This is who I recommend for all your digital needs in Houston. I use them personally. I have committed to having Affordablescans scan my top 100 pictures each month. I have organized my photos by each person or group of people. Every month I am creating a DVD for that person as a Birthday gift. I should be finished by the conclusion of this year. Once they are on CD, it is so easy to share them on-line. Also, it is easy and affordable to make multiple disks, so you have additional copies in case of a nature disaster.


Profit from Digital Organization
Christine Wu, Director of Marketing and Sales
AffordableScans.com – NAPO Associate Member

I. Introduction

A. Job Categories

i. Documents (financial and family records)
ii. Photos
iii. Video
iv. Data Backup

B. Why Go Digital?
i. Technology Trends
ii. Easiest way to store
iii. Easiest way to duplicate
iv. Easiest to sort and search

C. Role of the Organizer

i. Merge physical and digital filing systems
ii. Help put things in digital format
iii. Help organize things once they're digital
iv. Help find digital "stuff"
v. Electronic records keeping (accounting)
vi. Digitize and destroy!

D. Opportunity Knocks

i. Important things are trending toward digital instead of physical
ii. Few people have mastered both physical and digital organization
iii. Easier to do more for each client than find more clients
iv. Small businesses consume these types of services

II. Electronic Documents

A. Motivation

i. Reduce paper clutter
ii. Reduce exposure to man-made or natural disasters
iii. Meet government and business regulations
B. File Naming Rules
i. Always organize so file names make sense when sorted alphabetically
ii. Arrange with date in filename (YYMMDD)
iii. Put useful differentiators in filename
iv. Add prefixes when alphabetical naming does not look right

C. Scanning Differentiators

i. Paper size
a) Letter, legal size easy
b) Anything bigger may be 2X more
ii. Single sided vs. double sided
iii. Can it be automatically fed?
a) Similar or mixed sizes
b) Thickness/stiffness
c) Semi-transparent
iv. Remember or reproduce?

D. Tips

i. Draw a paper chart to help understand where files reside
ii. Apply above File Naming Rules to directories
iii. 300DPI is almost always sufficient
iv. PDF format is usually what customers want (easy to view/re-print)
v. Grayscale documents are 1/3 the size of color documents

III.Photos

A. Motivation

i. Photos fade, stick together and deteriorate
ii. Slides fade and color shift
iii. Family members want copies

B. Physical Organization

i. Get a rough idea of the family structure (members, generations)
ii. Determine how much information they kept
a) A lot - organize by year/month
b) A little - organize by 5 or 10 year periods
iii. Find a happy balance on order - perfection takes a lot of time / input
iv. Must be able to identify what has been scanned or not in the future
v. Good to organize into numbered groups (1 group = 1 album)

C. Scanning

i. Takes a long time
ii. 300DPI good enough for photos
iii. 2000DPI good enough for negatives
iv. Pictures should be stored in JPG w/high quality settings
v. Cropping is a large hidden problem

D. File Naming Rules

i. Use separate directories for each logical group
ii. Make sure no two images have the same name
iii. If you know more info, you can name better (Image1989-001-Disneyland.jpg)
iv. These rules also apply to incoming images from digital cameras/email/web

E. Photo Enhancements

i. Digital noise reduction
ii. Color correction
iii. Restoration

IV.Video

A. Editing time proportional to length of footage (slow)
B. Requires a lot of attention to detail and disk space
C. Very difficult to match a customer's "vision" of the end product
D. Business customers yield best profit
V. Data Backup
A. Backup! Backup! Backup!
B. DVD for < 4.7GB (Under $0.10 per GB)
C. USB hard drive for > 4.7GB ($0.25 per GB)
D. On-line services are available (see www.mozy.com)
i. As low as $5 monthly
ii. Can be slow
iii. Stability of company unknown

E. Backup is cheap, takes a lot of time to set up and execute
F. Can possibly profit if you already organize a customer's files

VI.Profit from Digital Organization

A. Commercial services (e.g. AffordableScans.com) exist because there is a demonstratable
need
B. Document and Photo organization are most profitable
C. There is a difference between organization and digitization
D. Take this information and do more for your clients
AffordableScans.com - A Family Archiving Service