Jim Robinson over at Money Talks News has put together a nice article giving five basic steps for getting a jump start on your paperless life.

Among other things he discusses options for prioritizing and cutting down on the total volume of stuff you plan on keeping, digital or otherwise.

“Backup, backup, backup” made number four on his list.

And finally, he provides a few notes on some helpful free organizing software. I think I’m going to check out that Know Your Stuff application he mentioned.

Five Tips to Paperless Finances (moneytalksnews.com)

A while back I had a rare opportunity indeed: I went on a business trip to India to visit our offshore team. We knew it was a once in a lifetime trip, so four of us took some vacation days and paid our own way on a side trip to some of the great cities of India after the business was done. When we finally sat down to pool our collection on layover in Frankfurt, there were over 1,500 photos.

What do you do with 1,500 photographs?

In hope of sparing some folks hours of boredom I’d like to share my ideas on this topic here. (more…)

Recently I have been mulling over the possibility of commuting to New York—owing to a hazy future at my current employer. Whether or not I am ready to trudge there and back every day of the week is still an open question, but the siren song of the city has its draw.

With such a fine commute comes an interesting problem: one needs to cart lots of stuff to and from, especially a laptop and possibly a Kindle for the train ride, but no one wants to lug huge bags throughout the subways of Manhattan.

Anyway, here’s the article from Wired Magazine’s How-To Wiki on how to Travel Light Without Leaving Your Laptop Behind.

Got any ideas? It’s a Wiki, so go ahead and contribute yours.

One point that I don’t think they mention: I want a bag or backpack that looks nothing like a laptop bag. I really don’t care to walk around with a neon sign on my back saying “I’m carrying $3000 in electronics!”

I’m still looking for that perfect gruffy looking bag.

A few weeks ago I pulled up a chair in front of an aging computer that is shared by many volunteers in order to log their work and do occasional web searches. After an hour or so of doing paperwork, I wanted to look something up on Google, so I selected the word and hit Control-C to copy it and quickly pasted it into the Google search bar, only to be greeted with an unusual error from Google saying that my search text was too long.

And the bits of the search string I saw had nothing to do with what I had copied. Clearly my Control-C did not “take” and I had pasted whatever stuff had been hanging around from the prior user.
My curiosity got the better of me and I opened Notepad and did a quick Control-V and watched in amazement as a young girl’s secrets were exposed before my eyes.

She is clearly struggling in her relationship with her boyfriend, because she had listed about fifty bad points about him in detail—and some were pretty bad. She then listed a dozen or so good points at the bottom. And I must admit that I read the whole story…and felt a voyeuristic guilt with each word.

I then closed Notepad and purged the clipboard and felt much better.
Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that I will feel uncomfortable the next time I see her. I feel like I snuck into her room and read her diary.

This is what she had done: She had written her personal note in Word or some other tool and then likely decided to email it to herself, so she copied and pasted the sordid details of her love life into Gmail, forgetting to purge the clipboard before going home.

And I, with no malice or intent, bumbled into her secrets.

Learn from the mistakes of others!

When was the last time you used a public computer at the library or worked on a common computer at school or work? Did you leave anything behind?

One of my pet peeves in software is the black-box application that calmly sucks in all of your files and does everything for you, until the day you want to swich apps. This is the iTunes model, followed by many other products.

I am of the opinion that rather than allowing an application to shuffle your life randomly, why not do it the old fashioned way and move your documents into folders of your choosing?

This article discusses some of the advantages of old-school folder management and gives a few hints along the way. (more…)

Several weeks ago I was sitting at the dining room table with a family friend going through a stack of documents and letters. Her husband had passed away suddenly some weeks before, and I was doing the best I could to help her untangle the paperwork and understand what was what. This unfortunate scene made it clear to me that sudden illness or death of a family member may require us to access files that they have, for many reasons.

