Paper Doll
Paper Doll Organizing Carnival — Paper’s Imperfect Past, Present and Future
Once again, we’re pausing to look at some of the quirky and delightful, thought-provoking and useful things that have popped up while we’ve been focusing elsewhere.
LESS PAPER VS. PAPERLESS
The title of I Heart Tech‘s Paperless for Lawyers — A 12 Step Plan only incidentally creates a parallel between a smattering of advice and the well-known steps of a recovery program. After all, it’s not like the blogger, Adriana Linares, starts by asking the reader to admit he or she is powerless over paper.
Nonetheless, Paper Doll knows how addictive paper can be. It’s tangible and immediate, and whether loose or bound, paper is comforting. While it can, conceivably, burn or be tossed away, there’s a safety in its permanence that many of us, even those who embrace technology, prefer to the idea of going paperless.
While I Heart Tech’s advice is designed for attorneys and legal practices, many of the general concepts are applicable to all of us. If we want to reduce paper (and let’s face it — we DO want to reduce it; we just don’t want to wipe it out entirely), we need to start with a plan (#1) for reaching our goals. Moreover, getting a scanner (#4), converting more paper to digital formats (#6), keeping digital documents from being printed by “printing to PDF” (#8) and replacing traditional faxing with e-faxing (#7) are all smart tactics.
However, as a professional organizer, I’m dubious that some of these tips are practical, even for attorneys. I imagine that her hyperbolic advice (#3) to squirrel away printing supplies and force staffers who use them to be visibly accountable each time they need something, would destroy more, in terms of the value of productivity, than it would gain in the value of printing supply costs. I’m even more skeptical of scanning all incoming physical mail (#10), which I believe would be just as unproductive for a 100-person law firm as a three-person family.
If you’re thinking of going digital with your files, remember that your time is valuable, and focus on scanning documents which you have a reasonable likelihood of referencing later on. A widely-noted statistic in professional organizing is that upwards of 80% of documents filed are never looked at again; do you really want to spend your precious hours scanning every darn thing? It’s a simple fact that sometimes, having a paper element to your filing system is just more efficient.
Finally, while I empathize with Linares’ frustration over documents that are printed solely so that they can be signed and then scanned and emailed, the subject of electronic signatures (#11) is likely to make the average user somewhat queasy. What does it mean when something that is inarguably your signature doesn’t require you to create it? Be assured, we’ll be talking more about electronic signatures in an upcoming post.
TAB, AND TAB ALIKE
Right after last week’s post on tabs went to press, two other free-standing tab options, one practical and one mainly aesthetic, came to my attention.
On the practical side, paper powerhouse Smead has Add-A-Tab, manila card stock filing tabs with adhesive strips on the front, enabling users to affix them to the back edges of tab-less folders, binder dividers and file pockets.
The neutral/beige Add-A-Tabs come in 32-packs with four assorted color-coding top stripes (in red, blue, yellow and green), and are made of 10% recycled content and 10% post-consumer material.
On the pretty side of things, mere moments after I’d put last week’s post to bed, K & Company’s Paper SMASH Tabs presented themselves. These colorful, decorative tabs, printed on thick card stock, come 16 to a package and are themed to the SMASH line of scrapbooking products.
Although Paper Doll is not a scrapbooker, I have it on authority from numerous sources that these are popular doohickeys, equally suited for use with Smash and other scrapbooking products, journals and various creative endeavors.
DUDE, THAT’S AN AWESOME PIN!
Speaking of after-deadline finds, many weeks after I shared a bulletin board full of guy-themed alternatives to Pinterest, including Gentlemint, Manteresting and DartItUp, a new contender pinned itself to my sleeve.
Dudepins, with the motto “Man up, Sign up, Pin up,” is in beta, currently accessible by invitation only, after which one may sign up via Twitter, Facebook or email. Pinned topics (like alcohol, implements of destruction, cars, and sports) may tend more towards guy-ish stereotypes than the classier Gentlemint, but there’s no doubt there’s an ample bacon- and scotch-loving audience for such pins. And then there this:
It’s not yet clear how much effort has gone into the branding of these male-themed pinboard sites, but I think it’s safe to say that Dudepins is leaning a bit more towards attracting a younger, more casual dude than Gentlemint seeks.
