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Neat revises mobile scanning app, adds expense reporting
Pushing towards a paperless future, the neat folks at Neat have released version 2.0 of Neat for iOS. The new build of the scanning-on-the-go application features much faster performance, scan annotation, new sharing and collaboration options, plus a new expense-reporting tool. Neat has made its bones as a desktop scanning solution, offering both compact and ADF-enabled scanners that work with the company's Mac and PC applications for document management. The Neat mobile app extends that find-my-files experience for access on the go, with scans and folders synchronizing to the NeatCloud online service. You can quickly share folders or individual scans to collaborate with colleagues, or search the OCR / indexed text of your documents to find what you need quickly. The expense report feature is intriguing; it creates a summary PDF from a collection or folder of receipt scans, totaling up the expenditure and listing categories as it goes. It's not going to supplant dedicated expense-reporting iOS tools like Concur, but for mobile freelancers who want a quick way to send expense overviews while simultaneously filing the receipts for safekeeping, it may get some traction. The NeatCloud platform also includes an optional human-powered verification step called NeatVerify, which will run the automatic OCR results from your receipt or business card scans (no documents) past the eyes of a real, live person for checking. You can get 30 credits for this service for US$4.99 a month, so it's probably best to save it for key items. Speaking of credits, while the Neat application is a free download from the App Store, the required NeatCloud service works on a paid subscription basis. After a 30-day free trial, you will need either the $14.99 or $29.99 monthly NeatCloud plan (discounted if you sign up for a year) to use the app; both plans offer additional features like extra users, cross-service search and more. Compare and contrast the $45 annual cost of an Evernote premium subscription, and you get the sense that Neat is aiming at the more demanding side of the market.
Look the business with PlanOn's super-slim receipt scanner
Receipts. You request them every time you make a claimable purchase. Then you put them in your pocket, the washing machine, the dryer, an old envelope, until they've been everywhere except where they need to go. Sure, you can use a smartphone app, but wouldn't you be so much more diligent if you had a $140 dedicated portable scanner like PlanOn's SlimScan SS100? It's taken a while to come to market since we went hands-on, but it's finally available with immediate effect. You swipe the credit card-sized stainless steel device over your receipts and store the images -- up to 600 of them -- on its built-in storage. Then you hook it up to your PC over wireless-schmireless USB, auto OCR the images, correct any inaccurate fields and export the data straight to your spreadsheet. Then you wash it, dry it, put it in a drawer...
IRL: Spotify, Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 and Oakley's AP backpack 3.0
Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment. In this, our last edition of IRL before worldwide eat-Chinese-food-and-go-to-the-movies day, we're unpacking our gifts a few days early. Darren replaced his document scanner after his old one went to wherever it is that deceased scanners go, Joe finally settled on a gadget bag stylish enough to go with his skinny jeans and Brian's given himself the gift of a Spotify premium account. So how's it going, here in real life? Head past the break to find out.