Imagine that you were to become temporarily incapacitated for whatever reason…

• Can a family member log in to your computer, as yourself, in order to access your files?
• Can your spouse access your online banking details so the bills can be paid?
• Can your family find your insurance information that you scanned and filed away?
• Is there someone who can log in to any online accounts that need care and feeding?

Not a pleasant subject, indeed, but one that worries me from time to time.

One way to address these needs is to keep all of your passwords and so forth in one special place, using a password safe application, and make sure someone else has the access code. For example, you can use a tool such as 1Password or SplashId to store hundreds of secret bits that you use all the time, and your family might need.

You might consider writing down the master passwords that control your life and sealing them in an envelope that you provide to a trusted family member. Since this is such a great security risk if found by the enemy, you might want to omit any identifying information from the note. Impress upon them the need to secure the document very well.

Perhaps you can choose the same master password with your spouse, with one relatively short password locking your computer and a long secure password locking your password safe application.

Regardless of how you address these issues, sit down with your better half (or trusted family member) and review where documents are and how to access them.

Some time back I published an AppleScript that allows one to automatically run OCR in the background on scanned files generated by your Fujitsu ScanSnap, while you to continue scanning more files. ScanSnap owners should all be familiar with this: the out-of-the-box configuration of the ScanSnap Manager and Abbyy Finereader force the scan and OCR stages to run in lockstep: scan 1…OCR 1…scan 2…OCR 2… and so on. This script allowed you to scan regardless of the OCR processing going on.

As it turns out, my original script does not work in Snow Leopard, and I promised that I would one day clean up and publish my new and improved version.

Chris posted a comment today as a gentle reminder, so here is the new and improved version without further delay…
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Some decades ago, when I was in high school, I somehow managed to get my hands on a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook. For a teenager in a society before the Internet, this was a fascinating read, though tame by today’s standards.

I never really considered that this book might raise eyebrows until some years later when I was in the Navy. We had just come back from a cruise and everyone was heading out to their dormant cars to go off base. One of my shipmates was quite surprised to find police surrounding his vehicle when he reached the parking lot. It seems that a few weeks prior, some night watchman had seen two curious items in the back seat with his flashlight: the butt of a BB pistol and … The Anarchist Cookbook. He sure had some ’splainin’ to do about that one. They were more interested in the book than the pistol.

What about today? Do we have to worry if our reading habits are known to others?

Though I chuckle at the thought that anyone would care that I have Clive Cussler in my Kindle, it’s not difficult to imagine situations where one might not want Kindle searches or eBook library contents known:

• People reading hotly political materials that might attract unwanted government attention.
• Folks who are reading materials that hint at their sexual orientation, a fact they might wish to keep private.
• Readers who are searching for materials on one of many different illnesses, that they might not want potential employers and insurers to know about.

Want to know how eBook vendors are treating your privacy? Here’s an article on the subject by Ed Bayley on the Deeplinks Blog:

An E-Book Buyer’s Guide to Privacy

This article provides a table with five key e-reader technologies—Google Books, Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, Sony Reader, and FBReader—and provides answers to several key privacy questions for each product.

Even if you have nothing to hide, think about this: Considering how poorly Amazon chooses recommendations for me, I wonder how poorly our government might pigeonhole me based on my book collection. One thing is certain: somewhere in that list is one ancient copy of The Anarchist Cookbook!

Last summer I finally gave in to the tantalizing siren song of the Kindle and bought one to take on a road trip—it was everything I had hoped for and more.

Soon after returning from that trip I wrote a review of my Kindle experience. Now some time has passed and I am coming back to relate the Kindle experience over time. (more…)

It’s too comical to be true. A few months back, when I wrote an article warning about inadequate attempts at sanitizing PDF documents, I thought that any organization serious about censoring documents would not make such a basic error. Especially not a government agency, after the military had been caught by this pitfall.

Apparently this is not the case

It seems that the TSA has leaked their official document of airport security guidelines. ABC News says Online Posting Reveals a “How To” for Terrorists to Get Through Airport Security

(more…)