Update Released: Scanning Profiles

We’ve just released an update for Home Document Manager which introduces the concept of scanning profiles. This change should make scanning a whole lot easier.

We’ve removed the “Single Page” and “Multi page” scanning options, and replaced them with a single button with a dropdown menu. In here, we have added some pre-configured scanning profiles for the most common scan types.

Most typical documents should be scanned using the “Black & White Document” profile. This will scan the document to a black and white (binary) image at 300dpi. This is usually a high enough resolution to get good results with the OCR, but also offers a very compact file for archiving.

We also scanning to grayscale and color at 300dpi, as well as a hi-res color scan at 600dpi. Most documents do not need such profiles if we’re only interested in archiving the information.

The predefined profiles will not show you any further scanning dialogs, they will simply commence scanning. If you want to tweak the scan or use different settings, use the “Custom” profile, this will launch the familiar scanning settings interface.

We’ve also made a few other minor tweaks, like ensuring that tags and folders are always alphanumerically ordered.

As usual, no action is required on your part, Home Document Manager will update itself when an Internet connection is present.

Update Released: Tag Your Documents

We’ve just released a really nifty update. As of approximately 7 and a half minutes ago, Home Document Manager supports tagging as a way of organizing your documents. As any of you who use Gmail, Evernote, Zoho etc will know – folders are good, tags are great, but folders + tags is the business! Any of you familiar with GTD’s action tags or Covey Roles will already be familiar with the power of tags.

What is a tag?

A tag can be anything you want it to be. You can create tags corresponding to your project, your workflow, or how you like to organise your tasks. Tags are hierarchical, and completely free form. The important difference between Tags and folder is that tags are not mutually exclusive. A document can be in only 1 folder, but can have any number of tags. The image on the left is just an example of how you could organise your tags.

You can browse your documents with each tag in much the same way as you do with folders. Just click on the tag.

When documents appear in the document list, any tags they have will be displayed underneath their icons (shown left). Using tags is a great way add a little GTD to your paperwork. It certainly saves having papers sitting round with post-it notes stuck on them.

This is very much the beginning of Home Document Manager’s affair with tagging. There are a lot of other tag-oriented features on the roadmap. It’s an important new feature, so your feedback is really valuable.

As usual, no action is required on your part to receive this update. Home Document Manager will update itself whenever an Internet connection is present.

Update – Bulk Import and Export

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for new features here. Today, we’ve published an update which significantly improves the import and export capabilities of Home Document Manager. You have always had the option of importing and exporting files via the Import and Export buttons in the Ribbon, but now you can import/export entire directory folder structures in one fell swoop.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a short video should be the equivalent of an encyclopedea. Perhaps not. But anyway, here is a video of the new import features. You can also now export entire directories by simply right clicking on a folder and selecting ‘export’.

As usual, no action is required, Home Document Manager will update itself when an Internet connection is present.

Major Update Released – Action Required

Happy New Year all.

It’s Home Document Manager’s turn for a little “out-with-the-old” and a bit of “in-with-the-new”. I’ve just published a significant update for Home Document Manager. Ordinarily, the software will update its self without any action on your part, but on this occasion you will need to manually uninstall the application, then download the latest version from the website.

Here’s what’s new:

1. Updated scanning engine with wider scanner support.
2. Updated OCR engine with increased accuracy.
3. Bug fixed which prevented some Scansnap users from importing PDFs.

All the best for 2010!

Minor Bug Fix Update Released

I’ve just uploaded an update for Home Document Manager. Nothing Earth-shattering in this release, just a couple of minor bug fixes really:

• Fixed a bug which prevented PDFs with upper case extensions (.PDF instead of .pdf) being imported.
• Fixed a bug which caused scanned documents with large colour sections to be skewed incorrectly.
• A couple of minor GUI tweaks.

As usual, Home Document Manager will update itself when an Internet connection is present.

Related articles by Zemanta

• What’s the difference between Acrobat versions? (blogs.adobe.com)
• Thursday October 29,2009 – 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM US/Eastern – Using Acrobat Pro and Adobe Reader for Collaboration (blogs.adobe.com)
• GoodReader – Best PDF reader for iPhone (cristianobetta.com)
• GoodReader: Huge advance in PDF handling on iPhone (tor.com)
• Combining PDF pages in Snow Leopard (macworld.com)