When developing a product you never know exactly what part will become the most popular feature to use. We initially started developing the Art-Copy SDK (ACSDK) for manufacturers of scanners and imaging software, but soon realized the ACSDK was capable of so much more. With future expansion in mind we later added image file support and image processing to the SDK. We even went one step farther by adding the unique ability to transfer or scan an image directly into a database.

All along we used a test bed application to test the SDK’s scanning and image processing abilities.  This little application became the Art-Copy Scripting product that has become very successful in its own right. Many people have figured out ways to merge Art-Copy Scripting into their own business processes without having to program a single line of code. Customers are even going as far as ordering custom modifications to Art-Copy Scripting and multiple licenses to fit their specific document processes. While the SDK is still useful for those who know how to code, Art-Copy Scripting has enabled a number of companies to do relatively complicated things without coding with the press of one button.

As we expand the SDK features and begin working those features into our other products, Art-Copy Scripting will continue to get better and better.

http://www.scanhelp.com/288int/artcopy/scriptingversion/

http://www.scanhelp.com/288int/artcopy/sdk/index.html

Is just me or does it seem like all the neatest gadgets and software these days are coming from Apple, Inc.? 

1. We do a lot of Mac development work for outside companies and right when Apple came out with the Intel laptop along with BootCamp our work life got much easier. We could finally do Mac and Windows work on one portable system without the headache of having to work with Windows on a clunky (Dell?) laptop. Currently, our office has been using Mozilla Thunderbird so we have access to the same email when either booting to Mac or PC but that will probably go away when Paralells releases their 2.0 version, which will more fully support the Mac hardware. From then on out we will only have to boot Mac to run Windows based software. 

2. I just went to Apple’s web site and fooled around with the newly announced iPhone. Just one look at their 160ppi screen you can easily view and read a web site on a small screen, which really makes it worth it. After Leopard, supposedly iWork and iLife too will be available for the iPhone.  Just playing with it on the web site makes me want one even more. My current phone is starting to fall apart, so in June I will probably be in line to get one. I wonder, is this going to be the laptop of the future? 

 If only the American auto makers could duplicate Apple’s comeback!

In the past, users were forced to spend thousands of dollars to buy document management programs that were able to index scanned data and documents. With the new Google Desktop this has all changed. Google offers a desktop program for free that will index all of your local drives plus any network drives you choose.  So how does this fit into scanning or even ScanHelp’s products you ask? Our customers have been buying Art-Copy Enterprise for scanning to PDF files using the built in OCR feature. This by default creates a hidden text PDF with the original image viewable in front and the OCR text behind the image. The Art-Copy user then specifies a special network drive (or a specific folder on that drive) when outputting these scanned documents. Each user with Google Desktop installed and configured can then thoroughly index that special network drive. Presto! Instantly the user ends up with a network wide index of documents for their company records that they can then do keyword searches for relevant information at a fraction of the cost that it used to be. I don’t know if this will eventually hurt companies who sell expensive indexing software like Documentum, but it sure brings the capability down to an affordable level for the small or medium sized businesses. 

http://www.scanhelp.com/288int/artcopy/enterpriseversion/features.html

http://desktop.google.com/enterprise/index.html

I just wanted to welcome everyone to my new blog. We have a lot of knowledge about scanning, imaging, and technology that can not really fit into our monthly email. A lot of this information is hard to format into html pages. This blog will be an opportunity to get this information out to our members in a quick way formatted in a more down to earth conversation style format.