Instead of the mints, workbenches and dartboards of its pinboard brethren, Dudepins’ users create montages (oooh, classy) to categorize and store pins, which are added either via the “Pin up” button (an installed browser bookmarklet), uploading from one’s hard drive or navigating to a site from Dudepins.
Generally, newcomer Dudepins is a masculine copycat of Pinterest with less interest in distancing itself from the mother ship than the other guy-boards. I found the main difference only by watching the instructional video; the voice-over accent made it clear to my native Buffalonian ears: Dudepins is Canadian! And longtime readers know that my adoration of North-of-the-Borderisms extend even beyond my Professional Organizers in Canada colleagues and the world’s best candy bar…so give Dudepins a look-see.
THE GENIZAH PROJECT
Finally, I was intrigued by an article in Washington Jewish Week about an art installation (through this Saturday) at Washington, DC’s Artomatic. Artist Rachel Farbiarz sent out a call that, to some, might have the poignancy of Emma Lazarus’ poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “…Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free…” Farbiarz’s request:
I am offering a means of disposing the scraps that you have carried throughout life and no longer want to carry. They can go if there is a place for them: I’ll be your place and we will put them to rest as art.
Send me your: holiday greetings, letters from old boyfriends, birth announcements, thank you cards, notes passed in grade school. Send me your: letters not sent, save-the-date reminders, old calendars and daily planners. Send me your: lists of things-to-do not-done, ancient valentines, finger-paintings from long-grown toddlers, postcards from around the world. Send me those papers that have followed you everywhere. Send me those things that were once disposable, but through the passage of time have become not-so.
Farbiarz created The Genizah Project. For those unfamiliar, a Genizah was historically a repository for damaged Jewish holy books and documents set to be ritually buried in a cemetery. The Genizah provided a way for communities to dispose of sacred materials in a way that honored them and showed respect.
However, in certain communities, no ritual burial ever took place. Indeed, in the case of the Cairo Genizah, for over 1000 years, a community collected not only crumbling Torahs and prayer books, but a vast stockpile of both personal papers and public documents.
To reflect an understanding of the role of such paper collections, Farbiarz recently ran a workshop at Washington’s landmark Sixth & I Historic Synogogue. As the Washington Jewish Times described it:
…the workshop was part support group, with participants carefully admitting that they are “savers,” “collectors” and “pack rats.” Farbiarz encouraged them to consider the fallacy that if something has been saved it is somehow important, even sacred.
We all face the issue of attachments to papers every day. We save papers for a myriad reasons. We hold on to papers because we are overwhelmed by the bulk, and don’t know where to start. We hold on because of genuine sentiment, and the affection and warm feelings bought on by old love letters and driving directions to kindergarten orientations.
And we hold on to papers out of fear. Certainly there’s fear that we will be in trouble, legally or financially, if we dispose of important documents, receipts or statements, but at least that fear can be easily overcome with confident assertions from experts.
But there’s another kind of fear that keeps us attached, creating junk drawers and filing cabinets and cedar chests that turn into our own personal Genizahs. This is the fear that we will be forgotten. As the Washington Jewish Times story alludes, mankind has always created or saved some things that serve as landmarks for future travelers to find, as a way to say, “I was here.”
The difference is that just as our homes, our possessions and our waistlines are vastly increased vs. that of prior generations’, the collected paper ephemera and memorabilia of our lives have exponentially increased. There’s less room — in our lives, on our planet — and increasingly more difficulty persuading someone not to treat an expired car registration with the same sacred reverence as a marriage certificate.
Every day, we try to help clients find a way to balance being comfortable with letting go of what isn’t serving their needs (for space, for serenity, for a clear writing surface) with retaining enough tangible proof of their existence to feel just a little bit eternal. For clients, as much as for me when I debate tossing my college ID or love letters that outlasted an eleventh grade romance, it’s always a bit of a struggle.
