No really, must I keep my 3rd grade diploma?

November 16, 2012 2:29 PM

I have boxes of neatly organized crap! I would like to upload as much as possible to "the cloud" thus freeing up space in the basement for the kitteh olympics. I need recommendations!

I'm interested in scanning all of our printed photos and organizing them into a cohesive set of digital "albums" that I can share with friends and family on-line. Also, once that's done, I'd like to save to discs and ditch the actual albums that I've been schlepping around since the Regan administration.

I'd like to be able to make notes on each picture, names, dates, situation, etc.

Secondly, I'd like to upload all of our insurance info, pink-slips, deeds, etc, so if we have to bug out ahead of another "Super-Storm" I can access important documents from my iPhone, or at least using a lap top.

I'm willing to spend under $500 for photo scanners, document scanners, and good software to help me organize all of this stuff.

Husbunny has "papers" and other stuff from childhood. I'd like to digitize and organize it for him, so we can stop courting the hanta virus from all of these old, dusty papers.

What does the hive mind recommend?

posted by Ruthless Bunny to computers & internet (3 answers total)

Mark Frauenfelder (Make, Boingboing) and I are both big fans of Evernote. He's written a bit and been interviewed about his organization system that makes use of a document scanner and Evernote.

My system is not so slick as his as I just recently got an all-in-one printer and haven't figured out a good workflow to get things scanned and tagged properly, but I get the impression that what you are trying to do is pretty much what he has done.
posted by sparklemotion at 3:00 PM on November 16, 2012 [5 favorites]

Check out unclutterer
posted by a robot made out of meat at 4:13 PM on November 16, 2012

I know that it is generally considered a big no-no to get rid of original things like photographs because the photographs themselves are more reliable than digital versions - you'll never lose photos to a hard drive crash or a format change.

That said, albums can be kind of large and clunky - I wonder if doing the scanning process and then moving the photos to something less unwieldy like a photo storage box would be helpful.

As for documents, I'm all for scanning and dumping, doubly so with things like receipts that are printed on thermal paper that will fade within a year or so.
posted by zug at 9:50 AM on November 17, 2012