Archive for the ‘Organizational’ Category

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Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Photos and Home Movies

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

With Spring Cleaning season upon us, we asked friend Chantale Bordonaro for some tips on how to best organize your photos and home movies.  Chantale, Certified Professional Organizer, founder of Simplicity Source and LA’s Incoming Chapter President of the National Association of Professional Organizers knows her stuff – see what she suggests below.

 

But first, let me remind you about ScanDigital’s Spring Cleaning Special that gives you 15% off all orders placed before April 14th. Let us help you organize your photos, slides, negatives and home movies effortlessly! Use the coupon code : SpringClean09

 

 

Easy Ways to Organize Your Photos and Home Movies

By Chantale Bordonaro

 

 

Organizing digital photos and movies can rapidly become a very daunting task if you are like many of my clients and just keep them on the memory card forever! Off course, you can click away and just purchase a new memory card once the first one is full…. But remember that the idea is to enjoy those memories and to share them, right?

 

 

 

Here are some easy tips on how to start organizing your digital special moments:

 

 

First Step:

1-   Temporary holding folder:

Every couple of weeks, download your memory card onto your computer in a temporary holding folder name “photos to sort “ on your desktop.  If you have time now, start picking your favorites. 

2-     Keep the best ones!

Eliminate the clutter; delete the ones too dark, the ones where mom is missing her smile; be tough just like you were when you delete the papers ones. Even though digital does not take as much space, you still want to control the flow.

3-     Rename your photos and movies:

Be descriptive and consistent!

4-     Tag your photos with key words (or names of people in them)

 

Second Step:

Initial purge done! Now you want to move the photos and videos to their permanent home in My Pictures.  But wait!  That’s where the system really becomes important for future retrieval.

1-     Create detailed subfolders:

The easiest way is to create subfolders under My Pictures.  Decide on the structure based on how you would usually look for them. Would you try to look by year, by event, by location, etc? For me, I like to create names like 2009-11 Luca 3rd birthday party or 2009-01 New Year Celebrations

2-     Use numbers to replace actual month

Notice the number after the month? It makes it easier then actually writing January or November, as now the folders will actually be sorted chronologically.

3-     Moving time!

Once the folders are created, just moved the pictures or movies in the right one. Voila!

 

 

Couple more top tips:

1-     Use Tags to mark photos that will need some touch-ups (those can be done later)

2-     Don’t be afraid of using software to help you stay organize. You have plenty of free options out there from Adobe Photoshop Album, Picasa from Google, IPhoto, or IView.

3-     Archive, archive, active!

Burn CD or DVD of your photos and video once you downloaded them. Schedule weekly back-up of your files on an external hard-drive. Also, you can back up your photos online on websites such as ScanDigital.com.

 

With couple of easy steps, you will be able to go back down memory lane with only couple of keys to push and a lot less frustration! Who knows, next, you might even start creating albums online to share with friends and family!

 

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Posted in Organizational, Photo Tips, ScanDigital, ScanDigital Affiliates, photos | No Comments »

NAPO Organizing Awards

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Hollywood hosts an array of award shows this season, and last Friday was no different with NAPO’s Organizing Awards. However, I was lucky enough to actually attend! ScanDigital is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), as we help to archive and organize photos and home movies, so Anderson and I decided that was reason enough to attend the Red Carpet Gala. Twist my arm, will you? I love my job!

When NAPO said ‘Red Carpet Gala,’ they meant it. Anderson and I arrived at the beautiful Luxe Hotel in Bel Air, California, walked down the red carpet, admired everyone’s fancy attire, and took tons of photos. Check out Anderson striking a pose!

Luckily, we were also able to get a shot with friend Jodie Watson, award recipient for ‘Best Organizing TV Show’ for her Organizational expertise on TLC’s hit show ‘Real Simple. Real Life.’

Once we arrived, we saw lots of our friends and familiar faces. Everyone at NAPO has always been so welcoming to us. Especially Chantale Bordonaro, NAPO-LA Director of Membership, and John Trosko, NAPO-LA President. Both were also award winners that evening- Congrats!

