Paperless Mac

Which Banks Have iPhone Check Deposit?

paperless — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:11:32 +0000

Chase Iphone Check Deposit

For most, financial documents, especially those related to banking are a major source of paper in their lives. Fortunately, over the past few years banks have awoken to the cost savings and desire of their customers to go paperless. At first, the primary sources of paper were cut out: bill pay and paper statements. Now a new trend is catching on at banking establishments that, even though it is more of a convience factor than a paper saver, is worth mentioning… iPhone deposit of checks. While a handful of smaller banks blazed the path, the big boys are starting to pay attention and now Chase offers free iPhone deposit of checks. You just snap a photo of the check within the app and presto… deposit complete! Look for other big banks to follow with their own check-depositing iPhone apps soon. Curious if your bank offers iPhone deposits? Take a look at this comprehensive list of banks offering iPhone apps for check depositing.

Virtual KVM – Multiple Machine Bliss

paperless — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:29:14 +0000

This may seem off topic, but one of the goals of the paperless office is a clear desk, free of distractions. Perhaps you can manage to keep the piles of paper from stacking up, but it is still common to be haunted by clutter strewn about such as external hard drives, phone chargers and for those with multiple computers, a stack of keyboards and mice. The solution to the multiple keyboard and mouse problem has traditionally has been the KVM which provides a physical switch to share a single keyboard, monitor and mouse between computers. These cost money and can be unreliable. There is a straightforward and free option available to those that have a display for each computer, but want to share a single keyboard and mouse, the virtual kvm. The virtual kvm is a piece of software that allows you to share a keyboard and mouse physically connected to one machine with others that are connected over a local network.The are two programs that lead the pack in this domain for the mac: Synergy and Teleport. I have used both and I think they are both great choices. A common multi-computer configuration though is to share a keyboard and mouse across both a mac and either a windows or linux box. For this, Synergy is the only option as Teleport is just for the mac. Lifehacker has a great configuration guide for getting Synergy up and running. I have been using Synergy for a few months now and it has worked very well. I only had one issue when I first installed Synergy, the command key was not being communicated properly to my mac (in my config the mouse and keyboard are connected directly to my pc and to my mac via synergy) which was a big problem for me because I use “command-space” to trigger Quicksilver. The fix was simple though, I went into the “edit screen” option in Synergy for my mac and swapped the Super and the Alt key modifiers… voila! If you have other ways to keep clutter from piling up on your desk, let us know in the comments.

Stop Printing, Filling Out & Scanning

paperless — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:18:18 +0000

Print. Fill out. Scan. Email. Repeat. Is this cycle familiar? Last week lifehacker reviewed free web service FillAnyPDF, which may help you put an end to this routine. Upload any PDF, PNG, GIF or JPG and the service will sprinkle a little magic on top and then you can fill the form out right on their site. Tried it out? Let us what you think in the comments.

What About Encryption on Evernote?

paperless — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:30:20 +0000

When I described my workflow with important documents and Evernote, I’m certain that many of you had red flashing lights going off in your head as you were considering the safety of your personal information as it whizzes back and forth to the Evernote servers. To combat this potential issue, there is a built-in encryption feature in Evernote, but I didn’t mention it because I feel it is a little clunky. You have to select individual text that you want to encrypt; there is no bulk encryption, well not built-in anyway.

The pros over at DocumentSnap have put together an excellent tutorial on how to encrypt your entire Evernote library on a mac. The only down side to their system that I can see is that it removes your ability to view your notes on your iPhone or other mobile device. If you give this technique a shot or have a better system, drop a line in the comments and share your thoughts.

Fujitsu ScanSnap – My Hero

paperless — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:00:33 +0000

I could already hear the groaning as I was drafting the post on using the ScanSnap with Evernote… “but scanning all my documents will be a huge pain in the @$%!” Up until a year ago (when I purchased my Fujitsu ScanSnap 300m [amazon]), I would have totally agreed. At that point, I had only used a standalone flatbed scanners and the paper-fed scanner on my all-in-one printer. Through these experiences, one thing was clear, these instruments were note designed to scan more than a couple of documents at a time. Then the 300m came along and changed everything for me. It was one of those moments, like when I got my first ipod, and knew everything would be different from that day forward.

What is so great about this scanner? Is it really worth $250? If you are committed to reducing the heaps of paper on your desk, then absolutely! It is tough to really do the device justice in words, for all of you that have struggled with scanners in the past, I think this video I found on youtube of a ScanSnap 300 in action should do the trick. A few things to note. First, as you watch the pages fly through the scanner, the ScanSnap is actually scanning both sides of each page, simultaneously. Also, as we’ve described, once paired with Evernote, the single action of pressing the button on the ScanSnap does so much. Documents are uploaded to the Evernote servers, OCRed, made searchable and distributed to all your other computers running Evernote. All of this from one single button push!

Even Walt Loves Evernote

paperless — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:24:42 +0000

We recently extolled the use of Evernote in the paperless office, but it looks like the software is now hitting the mainstream. In today’s Wall Street Journal, tech columnist Walt Mossberg has written a love letter to Evernote praising many of its powerful features.

