Another New Toy

Thanks to the members of the Facebook Technology for Genealogy Group who gave positive feedback on the  Fujitsu Scansnap IX500.

I bought one online from a Sydney store and it is running beautifully.

So far I have scanned ordinary paper, old air mail letters on very fine paper, photos on regular photo paper, business cards and old greeting cards. It will scan straight into Evernote, Google Docs, Dropbox.... or into any folder one nominates. This device has so many capabilities - there is so much to learn.

Lots of scanning options

The only item the device has refused to scan so far is a tiny ticket to an event. I thought I was stretching the friendship in asking it to do that but my trusty little Flip-Pal that will scan that for me. This latest toy will not scan everything; there is no way I would put a precious original old photo through the feeder, that's a job for my ancient old slow and reliable flatbed scanner.

What it will do for me is allow me to quickly scan the mountains of paper that surround me and help me along the road to becoming an organised genealogist.

Digital Imaging Essentials

When I saw advertising about Geoff Rasmussen's book Digital Imaging Essentials : techniques and tips for genealogists and family historians (Australian edition) I was quite excited as I thought that this would be the book for me. I duly ordered a copy by mail from Gould Genealogy.

Having received the book I now have mixed feelings, I have not yet completely digested its contents but have read most chapters (more than once) to form an opinion on the work. I will apply my favourite PMI strategy (with my librarian's hat on as well) to review this book.

I really wanted to give a positive review of this book as it has great potential but I had to be honest.  Hopefully a Revised Edition will be published soon. I trust that the issues in the print edition will be sorted in the mooted ebook version of the title.

PLUS

• The book is a useful resource for beginners and would be a valuable addition to a library if a revised edition was published (see Minus).
• It has a Table of Contents and an Index.
• It has many illustrations.
• I realised that I did not need this book; it confirmed that I have a a reasonable knowledge in this area.

MINUS

• Diagrams in the book are not labelled.
• The book is poorly formatted with too many blank pages and too much white space. There are many instances where text wrapping could have been employed and image sizes reduced.
• The number of pages in the book could have been reduced resulting in paper not wasted, trees saved and even a few cents on the final cost.
• The book  received was supposed to be an Australian edition. Some attempt has been made to Australianise it yet American terms and examples are used  eg on page 28 the author writes "if I lost the digital image of the death certificate, I could reorder it from the vital statistics department." On page 79 an American example of Minneapolis, Minnesota could have been replaced with an Australian example eg New South Wales, Australia.
• There are formatting errors eg on page 24 the text commences with " Above are two documents...": the documents are actually at the bottom of page 23.
• The scanner section ignores sheetfeed scanners that are commonly used in business to scan large amounts of paper. These are great tool for the genealogist who has lots of loose paper and photographs to scan. 
• Chapter 5 fails to warn that not all scanners will work seamlessly with all computer operating systems or programs like Photoshop Elements or Picasa. 
• The quality of some of the images in the book is poor. All labels on the menu bar on the screenshots on pages 123 and 124 are so fuzzy that they cannot be read. There are fuzzy images on many pages eg 40, 50, 117, 136. 
• On page 117 the author stresses the importance of adding a citation to a digital image but appears to only give instructions for Photoshop Elements (apologies if I have overlooked the Picasa instructions. In this instance that referred to clipings from US newspapers it would have been good to show people how to save clippings from Trove with citations already attached - another case for Australian examples.

INTERESTING

• One should take what one reads on a vendor's site with a grain of salt http://www.gouldgenealogy.com/2012/11/digital-imaging-essentials-the-australian-edition/.
• I should have waited and perused the book at a Gould event; I would not have purchased  it after an inspection and could have saved my money. Ahh, the perils of impulsive online shopping.
• The author has based his book on a collection of 20,000 images. I had a different experience with Photoshop Elements (albeit an earlier version) when I used it with my collection of 50,000 images. I now have 90,000+ images and Picasa works well with them.
• I thought the file formats were TIFF and JPEG (not TIF and JPG as mentioned in the book) as shown in the diagram on page 25 and the file extensions attached to files were .tif and ,jpg. A small point but nonetheless important.

Good things come to those who wait...

From time to time since February I have tried to accomplish a task but have failed dismally.  I finally managed it today.

