The ScanSnap S1300: A Saviour from Paper Piles?

By Mark Evans in Product Reviews 2 Comments

This review is a guest post by Sean Evans.

I hate paper.

Like many people, I subscribe to e-bills whenever available, bank online, shop online…I even have a sign outside my house that says, “No junk mail, please!”

The “green” in me likes the idea of the world going digital and saving our precious forests, but it’s more that I hate how no matter what you do to get organized, the paper keeps piling up. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, if it weren’t for the fact that I also am loathe throwing anything out. Old receipts, manuals for appliances, recipes, old pay slips, and credit card statements. You name it, I hold onto it.

So this leaves me few options. Essentially, learn to live with the stacks of paper or digitize everything myself. And so a scanner is what I crave. Yes, I know, it’s old technology and almost a no-brainer. Yet every time see one in action, I’m left wanting…wanting for one of those giant, awesome scanners you only find in Kinko’s.

And now comes along the ScanSnap S1300 from Fujitsu. The elevator pitch sounds enticing! “Take document scanning to a whole new level with the ScanSnap S1300 mobile scanning solution. Whether you’re at home digitizing receipts, bank statements or term papers, or at the office capturing mission critical documents for a business trip, ScanSnap takes scanning beyond the desktop and into your world.”

And my test begins.

To make this even more challenging, I’m couch-ridden having just undergone knee surgery. So it this mobile scanner really is my slice of scanner heaven, it will have to pass the ultimate test of physical immobility.

The Unboxing
First impressions – this scanner is small (28cm x 7.5cm x 9.5cm). It’s briefcase-light (weighing only 1.25 kilograms). And it has only one button – Scan. Can something this small live up to the hype?

Software Installation
The scanner comes with both Windows and Mac software. I’m using an Acer Ferrari running Vista Ultimate. With the exception of the somewhat inconvenient extra “security” click that Vista requires and a reboot, installation was a snap.

Powering Up
It’s no surprise tha, the scanner requires a power supply in addition to the USB data connection for actual scanning. But much to my surprise, fully expecting that I would have to shuffle my way over to a wall socket, Fujitsu includes a secondary power cord that plugs into a spare USB slot. Great foresight and a nice feature if this is truly to be a scanner for the road warrior. Fortunately, having one to spare, I saved myself the pain of lifting my knee off the couch and plugged right in. Within seconds, the blue “Scan” buttons lit up and we are ready to go.

Basic Specifications
The SnapScan S1300 holds up pretty well at first glance.
• Scan up to 8 double-sided pages per minute
• Holds up to 10 pages in the automatic document feeder
• Cross-platform compatibility for PC and Mac
• One button Searchable PDF creation, PDF, and JPEG
• Scan to editable Word and Excel files.
• Create searchable keywords from highlighter text
• Business card scanning software.
• USB or AC-powered

What I really like with the fact that it can scan both sides of a page at once, making the most out of the 10-page hopper. It is worth noting that powering the ScanSnap via a USB port does reduce speed by 50%, but this is a pretty fair trade-off in my mind.

First Test
What better a test than my post-op rehabilitation instructions from the hospital? A combination of test, grid, handwriting, and drawings. And double-sided, no less.

Two double-sided pages and 42 seconds later, ScapScan presents the user with a raft of options, from saving to the Fujitsu’s proprietary document manager to Word to printing. For this test, I chose the document manager and the results were fantastic.

Given the number of options, the one not listed is linking this scanner to the cloud, using something like Evernote as my document client. This is definitely on the cards to try and would make my goals of going paperless even more interesting as being able to use the SnapScan on multiple computing devices would be a real bonus. (Hmm…I wonder when they will come out with the iPhone and iPad apps?!)

Second Test
For a second test, I combined the ScanSnap instructions with my cable company’s station guide pamphlet, wanting to see how the scanner would treat to pages of different sizes. Given that the hopper obviously only adjusts to the larger paper size, I assumed that the smaller scan would come out a bit wonky. No surprise, the smaller page went through the scanner slightly askew, yet SnapScan’s software corrected for this and the results were very good.

Third Test
On two pieces of blank paper, I wrote “This is a test.” The first with a Sharpee, the second in blank pen. Not having any expectations, trying to scan them into a Word document was a failure. With extensive further testing, it seems clear that this is not what I would use it for. Copying the same pages into a PDF worked great and considering that SnapScan’s document management makes them searchable, this is clearly the way forward for any hand written notes.

