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It’s like magic: a scanner in your smart phone

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I’m excited to share with you an app I have discovered recently. It’s saving me time and improving my efficiency at home and work. Office Lens from Microsoft trims, enhances and makes pictures of whiteboards and docs readable. Office Lens will even convert images to PDF, Word and PowerPoint files.  The app is free to download and simple to use. It integrates with your smart phone’s digital camera. Here are examples of the two main uses I’ve made of Office Lens.

1) Saving and sharing letters received by post:

It’s great to be able to save reports and membership information digitally. Office lens has allowed me to decrease the space I need for paper storage. It has enabled me to easily share medical reports I’ve received for my son with his school.
A standard photo I took of a letter:

An ‘Office Lens’ photo taken with the same phone in the same lighting:

A screen shot showing the photo effectively converted to an editable word document:

A screen shot showing conversion to PDF:

2) Capturing information at lectures and events:

Here is a standard photo of my view of a whiteboard during a presentation:

Here is the ‘Office Lens’ image taken from the same place with the same phone:

I could have got an even better image but I was not using the whiteboard setting!  I’ll try this again at my next presentation / event opportunity.

I hope you are inspired to give office lens a go. Please give me some feedback in the comments below or head over to my synergy-now facebook page.

 

‘Put it in your pocket, save it for a quieter day’: Pocket a free app for saving fab stuff from the web

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Do you ever get frustrated that you now can’t find that great article you saw only yesterday? Typically in our busy lives you come across something really interesting just before you have to leave for a meeting. Whilst sat in a waiting room scrolling through twitter you spot a possible answer just as your name is called. Pocket could be your solution.

I have been using the pocket app on my phone and the pocket extension in my internet browser for just over a month. I highly recomend it.  Here is a quick run through of how to use it.

  • First you will need to download the app to your phone and install the extension in your browser.  Pocket works with ios and android and with most browsers.
  • Here is a screenshot of my ‘pocket’ from my laptop and phone.

       

  • To add a web page to pocket from your phone:
  1. Whilst viewing the page you want to save click on the 3 dots in the top right corner
  2. A drop down box will appear
  3. Click on ‘Share via….’
  4. Share icons will appear
  5. Click on ‘Add to Pocket’

  • To add a web page from your internet browser simply click the pocket icon adjacent to your search bar.

  • Your web page will be saved to your pocket My list.  You can click on it and open it in a simplified format without adds at any time. A screenshot of this ‘article view’ is below

  • You can easily print this article view from your browser.  A feature I particulary like is pocket’s ability to read the article to me. I pop in my ear buds and listen to saved documents whilst on my dog walk
  1. Click the 3 dots in the top right
  2. Choose ‘Listen (TTS)

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you give pocket a go and find it helpful.  As ever I’d love to hear how you get on with it. Let me know at Synergy Now facebook page