TUAW Review: NEAT Receipts, part 2
Installing and launchingThe NEAT Receipts software must be installed prior to attaching the scanner for the first time, and it comes in a standard Mac .dmg file. Installed, the application takes up 237 MB of hard drive real estate. As soon as the software installation is complete, your Mac reboots. Immediately after launching the software for the first time, I was notified that a newer version was available. Instead of entering the license key, I shut down the installation and let Firefox download the 122.2 MB updater. The update required yet another restart, which was a bit annoying - what do they think this is, a Windows application? ;-) Upon launching the updated application, I was greeted with a very neat and clean Welcome screen (see gallery for a screenshot). According to the Getting Started pamphlet, it was time to connect the scanner and calibrate it. The scanner is a tiny device, only 10.8" x 1.6" x 1.3" (27.4 cm x 4.1 cm x 3.3 cm) in size, with its own carrying bag -- a very nice touch. It's also very lightweight, weighing in at a svelte 10.6 ounces (300 grams). NEAT Receipts requests that you calibrate the scanner before using it, and they include a calibration card to get everything aligned properly.Scanning receiptsThe first couple of receipts I scanned were from OfficeMax and had fairly high contrast, so I expected them to scan well and was not disappointed. The receipts were scanned in about 10 seconds each, followed by a 20-30 second recognition sequence. When that was done, I had not only a fairly decent scan of the receipts, but NEAT Receipts had filled in information about the vendor, date of purchase, amount, and payment type (i.e., Visa, cash, check, etc...) in a small form on the right side of the screen. The receipts didn't have a field called "Sales Tax", so that field wasn't filled in. However, when I double-clicked the image, I found that I could drag the Tax line of the receipt image to the Sales Tax field to populate it. In fact, every line of text that had been recognized was highlighted on the image in a light yellowish-orange tint, and each one could be individually dragged to the form if I needed the information. Very cool.I went to my completely unorganized receipt drawer and grabbed a handful of receipts to scan. Many of these receipts were crumpled from living in my wallet, some had faded, some were in color (movie ticket receipts), and they were from a variety of vendors. NEAT Receipts surprised me in many cases with its accuracy and uncanny ability to "know" what category of vendor a receipt belonged to. For instance, when I scanned in a receipt from Red Robin (a burger chain), the category was automatically set to Meals/Restaurant. Next, I started feeding in receipts that were hard for me to read. For instance, one was about two months old and quite faded, but the results were still fairly good. While it didn't bring in the name of the restaurant automatically, it was able to let me drag what it thought was LiV Ricci's (actually Lil' Ricci's) into the Vendor slot of the data page and correct it. Not bad!Did it recognize 100% of the receipts? No. The receipts that weren't recognized were usually so badly crumpled, ripped, and faded that I could barely read them, so it's unlikely that any optical character recognition (OCR) software would do any better. %Gallery-24308%
TUAW Review: NEAT Receipts for Mac Advance Release
Be sure to enter our NEAT Receipts for Mac giveaway! See details at the end of the article.A few weeks ago, the NEAT Receipts team announced an Advance Release of their receipt scanning and text recognition package for Mac. A few days later, FedEx delivered a small box containing the shipping product, and I've been feeding NEAT Receipts a steady diet of receipts and any other paper I can get my hands on ever since. While the $179 Advance Release doesn't have the full functionality of the Windows version, such as a business card module or the ability to export receipt information to financial software, it is a very good first attempt at a Mac product. The scanner is a tiny piece of sculpture that can be easily carried along on business trips to capture expense information - it's that small and light. As you have probably surmised, NEAT Receipts for Mac Advance Release is more than just a slim little scanner; it's also a powerful and adaptive piece of Mac software that performs intelligent optical character recognition and automates the process of moving receipt information from paper to digital format. Read on for the full review and be sure to check out the gallery below for photos and screenshots. %Gallery-24308%
TUAW Review: NEAT Receipts, part 3
