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 Pixily provide you with that very assistant. Hours spent organizing paper documents physically can be replaced by sending them to Pixily 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 Pixily.

Picking a magazine scanning services provider

Magazine scanning services require special attention. Most scanners can’t easily scan bound material. Older issues have the issue that ink from the other side of the page can seep through. Older, larger sized magazines may not fit in conventional scanners. If magazines haven’t been properly stored they can have creases or wrinkles that need to be flattened out prior to scanning. Remember that bound material may require cutting or hand scanning - which can become quite expensive.

If you are launching a magazine scanning project, you should first send a few samples to your scanning provided to make sure they can handle your scanning job. We recommend sending both a recent issue and one of the older issues as well. The older issues are the ones that tend to have the most yellowing/color issues and the most ink bleed through, so you’ll want to make sure you can get the quality of scanning that you’ll need.

Also, you’ll want to test the OCR software that your provider will use. With out OCR, your PDFs won’t become text searchable. You need OCR to get search engine traffic to your past issues; otherwise they are images that search engines like Google and Bing can’t see into.

DPI also becomes important if you are going to be displaying the images/PDFs online. If the DPI you pick is too large then you’ll end up with very, very large files and images - and thus they won’t be easy for your magazine readers to view online.

Let us know if we can help you out with a magazine scanning project! Call us at 1-888-674-6493. Good luck with your digitization project!

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 Pixily 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 Pixily’s document scanning and document management service!

So, how does this matter to you when using Pixily?

When sending emails to your Pixilymail email account, you can now specify the folder that you want to move the attachments (or the email itself) to and can also specify what labels you would like to apply to those documents once they are processed in to your Pixily account.

Why is this powerful?

It is powerful because, at the time that you forward the information is when you exactly know how you want to organize it. You don’t have to log back into the system later on just to organize your documents. Also, if your clients, partners or vendors are sending documents to your pixily account, you can ask them to specify the folders and make it easy on yourself

How does it work?

To move the email attachments (or the actual body itself) to a folder called “Customers/Acme-Corp”, you just have to specify #Folder: Customers/Acme-Corp in the subject line. If the folder structure already exists, your documents will be moved to that folder and if not, those folders will be created for you. Similarly to apply the labels “Invoice” and “2009″ to those documents in the email, you can specify #Label: Invoice, 2009 in the email’s subject line. We accept most known variations such as #Folders, #Labels etc,.

But how do I know what folders and labels I have?

We understand it is not easy to keep track of this all the time. So we have given you a couple of easy ways to save a copy of your folder and label list. From the Folder Actions Menu and the Label Actions Menu, you can save a PDF version of your folder and label list, or you can send an email with your folder and label list.

Print Email and Copy Folder list to Clipboard

These actions are also available from the page where you configure your email via upload (https://www.pixily.com/ze/tools/email_upload )

Print or Email Folder list from The Tools Menu

This is another small, yet really useful way that we hope will help you save time in organizing documents and capturing as much context as you can provide at the time of sending emails. We hope you find it useful. Let us know what you think.

Now you can also follow ALL of these professional organizers on the new Professional Organizers’ List we’ve greated on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pixily/professional-organizers

List of Professional Organizers on Twitter

@addspace - Kathi Burns
@allorganizers - Stephanie LH Calaham
@anorganizedlife - MJ Rosenthal
@ChaosOrganizer - Kelly Deering
@clutterdiet - Lorie Marrero
@dallisonlee - Deb Lee
@Downshiftingpos - Margarita Ibbott
@EcoOrganizer - Dorothy Breininger
@JanetBarclay - Janet Barclay
@JodieWatson - Jodie Watson
@johntrosko - John Trosko
@JulieMorganizer - Julie Morgenstern
@LurleneAnderson - Lurlene Anderson
@MyOLCEA - Jessica DeYoung
@organizedaily - Ellen Delap
@organizedhome - Julie Verleger
@organizer - GiGi Miller
@OrganizerLauren - Lauren Davidson
@organizewithz - Zele Avradopoulos
@piggybankpixie - Nanette Duffey
@PutItAway - Kim Oser
@SaraPedersen - Sara Pedersen
@savvyspaces - Kristin Lindstrom
@Smart_Spaces - Heather Burke
@SolutionsForYou - Anne Blumer
@tammyburke - Tammy Burke
@TheTaskPros - Michal Gregus

Post a comment if we’ve forgetten anyone, and we’ll add them to the list - there are obviously other organizers out there on Twitter!

