Scanner Apps for Your Phone

If you use an Android phone, I highly recommend HandyScanner Free (http://tinyurl.com/3kuoo59). 

 

Scanner Apps Turn the Phone Into a Fax Machine

By BOB TEDESCHI

A few years ago I tried to use my fax machine. I hadn’t used it in months and it failed. I didn’t even think about replacing it.

Of course, during the one or two times each year when I actually needed to send a fax or scan a document or receipts, I almost regretted not buying a new machine.

Now even that shred of regret is a thing of the past. For the price you might pay to send a fax from the local copy shop, you can buy an app that scans documents, builds PDF files and exports them without all the hardware headaches.

Free apps like JotNot Scanner are a good entry point for cautious buyers, but on Apple, at least, paid apps like TurboScan ($2), Scanner Pro ($7) and JotNot Scanner Pro ($2) are worth the money.

On Android, CamScanner (free for limited version; $5 for unlimited version) offers similar functions, while Scan to PDF is a good free option.

In customer reviews on iTunes, critics point out that you can always take a photo of a page, print it out and spare yourself the added cost of a scanner app. But this overlooks an important feature of these apps — namely, they make a page of text more readable for printing or reviewing on a bigger computer screen.

If you were to photograph a page from a book, for instance, you would have to push the page completely flat in order to get an image you could read. Otherwise the text curves so much that it hinders easy reading. For professional use, such photos would fall far short.

To get a sense of how these apps work, I would suggest trying a free app first. JotNot Scanner’s free app works like most of the others on the market, and of the free apps I tried, I liked it best.

The apps differentiate themselves primarily in the ease with which the image of a page, for instance, or words on a whiteboard can be tweaked. Other differences come in how the apps help in exporting the scans in different formats and to different online services like DropBox.

The scanning process is fairly consistent, regardless of the app. You take a photo of a page, preferably in good light. The software scans the image and lets you crop it before a version is created for sharing.

JotNot’s free and paid versions include an image stabilization feature that snaps the photo only when the phone is perfectly still, but my hands failed to meet this standard. I grew weary of waiting for the app to take the photo automatically, and as a result I struggled to get a snapshot that was completely free of blurry words.

Once the page was photographed, JotNot placed it into a frame with grid lines that I dragged across the image to orient the text horizontally.

It worked nicely. The text lay flat on the screen and, even with a few slightly blurry words, it was easy to read. You can pinch and zoom the page to get a closer look at words and phrases, and if you are scanning batches of pages, JotNot lets you build a multipage document.

The free version of JotNot includes ads, which is both annoying and a waste of valuable space on an already small screen, but it is a good app for those who merely want to test out the category.

It is worth spending $2 for the Pro version, which provides added screen room and other important benefits — chief among them the ability to export images via e-mail to an Evernote account or DropBox.

The only way to export a scan with the free version is to send it as a fax or print it — if, that is, you own a printer that connects to your device wirelessly. If you can export the document digitally, as with the Pro version, you can then retrieve it using a device that is wired to a printer.

TurboScan and JotNot Pro are highly rated by iTunes users, and I liked them both. For the money, though, I found TurboScan a little easier to use, and the printed images were noticeably lighter and more consistently clear. TurboScan’s text-alignment feature also required slightly fewer touches, and the app moved pages into my e-mail queue with fewer steps than JotNot Pro, which is valuable if you are scanning multiple pages from separate sources, where batch-scanning is less helpful.

Scanner Pro was also good, but in my tests its image quality was not as good as TurboScan’s, and some of the controls were placed so closely together that I often pressed the wrong button.

On Android, I preferred CamScanner. Its interface was intuitive, the image quality was good and documents flew to DropBox.

The free, advertising-supported version of the app allows users to scan 50 documents, with up to 10 pages per document, and it offers few exporting options, while the $5 version offers unlimited scans, more exporting options and no ads.

Scan to PDF’s controls were less precise than those of CamScanner, and the processing was slower, but exporting was fast and easy, the image quality was good and the app placed no limits on the number of available scans. Scan to PDF also put no limits on batch-based scans.