Luckily, we even got to and meet new people from chapters all over the country. Anderson and I actually sat at a table with people from NAPO’s San Francisco chapter. They were so warm and welcoming, even inviting us to their chapter meeting. Just may be taking them up on that offer soon!

Like any red carpet gala, there was no shortage on celebrities. Comedian Hal Sparks, former host of “Talk Soup” on E! Entertainment and star of the Showtime series ‘Queer As Folk,’ hosted the event. He was hysterical, especially when he brought humor to his experience working with his own professional organizer. Presenters included actor Christopher Knight, ‘The Brady Bunch,’ Sam Saboura, ‘Extreme Makeover,’ Gia Russo and Jodie Watson, ‘Real Simple. Real Life;’ Dorothy Breininger, “Dr. Phil,” Linda Koopersmith, “Clean House,” Monica Ricci, “MISSION: Organization,” among others.

One highlight included a live performance from a woman singing her original Organizing themed song. Listen to a clip that I recorded below. It was hilarious! “I fell in love with the man with a label maker…” Haven’t been able to get those words out of my head since! Click Here to View Video

I had such an amazing night. There’s only one more thing I could have wanted- for ScanDigital to have won the ‘Best Organizing Technology’ award. But hey, there’s always next year!

Posted in Organizational, ScanDigital, ScanDigital Affiliates, business | 4 Comments »

How to Avoid Mom’s Brussels Sprouts This Christmas – ScanDigital iReport Review

Monday, December 15th, 2008

One of our customers, Gwen Arthur, recently wrote about her experience for the CNN iReport.

After Gwen’s mom took out the old shoeboxes of photos again this Thanksgiving, she realized how tragic it was to see her family’s deteriorating memories. So this holiday season, she decided to give her mom a sentimental gift by converting all of their old memories into digital format with ScanDigital. Gwen Arthur wrote about her experience using our service in ‘How to Avoid Mom’s Brussels Sprouts This Christmas’ on iReport.com.

Read her review below: How to Avoid Mom’s Brussels Sprouts This Christmas – by Gwen Arthur

Over Thanksgiving, like every year, mom busted out with the old shoeboxes of family photos collected through the years. Lots were dog-eared and faded, showing their age as much as the hairdos and clothes we were wearing in the pictures. It was tragic to think our special memories were fading away! I immediately thought there has to be something we can do to properly preserve our precious memories before they fade as badly as grandma’s recollections.

That’s when I did some digging and came across a fantastic new company called ScanDigital, www.scandigital.com. According to their site, ScanDigital professionally scans, crops and color-corrects slides, photos, videotapes, reel-to-reel films, scrapbooks and photo albums then uploads them onto a password-protected online gallery for sharing, organizing and long-term preservation. Originals are returned along with a CD or DVD.

With the holidays quickly approaching during such uncertain times, I’d thought long and hard about meaningful, easy and cost-effective gift ideas for my family and close friends. I was looking for the perfect sentimental gift, especially for mom, so I gave ScanDigital a shot and things went as smoothly as advertised.

They did all of the work for me and the turn-around time was great! The website automatically generated a UPS label for shipping to their LA headquarters. All I had to do was print out the label and ship the photos and tapes. I could even track the process of my order with their online tracking system. Compared to the sneaking around to get photos and videos from my mom’s house, ScanDigital was a snap.

While I was waiting to get my digital images back, I spread the word about ScanDigital to my friends in ‘tornado alley’ as well as to my LA-based friend Karen, who, with the most recent fires, had a bit of a wake up call about the importance of preserving photos and documents in a potential disaster zone. The bonus for her is that ScanDigital even offers a pick-up and delivery services for those in the LA area.

This Christmas day, I am looking forward to the look on my mom’s face as I break out the old home videos and pictures of Christmas’ past. This time we’ll be watching on the TV from the DVDs from ScanDigital. When we’re done and I show her how to log on to my ScanDigital account and show her the photos in the online gallery, I’ll probably spend the rest of the day in the kitchen. Usually mom cooks but I bet my surprisingly tech-savvy mom spends the rest of her day in front of the computer. Wait – this is good! She won’t be able to make her Brussels sprouts, another one of her less-appealing traditions.

Hmmm … I wonder if I can send ScanDigital her box of recipes, minus a few.

Merry Christmas!