So You Still Want OCR on PDFs

paperless — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:00:30 +0000

Earlier this week I posted how to get OCR with Evernote on your mac, but unless you are willing to pay for the pro account, this excludes PDFs. There is a workaround for this issue if you happen to have Adobe Acrobat (full version – Amazon link) installed on your mac. Jump over to DocumentSnap for their clever tutorial on how to OCR PDFs before loading them into Evernote.

Evernote: OCR and Availability Everywhere on the Mac

paperless — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:32:26 +0000

Now that you have your ScanSnap and Evernote playing nicely together on your mac, maybe you’re asking yourself what’s the point. Well, Evernote is a very powerful piece of software that will make your scanned documents available across multiple computers as well as your smartphone. This alone is great, but Evernote’s real power is that it performs OCR on your scanned documents and makes them searchable (this even works on handwritten notes). For me, whenever I get a paper statement/bill in the mail, a store receipt or anything worth keeping I immediately scan it into Evernote (and tag it), shred the original and forget about it. With the ScanSnap and Evernote paired, these steps are a breeze and the process has done wonders to reduce my desktop clutter. To top it all off, Evernote is free (unless you want the pro account).

The one catch with Evernote is that OCR is only performed on pdf documents if you pay for the pro account; there is a simple workaround though. If you are poor like me, and don’t want to pay the $45 annual fee for the pro account, simply set up a profile to scan into Evernote as jpeg, not pdf. The free Evernote will OCR jpeg, no problem. There is just one issue I’ve found with scanning in images instead of pdf and that is that each scanned page is its own image. Evernote lets you combine notes though, so scan in a multiple page document as jpeg, select them all in Evernote and then right click and select merge notes from the menu. Viola! One final note on the OCR feature. It is performed on the Evernote servers, so you must set your notebook to sync in order to OCR the text and make it searchable. Shortly after a document has been uploaded, Evernote will download data from the server and you can search. Good luck and have fun clearing off your desk.

How to get the Fujisu Scansnap 300M and Evernote Working Together

paperless — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:24:25 +0000

As I mentioned in my Tools of the Trade post, Evernote is one of the workhorses in my paperless office. It took me a little while to figure how to get it working seamlessly with my other workhorse, the ScanSnap 300m, because the instructions I found online were a little misleading. If you go to the Evernote blog, they explain how to use a twain-compliant scanner with Evernote on the mac. Unfortunately, this is not how the 300m works. If you attempt to use those instructions, you won’t get to far because Image Capture will not recognize the ScanSnap and just leave an error message up that states “No Image Capture device connected.”

Do not fret though, it is simple to get the ScanSnap and Evernote working in harmony. The first thing you must do is ensure that you have the latest ScanSnap Manager installed, which you can find on the Fujisu website. At the time of this post, the most recent version is V22L11 – and I can confirm this version works. Once installed, you must make a simple change. With the ScanSnap Manager running, right-click on the icon in the dock and unselect “Use Quick Menu.” Now you will be able to use profiles, which are a much more powerful way to utilize Evernote anyway. Now that you have disabled the quick menu, you must add Evernote as an application that the ScanSnap Manager can recognize. Once again right-click on the dock icon and open up Settings….

In the Application tab, click the Add or Remove … button and select Evernote from you Applications directory. Once you complete this, click the drop-down at the top of the ScanSnap Manager where it says “Select a Profile:” In this menu you can add a profile called Evernote. Make sure the Evernote is selected in the Application drop-down and select any options in the other tabs you require and then save the profile by hitting the Apply button.

This completes the setup portion, now all you need to do is left-click on the ScanSnap icon in the dock and a menu will pop up with all your profiles, select the Evernote profile from the list (which will remain the default until changed). Now whenever you hit the button to scan on the 300m, it will scan directly into Evernote! If you have any other Evernote / ScanSnap tips, please drop me a line in the comments below.

Secure Disk Erase on a Mac

paperless — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:50:16 +0000

I recently upgraded an external drive of mine and sold the old one on ebay. I tend to repurpose old drives until they are out-dated to the point that nobody would want them and then physically destroy them. Initially, I was concerned about selling my drive to a stranger because I figured there would be a way they could recover my data, and in fact, there most certainly are ways to recover data “deleted” on a hard drive. Fortunately, since 10.3, Apple has included in Mac OS, a built-in feature called “Secure Empty Trash” that ensures deleted files cannot be recovered. This feature can be accessed by going to Finder > Secure Empty Trash. This process takes longer to complete than the standard empty trash, but especially for sensitive files, it is worth it.

So what should you do if you haven’t been using Secure Empty Trash all along and need to securely wipe a drive? There are two main options on the Mac. The first is another Mac OS built-in feature accessible through Disk Utility (located in Applications/Utilities/). Select the disk you would like to secure, then select the Erase tab. Within this tab there is a “Erase Free Space…” option. Here you can select the number of times you want to zero out the free space on your disk. Depending on the number of times you select and the size of your free space, this can be a lengthy process, so plan appropriately. The other option is to use Permanent Eraser, an open source solution to this problem. I’ve never used this due to the convenience of the built-in Apple solution. Please leave a comment on your experience if you’ve used Permanent Eraser.

Remember, if you’re going to get rid of a hard drive, be sure to securely wipe the device so that you aren’t giving someone an opportunity to access your personal information. A recent informal survey indicated that 40% of drives sold on ebay had readily accessible information contained on them. Be smart, securely erase!