For occasional scanning needs, I’d choose Scan to PDF and leave CamScanner Pro to those whose lives are still too cluttered with dead trees.

Scanner Apps Make Digital Versions of Paper Documents - NYTimes.com

Google Music

How to Make Google Music Your Secondary Media Player (and Why You Should)

Even if you don't want to use Google Music as your full-time music player, it's become one of the best ways to back up and access your music library from anywhere. It doesn't need to be your main player; you can still reap the benefits of Google's free music backup and on-the-go streaming service. Here's everything you need to know about setting it up as a secondary player and getting around its few quirks.

Google Music started off as a cool service, but it wasn't without some pretty big annoyances. Since then, Google has slowly improved it to the point where it's one of the best music webapps out there—not to mention a great way to sync your library to the cloud and get access on your mobile device (for free, no less). While it isn't as easy as set-and-forget, it doesn't take a ton of work to set up, as long as you know its limitations and quirks out of the gate. Even if your using Google Music as your go-to music player now, you might still want to peruse this—I can almost guarantee you'll learn something new.

Uploading Your Music

Getting your MP3s into Google Music is a somewhat drawn out process, since it'll all take awhile to upload, but after the initial upload everything should be pretty easy. Here's what you'll need to do to get your music up and running in the cloud.

Pre-Upload Maintenance

Before you start uploading, you'll need to make sure your music is ready for Google. That means everything has to be in MP3, M4A, WMA, FLAC, or OGG format. Protected AAC (M4P), Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF, and RA are not supported. Note that it actually converts FLAC, OGG, and AAC files to 320kbps MP3 when it uploads, so you won't get them in the same format you have on your computer. That means FLAC files will be 320kbps, while AAC and OGG files will be compressed even more, which is bad. As such, we highly recommend keeping MP3 or FLAC versions of your files if you want to get the most out of the versions in the cloud—see our explainer on music bitrates for more information.

Next, if you haven't taken the time to whip your music's metadata into shape, this is a good time to do it, since you won't want to do it twice (once the files are uploaded). If you don't want to upload your whole collection, you'll also want to make a playlist now containing the songs you do want to upload. As we've recommended before, a good way to do this is to sort your library by "last played", "plays", or "highest rating" to get a good idea of the most important stuff (that is, if you don't want to do it by hand).

Performing the Initial Upload

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To start the process, download the Music Manager application and start it up. It will ask you where you want it to watch for music: iTunes, Windows Media Player (for Windows users), or a folder on your hard drive. I use iTunes, since I want it to sync all my playlists in addition to my music. Once you decide, it'll scan your library and start uploading. Keep in mind this will take awhile—like, days or weeks—so just forget about it for awhile. Make sure it's set to start with your computer under Music Manager's Advanced tab, and leave your computer on whenever you can.

You might also want to tweak a few other settings in the Advanced tab. I unchecked "Include podcasts" for the initial uploads, and then re-checked it later. This assures that your music is given priority over your podcasts, which you can always upload later if you want them. You can also tweak the amount of bandwidth Google Music uses, which is nice if you're also uploading other files, or if you are experiencing issues with voice and video chat. I usually leave it as "Fastest possible" unless I need to do something bandwidth-intensive.

Uploading Future Music

From now on, as long as you keep the Music Manager running at all times, it will upload any new music to your Google Music account. It will also upload playlist changes. There are a few small quirks, though, that could result in a Google library that isn't perfectly synced. Here are some of the issues I've noticed:

Deleting files on your computer won't delete them in Google Music: If you decide you don't like a particular album, or that you want to replace its files with higher quality versions, Google Music won't recognize this. As such, you'll have to delete the original songs from Google Music whenever you delete them from your computer.

You can't re-upload files you've deleted from Google Music: On the other hand, if you delete something from Google Music—say, if Google Music uploaded it before you got a chance to fix its grossly disorganized metadata—you can't re-upload it later. There is a fix for this, however. If you delete something from Google Music that you eventually want back, open up Music Manager, go to the Advanced tab, and click the "Change" link next to where it lists the source of your music. Go through the process again, choosing the same location you did before—that is, if you were using iTunes, be sure to pick iTunes again—and it will get ready to re-upload all your music. However, even though it looks like it's going to re-upload everything, it'll only re-upload songs and playlists you've deleted. It's a bit of a hacky workaround, but it works.