Final Test
For my final test, I scanned a Sudoku that I had ripped out of the newspaper. Not only did the ScanSnap handle the folded newspaper admirably, but the PDF produced was excellent! While it did include the backside of the page (having not indicated that I only wanted one-sided scanning) this was easily fixed with a right-click, page delete request.

Conclusions
The SnapScan S1300 is light, portable, flexible and comes with a full suite of scanning options. While this scanner certainly isn’t the most expensive one on the market, you have to decide for yourself whether the list price of $265 price tag is worth it. It may not be good for large batch jobs, but for the home office and road warrior, it has to be one of the best options in the market. For me, it is definitely a good investment in my drive to go paperless.

Has Facebook Jumped the Shark?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

Wired.com’s Epicenter is asking a question that many people have been whispering recently: Has Facebook gone rogue, and should we be looking for an alternative?

In the wake of Facebook’s new everything-is-public approach and its Graph API, it is difficult not feel Facebook is a different and less friendly social network that it used to be once.

As Epicenter notes, Facebook used to be a happy place to share updates and photos with friends and family, and perhaps play a few games. No matter how Facebook wants to position it, the changes it has implemented are all about the business and driving more revenue as opposed to serving its users better.

Of course, when you get down to brass tacks, a business is about revenue and profits, and if consumers are happy, that’s a bonus. For Facebook, the hard truth is despite having millions of users, it wasn’t making enough make to become a viable business. This explains why Facebook has decided that more public data means more traffic, which, in theory, means more revenue and profits.

If this new approach pisses off some users and privacy advocates along the way, Facebook seems to be saying “Tough, where else are you going to go?”.

Being arrogant is easy when you’re an industry Goliath with more than 400 million users and competitors – MySpace, Friendster, Bebo and Orkut – that are in decline or irrelevant. As much as having a viable alternative to Facebook would be a great thing, such a thing doesn’t exist right now.

As a result, we’re stuck with Facebook. It’s where the action is happening so companies have no choice but to be on Facebook even though they may have some reservations.

As I read recently, Microsoft didn’t really change it’s stripes until Google came along to provide consumers with another option. Facebook will continue to act like a petulant child until another, nice social network start-up emerges. The question is when and what it’s going to look and act like.

Welcome Home, @markevans!

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , , ,

A few days, I did something really dumb.

In trying to create a new Twitter account for a client, I accidentally deactivated @markevans. It was one of those moment when, like Homer Simpson, all you can do is say “Doh!”

According to Twitter, reactivating your Twitter account is not possible, although you would think that it would just be a matter of flipping a switch. Then again, if you’re dumb enough to deactivate your Twitter account, you only have yourself to blame if it can’t come back to life.

That said, I’m a glass half full person, who always believes everything happens for a good reason and that good things will happen to good people. (I also believe at the start of every hockey season that the Toronto Maple Leafs have a good chance of winning the Stanley Cup!)

So, I threw myself at the feet of Twitter’s support team (aka @support) to beg for forgiveness and the revival of @markevans.

Back and forth it went for several days with a steady stream of e-mails from Twitter’s support team, followed by hopeful replies. Just when the situation looked promising, another e-mail would arrive making things look uncertain.

In the meantime, I had resigned myself to @markevans disappearing into the ether, and had set up a new Twitter account, @markeconsulting.

Finally, the good news arrived:

Now, talk about getting good news!

Looking back, the worst part about losing @markevans – aside from the fact it was self-inflicted – was that I had spent two-and-a-half years nurturing it.

In the process, I had pragmatically and patiently selected 300 people to follow, and attracted more than 5,000 followers. To lose all that work was frustrating, particularly the people I had followed because restoring this group would be difficult, if not impossible.

Another important lesson is how dependent we are on third-party services for important parts of our digital footprint and personal branding.

Unlike a self-hosted blog that you control, a Twitter or Facebook account isn’t really yours. Sure you “own” your username but there’s no guarantee it can’t be taken away one day, or the service disappears. So while you spend countless hours nurturing a Twitter or Facebook account, it’s a lot of taking really good care of someone else’s garden.

Not that this will change my involvement with Twitter but it does provide a eye-opening lesson about what could happen if, for whatever reason, your plot of land on Twitter and Facebook suddenly disappeared.

Anyway, welcome back @markevans. Thank you @support, and thanks to everyone who stepped up to follow @markconsulting.

