Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Go paperless!

I love working on paper…. When I’m deep in thought, working on new ideas, I find myself to be most effective when I scribble on paper as I think.

There is something about that natural physical action that cannot be replaced by even the best drawing tools on a computer screen.

As much as I love paper however, I hate it as well.

It can really accumulate and if I’m not careful my desk and workspace can become a cluttered mess!

But, I have found a wonderful solution. I started taking digital pictures of all my important papers, uploading them on tagaabo, and then throwing away the original paper.

For example, here is my sketch idea for tagaabo:

sketch

I even use this method for business cards. (I also keep the original business cards in a box, but that’s only because I feel sorry if throw them away. I don’t try to organize them at all.) Here are some that I got at a recent conference:

cards

Some tips for taking the clearest and most readable photos of documents include:

  • Use a flash. This makes the shutter speed faster, resulting in a clearer image without blurring.
  • Take the picture from as close up as possible. This minimizes the blur caused by small hand movements.

Also, using Eye-fi is REALLY helpful. It automatically and wirelessly transmits my pictures to my Macbook, so I don’t have to bother connecting my camera to my computer all the time. Without it, I might get lazy about keeping up this habit….

2 comments:

Morten said...

I like the paperless-idea a lot!
But why don't you use a scanner instead of a digital camera?
You get a lot better readability of your electronical documents, and I think it's a lot less work putting the documents in the scanner.

hideaki said...

Scanner would work too. It's just I don't have one. Maybe I should buy one and look into the possibility.

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