OfficeDrop is very excited to announce the release of a free version of the popular Mac scanner software - ScanDrop Lite. ScanDrop Lite lets Mac users scan paper directly into the world’s leading cloud storage services for free. It is a starter product for OfficeDrop's paid Mac ScanDrop scanner software as well.

ScanDrop Lite allows the user to connect their scanner directly to popular cloud storage providers, like Dropbox, Google Docs, Gmail, Evernote and OfficeDrop's own cloud filing system.

OfficeDrop's head of marketing, Healy Jones, recently had a guest post in Mashable on 3 tips for making mobile apps more discoverable. As OfficeDrop continues to grow, we are finding that app marketplaces like the Google App Marketplace or iTunes or Android's mobile app market are driving a higher and higher percentage of new users. For example, new users are encountering OfficeDrop's Android scanner app or our Mac ScanDrop scanner software prior to even knowing anything about our traditional document scanning service.

App marketing is becoming more and more important for cloud and SaaS businesses as app marketplaces evolve into effective distribution channels. However, marketing in an app store is more challenging than the "traditional" web-based marketing that most cloud/browser based software companies are used to. The lack of analytics, limited space marketing materials in the listings and brutal one to five star review system means developers need to change the way the address marketing. 

Read the full piece in Mashable to learn more about how OfficeDrop gets our downloadable apps discovered.

Upgraded ScanDrop for Mac Now Digitizes and Organizes Documents Directly Within Dropbox; Converts Files to Editable Online Copies with Google Docs OCR Compatibility

A new version of OfficeDrop's popular scanning software, ScanDrop for Mac, is now available in the Mac App Store. ScanDrop scanner software digitizes and organizes documents directly to the cloud. ScanDrop for Mac can now scan to Dropbox and a local disk, in addition to leading cloud filing systems including Evernote, Google Docs and OfficeDrop Online. In addition, ScanDrop for Mac is now compatible with Google Docs optical character recognition (OCR), which allows users to automatically convert uploaded images, documents and PDF files to editable, searchable text.

Download ScanDrop for Mac at the Mac App store.

Businesses looking to take advantage of the power of going paperless face an interesting conundrum: once you are using digital files, where do you store them? A digital filing system can be a great way to increase your office's productivity by lowering the costs of storing, sharing and backing up information. There are a lot of different digital filing systems, but what makes one better than another? Here is a list of key features that you shouldn’t pass up when choosing a way to manage your digital information.

Versatility

Some digital filing systems are restrictive and confined when compared to more versatile options. Before uploading your information, make sure there are multiple ways to access or export your information, and that you are not locked into one system. A real digital office makes it easy for you to get your information OUT in addition to being able to interact with other digital services. Otherwise, it can be difficult to collaborate across offices, and even harder to share information with people outside your organization. 

As an example of versatility, OfficeDrop lets you link your account with other systems like Evernote and Google Docs. You can also easily share documents through OfficeDrop and can also download PDFs as needed.

OfficeDrop recently posted some pretty interesting data we learned after we launched our first desktop application, the ScanDrop scanning software. Turns out we got some pretty interesting data on which scanners were most likely to be used by cloud computing users. 

While I can't claim that this is an overall perfect representation of scanner market share by cloud computing users, the data is pretty cool. We found that:

OfficeDrop Data Reveals Cloud Computing Users Prefer Fujitsu ScanSnap and HP Scanners 

Cloud Computing - What Is It?

At OfficeDrop (a cloud based digital filing system and scanner software company), we realize that a lot of small business owners have heard of cloud computing but don't realize how it can help your business. For people that don’t know, cloud computing is a great way for small businesses to utilize IT resources without costs and responsibilities of physical infrastructure. Since we 've built our business in the cloud, and since our business is helping your business, we want you to understand what, exactly, this means.

Cloud Computing as a Metaphor

To explain the metaphor, the cloud is the internet – no big secret and computing is…computing. Essentially, cloud computing is a platform for accessing and utilizing your businesses IT via the internet. This means nearly all of your IT resources – your servers, data storage, software/ programs – are hosted on the internet. NOT sitting in your office. It used to be that all of your computing would have to be done by your own servers, hardwired to your business. Now that the internet is around, your servers don’t have to be hardwired, and you don’t even need to have your own. Instead, you can rent server space from anywhere in the country from people like Amazon, who have already paid the overhead. Utilizing this system with SaaS, which does the same thing with software, one could theoretically run an entire business from various cyber cafés (if those still exist) without purchasing any of their own personal hardware or software at all.

Why the Cloud is Great for Small Businesses

Cloud computing helps small businesses in a number of ways. In general, cloud computing offers a more versatile model both technically and economically. With cloud computing, you don’t have your own servers/hardware. On the economic end of things, operating in the cloud lets you pay as you go, and you only pay for what you use. So on one hand you have lower startup costs because you don't have to purchase expensive equipment when you are getting started. On the other hand, cloud computing allows for great scalability, since you don't have to keep buying servers every time you add an employee or a new software system. It’s the scalability of cloud computing that makes it especially effective with quickly growing small businesses. In addition, cloud computing removes the need for an IT expert on payroll. Unless your company is actually developing software, you don’t need the techies that would normally be running around putting out sever fires. Now, most small businesses are probably not going out and directly purchasing cloud computing units from Amazon. But where a small business can take advantage of cloud computing is in purchasing basic software like CRM, help desk, document management, email and more. Instead of purchasing hardware, buying software on a disk and hiring an IT professional to setup the hardware install that software a small business can purchase software over the internet - typically with no installation required - from a Software-as-a-Service provider. Usually this means that you've got a monthly contract instead of a big up front purchase. And, as we've already mentioned, you don't need to buy a server to host the software!

From my post on Pixily.com's blog: http://blog.pixily.com/blog/2010/01/08/top-free-and-low-priced-sales-and-marketing-saas-tools-for-small-businesses/

Now that small business SaaS is becoming mainstream, powerful marketing tools can be utilized to build a productive, cost effective marketing strategy for your small business. Five years ago when I worked for a big company we used multi-million dollar tools to track and manage our pipeline. Today, there are plenty of SaaS applications to oil your sales and marketing machine - a lot of them cheap if not free. Here are some of the best SaaS apps we have found for running sales and marketing:

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