Pixily’s name has now changed to OfficeDrop

Digital documents are an entrepreneur’s best friend; they’re easier to store, organize, backup, share, search, access, and transport in comparison to physical paper. On the other hand, scanning the contents of your filing cabinets into digital form is akin to watching wet paint dry on a rainy day. Enter OfficeDrop, a new startup that hopes to ease the process of getting your paper and documents digitized and online.

My Experience With Pixily

Since Pixily was in private-beta, I decided to try them out and make use of the free document digitizing service. By the way, Pixily has since gone live and was just recently featured in the Boston Globe’s tech section and on ReadWriteWeb.

After signing up, I received a pair of pre-paid First-Class DuPont Tyvek flat envelopes which according to DuPont are tear-resistant and waterproof. Admittedly, I was nervous about sending important documents and receipts via mail for fear of something happening to them en-route to OfficeDrop’s processing facilities; yet to be fair I’ve sent important documents via First-Class mail in the past without issue. OfficeDrop’s CEO Prasad Thammineni did tell me that they’re looking into creative ways to add tracking, yet the option of tracking via USPS would result in trips to the post office for customers. If you want a sense of how long the process takes, my documents were mailed on July 17th and arrived at OfficeDrop’s Waltham, MA scanning center on July 21st; I received an email on July 23rd notifying me that all pages were scanned, uploaded, and had been mailed back to me.

The scan quality is actually pretty good, and documents are grouped into single PDFs where applicable. There was an instance where unrelated pages were grouped into a single PDF while other related pages were not, and OfficeDrop is currently working on several solutions that will allow customers to specify page grouping and document tagging prior to mailing documents in. Also being considered is a Flickr like interface that will allow users to organize pages within documents, rotate pages, and delete any unwanted pages. Optical character recognition (OCR) is also added to each PDF which makes searching through documents possible. Their current search engine does not allow for partial searches, wildcard operators, or handwriting recognition; yet these features are part of their search plans and will be rolling out in the coming months.

If you wish to download your digitized documents, you have the option of either downloading a single document or downloading 10 PDFs at a time. I was hoping that a bulk download option was available where you could download your entire account, but I could see how bandwidth intensive that could become considering that each PDF is several megabytes each. Also, no option exists to have all your documents burned to a CD and sent to you, but you can easily do that yourself. In addition, you are also given the option to upload your own PDF documents to your OfficeDrop account and support for Microsoft Office and image formats is currently in the works. You also have the option of organizing your documents online via tags and sharing your documents via a private URL which can be set to expire if needed.

Security And Confidentiality

In regards to security and confidentiality, OfficeDrop states that all employees undergo extensive background checks and interviews prior to being hired. They also track employee handling of envelopes and scanning throughout their entire processing system. In addition, recording instruments are not allowed in the scanning facility and additional security checks by independent security consultants and fraud experts are being considered.

As far as online security goes, OfficeDrop encrypts your files before storing them on Amazon’s Web Services, which by the way is also used by Amazon’s own developers for business-critical operations. They also utilize automated network security audits via McAfee Secure.

Items Of Interest

• OfficeDrop’s plans are monthly subscriptions that range from a free account with 200 pages of online storage (sans mail-in envelopes) to a ‘Select’ account with 12,000 pages of online storage and four mail-in envelopes per month.
• A pay-per-use option is available by choosing the digital-only plan which runs $4.95 per month plus $14.95 per mail-in envelope, although it would be nice to have an easier option which didn’t involve signing up for a monthly plan.
• You can mail up to 50 sheets per envelope at no additional charge; additional sheets are charged 12¢ per sheet (the envelope itself will fit about 75 sheets).
• As mentioned before, support for Microsoft Office and image uploads is in the works but not yet available. Also, secure PDFs are currently not supported yet it’s on their list of future releases.

