Pixily turns stacks of paper into search-friendly scans
Pixily is a cool scan-by-mail service that launched in early June. Like Shoeboxed, which I checked out last month, Pixily is all about taking paper clutter out of your life by scanning it in for you and making it both searchable, and able to be organized into buckets. The big difference between the two services is that Pixily is focused less on receipts and finances, and more on day-to-day papers like insurance claims, long cell phone bills (with call lists on them) and little things like birthday cards.
Everything that's scanned goes through optical character recognition (OCR), so you can search for it in the built-in search tool. It also lets you tag, and make notations to documents for the sake of sorting. If you've got digital documents, you can upload them into the mix as well.
Like Netflix, Pixily works through the mail with similar pre-paid envelopes that you can stuff with as much paper as allows. Each paid plan has a higher number of envelopes you can send in each month, along with limits on how much scanned content the service will host for you. After it's scanned, it's sent back in the same mailer, which can be chucked in with your paper recycling--envelope and all.
It's worth noting that for things like school papers and general writing, Scribd.com has a free program called Paper-to-iPaper that lets you send in all sorts of paper items by mail (at your postal expense) complete with OCR. One thing to note, however is that you have to get the content pre-approved, and things like bills and notes scribbled on paper are not welcome.
Pixily plans start at a free level (which requires you sending in documents on your own dime), all the way up to a $60/month plan that serves up four envelopes a month for you to stuff.
[via ReadWriteWeb]
Josh Lowensohn writes for Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications and services. E-mail Josh.
- Topics:
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Productivity and business,
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Storage
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Pixily,
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scanning,
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paper scan,
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Scribd,
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Shoeboxed
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Plus, pixily allows you to upload pdfs yourself (that's what I've been doing since my address is outside USA and they don't accept international mail :-() and more important than that, doesn't ask you to type again everything you posted! (shoeboxed asks you to type what's written on the receipt?!). Very different market niches, I guess..
Thanks for the Shoeboxed shout-out. Shoeboxed now offers a 30-day free trial on all Receipt Mail-In plans.
You can all sign up now at http://start.shoeboxed.com to take advantage of our great service.
In case that doesn't link: you can start your free trial here.
Dan Englander
VP Community
Shoeboxed.com
Call me: (888) 369-4269
Another clarification from your comment: Shoeboxed does not require you to enter in any information about your receipts under the Receipt Mail-In program. It is all entered into your account for you. And we don't just do "small receipts." We'll scan and enter any financial document: receipts, invoices, canceled checks, bills, credit card statements, etc. You'll be ready to go for taxes, expense reports, bookkeeping, and general budgeting.
Dan Englander
VP Community
Shoeboxed.com
Call me: (888) 369-4269
Dan Englander
Shoeboxed