be good sources of information, it is easy to start collecting more subscriptions than you can possibly read. I have recently started switching to short newsletters for my reading. They are typically much more expensive, but the information is much more concise and focused.

Portable Scan Snap S300

Fujitsu has released a portable version of the ScanSnap line of scanners.  It can run on its own power cable or use power from the USB connection.  This is particularly useful if you are traveling or working of your laptop with a battery.

When running off the USB power it is a little slower to scan. When plugged into its own power connection it can handle 8 pages per minute.

The S300 is only for Windows.  It is fairly new, so they may release a S300M version sometime in the future.  You can buy the S300 from our online store for $291.

Another Scanner

A reader pointed me to the Fujitsu 6140.  It is faster than the Scan Snap at 80 to 120 ppm (each side counts as one page) and seems to be a little more heavy duty in its construction.

It looks like it uses dual rollers where the Scan Snap 510 and 510M only use one.  This might help guard against misfeeds and paper jams.

The 6140 comes with Kofax workgroup software that will handle some scanning tasks including processing bar codes scanned on documents.  The scanner appears to only support the Windows platform.

The 6140 is quite a bit more expensive with a list price of $1999.  You can get it in the Productivity501 Store for $1,660.

Online Backup Options

I’ve been trying out several online backup tools. I plan to write in more detail about my experiences with each one later, but here is an overview.

My wife and I travel quite a bit. While I can take an extra hard drive with us for backups, but this seems a bit pointless since the biggest threat to my equipment is probably theft. If someone breaks into my hotel room and steals my laptop, they probably aren’t going to overlook an external hard drive. I need a solution that will give me quick access to all my information if my computer is stolen or damaged.

Here are three services I’ve tried.  If you have any suggestions of other services I should check out please post them in the comments.

.mac Backup

This would seem like the ideal solution, but until recently .mac accounts only came with 1 GB of storage space. They recently upped this to 10 GB. This is more useful, but it doesn’t take long to fill it up. On the plus side of things, it can be scheduled to run automatically to keep your backup up-to-date.

The .mac Backup software will also allow you to backup to DVDs, CDs and external HDs. So I could conceivably come up with a plan that backs large files that don’t change much up to external media while storing all of my documents that are smaller but change frequently online.

As I move toward a paperless office, my storage needs are just going to go up and I don’t think .mac Backup is going to be able to keep pace. I’m still using it for backing up certain documents just for added redundancy, but I’m not using it as my main backup system.

Mozy

Mozy is an interesting idea. For about $5 per month you can backup everything on your computer. (I have heard that in reality they have a limit of 50 GB of online storage space.) Mozy has a nice looking client that installs and lets you setup your backup to run automatically. However, I was never able to get it to backup more than about 20MB at a time. After weeks of emailing them for support I finally gave up. I have heard that their Windows product is much more stable, but I haven’t tested it. Support said that other OS X users were not having problems.

If you have a PC this might be worth looking into as it is fairly inexpensive.

They also offer a business class service that can backup databases and email servers.

Jungle Disk and Amazon S3

Jungle Disk doesn’t actually store any of your data. They just make a product that allows you to upload your data to Amazon S3. Amazon S3 is a storage service with a pay-as-you-go pricing setup. You pay $0.15 per GB of storage space. So 20 GB of storage will cost you about $3. You also have to pay for your transfers. That is an additional $0.10 per GB transfered into the system and $0.18 per GB transfered out. There is also a $0.01 charge for each PUT, GET, or LIST request.

Jungle Disk automatically keeps track of what changes on your system and uploads a new version of the file whenever necessary to keep the online copy up todate. If make changes to huge files every day, you’ll pay more than if you make changes to small files because the entire file has to be uploaded–not just the changes.

My experience in uploading around 20 GB of data and running a backup for about a week was in the $15 range for the month. Obviously a good deal of the expense is just getting the data uploaded the first time. After the first month I’d expect to pay $5 to $10 per month to Amazon.

The Jungle Disk program is $20 and that gives you a license to install it on as many computers as you like. It works with Windows, Linux and Mac so it is a pretty good deal if you have multiple machines.

Jungle Disk recently came out with an added service that gives you additional capabilities.  Most notable is the block level backup.  If you change a file the software will figure out what is different between the file on your computer and the one on the server and upload just the changes.  If you make a lot of changes to large files this can really reduce the amount of bandwidth required to keep the server in sync.

Don’t forget if you have any suggestions of other services to try, I’d love to hear about them.

Letting Go of Paper

I’ve been surprised at how difficult it is to let go of my paper. As I move more and more of my paper to a digital format I keep finding myself hesitating when I get ready to shred a document. We are trained so very well to keep our paper records. Has anyone else experienced this?

I think part of the issue is that most people have suffered some type of data loss with their computer. Even though I have multiple systems in place for backup I’m still haunted by losing important files years ago. Another issue is the physicalness of paper. You can hold paper in your hand. Spread it out. Write notes in the margin, etc. Not that I ever do that with my car insurance statement or gas bill, but somehow the idea of having something physical is comforting.

Little by little I’m training myself to let go. One trick I’ve found is to not shred the paper right away. I simply put it on top of the shredder to shred later. My daughter’s sleeping schedule was the original reason for this habit, but it is easier to give myself a few hours–just in case I think of some reason a document needs saved. So far I haven’t come up with any reason to save something that I was planning on shredding, but it makes me feel more comfortable.

My files have stopped growing and are starting to shrink!

Text and Image Documents

There are two basic types of documents you can use in a paperless office.  The first type of document is text based.  These are formats like .TXT .RTF .DOC, etc.  These store text as editable information.  You can go in and change the document, fix spelling, copy sentences, etc.

