Mark Dalton

So back in October I embarked on a project to simplify how I handle my personal paperwork (Digital Filing Cabinet Part One). Well since then I have made great progress and found the solution to be a lot less complicated than I originally thought.

At the end of my last post I was stuck with figuring out what storage options I needed for the three types of data I had.

Type 1: Insensitive Data – This is data that is to all intense and purpose no use to anybody else but me, and includes items such as manuals and instructions, for example the Boiler manual, and the instructions for the hot water and control system.

Type 2: Sensitive Data – This is data that could be used by others and could compromise my personal security or be used to impersonate my identity, such as education and health records and official correspondence such as voting data and official correspondence.

Type 3: Confidential Data – This is data that could severely impact my personal security, financial well being, and could certainly be used to impersonate me or secure financial benefits in my name, such as bank and credit card statements.

Well, after a lot of thought I arrived at the decision that as long as the data was encrypted and transmitted over a secure connection then I couldn’t see a major problem, and settled on two cloud computing solutions. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand fully the risks of storing data “in the cloud”, but have reasoned this is no less secure that storing it on a hard disk at home.

So what have I used? Well, for “Type 1″ type data I have selected Evernote and for “Type 2″ and “Type 3″ Data I have gone with DropBox. Evernote is ideal for this type of data as it indexes everything that is stored which means everything is searchable, even images. I have gone for the Premium service that allows you to upload 500 MB per month as I am loading quite a chunk of information at present. I have also using Evernote as a research tool for compiling list’s and research notes including Web Links, Emails, and Scanned pictures. DropBox on the other hand is cloud storage and I suppose a basic CMS / Document Management System. At present I am still working on scanning and copying the data to my DropBox account so am still using the free service, which provides 2 GB of storage. DropBox copies the data over SSL and encrypts all items using AES 256 before storing it on the back end, so I am relatively happy that it’s safe but am still taking a cautious approach at this stage. A great addition to DropBox is that it also provides version tracking so if you do amend a document you can easily revert should you need to. DropBox is also available from any computer either via a desktop client or their web interface. Unlike MobileMe and iDisk DropBox is super fast very reliable.

So that’s the storage sorted out, so I could scan a document in as a PDF and then move it to either Evernote or DropBox. There were a couple of other pieces of software I found made the process a whole lot smoother, however. The first was PDFPen from Smile On My Mac, which allows you to work with PDF documents, and the second was Hazel from Noodlesoft, which allows you to set up automated actions such as document renaming, moving, etc. This really is more about house keeping for me but I as I find myself performing repetitive tasks I do find it easier to configure Hazel to perform them for me.

So that’s in essence it for now! I am sure I will refine this over time and make small adjustments an improvements, for example I am now using OmniFocus from the Omni Group. OmniFocus is a “Getting Thing’s Done (GTD)” application, think advanced task planning. I am also testing Mail Tags & Mail Act-On from indev Software to help me integrate how I use email with the workflow, but for now I am not quite sure how I am going to do that as I don’t really work (at least from home) from my inbox.

So in my continued effort to make life easier and simplify my digital existence I have started the project to convert my filing cabinet. One of the downsides of adulthood, is the plethora of paperwork you are destined to deal with. Everything from bank statements and insurance policies, to boiler instructions and heating schematics.

So the first task was to identify what I was going to need and how it was going to work, the two obvious tools were a scanner and a computer! So I checked the HP website and found an updated software bundle for my HP OfficeJet 7210 Multifunctional device that were certified for MAC OS 10.5.x. Once installed on my MacBook Pro and MacBook Air the full functionality of the device was at my disposal. The next step was a little harder as I needed to figure out what my workflow was going to be before I could identify what software I was going to require. So I decided to go through my filling cabinet and review the contents. I needed to find out what kind of information I was working with and was actually quite a simple task. I think that PDF it going to be the preferred format as it can cope with both images and text, and if I had some Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to the process, should also be searchable.

The next consideration is security! I figure I have three types of data;

Type 1: Insensitive Data – This is data that is to all intense and purpose no use to anybody else but me, and includes items such as manuals and instructions, for example the Boiler manual, and the instructions for the hot water and control system.

Type 2: Sensitive Data – This is data that could be used by others and could compromise my personal security or be used to impersonate my identity, such as education and health records and official correspondence such as voting data and official correspondence.

Type 3: Confidential Data – This is data that could severely impact my personal security, financial well being, and could certainly be used to impersonate me or secure financial benefits in my name, such as bank and credit card statements.

No I use two online services for general data storage. The first is MobileMe and iDisk, the second is Evernote. Now I use iDisk to store items such as pictures and graphics (Usually for web design work) and general correspondence and reference material. Evernote I use primarily for reference material that I rarely use but consider to useful to throw away. Now I don’t see MobileMe and iDisk as a solution for storing any of these types of data, mainly due to the size restrictions. I do however think that Evernote (Which I under use drastically) could be a candidate for the first type of data (Type 1).

Now I just need to figure out what to use for the other two data types!

So the problems I have been having with forwarding me email finally seem to be resolved. The MobileMe Support team have added my ISP’s email servers to there white lists and email forwarding is finally working.

Okay so I finally found a work around to my iPhone SMTP problem and that is to not use the default MobileMe option on the iPhone. I deleted the mail account from the iPhone and then opted to create a new one but instead of selecting the default MobileMe option I selected the “Other” option and manually setup the MobileMe connection which allowed me to manually configure each of the options including changing the SSL and Authentication options.

Now just to sort out my email forwarding issue, which I thought was resolved but appears to still be a problem, and I will be a happy MobileMe user.

So it looks like my eMail problem may be resolved by I will need to monitor it for a couple of days to say for sure.

I feel kind of guilty as I really gave my ISP a hard time and it looks like it wasn’t there fault. On the face of it it looks like Apple (@me.com) was blocking my ISP from forwarding the email. Thankfully my ISP were able to provide the header information from the failures that I could send to Apple support.

I received a quick response from an “Amanda” from MobileMe support which asked for some additional information but I wasn’t able to supply it. I haven’t heard anything since but email does now appear to be flowing.