In Conclusion

OfficeDrop was actually born out of personal need as OfficeDrop’s CEO Prasad actually spent two weeks scanning over 8000 pages worth of MBA course notes after realizing that digital copies would be easier to store, distribute, transport, and search through. Personally, I think it’s a great business idea and the service is ideal for individuals hoping to declutter their offices or kick the paper habit completely. Aside from the constructive feedback I offered above, I was actually pleased with my OfficeDrop experience, both with the service and the communication I received from OfficeDrop’s CEO. By the way, OfficeDrop is offering a 30-day risk-free trial just in case you want to try the service out for yourself.

So, have you or would you use OfficeDrop to go paperless? Feel free to leave your ideas and comments below!

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Post Scriptum: Twitter users can follow @officedrop and @prasadt for the latest company news.

UPDATE: It appears that Drop.io’s free fax service was too generous for its own good. Starting July 24th, 2008, Drop.io revised its service and is now only offering users the ability to receive faxes for free. To send a fax, you will have to sign up for a premium account which will run you $10 a year for the least expensive upgrade. It may still be a good option depending on the amount of faxes you’re planning to send; check out faxZERO, eFax, and FaxIt Nice for other online faxing alternatives.

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I know what you’re thinking; a free service always has a catch. Well the catch in drop.io’s case is that you must use a US-only fax number, and the documents you send cannot exceed 20 pages or 100MB in size. To receive a fax, the receiver (you) must email (or print and send) a provided cover page to the sender. The sender must use this cover page to send the fax, then the fax shows up in your drop.io account as a PDF.

Clearly there are limitations to drop.io’s free fax service, but I have yet to find an alternative that even comes close to what drop.io offers. Plus, you can always get around the 20 page limit by printing to PDF with two or three pages per sheet if your software allows it. Another route would be to split your document into files of 20 pages or less, yet be forewarned that a specific fax number can only receive a fax from drop.io every six hours. Regardless, drop.io’s free fax service is outstanding in my opinion, and the catch is so trivial that you might actually feel guilty for not paying to use the service.

My Experience With Drop.io Fax

Signing up for a drop.io account was extremely quick and painless; the only requirement was a file(s) to upload and a custom or random name for the drop. By the way, drop.io refers to their accounts as private sharing points called ‘drops’, but more on that later. In addition, you get to choose the privacy level, an optional password, and a lifespan for your drop; absent is the need for an email address, registration verification process, or any personal info.

Once you have uploaded a file to your drop, you choose ‘send’ from the list of available options and then choose fax from the drop down menu on the subsequent page. A status icon appears next to your file to tell you when your fax is in queue and when it has been sent.

Drop.io, The Entrepreneur’s Swiss Army Knife

Interestingly enough, the free fax service is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to drop.io’s features. Drop.io was built from the ground up as an online storage, sharing, and collaboration application yet its uses are vast; some items that budding entrepreneurs will be interested in are…

• Sending and receiving faxes
• Sharing files of all types – Office docs, photos, video, et cetera
• Recording voice messages, memos, and podcasts via phone
• Recording phone conversations or interviews
• Setting up conference calls
• Writing, sharing, and collaborating via notes
• Collaborating in general
• Online storage and data transfer between computers
• Posting press releases

There’s even an option to print out business cards which include your drop.io voicemail, conference line, and URL.

Again, it’s all free.

In Conclusion, Drop It Like Its Hot!

Seriously, I can go on and on about how useful this collaboration tool is for entrepreneurs and home office warriors on a budget. Not to mention, it’s great for anyone who is trying to setup a paperless office and doesn’t want to feel trapped by not having a fax machine or paid online fax service. My only wish is that drop.io creates a desktop application similar to what Dropbox has done, that way users can just drag & drop files into their drop on their computer without having to use a web interface. Regardless, I would highly recommend checking drop.io out to see if it suits your storage, collaboration, and sharing needs.

Anyone else using drop.io? If so, feel free to leave a message in the comments about your experience with the service.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Post Scriptum: For those of you who can’t make use of drop.io’s free fax service, check out this post on Groby Unplugged about faxing from your computer.

