Yesterday, PC World’s blog The Cost Cutter encouraged businesses to use document scanning as a means for “saving time, space, and ultimately money.” Zach Stern discussed the necessary work involved in scanning your documents but suggested Pixily’s award winning service as one way to eliminate that overwhelming task.
To better understand how our service can help you save time, check out this video on our document management service and how it functions like a search engine for your valuable digitized documents.
Please be sure to post any questions you might have or let us know if Pixily has enabled you or your business to become more organized, productive, and efficient while saving money.
We take pride in finding innovative ways to solve our customers’ problem (Our easy workflow using pre-paid Scanvelopes or boxes, our adoption of the Cloud even before it was the next big thing to name a couple), so it feels great to win the MITX Technology Innovation award in the Cloud Computing Category.
The annual awards program recognizes achievements in the development and implementation of innovative technologies. Specifically, for the Cloud Computing Category, judges evaluated entries based on a defined set of criteria including: business solution, technical merit, scalability and innovation. For this category, judges also looked for Security and Energy efficiency.
Given the criteria, Pixily may seem to be an obvious choice, especially as it relates to our use of the Cloud and specifically that of Amazon Web Services. Use of the cloud helps us keep our fixed costs low, scale easily and most importantly, pass on those cost savings to our customers.
Pictures and videos from the event to follow soon. Meanwhile, join us at, ahem, Cloud Nine, to celebrate.
Pixily has just recently published a demonstration video of how the Pixily document management service allows users to text search within their paper files. Pixily document scanning service uses state-of-the-art optical character recognition. This means that once paper files have been processed into the Pixily service, users can search for specific pages, information or keywords just like they would use a search engine to search for web sites or information online.
At Pixily, we believe that this search feature will unlock the information within you paper files, saving you time and helping you get better organized. If you haven’t do so already, please sign up for a free trial and see the power of the Pixily document management system for yourself! Watch the video below to learn more about how the search feature works.
Pixily’s Document Management Service is a Search Engine for your Paper Documents
Pixily is excited to announce a webinar for Professional Organizers who are looking to better help their clients organize their paper. Paper documents and files are one of the most challenging aspects of any organization system. The Pixily electronic file management system converts paper files into text-searchable digital documents - included in the price, Pixily handles the difficult job of scanning paper files and converting them into digital PDF files. Pixily’s award winning online document management service is an easy, quick and affordable paper management solution for consumers and small businesses. Learn how Pixily integrates with a Professional Organizer’s business and how Pixily can generate affiliate revenue for organizers.
In this webinar, we will discuss:
the basics of how the Pixily service works - the paper mail in system, our document scanning system and more
how your clients can get their paper piles into the document management system
how document labels can help them make order out of their paper chaos
the advantages of the Pixily search feature, and how it will help clients quickly and easily find the information/document they are looking for
how you as a Professional Organizer can develop a recurring relationship with your clients and how you can not only help them keep organized every month but how you can earn money every month they are using the system.
Including questions this paper management webinar should take just under 30 minutes.
Faxes? Are you kidding me? Does anybody use them anymore? Turns out, a lot of people do. A recent article in Inc Technology reports that approximately 25 million U.S. businesses — large and small — still use traditional fax machines. And only about 30 - 40% of small businesses have adopted some form of Internet-based faxing. And another study by AT&T shows that 57% of small businesses polled said that fax machines are very important to running their businesses. So clearly, there is a lot of faxing happening.
If you are a small business using either electronic or traditional fax, you should consider centralizing them all in a single place, so that the information in fax is available readily to you. Imagine fumbling through a wad of paper when your customer is on the line waiting for you to sift through them. Even if you use electronic fax, many providers still send the faxes as TIFF files (yep, TIFF files are nearly synonymous with faxes even today), which cannot be viewed in a browser and need special software in your desktop.
If your business already uses Pixily, you can easily centralize all your electronic faxes with a few simple steps. Almost all desktop email clients (such as Micrsoft Outlook or Apple Mail) and web based email (such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc,.) provide the ability to setup rules to automatically forward emails to another account. You can configure this rule to forward to your pixilymail email dropbox.
Automatically forward all email from your electronic fax provider to your pixilymail account. For example, automatically configure all email from Links to popular email clients are provided below. When configuring use your pixilymail email account as the forwarding address.
Update your Pixily preference to not notify sender about received emails. By default, when someone sends an email to your pixilymail account, the sender gets a confirmation that the documents have been received by Pixily. Sometimes, depending on email server configuration, Pixily will think of the email as coming from your electronic fax provider and not from you. So it is recommended that you turn off the notification. This means that you also have to add your fax provider to the allowed domains list. (Hat tip to our incredible user base for this suggestion. You rock!)
Turn off Email notification to sender:
Authorize your fax domain provider (if necessary):
This same tip applies to electronic receipts as well. For example, you may configure the amazon.com domain as above and have all your receipts automatically be aggregated in Pixily.
Do you still use a fax machine to communicate? Do you find this useful? Any other suggestions on making your fax life easier? Let us know.
In a U.S adaptation of the expense scandal rocking the U.K, The Wall Street Journal has a great story on the current state of expense management and receipt tracking in the House and Senate.