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Sometimes it just gets wonky: I haven't figured out why this is yet, but I've noticed that every once in a while, a group of songs or a playlist will just get a little out of sync. Sometimes you get a string of duplicates in a playlist, sometimes a group of tracks will still have old metadata even if you changed it first, and sometimes playlists just don't sync your changes. Simple fixes can be done right from Google Music: just click the arrow next to a song or album and hit Edit. For more complicated mess-ups, I recommend deleting the album or playlist and using the above method to get it back. It isn't ideal, but it looks like Google still hasn't ironed out perfect synchronization yet, so workarounds will have to do for now.

All in all, you shouldn't have too many problems. But, if you don't use the webapp a ton, it's worth checking in every once in a while to make sure everything is in order (especially after you add new music to your library).

Using the Player

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Once your music's uploaded, listening to it is a cinch. You can use Google Music just like you do any other desktop or web player. You can browse by artist, album, or genre, as well as search for whatever you're looking for. Double-click on a song to play it and even drag it to a playlist to add it to that playlist (but know that those changes won't be synced back to your desktop library. It even has a few keyboard shortcuts, just like Gmail, that help you navigate the interface with ease. You can also hit the "Shop" button in the top right corner of the player to head to Google Music's music store, which has a great selection of both paid and free music (not to mention some exclusive live cuts from popular bands).

Google Music isn't chock full of music playing features, but it does have a neat thing called Instant Mix, which, like iTunes' Genius, creates a 25 track playlist for you based on a seed song. It's a good way to throw together a playlist really quickly, though it isn't quite as good as Genius and its other competitors.

Lastly, if you ever want to re-download the music you've uploaded, you can do so by finding the album or song, clicking on the arrow next to the album art or track name, and choosing Download. Alternatively, you can open up the Music Manager, go to the Download tab, and download your entire library. If you've purchased music from the Google Music store, you can only download it two times from the web interface (though you can download it as many times as you want from Music Manager, packaged with the rest of your library).

Listening On the Go

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One of the best things about Google Music is that you can stream your entire library to your mobile device for free, which is something other services like Spotify and Rdio don't offer. The experience is a bit different, depending on your platform.

Android

On Android, just download the official Google Music app to get started. It works much like the default music app on your phone—you can sort by arist, album, playlist, and recently played, and you can swipe between the screens easily. You can also turn your phone on its side for some other really great, album art-based views of your library.

When you listen to a song, Google Music will automatically cache it, so the next time you listen it'll have it on hand and it won't need to use your data to stream it. If you want to cache certain tracks that you know you'll listen to a lot, you can just long-press on an album or playlist, then tap "Available Offline". It will download it the next time you're connected to Wi-Fi and keep it on your device so you can listen to it, no connection needed. You can edit preferences for this feature in the app's settings, as well as show only offline music by hitting the menu button at any time.

iOS

iOS users don't have an official app, but they do have a few choices. Google Music has created an official webapp designed for iOS, and frankly it isn't that bad. It's not quite as fast as a native app, but it has all the animated transitions and swiping gestures you get on the Android client, and it looks great. It doesn't let you pin songs for offline use, but it's more than usable in a pinch.

Alternatively, you can use previously mentioned gMusic for iOS, which can stream your library to your iPhone via a native app. It has lock screen integration, AirPlay support, Last.fm scrobbling, and even offline listening. Google may not have created a native app for iOS, but even if they did, they'd be hard pressed to compete with gMusic—at least in terms of features.

Programs and Extensions that Make Google Music Better

Lastly, while the Google Music webapp is pretty great, it isn't perfect, and could use some extra features. With a few extra downloads, though, you can turn it into a killer player. If you're going to use Google Music, we recommend checking the following apps and extensions out to enhance your experience.