Your Gmail inbox is about to reach the next level of anal-retentiveness! Although Gmail doesn’t have a search operator for unlabeled emails, there is a way to find all unlabeled emails in your inbox.

The Good News!

Gmail’s advanced search operators can be used to locate all unlabeled emails by using the following search query:

-(label:your-1st-label OR label:your-2nd-label OR... label:your-last-label OR from:me OR in:chat)

So, if you had two labels named red stapler and Milton, your search string would look like this:

-(label:red-stapler OR label:Milton OR from:me OR in:chat)

Take note that every space in a label must be replaced with a hyphen. Also, the from:me and in:chat snippets exclude all emails that you have sent or are part of a saved chat; remove these items if you want your unlabeled sent messages and chats to appear.

The Bad News…

First, the code does work as advertised, but Gmail’s conversation feature may group related email regardless of whether they are labeled or unlabeled.

Second, typing up a search string for a few labels is easy, but typing up a search string for several labels is a complete pain!

The Solution, Generating Your Search String…

Firefox + Greasemonkey users have it easy since Jaidev created gmailUnlabelled, a Greasemonkey script that creates an unlabeled button in your sidebar.

If you’re not using Firefox or Greasemonkey, then download my Unlabeled Gmail Search Spreadsheet which generates a search string for you. Simply follow the instructions located in the spreadsheet.

Excel 2004 for Mac users can download a reformatted version of the spreadsheet by clicking here.

Dealing With Labeled Emails That Show Up In Your Search Results…

As mentioned before, there’s a chance that labeled emails will show up in your search results. To circumvent this problem, you can either 1) select the email and add the same label again, or 2) add a new label (e.g., Read, Labeled) that shows it has already been read/labeled. Just remember that you will need to add a label:your-new-label to your search string to account for any new labels you create.

In Conclusion…

In this day and age of Inbox Zero, GTD productivity hacks, and the super-sized giga-inbox, having a well labeled and organized inbox can help you stay on top of all your important emails and follow-ups. If you have any questions or tips for keeping your Gmail inbox organized and well labeled, leave a comment below!

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Looking for decent software to record that tutorial, PowerPoint presentation, training video, or random screencast on your PC? Well thanks to an ad in PC Plus Magazine (UK), anyone and everyone can get a free copy of TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio 3! Simply CLICK HERE to download the install file, then visit www.techsmith.com/camtasia/pcpls.asp and request a software key to enable the full version.

So what’s the catch?

The catch is that Camtasia Studio 3 is an old version and TechSmith is hoping that you’ll love the software so much that you’ll shell out $150 for the latest version, Camtasia Studio 5. Keep in mind that Camtasia Studio 5 is regularly priced at $300 so you’re still getting a 50% discount – that’s something to think about before disregarding the offer.

Regardless, Camtasia Studio 3 is still one of the best screen recording and producing tools out there, so definitely take advantage of the offer before it is gone. You can also CLICK HERE for a feature comparison if you’re debating between Camtasia Studio 3 and Camtasia Studio 5.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Post Scriptum: Stay tuned for tips on getting the most out of your screencasts.

How to add some “bling” to your Craigslist posting…

Craigslist allows HTML to format your post layout and text, which is all fine and dandy if you’re versed in HTML coding or handy with an HTML editor like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver. The only inconvenience is that custom images require separate hosting and a custom layout requires manual coding. Instead, you can simplify the process by using vFlyer to take care of all the formatting and coding for you. Here’s a summary of the process:

• Step 1: Sign up for the free vFlyer Personal plan.

• Step 2: Create your flyer, there are a number of types to choose from.

• Step 3: Edit and publish your flyer.

• Step 4: Copy and paste the HTML code to your Craigslist post.

• What you’re left with is a nice, eye catching post:

So what’s the benefit?

