Free paper scanning and converting to ipaper

I thought this was interesting.

I'm using ipaper on my "Learn XLsuite" materials.

I think it's pretty cool, but this was even cooler. Smart strategy since they monitise it with adwords on the documents, but they're pretty innocuous so ... should be good.

Check out their press release (as an ipaper)

Read this doc on Scribd: Convert your paper to iPaper

Web Publisher Expresses Delight

Christmas is always a slow-time. Seems much harder to get things done through that season. Since the New Year, it has been one heck of a flurry. Major pieces of XLsuite are coming together, as are interested parties who are discovering how this business-in-a-box available anywhere there is an Internet connection can help them succeed and manage their business.

Look, I'm not even going to try and convince you. Listen to this one example from a typical start-up business owner instead:

As a site Publisher myself for years, I've been frustrated by the limitations of publishing tools. I've been agonized by the repetitive task of emailing a few hundred people from Microsoft Outlook, or by paying some other third-party for their email application. Then I'm using MS Outlook to manage contacts, and a variety of other online systems that I have to subscribe so I can get a job done.

Since the creative side took over I haven't been that sharp on the business management stuff to begin with. Maybe the tools wouldn't have made a difference, and maybe they would have. Business management tools aside, my real passion was sharing empowering and inspiring writing with my web audiences. Each time I'd write some clever new piece, I created a new table-based-layout web-page, FTP it to my host, copy a clever bit of the text, create an email message, hot-link the Read More tease to the web-page, and save it as a draft. Why a draft? Because now I have to email this teaser to about 300-400 email subscribers and I've just found it easier to click and shoot from the one central place I do manage my contacts: MS Outlook.

As you can see, that is a lot of tedious work. It almost takes the reward out of publishing your own site content, regardless of how inspiring it is. Then along comes XLsuite. Initially, even though I saw the possibilities of what I was hearing and seeing, it wasn't there yet, and I was still dubious of many things. As months went by, I kept involved and watched what would unfold.

Now I'm chomping at the bit, feeling the ants-in-my-pants, and I want to use this tool to launch a number of exciting web-site properties for some very exciting ideas of serving people and community.

Oh, and of course, it has to earn its' keep - and mine! ;)

Import Manager Module

Thank you Harman for a very functional import manager. We'll have to get some CSS work done on it, but overall it's very nice.

You can load a CSV file into it, have a visual representation of the data (see the field data), and then drag and drop the XLsuite database fields so that they line up the way you want.

It's a very intuitive design and while it only works right now for contacts, you can see how we'll be able to extend it for things like the product catalog, email and even blog and forum postings and other "imports" from external systems.

All this should make it much easier for users to get their current client information into the system and start to use it effectively and quickly.

Next up? Francois has made good headway on both the RETS integration and it's listings section as well as taking a good first stab at the asset manager, which is now functional in XLtester.com but hasn't been ported over to the live version on XLsuite.com

Harman is focused on getting our mail integration happening. Both on the personal email level, and on the mass mailings front. The two should come together next week some time and be available to users soon.