Back in February I conducted two video interviews at Rootstech. One I uploaded from the conference hotel to Youtube with no issues . The other slightly larger file just would not upload for me. When I got home I tried again - Failure. I tried a few video converters I found on the web - Failure. Every few weeks I would have another try - Failure.

Yesterday Thomas MacEntee on Facebook mentioned a video conversion program,  Prism Video Converter http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/index.html. I downloaded the software and thought I would have a go. My first effort produced a file that was going to take over 300 minutes to upload to Youtube - Failure. So I played around a bit and found a setting to compress the file; I didn't quite know what I was doing but I did it anyway. Hey Presto - I ended up with a .avi file that was 1/10th the size of my original. Thank you, Thomas.

The video quality is not as crisp as on the original but it's way better than many files on Youtube. As with the video with Darrin Lythgoe I am embarrassed by my facial expressions and hand waving. Perhaps I need some Botox to stabilise my face!

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, I announce the delayed release of my video with Diane and Walt from Flip-Pal.

Is the joining of small images into one big image really as good as stated?

In a comment on my  Family History Through the Alphabet – F is for …Greedy  post where I sang the praises of Flip-Pal mobile scanners Sharon  asked "Is the joining of small images into one big image really as good as stated?"

Sharon, I wasn't sure that the stitching would be as good as the people from Flip-Pal stated so had to check it out. The results speak for themselves.

This was my very first stitching effort in which I stitched my early scans 0015 to 0018 together. It was a large photo (too big for an album). I am wondering if the kids will use it in a slideshow at my wake. 

Image 1 Old girl, Poor dolphin

I scanned and stitched this deteriorating old photo as a demo for a lady at The Shoalhaven Family History Fair last weekend. With a bit of tweaking in photo imaging software it should look pretty schmick. The lady bought a Flip-Pal on the spot.

Image 2 - Old photo

 Just in case the stitches previously done were flukes I grabbed the copy of Inside History Magazine that was in my laptop bag and scanned it just now.

Image 3 Inside History Magazine

You will note the raggy edges on Images 1 and 3, these are visible because I haven't cropped the images to get rid of the of the background on which the items were placed for scanning. On my Image 3 the baby's waving hand is out of focus as it is on the magazine cover.

Pretty Impressive!

My Pal - Flip-Pal

I have been a fan of the Flip-Pal mobile scanner since I purchased mine at Rootstech 2011.

Many of my Australian friends in genealogy have been quite envious of my little Pal and have lusted after one for themselves.  The good news is that they are now available for order in Australia from Gould Genealogy. 

Alan Phillips asked me if I would help out on the Gould stand at Congress today and tomorrow with demonstrations of the device. I had great fun at morning tea and lunch putting Gould's demo Flip-Pal through its paces. I didn't have to do any selling - these little devices sell themselves. 

Thanks to Michelle Nichols who took this snap of Geniaus playing salesperson and emailed it to me. 

I'll be back on the Gould stand during the breaks tomorrow (Saturday) so, if you are around, please come and say hello and I'll put the Flip-Pal through its paces for you.

Flip-Pal available in Australia

Thanks to Jennifer who made this comment on my blog yesterday about the availability of the Flip-Pal scanner in Australia. I had previously blogged about my nifty little unit that I purchased at Rootstech in February this year. A number of readers were frustrated because they could not purchase one in Australia.

At $AU219 the price is more than that in the US (but isn't that always the way for tech in Australia).

Jennifer said...

This place in Australia appears to sell it.
http://www.digitalcentre.com.au

http://www.digitalcentre.com.au/p/4542776/flip-pal-mobile-scanner.html

November 29, 2011 11:39 AM

Scanning Station

As a result of my recent retirement and things learnt in a webinar this week I am getting serious about scanning.

Filing is not my forte; I have been a little lax lately as I knew retirement was approaching and that I  soon would have lots of time to sort out papers. The result is a safety hazard on my study floor ie a couple of boxes of papers for filing.  When I receive a paper document or photograph I usually add any data I can glean to my database and toss the resource into a cardboard box for filing in my genealogy folders.

I had intended putting all of this in order, filing it and, at some later date, scanning the contents of all my folders. I now realise that that would mean double handling of the unfiled docs. So I made a decision to scan all of those docs before I filed them away. With this decision made I had to think about scanning. I need to make it easy for myself to do this task or my good intentions will fly out the window.