The second type of documents are image based documents.  These include formats like .TIF, .JPG, .PNG, .GIF, etc.  These documents just represent a bunch of pixels.  The computer can’t edit the words themselves other than by deleting pixels and putting new pixels down.  You can’t copy a sentence and paste it into another program if you are using this format.

The advantage of the text based formats are the fact that they can be searched.  If the document contains the word “Smith Contract” a search on your computer for those words should show the document in the results.  With image based documents you don’t have that luxury.  If you want to be able to find it, you better name it using the keywords you might use for your search, put it in a directory with the name you will search for, or associate meta information with the document containing all the keywords you might use.

The advantage of image based documents is the way they preserve the layout and non-text elements.  If you have to go to court to show someone signed a contract, you are going to want to have an image based document with their signature. (There are some ways to do things with digital PKI signatures that will stand up in court, but that gets quite a bit more complicated.)

Of course the problem is, you may have a hard time locating the particular contract unless you were particularly careful where and how you saved it.

The PDF format solves many of these issues.  PDFs allow you to store a document as an image AND as text.  Think of it as two layers,  you have a text layer that contains the words in a computer readable format and you have the image layer that contains a picture of the document–including any pictures, annotations, etc.  So if you want to search for a keyword it acts as a text based document.  If you need to print out a copy of the document it acts as an image based document.

When you scan your document you want to make sure both types of information is recorded.  To get text information from a scanned document, you need to use some type of optical character recognition.  Usually your scanner will come with some type of OCR software.  Many scanning programs will automatically add the text layer into a PDF.  The newer versions of Acrobat have OCR capabilities built in so you can take image based documents and add the text layer with a few clicks.

In my workflow, my scanner sends the image of each document directly to a program that  performs some optimizations, does OCR and then saves the results as a PDF in my document repository.

If you are looking at setting up a paperless office, you will need to consider how the character recognition takes place.  The more you are able to automate the process the easier it will be to work with.

Note: If you are creating a PDF directly from your computer, there is a way to skip the image layer while still preserving the layout of the page.  If you start adding signatures and markups it will create an image layer to put those items in.

Last Night

Last night I got a new electronic book device.  It was the size of an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and had 600 dpi resolution.  The quality was excellent.  It worked in bright sunlight without a problem.

I put all my scanned documents on it and found it was just as easy to read them as it was on paper and it was even easier to navigate and find documents than using the filing cabinet.  I loaded it with all the PDF articles I wanted to read and found it worked flawlessly.

Then I woke up.

I was very disappointed.  Should I be concerned that I’m now dreaming of becoming more paperless?

Is Acrobat a Necessity for a Paperless Office?

As work toward creating a paperless office, I’m coming to the conclusion that Acrobat is a necessity. Not the free version but the multiple hundreds of dollars standard version. This isn’t a problem for me because my ScanSnap came with Acrobat 7 Standard. I was hoping to find that there was enough capabilities built into OS X or free tools to have something less expensive to recommend.

Here are the things that I can’t find good ways to do outside of Acrobat:

1. Rearrange Pages - And Acrobat isn’t great at this, but I can extract, remove, rearrange, or add pages as needed. In 7 it isn’t particularly user friendly, but it is a whole lot easier than any other way I’ve found to handle it.
2. Sign Documents - I haven’t found a good solution for digital or graphical signatures.
3. Filling in Documents - Acrobat provides a Typewriter tool that basically lets you type anywhere in the document even if it wasn’t saved as a form. (If it was saved as a form you can fill it in using the free version of Acrobat.)
4. Compressing PDFs - OS X has a built in process to compress PDFs, but it barely makes any noticeable difference. Acrobat can make a significant change in the size of the file.
5. Editing Existing Text - Acrobat will let you edit existing text. So if you find an error in a file that you saved as a PDF, you can just make the change. This only works for small changes like fixing a spelling error. If you try to start removing entire paragraphs it probably won’t look right.

Are there other tools that allow you to do all of this other than Acrobat?

Using Acrobat to Sign Documents

Acrobat is capable of doing two types of signatures.  Technically the best way is using a digital signature.  Not only can the signature show that you signed it, but it can also prove that the document wasn’t changed after you signed it.  If you deal with a lot of people who use digital signatures, this is a great way to go.

Personally when I sign something it is usually to fax or mail.  While I like the digital signature idea I just don’t interact with enough people who could actually use it.

Originally I was signing documents in Acrobat by creating my own digital signature and then attaching an image to the signature.  Acrobat will use the image anywhere you place the digital signature so things look normal when you print it.

While this works, it can take a bit of effort to setup.  You have to generate a public and private key and then import them into Acrobat, etc.  Also when you sign something Acrobat adds an additional graphic showing that it is a digital signature.  This doesn’t show up when you print it, but it can be confusing for someone who gets the PDF.

Today I discovered another feature in Acrobat called “stamps”. This is a way to stamp parts of the document with an image like “Confidential”, “Past Due”,  “Top Secret”, etc.  You simply select the stamp and then you can go through your document just like you would with a rubber stamp.

It turns out you can import an image file and use it as a stamp as well.  If you follow the instructions from our post about how to create a scanned signature, you’ll find it imports nicely.  The transparent background lets you sign on a line without covering it up.

Once you apply the stamp you can use the tool to resize it or move it around for better placement.

To import your signature as a stamp go to Tools > Commenting > Stamps > Create Custom Stamps.

I am using Acrobat 7 Standard.  If you are using a different version there is probably a slightly different process. 

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