Social Media is a Partnership Between Man and Machine

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Over the past few weeks, a common thread in many of the more enthusiastic conversations about social media has been the role that people play compared with the technology.

These discussions have been focused on issues such as sentiment, particularly whether automated sentiment technology is accurate, and whether people can do a better job of assessing whether a conversation is positive, negative or neutral.

In particular, Jason Falls’ blog post on “Why You Shouldn’t Trusted Automated Sentiment Scoring” attracted a lot of attention.

There’s also been talk about social media monitoring and discovery versus curation done manually by people.

The emergence of these discussions is not a surprise. In fact, it’s a positive development because it reflects how the social media industry is evolving and maturing.

As social media monitoring usage becomes more widespread, there’s bound to more talk about the “what”, “who” and “why”, as well as the inevitable “man vs. machine” debate.

I think some of this discussion is motivated by the fact technology is taking over a role played by people for many years.

Before the Web and social media emerged to search and aggregate information, many companies used clipping services that used people to manually go through newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television broadcasts. It was an intensive and expensive process.

Now, technology has pushed people into the background. Social media monitoring and analytics technology can handle a lot of the grunt work by quickly collecting, aggregating, processing and presenting millions of conversations – something that people are not capable of doing.

But – and here’s the big “but” – technology can’t completely replace people, and technology shouldn’t completely replace people.

Despite the advantage of social media monitoring and analytics services, people will continue to play a key role in taking the information collected, and then providing insight, advice, context and recommendations about what the data means and what should be done with it strategically and tactically.

For example, technology can make it easy to identify key influencers and opinion leaders but people need to step into the fray to engage with these people and develop relationships.

People can also play an active role in helping perfect the technology. For example, all the talk about automated sentiment fails to take into account that perfection can be elusive because of things such as sarcasm and nuance.

Still, I’d take a system any day that processes millions of conversations to offer information and intelligence about what’s happening within the social media landscape, AND gives provides the ability to easily adjust sentiment when needed.

The bottom line is that social media is a partnership between people and technology. They serve different roles and, in many ways, couldn’t operate as well without each other.

The “man vs. machine” discussions are healthy but it’s really a “man AND machine” world that we’re living in.

(Note: This post originally appear on the Sysomos blog)

Audience Tackles Social Media ROI

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Within the social media world, return on investment (better known as ROI) is a raging conversation, probably because more people are starting to take a pragmatic look at how their social media programs are performing.

One of the challenges in measuring ROI is that social media offers two kinds of metrics: hard, which includes metrics such as Web site traffic, click-throughs and sales; and soft, which takes into account a stronger brand, better customer service, and happier customers, partners and employees.

Given the focus on social media ROI, it will be interesting to see the reception for a new and innovative service from Sysomos (Note: I’m the company’s director of communications) called Audience, which measures social media ROI and provides a value to potential customers.

In many ways, Audience is a game-changer because it gives marketers a new way to see whether their social media and online campaigns are working. What makes Audience so disruptive is that it delivers intelligence about what your potential customers are doing online, and the Web sites and blogs influencing them the most.

Here are the benefits for different people:

- Sales managers can identify and follow up on the most valuable leads. With Audience prospective customers and media sources are scored (using a virtual currency figure or dollar value) so their potential value can be understood and outreach can be prioritized.

- Community managers can focus on the most important relationships. Audience associates each blog and social site within the ecosystem with detailed statistics about its impact based on business objectives.

- Marketing managers can see how their campaigns are performing and the new leads being generated. As a result, they can finally measure ROI and attribute value to their social marketing campaigns.

For more on Audience, visit the launch page, or check out this video:

URL Shorteners Here, There, Everywhere

By Mark Evans in Web 2.0 1 Comment Tags: , ,

Bit.ly announced a bunch of new features today, including a refreshed and improved look and feel.

What struck me about the news was not so much what bit.ly did but the fact bit.ly is just one of dozens of URL shorteners battling for users. It wasn’t that long ago that tinyurl.com was pretty much the only game in town. Now, I don’t see tinyurl as much. Instead, there’s a non-stop number of URL shorteners with all kinds of strange names.

The question is whether and when the URL shortening bubble will bust. While bit.ly offers a premium service, many URL shorteners are free – and we all know how successful the free model has been beyond a handful of anomalies.

Here’s a chart comparing traffic for bit.ly and tinyurl.com:

For more on bit.ly changes, check out ReadWriteWeb.

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