Pixily founder Prasad Thammineni talks about the moment when he came up with the idea behind Pixily’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, Pixily’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.

Pixily 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. Pixily 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 Pixily’s work with Boston-area public schools like Belmont Public, with whom Pixily 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:

• shoebuy.com
• Harmonix
• Cloudswitch
• Aspen Aerogels

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.

Google Docs has just launched a “folder share” option, something Pixily document management customers have enjoyed since August. While I’m sure Google isn’t actually trying to catch Pixily, they have added a great piece of functionality for the Doc’s customers - a product the team at Pixily uses and enjoys. Folder share makes a lot of sense for small businesses looking to collaborate internally, with customers, and with partners.

How Google Doc’s Folder Share Works

Google Doc’s folder share works a lot like Pixily’s folder share. To share folders in Google:

Step 1 is creating folders; you do this in Google Docs by clicking on the “create new” button on the left, and selecting “Folder.” You’ll get a dialog box, into which you need to type the name of the folder. You can also enter a description. You’ll see the empty folder space below; once you’ve put files into the folder you’ll see them below, much like you see them when you log into Google Docs. Actually, totally like that :).

Step 2 is to put files into folder share. To get back to the general list of your files, click on “All items” on the left, below the button you just clicked for “Create New.” At this point you should be back at the list of files you see when you first get into Docs. Now, select the files you want to put into the folder. Click the check boxes on the ones you want to put into the folder - these little boxes are to the left of the file names. Once you’ve checked some or all of the files you want to put into the folder, click “Folder”, which you’ll see toward the upper-left-middle of your screen, just below the “All Items” banner. You’ll see a tree of the folders that you have created; click on the one where you want to move the documents. Note that the files WON’T disappear out of your general all documents in box - they will just also now be in the folder. A little box with the name of the folder will appear next to the actual name of the file - this tells you the folder that you’ve put the file into.

Step 3 is to share the file. You’ll see a list of your folders on the left, under the navigation pane that says things like “all items,” “owned by me” and more. Click on the folder that you want to share. Now only the files in that folder will be shown in the center of your screen. Go back to that folder name on the left and left click. You’ll see several options, including “share.” Select “share” and invite people to view the folder! This part now looks just like the dialog box you’d see when sharing an individual file.

Google’s Folder Share is Pretty Similar to Pixily’s Folder Share

It’s both cool and interesting that Google’s functionality is similar to Pixily’s. One of the added benefits of using Pixily’s share is that you can restrict the amount of time that the person you are sharing with has to view the document. So, if you only want to let them view the document for a week or a day the link can expire and the person will no longer be able to access the information in the folder.

To learn how to share a folder in Pixily click here!

1. Filing costs - It costs the average business $20 to correctly identify and file away a document. That includes the time to identify, create a file folder, and put the file away in its correct location. Of course, finding a lost document or misfiled costs even more - depending on the size of your business it could be up to $120, mainly in labor hours. What is your time worth, and how long does it take you to find a missing file?
2. Space/Storage costs - Filing cabinets take up valuable space, including the space needed to actually safely open the drawers. A 3 foot wide filing cabinet may need almost 10 square feet of floor space to open. Depending on your real estate costs you could be spending hundreds of dollars a year simply storing away your paper. How often do you access your paper, and is it worth the annual costs to have all of it right next to you?
3. Sharing costs - Paper documents can only realistically be viewed and annotated by one or a couple of people at the same time. If you need to get the paper to someone in a different office, you need to mail, fax or scan and email it to them. Plus, you only have two choices: give the file away to someone else (losing control) or keep the file private by not letting it out of your possession. Copying and mailing a document is less than 50 cents - but that excludes the time and effort required to get the document there, and ignores the fact that you no longer control the data.

With online document management services, you no longer need to wake up one to the realization that you’ve lost the ability to find important pieces of information under a mound of dead trees. Go digital and reduce the time needed to file, save the space needed to store and gain the ability to securely share your files.