My Flip-Pal Mobile scanner is good for scanning when I am out and about or for things I need to email in a hurry but it doesn't scan in tiff format. The need to scan in tiff was reinforced in the webinar this week. That means that I should use my desktop scanner which, although it is a few years old, does a sterling job. Since moving to Windows Vista I have had numerous problems with the scanner and laptop crashing. I bit the bullet and downloaded new drivers for the scanner this week but that didn't help the situation.

Then I remembered my netbook that sits on a shelf when I am not travelling. This tech toy runs Windows XP. I wondered if it would have the guts to deal with large scanning jobs. I downloaded the drivers, plugged in the scanner, did two scans (after which the Vista laptop crashes), held my breath and kept on scanning for a couple of hours. I tried again the next day and it worked like a dream.

Hey presto, I now have a permanent scanning station set up in my study so there is no excuse for not scanning documents when they arrive.

I already have a filing system set up for soft copies of documents on an external drive (backed up to another external drive). So all I have to do is save the new scans into a folder "Genealogy scans to be sorted", rename them, plug the hard drive into the netbook and transfer them into their appropriate folders.

And while the scanner groans as it scans huge tiff files I can paly on my shiny new toy.

Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner In Australia

I don't know of any other Australians who have a Flip-Pal mobile scanner.  Some of my Australian  GeniMates are envious of my little toy in its emerald green case that I purchased at the recent Rootstech Conference in Salt Lake City.

A number of Australians are wondering when the Flip-Pal will be available in Australia.  I mentioned this to the people at Flip-Pal when I finally registered my unit this week. They responded  with thie message for my Australian friends:

"As you well know, we do not yet distribute in Australia.  We are actively
investigating what that would take.  It is a matter of both the
distribution/support processes as well as regulatory approvals and it is
hard to set a date for those kinds of things. Just have your friends
regularly check our website.

Thanks for your inquiry.

Happy Scanning!"


My Flip-Pal sits beside my computer ready for action. If a document up to about A4 size comes my way I immediately scan it with the Flip-Pal. The procedure for scanning small documents is easier and more time effective than scanning with my larger scanner. My light little Pal goes with me in my laptop bag when I visit libraries, archives  and elderly aunts.

If you don't know about this marvellous item take a look at this video in which Dear Myrtle demonstrates a Flip-Pal.

The Good Guys were as good as their word

Resting beside me on my bed is my new toy, a Flip-Pad mobile scanner. I blogged yeterday about how this item was on my shopping list.

After a full morning of sessions at Rootstech I went down to the exhibition hall at 3:00 to see if the new batch of scanners had arrived to find a long queue of people. I discovered that they were all waitng in line to purchase one of these nifty gadgets. Ithink the Flip-Pal must be one of the success stories of the conference as I think they sold all of the extra units that were delivered.

As it's nearly midnight I will refrain from opening the package so you will hear about this new toy, that is not available in Australia,  after I open and play with it on Sunday.

The Good Guys from Flip-Pal

Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner

In contrast to my experience with Dell at Rootstech was my experience with the people who are peddling the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner, another item on my US shopping list. Fellow Rootstech Official  Bloggers had been singing the praises of the gadget and had given it stunning reviews. These gadgets are not yet available in Australia.

When I wandered over to their booth in the middle of the day brandishing my Amex card I was made to feel most welcome. I had to wait a while to talk to them as they were very busy enthusiastically demonstrating the device to the people gathered at the booth. When I spoke to the genteman there he related that they had sold all of their stock but were waiting on another 80 units that they hoped would arrive. He was attentive and gave me a good hearing, I filled out an order form and left feeling that someone was interested in selling me a product.

The Good Guys

At the end of the day I wandered back to the booth to see if the 80 units had arrived. They hadn't but the lady on the booth assured me that she wanted me to have one of them to take back to Australia in my luggage. If I don't manage to purchase one of these I will be disappointed but not bitter because of the delightful manner of the representatives of this company.

Thank you for your interest in me.

Taneya’s Genealogy Blog » Portable Hand Scanner

Another techie toy for my wishlist

Taneya’s Genealogy Blog » Portable Hand Scanner

Posted using ShareThis