Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [107]
• Business card scanner. Special scanner of business cards. Desktop scanners usually handle this, making them redundant.
• Photo scanner (slides, negatives, positives, and prints). Photo scanners require the ability to handle multiple items at high resolution (>1,000 dpi), including slides. Photo scanning services are an excellent alternative to owning a photo scanner.
• Book-specialized flatbed scanners cost a few hundred dollars but require setup time per page scanned. At the high end of the spectrum, a fully automatic book scanner sells for tens of thousands of dollars.
• Large format, e.g., for blueprints. There are a variety of special scanners for scanning large items such as plans and blueprints. Most people will not have very many of these to scan, and will better off using a service to scan large items. An alternative is stitching multiple scans together using image-editing software.
Photo- and slide-scanning services are everywhere, from drugstores to photo stores. The Web lists thousands of them. Document scanning services also abound. Some scanning services will also come to your facility to do the scanning. VendorSeek and RecordNation will get you several quotes from different vendors for scanning your documents.
http://vendorseek.com
http://recordnation.com
If you are handling scanned documents, PDF is likely the format you will settle on, and PDF tools for creation, OCR, and editing will be essential.
Adobe Acrobat Web site. https://www.acrobat.com
Nuance Web site. www.nuance.com
CutePDF Web site. http://www.cutepdf.com
Tools for recording family and small business finances:
Microsoft Money. http://www.microsoft.com/MONEY/default.mspx
Quicken. http://www.quicken.com
Mind Your Own Business. http://myob.com
Tools for music ripping and management:
Apple iTunes Web site. http://www.itunes.com
Microsoft Zune Web site. http:// www.zune.net
WinAmp Web site. http://www.winamp.com
Photo editing and management software:
Adobe Elements Web site. http://www.adobelements.com
Adobe PhotoShop Web site. http://www.photoshop.com
Apple iLife Web site. http://www.apple.com/iLife
Picassa Web site. http://picassa.google.com
Microsoft Live Photo Gallery. http://download.live.com/photogallery
Video editing and management software:
Adobe Premier Web site. http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere
Apple iMovie Web site. http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie
Microsoft Movie Maker Web site. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxpusing/moviemaker/default.mspx
Magix Movie Edit Web site. http://www.magix.com/us/video
Pinnacle Studio Web site. http://www.pinnaclesys.com
Ourpix Web site. http://www.ourpix.com
Movie Story Web site. http://ourpix/dvd-slid-show.html
See the Health section below for devices, especially by Philips, Bian caMed, BodyMedia, Oregon Scientific, and Omron. See that section also for health software, including Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and Quicken Health.
Microsoft OneNote uses a notebook metaphor for putting “everything,” e.g., handwritten notes, voice comments, e-mail messages, writing, Web pages, photos, et cetera, into a searchable hierarchy of notebooks, sections, and pages.
One Note Web page. http://office.microsoft.com/onenote
Evernote, patterned after OneNote and inspired by MyLifeBits, is a cloud service that includes the use of a cell phone for transferring images, video, and voice into the notebooks where it is stored and recognized for access.
Evernote Web site. http://www.evernote.com
Livescribe’s Pulse Smartpen is a pen with audio recorder enabling handwritten notes and text input. When handwritten notes become part of computer documents, the voice recordings can be retrieved by pointing to the text. The pen has numerous applications; one can use it as a calculator, recorder, and to record meetings. IOgear has the competing