Posted in Organizational, ScanDigital, business, negative scanning | No Comments »

We’re on Twitter! Follow Us.

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Some of you may be familiar with Twitter, in fact, some of you may be addicted to Twitter.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the service, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.  For companies, it is a great way to exchange information with their customer bases and distribute updates or other interesting pieces of news.

Here is a short video which explains the service and how it works:

Following us is easy.  Simply set up an account at Twitter or log into an existing account.  You can find some of our key team members at:

Anderson Schoenrock, CEO & Co-Founder
Twitter: www.twitter.com/AndersonSD

Pamela Weiss, Director of PR / Marketing
Twitter: www.twitter.com/PamelaSD

So come follow us and we’ll follow you back.  We always love to hear from our customers!

Posted in Organizational, ScanDigital, Social Web, business, technology | No Comments »

ScanDigital Updates

Friday, July 18th, 2008

There are a few new things that we are happy to introduce this month to our customers. We are always in the process of developing new ways to improve our service on all ends to offer the best digitization services on the market.

Large Flatbed Scans – ScanDigital is now offering scans up to 12.2”x17.2” in either 300dpi or 600dpi. By adding this service ScanDigital will be able to offer high quality full scans of large photos, newspaper clippings, artwork, album pages and scrapbooks. By capturing the entire image in one scan the quality is far superior to having to “stitch” different images together in an editing program. The pricing at 300dpi and 600dpi is $1.88 and $2.88 respectively and is relatively inexpensive when considering that elsewhere the price is upwards of $6.00 a scan. For those of you who scrapbook this option is a great way to protect and share your cherished hard work.

Capzles Partnership – ScanDigital is proud to announce that we have partnered with Capzles.com, an innovative new photo and video sharing site that lets users design their own timelines. Capzles’ amazing new flash technology allows for users to fully customize their timelines and seamlessly integrate photos, videos and blog entries. Check them out at www.capzles.com.

ScanDigital Growth – Over the past year ScanDigital has added more than 15 new employees to our skilled and dedicated team. Our experienced and highly trained team has been integral in helping ScanDigital become the industry leader in both quality and turnaround time. Each new member brings with them ideas and experience that have helped us improve all aspects of our business. By adding our great team members we are able to meet the ever increasing demand for our services while maintaining the quickest turnaround time. Also, you can rest assured that all their materials are being handled with the upmost care by trained professionals who are dedicated to providing you with the best possible images.

Posted in Organizational, Photo Scanning, Photo Tips, ScanDigital, ScanDigital Affiliates, business, film transfer, negative scanning, photos, technology | No Comments »

ScanDigital Helps Organize the Clutterbugs!

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

ScanDigital has recently been working with many home organizers in the effort to help simplify the lives of their clients. Most of us have a system of storing our photos, slides and negatives that is somewhat similar; partially labeled and piled up in a closet somewhere. You may be the only one who is even able to decipher what is where. Now, with the help of ScanDigital you can store those images away neatly and have full access to your images on disc and online anywhere in the world (even organized into folders no less!).

When sending their collection of images and movies into ScanDigital, customers can label there rolls of film, carousels of slides and photo albums so that those same names and groupings appear when viewing them on your computer. ScanDigital’s scanning service means no more searching for twenty minutes to find those photographs from that great vacation 10 years ago. After sending them to ScanDigital they will be right at your fingertips, in high quality and digitally enhanced.

Along with the digitally organized images ScanDigital offers a digital photo frame that we will preload for the customer with their newly scanned images. These photo frames look great and are good space savers as you can rotate through many images on the same frame. The photo frames also make perfect gifts for loved ones.

I recently took a large bin of images out of my parent’s house and had them processed at our El Segundo facility. Because of our great turnaround time I was able to put the bin back before my mom even noticed it was missing. When I gave her the DVD loaded with all the images in labeled folders she was thrilled. It was great to see her reaction as she was amazed that our slide scanning and editing restored old slides that she was sure were faded beyond repair.  She had forgotten what was even in the bin in the first place and now she is enjoying her images and the bin has been put into storage!

Posted in Organizational, ScanDigital, ScanDigital Affiliates, film transfer, negative scanning, photos, slide scanning | No Comments »

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