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Music Plus is a Chrome extension created by our very own Adam Pash, which adds a popup controller, HTML5 notifications, Last.fm scrobbling and artist bios, global keyboard shortcuts, and lyric fetching to make the webapp truly awesome. If you use Google Music at all, this extension is absolutely worth having.

Google Music Downloader is the closest Firefox equivalent to Music Plus, offering artist bios from Last.fm and global hotkeys to Google Music. It also gives notifications from the add-on bar when you change tracks. It includes a music downloading tool as well, but now that Google includes this, there's no real reason to use it.

If you're a Windows user, previously mentioned GMusic adds a small mini-player to your desktop, getting Google Music out of your tab and into its own window, and supports the media keys on most keyboards. It's only downside is that it can't use all the features of the above extensions, since you don't have a browser to install them in—so you have to decide what's important to you.

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You may not be ready to replace your desktop player with Google Music, but there's really no need. With a bit of forethought and the knowledge of Google Music's ins and outs, you can keep your desktop and cloud players truly in sync so you have music on your desktop when you're home, and Google Music everywhere else. Got any other Google Music tips we didn't mention, or an alternative cloud player you prefer like Subsonic? Let us know in the comments.

How to Make Google Music Your Secondary Media Player (and Why You Should)

Sync Online Media with Your Desktop

Social Folders Syncs Your Facebook Pics, Google Docs, and Other Online Media with Your Desktop

Windows/Mac: If you've ever wanted to keep a local copy of all the pictures, video, and files you post on social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and Google Docs, Social Folders can give you just that. Additionally, it'll sync any changes you make online or locally so managing your online media from your desktop is incredibly easy.

All you have to do to get started with Social Folders is download the app for Windows or Mac, sign up for an account, and start linking your social media accounts through the Social Folders web app. If you're already signed in to those accounts this process will only take a few clicks. You'll be able to connect to a good variety of services, such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Google Docs, Instagram, YouTube, and Box. Social Folders will then sync all your content so you can access it easily from your computer. It will also scan for updates periodically, whether they were added via the web or to one of the synced folders on your machine, and synchronize the changes. This means, for example, that you can upload new photos to Facebook by just dropping them in a folder.

Social Folders isn't as quick about noticing updates as it could be, but you can always manually initiate a sync to hurry the process along. Even if you're using it solely to keep local copies of the stuff you post online, it's a very useful utility.

Social Folders

Social Folders Syncs Your Facebook Pics, Google Docs, and Other Online Media with Your Desktop

Five top alternatives to PowerPoint

1 and 3 are free.

Five top alternatives to PowerPoint

By Susan Harkins

If you have Office, you have PowerPoint, presentation software that’s easy to use and cause for debate among users and experts alike. You love it or you hate it. But if you hate it or you just don’t want to purchase Office, you’re not stuck. There are alternatives and most of them will get the job done just fine.

Note: This list is also available as a photo gallery.

1: Impress

OpenOffice.org Impress is part of the free OpenOffice.org suite of business software. The user interface, shown in Figure A, is amazingly similar to PowerPoint 2003. If you can use PowerPoint, you’ll be up and running with Impress in minutes. Like PowerPoint, Impress offers master slides, layout options, object inspection via right-clicking, animation, transitions, and plenty of toys.

Figure A

OpenOffice.org Impress is similar to PowerPoint 2003.

Technically, it’s free (and open source). If you use it, consider a donation to help support and maintain the community.

2: Prezi

If you’re looking for a cloud-based presentation app, take a look at Prezi.com. It uses Adobe Flash to quickly create edgy animated presentations. There are no slides. Instead, you store everything on a huge canvas and then choreograph the show. To create a new Prezi, supply a name and description, as shown in Figure B. Then, choose a blank Prezi or a template. (The first time you use Prezi, you’ll have the opportunity to view a short tutorial.) Figure C shows a blank Prezi, ready for text and graphics. You can even convert PowerPoint slides to a Prezi.

Figure B

All Prezis start here.

Figure C

Add presentation text and graphics to this blank canvas.

Although Prezi is easy to learn, it’s different enough that it might intimidate you just a bit. Prezi’s zooming nature gives it a bit of a contemporary edge, but it won’t be right for every presentation. When it is right, it’ll be just the right tool.

