Derailed

Folks,
There have been some things happening here which are proving a major distraction, and my mind (and time) have not been on the tech and the blog. I ask for, and appreciate, your patience until I get things ‘back on track’.

And, please — be conscientious, and use good, healthy, “paranoid common sense” during this prime cybercrime season. (I.e., don’t open emails advertising extreme bargains on online stores you’ve never heard of before.) And, do the same while you’re in the malls, too (don’t leave your purse in the shopping cart, for instance).

It is the time of year to enjoy the best in life, not become crime victim, right?

Thanks.

Little White Xmas Tree

For those of you Windows 8 owners (or, if Santa brings you a new PC..) Two must-have downloads that make Windows 8 more bearable

“Rather than moaning about Windows 8, here are two downloads that make the user interface a lot more usable and bring back features that Microsoft decided to remove.” Read more..

For those seeking techy gift ideas be sure to check out the CNet Editors’ Holiday Gift Guides.

click me

Today’s quote: “Rings and jewels are not gifts but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of yourself.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Silly little poll (cont.)

Copyright 2007-2012 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Pen Scanners– A Back-to-School Must

There are some technologies that really do make me say, “gee, I wish they had that when I was a kid”, and one of them is the hand-held document scanner.

A hand-held document scanner is pretty much exactly what it sounds like it is; a portable device that allows you to “scan” text and images into digital form so you can store them on your computer… and thus access them for later study.
It’s kind of like having your very own pocket Xerox machine.

This is simply a “must have” if you are a researcher, or a student, as it replaces hand-writing out your notes, or carrying pockets full of coins to feed into the library’s copy machine.

When you find a relevant passage in a book, or other document, you simply pass the device over the text, much like you would use a highlighter. Later, you attach the device to your PC via a USB cord, and thanks to OCR, you can open your scanned passages in a text editor, like Word.

Hand-held document scanners (generally) come in two flavors; a true “pen” style — as pictured above — and a “wand” style.

The “pen” style makes it easier to capture just the lines of text that you are interested in. However, you must pass it in a fairly straight line, and wobbling it high or low may cause you to have to rescan the sentence (most have a preview window).. and some people use a plastic ruler as a guide.

I prefer the “wand” style, even though it (usually) means capturing a whole page. The color versions of these devices are pretty good at scanning images. Another advantage of the wand is if you are scanning tables and charts– the included software allows you to open the scanned tables in Excel.

Tip of the day: A simply fantastic Back To School gift (either for yourself, or someone you love) is a hand-held digital note taker. They’re quite reasonably priced.
My personal reco is to go with the slightly pricier wand scanner, and to go with the pricier-yet color model.

I won’t say which one’s “best”, but I will say that I agree with this PC Magazine review (read it here).

Today’s free link: SyncBack is a backup program that also functions as a file synchronizer, such as keeping your thumbdrive files and desktop files updated. From ZDNet:”Easily backup, synchronize, or restore your files to another drive, FTP server, ZIP file, networked drive, or removable media.”

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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