The first thing to note is that you are no longer restricted to the Craigslist default of four pictures since vFlyer allows up to 15 photos to be uploaded, the only caveat is that users are redirected to an external vFlyer page to view the slide show. There are also 14 templates for you to choose from with the option to create a custom theme if your heart desires. Also, the vFlyer code can be used on other sites such as eBay and MySpace, and last but not least you can email and print these flyers for distribution.

In conclusion…

Standing out from the crowd is a great idea (unless you’re a zebra), and free tools like vFlyer can easily provide some much needed eye candy to help you sell and promote your products, services, blog, company, et cetera in front of millions of Craigslist users without the need to learn or code HTML. Yet if you’re one of those adventurous types who wants to try a custom solution, you can pretty much do anything with HTML in your Craigslist post as long as it meets the HTML and photo requirements.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Post Scriptum: There are vFlyer alternatives such as postlets and ClassifiedFlyerAds just in case you want to try something different. If you’ve tried either of these services or know of a service I may have missed, please feel free to leave a comment and tell us about it.

Benefits

Most websites relay newly published content via Atom and/or RSS feeds, and a feed reader grabs this newly published content and acts like an inbox for feeds. For example, if you subscribe to the Craigslist Phoenix Real Estate RSS feed (the RSS link is located at the bottom of the page), your feed reader will be updated with new Phoenix real estate listings when a listing is published on the site. The same goes for blog posts, NPR news articles, del.icio.us business tags, Last.fm music charts, Flickr photos, and just about anything as long as it is published via a feed.

The nice thing is that all you have to do is check your feed reader for new content instead of visiting each site individually. Plus, you no longer have to give out your email address as is required by sites that send out updates via email. In addition, there’s no need to unsubscribe from a mailing list; instead you unsubscribe from a feed within your feed reader.

Personally, it’s nice to be able to have a list of unread posts available when I’m not able to keep up with my favorite blogs. Also, most of the blogs I follow are updated on a semiweekly, weekly, or biweekly basis so there’s no need to continually check the sites to see if new posts have been published. In the end, a feed reader can really be a time saver.

Some Drawbacks

• I found with Bloglines that some feeds I subscribed to were not being updated, this was eventually fixed once the site owner contacted their technical support.
• Sometimes, new feeds appear several hours after a post or article has been published. I haven’t looked into this since it’s not a big deal for me, but I could see this becoming an issue for anyone who wants to stay up-to-the-minute with newly published content.
• Also, feeds are displayed in plain formatting which is a bummer for sites that have spent a lot of time on their visual appeal and design. Thankfully, there are links to the content for direct viewing.
• And finally, some features such as video, audio, or podcasts may not show up in the feed. Most developers and bloggers have addressed this by adding messages to the feed informing users to visit the site.

Tips

Most popular feed readers are free to use, so I would suggest trying out a few until you find one you like. I personally use Google Reader since it’s included with Gmail, yet I was perfectly happy using Bloglines and recommend them both. Some email clients and browsers (like Yahoo! and Firefox) already have built in feed readers, so chances are that you might already have access to one. Most feed readers also offer the ability to tag or organize your feeds within folders, which comes in handy when the need to categorize arises. Something that has worked for me is using a “trial” folder for new and distracting feeds. If I find that a feed is not of interest to me, then I simply unsubscribe from it. If I find that a feed is useful and entertaining then I promote it from the “trial” folder to my regular feeds.

There are tons of other uses for feeds that I didn’t cover, yet I would recommend doing some research on Google and Wikipedia. Also, if you publish a feed which Blogger, Typepad, WordPress, and MySpace automatically does for you, then a service like FeedBurner can help track subscribers and enhance your feed with various features.

I created a short video about feeds and feed readers, you can view it by clicking on the “What’s This” link in my sidebar. There’s also a thorough writeup by Mark Glaser on MediaShift that goes into more detail about feeds and feed readers and contains a nice list of resources, you can view the article HERE.