According to the Journal “Currently, the information is published only in printed volumes”. Summaries of lawmaker expenses are available to the public in print, either by mail or in volumes that can be viewed in basement rooms on Capitol Hill. The House’s quarterly reports — which run over 3,000 pages apiece, across multiple volumes — are stored in a cupboard in a windowless office near a shoeshine stand. The Senate’s semiannual reports, which use type about half the size of the print in a daily newspaper, are in a building nearby. Expense entries for both chambers can be difficult to decipher, with entries and explanations sometimes cutting off midword.”
That is a lot of locked up information, of value both to the general public and to the lawmakers themselves. Clearly there are better ways to deal with that information and all the information can be made searchable and made accessible anytime, anywhere (or by anyone). The Journal also goes on to say that “The House and Senate say they are considering making lawmakers’ spending records available in electronic form”.
We would like to extend an open invitation to them. Just send your receipts and expense reports to Pixily. We will liberate your (our?) information, and can do our bit towards transparent governance? What say you?
Update: Looks like our blog post had its intended effect. WSJ breaking news reports that Speaker Pelosi has ordered that the information be made available online. We are glad we could help Attached snippet from the Journal :
June is Innovation Month in New England. As Scott Kirsner writes in his recent Globe article, Innovation month is about two things: Connection and Conversation.
As a proud member of the Innovative community in the area we are happy to join the conversation and grow the connections in this area. You can see the torch-bearers of Innovation @ Pixily in these events and more.
What if you could get all your documents (paper and digital) scanned and be readily accessible, in your desktop or on the road. That’d be cool, isn’t it? What if you don’t have to do the scanning yourself? Even better, right? Who said that you can’t eat your cake and have it too?
Pixily’s users already enjoy the convenience of having all their documents available in one central location, and access it using a web browser. Now, you can also have those documents available right at your desktop, thanks to Evernote.
Evernote, in their own words, helps you to Remember Everything. You can capture and access information using whatever device or platform you find most convenient. Everything you put into Evernote is always synchronized across all of your devices.
Exporting your scanned, uploaded and emailed documents from Pixily to Evernote automatically synchronizes those documents to the Evernote desktop client (available for both Windows and Mac) and to your iPhone. Like other documents in Evernote, the contents are made searchable.
So, why is this cool?
Here are a few examples of how Pixily and Evernote can help you:
Access scanned documents on your desktop: Stuck in the airport, without an Internet connection? Need to look up that contract? Need access to last month’s invoices? No Problem. Use the Evernote desktop client to view documents scanned at Pixily, right in your desktop. Impress your client with all the information in your fingertips.
Access scanned documents on your iPhone: Have your recipe Collection at Pixily? Need to look up the ingredients at the grocery store? Use your iPhone, get all the ingredients, save an additional trip. Guests love your brownies and you score brownie points with your spouse.
Microsoft Document Formats now searchable in Evernote: Wish you could search the contents of your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations in Evernote? No problem. Upload them to Pixily and Send to Evernote. You can then search from the web, on your phone or right from your desktop. Talk about Ubiquitous Capture.
Handwritten documents: Your class notes digitized at Pixily? Handwritten documents (manuscripts, class notes etc,.) can be sent from Pixily to Evernote, and thanks to Evernote’s handwriting recognition technology, can be searched.
So, what are you waiting for? Put your memory on steroids. Legally! Sign up now for Evernote and Pixily and follow instructions here to get setup . And tell us how it helps YOU remember everything, including paper.
Click the Authorize Button in Evernote (You may have to login to Evernote)
Once you have authorized, you may also use this page to revoke the authorization at any time. Additionally you can also specify the default notebook to which you want your documents sent to. You may consider having a notebook for recipes, a notebook for work related documents, a notebook for your kids’ artwork etc,.
Send Documents: From the snippet view or from the page view of the document viewer, you may now send the documents to evernote. Select Send to Evernote as shown below and select the notebook. Be default, only the first page of the document is sent to Evernote. You may also optionally send the entire document.
Accessing from EvernoteThe documents and their labels are now available in Evernote web as notes and tags. They are automatically synchronized with Evernote mobile client (available now for iPhone and Windows Mobile), or the Desktop Client (available for Windows and Mac OS/X)Evernote Desktop:
Evernote iPhone:
Pixily's Get Organized blog discusses how consumers, professionals and small businesses can leverage the Internet to become organized by going paperless. Pixily advocates scanning all paper documents and receipts and also uploading all digital documents into a central online storage thereby making it as easy as Google search to find them. This helps users save time in finding them and sharing them safely with others; save money in unclaimed discounts, tax benefits and late fees; save space and reduce clutter. Finally, for every two households that go paperless, you can save a tree.
Yesterday, PC World’s blog The Cost Cutter encouraged businesses to use document scanning as a means for “saving time, space, and ultimately money.” Zach Stern discussed the necessary work involved in scanning your documents but suggested Pixily’s award winning service as one way to eliminate that overwhelming task.
approximately 25 million U.S. businesses — large and small — still use traditional fax machines. And only about 30 - 40% of small businesses have adopted some form of Internet-based faxing. And another study by AT&T shows that 57% of small businesses polled said that fax machines are very important to running their businesses. So clearly, there is a lot of faxing happening.
In a U.S adaptation of the expense scandal rocking the U.K, The Wall Street Journal has a great story on the current state of expense management and receipt tracking in the House and Senate.
Attached snippet from the Journal :
Click the Authorize Button in Evernote (You may have to login to Evernote)
You may consider having a notebook for recipes, a notebook for work related documents, a notebook for your kids’ artwork etc,.