You can play in the cloud free, but all your Prezis are public. You can, however, download them and present offline. A private subscription is $59 a year, and for $159 a year, you can add full support to your subscription.

3: Google Presentation

If you haven’t tried Google Docs Presentation in a while, take another look. Google recently revamped the app and it’s got a lot more to offer than before. Just pull up Google.com and choose Documents from the More menu. If you don’t have an account, you’ll need to create one. Once you’re in, click Create and choose Presentation. Work through the tutorial to the user interface shown in Figure D. This Web-based app requires a recent version of Internet Explorer or Chrome to tap into its newest features. Google Docs is free, but you’re working in the cloud.

Figure D

Google Docs Presentation interface is utilitarian but effective.

4: SlideRocket

Another Web-based presentation app, SlideRocket, offers some impressive and advanced animations and transitions. It’s a good choice for creating a Web presentation. Searching for and adding Web content requires just a few clicks. (The interface might seem unfamiliar at first, so take the short tutorial.) You’ll spend most of your time working in the Editing window, shown in Figure E. It’s probably the most comprehensive alternative, when compared to PowerPoint. But the free version lets you publish only as a Web URL — you can’t view your work offline. For $24 a month (per user), you can download your presentation as a PowerPoint or PDF file.

Figure E

Manipulate slides in the Editing window.

5: Flair

Wildform’s Flair is a desktop app that produces Flash-based presentations, but you don’t have to know Flash to benefit from its pizazz. That’s Flair’s biggest plus. And even at a pricey $199, it’s still cheaper than Flash, so it’s probably worth it to the right buyers. For the most part, Flair is straightforward to use. Its strength lies in its built-in video and audio recording capabilities, making it a reasonable option for e-learning products. It also converts PowerPoint files to Flash. The Edit User interface, shown in Figure E, is familiar enough to get you started. There’s a ton of online training and a ton of templates.

Figure E

You’ll use edit mode to create and modify slides.

For the price, you’d expect a free trial, but there isn’t one. You can download a demo, but they don’t make it easy.

Five top alternatives to PowerPoint | TechRepublic

Recover Deleted Songs In iPod, iPhone, iPad

Recover Deleted Songs Music In iPod, iPhone, iPad

by Nitish Singhal

If unfortunately you lost all your songs and playlist present on your computer hard disk due to viruses or disk crash, then today we are going to tell you about a tool named GizoRip which can easily retrieve your all tracks and playlist if you have saved them on your iPod or other devices from Apple like iPhone, iPad etc.

When you run this tool, at the main window there is a option to search for the iPods. Basically it will show only iPod but this tool works perfectly for any device from Apple. Alternatively, you can even select search for devices by finding this option under file.

Then this tool will take little time to search for you connected device and once it complete search, it will show all the music tracks present in your iPod or other device. You can copy these tracks and playlists directly to your hard drive and even you can simply import them to your iTunes Player. This tool even supports the latest version of iTunes.

To customize these settings, go to Options and then click on Preferences. There you will see option to import music directly to iTunes and also to ignore copy of all those files which already exists on your system. You can even Browse and select alternate path for export directory if you don’t want to make backup directly to iTunes.

Now once you are done with all the settings, simply click on Recover Music whose short-cut is given on main window or alternatively you can select this option from file also.

When you click on it, your music file restoring process will start instantly. You can see the progress of the restoring process from the bar given on top. Once the process is done, you can open the destination folder directly from the option given at bottom. Developer has also added option to Donate that is just upto your wish.

You make even discover the following .Net error while trying to run this tool. Just ignore that as it may be a little bug with the tool and it works perfectly after ignoring this error message.

The size of GizoRip is 1.70 Mb and as usual it will create a desktop shortcut which can be used to access this freeware. This tool is compatible with all the versions of Windows and has been tested successfully on Windows 7 Ultimate-32 bit edition.

Download GizoRip

Read more: http://www.technixupdate.com/recover-deleted-songs-music-in-ipod-iphone-ipad/#ixzz1jdcMbCFc

Recover Deleted Songs Music In iPod, iPhone, iPad