Have a feed reader you recommend or tips that may be of use, then feel free to leave a comment!

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Post Scriptum: If you decide to start using a feed reader, you can subscribe to my feed by clicking HERE.

I used Gliffy to create a flowchart of my hostile financial takeover of the world and was pleased by how intuitive and easy the application is to use (which is extremely important when you’re planning a financial takeover of the world). There are two columns on the left and right hand side of the workspace that contain all symbols and their formatting properties. The top toolbar contains the text, drawing, and viewing options, and you have the option of reverting to previously saved versions of your diagram if you so desire.

The only issue I had was with the color picker which uses a HEX color-value to distinguishing between available colors. In a perfect world this is not a problem since people see in color, yet colorblind suckers like myself sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between certain colors (yes I know – it’s always about my needs). It would be nice if a color description was available, yet the app is too nice to pass up so I’ll stick to shades of gray for now.

My Verdict: Definitely check out Gliffy if you’re ever in need of a kick-butt diagram creating app!

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

The site is pretty easy to use for first time form builders, and the free plan gives you three forms, 10 fields per form, three reports, and a maximum of 100 entries per month totaled across all forms. Here’s a random form I created to use as an example (feel free to fill it out if you like):

The Closet Entrepreneur Questionnaire!

I like how users are able to personalize their forms by creating custom themes with their theme builder. You can also integrate the form into your own site via their code manager, and the XHTML and CSS code is available in case you’re looking for an example of how to build a form from scratch. Although I’m not versed in web development, I thought I should mention that the Wufoo team has made their API available for advanced developers to use. And last but not least, you can stay up to date with form results by using an RSS feed or choosing the option of receiving an email every time a form has been filled out and submitted.

The one thing that really strikes me about Wufoo is the personality that creators Chris Campbell, Kevin Hale and Ryan Campbell have bestowed upon it. The overall execution of the site is also worth noting (look at me, acting like I’m some kind of graphic designer – I’m colorblind for gosh sakes!). An example of the “personality” I’m talking about can be found on the log off screen, where you’re greeted with “Parting is such sweet sorrow. Are you sure you want to logout?”. I think it’s much better than the obligatory “Thanks for using blahblah.com, goodbye.” I’ll admit that I definitely smiled and laughed plenty of times while browsing around and creating forms, which really added to the entire user experience.

In terms of design and usability, the site is pretty intuitive with plenty of Flash and javascript throughout.

My Verdict: I would definitely recommend trying out Wufoo if you’re ever in need of an online survey, quiz, contact form, et cetera (the FAQ page lists several other uses for the site). You can learn more about the site at Wufoo.com or by visiting their blog.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Post Scriptum: For those of you that are curious, the name Wufoo comes from a combination of Wu-Tang and Foo Fighters, two favorites of Kevin Hale.

-Web Based PDF Conversion-

ExpressPDF
The site provides conversion for MS Word, MS Excel, & web pages (their privacy policy seems to be under construction)

Neevia Document Converter eXpress
FYI, they have a 1MB file limitation on uploads.

-Local PDF Conversion- (installed on your computer)

PDFCreator
PDFCreator creates PDFs from any Windows program, just like Adobe’s Distiller.

CutePDF
According to the site, it was elected as one of the “50 Best free downloads” by Computer Shopper (May 2004).

PrimoPDF
Includes features like secure 40-/128-bit encryption and the ability to add document information (title, author, subject, keywords, et cetera).

extendedPDF
Allows PDF bookmarks and integrated hyperlinks.

*BTW, if you want to skip all this freeware and learn to do it yourself, you can visit O’Reilly’s PDF Hacks page. BTW, Apple’s OS X has the ability to create PDF’s built in.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

To access Stanford on iTunes, visit itunes.stanford.edu and click on the Open Stanford on iTunes link (this will automatically launch iTunes even if it is not running). There’s a FAQ section to explain why you can’t just search for Stanford on iTunes to access the link.