Using the scanner with other appsHow about using the NEAT Receipts scanner with other organization software like Yojimbo or Evernote? If you scan in documents as PDF files, you can use the NEAT Receipts scanner to grab documents for those other applications. The scanner has only two buttons on top of it. One is marked SCAN and starts the scanning process. The other is marked PDF and is used if you want to save an image in PDF format. To test this, I took some checks from clients, placed them face-down into the maw of the scanner, and punched the PDF button. Immediately, a standard Mac Save As... dialog appeared, so I gave the file a name and pressed return. The scan of a standard voucher-sized check took about 30 seconds. At the end of that time, I had a very clear PDF file that I could just drag and drop onto Yojimbo. For the native version of Evernote, I had to create a new note and then drag the PDF onto the note. Once Evernote had synced with the online database, I was able to view my new PDF from the web client.I decided to use the scan-to-PDF feature of the NEAT Receipt software to capture business cards into Evernote. Previously, I had used Evernote's iSight Note capability, but the results were often blurry and I could see my fingers holding the cards. Scanning the files with the NEAT Receipt scanner meant that the results of Evernote's online OCR were much better, so searching business cards became a lot more accurate. Another feature of the scanner that I love is that there is no power brick -- it is bus-powered, so there is one less weighty power supply that I need to drag along with me on trips. The scanner has a simple straight-through paper path that prevents jams, and it handled flimsy receipts, business cards, and full US Legal sized documents (8-1/2" x 14") without a hitch. NEAT Receipts says the scanner can handle documents down to 1" by 1" (2.54 cm x 2.54 cm) in size.The NEAT Receipt software has several different ways of viewing scanned documents, all of which should be familiar to Leopard users. There's an item view, an icon view, and an Image Flow view that is supposed to work like Cover Flow. Unfortunately, I could never get the Image Flow view to work properly - I saw the currently selected document but there was no way to flip between the documents.The CompetitionThere are other "compact" scanners on the market. Fujitsu's ScanSnap S300M is one of the more popular compact Mac scanners in the field right now. It has several advantages, including double-sided scanning and a 10-page sheet feeder, but is larger and much heavier -- about 3 pounds (1.4 kg.). The ScanSnap also has dedicated business card OCR software (Cardiris) and a heftier price tag -- $295 MSRP. The Pentax DSmobile 600 scanner is less expensive than the rest at $135 MSRP and is about the same size and weight as the NEAT Receipt scanner. However, it does not include any Mac-specific software and is meant for use as a TWAIN-compatible scanner for use with other applications.Finally, the IRIScan 2 Portable Scanner ($149) comes with a full suite of software for business card, text, and photo scanning. It's an 11.7 ounce (332 gram) lightweight that could be the only real competition to the NEAT Receipts scanner. %Gallery-24308%
Fair Credit Reporting Act cited in Verizon, Alltel suits
We've all had situations where our printed receipts have been just a little too wordy for comfort, disclosing details about our address or credit card (or worse, both) that a nefarious individual would kill to score. The 2003 Fair Credit Reporting Act was supposed to put a serious cork in that business by threatening offenders with a $1,000-per incident fine for willfully printing out secret stuff beyond December 2006; Verizon and Alltel are being accused of ignoring that little clause of the FCRA, though, with class action suits du jour recently filed in Pennsylvania and Georgia respectively. For its part, Alltel says it's in the clear because it hasn't been printing both the credit card number and the expiration date on its receipts, and furthermore, the plaintiffs haven't proven that they've had their identities stolen as a result of its practices. Verizon has responded with a shorter, snippier comment, simply saying that it "did not commit any wrongful act" against the accusers. Seriously though, what's so hard about just not printing that stuff?
New Wii colors coming our way?
If you're the kind of cat or kitten that listens to "reports" on "things," then you'll want to turn your furry ears in this direction. Apparently, a stray Target receipt containing some elicit information made its way out onto the internet today (you know how those get around). Just what does this slip of paper tell us? According to the supplier (a Target employee), the store has begun listing the Wii as "White" in color, as opposed to just "Wii-colored" or "sold-out." The suggestion is that with the sudden delineation of color, more than "White" may be on the way -- speculation due mostly in part to Target's receipt-prescience on things like iPod deletions and the like. Of course, we've been hearing this kind of stuff for awhile, so we're not holding our breath on the issue, and suggest you do the same. Er, don't do. Don't hold your breath.[Via The Boy Genius Report]
Study finds e-voting machines short on security
A recent report from the Task Force on Voting System Security, at New York University's rather ominous sounding Brennan Center for Justice has determined that the e-voting machines currently utilized in 26 states have serious security issues. The machines currently use paper receipts to verify a voter's selection, but only regular audits of collected data can ensure that the numbers kept in the machine actually match those printed on the slips. As of right now, many states and counties are not required to perform these audits, leaving plenty of room for malicious misrepresentation. Luckily, the report also claims that other fixes, such as banning electronic devices in booths and eliminating wireless components, are so simple they could easily be implemented for 2006's election season, so you should be able to cast your vote with confidence, at least until the whole world adopts the American Idol-style SMS voting the Swiss have been messing around with.