Farbiaz plans to repeat the The Genizah Project installation in other cities. Her plea for submissions to the DC exhibit ended with:
At Artomatic’s end, the piece will be disassembled and your papers put to rest in a manner befitting their dignity. You will not receive your papers in return.
Oh, if only all we needed in order to be comfortable with letting go of our excess papers were to agree on a manner befitting their dignity.
Paper Doll Talks Tabs (Part 2) — Sorted, Separated and Stylized!
POST-IT
For Post-it, it was a natural progression from squared-off and pinpoint tape flags (the kind that say “Sign Here”) to creating a full line of labeling tabs.
Post-it Durable Flat Filing Tabs are ideal for organizing individual papers within file folders, as well as marking sections in books or loosely collected but unbound documents. The flat filing tabs come in two styles — white but striped at the top to aid in color-coding, and full-color tabs.
In both styles, the portion below the labeled tab is clear, so that when you’re reviewing paperwork, there’s no need to move the tab to read what’s underneath. The flat tabs come in 1″ solid-color and striped for easy sorting, 2″ solid-color and striped for traditional filing, and 3″ solid-color tabs for more detailed filing and sorting jobs.
The flat tabs are re-positionable and made of extra-thick, heavy-duty material to stand up to repeated use. Both the solid-color tabs and striped tabs come in Red, Yellow, Light Green and Blue Green assortments.
Post-it Durable Angled Filing Tabs are specifically for vertical filing and come in 2″ solid-color and striped formats, in the same color schemes as the flat tabs.
These angled tabs are suitable for use with hanging folders or with individual pieces of paper when you’re not using file folders, such as with accordion files (as illustrated above). These tabs are also re-positionable and sturdy, and lean just slightly back from the user to make them easier to read.
[To speed the filing process, Post-it also makes Pre-Printed Tabs, with solid-color blocks labeled with the months of the year, days of the week, letters and numbers.]
Post-it Note-Taking Tabs combine the “Hey, here’s what you’re looking for!” quick efficiency of tabs with a solution for keeping notes associated with documents. With the flat and angled tabs, both the tab itself and the clear “body” portion are made of a slick writing surface. The Post-it Note-Taking Tabs just go one step further.
The extra-thick and sturdy Note-Taking tabs measure 3 3/8″ x 2 3/4″, offering up a nice-sized piece of real estate for the user to make notations regarding the page being marked. Make notes of mnemonics in your text book, substitutions for recipes in cookbooks, or specific language for arguing your point in a contract dispute, all the while keeping the original pristine.
You can position tabs anywhere — top, bottom, left or right — just flip the tab and orient yourself before writing. Affix your tab adjacent to the applicable section, and then leave yourself notes about the written material. Students can even use highlighter on the writing surface of the tab’s body, instead of directly on the page, so they’ll be able to sell the books back at the end of the semester.
The Note-Taking tabs come ten per pack in a variety of single-color (pink, aqua or yellow) and assorted color packages.
AVERY
Avery sometimes takes a back seat to Post-it in terms of “celebrity sticky” status, but Avery’s innovations really deserves some attention.
The Avery Small NoteTabs are perfect for traditional filing, and are much like the Post-it flat tabs, specifically designed for color-coding files, organizing documents, marking references in books and journals, and creating divided sections in notebooks. The tabs bear up under heavy use, allow you to write or highlight anywhere on the tab (or see-through writing areas), and are re-positionable without removing any ink from the printed page.
However, Avery’s tabs come in a slightly wider array of styles. The basic Small NoteTabs are 2 x 1 1/2″ notes and come in Primary (Red, Yellow, Cool Green and Cool Blue, with clear writing areas), Cool (Cool Blue and Cool Green with matching-color writing areas), Pastels (Blue and Yellow, with clear writing areas), all in packages of 40, and Taupe (white tabs with Taupe writing surfaces, as well as all-Taupe) in packages of 10.
Beyond the traditional form, Avery expands the tab definition with sets of 2″ x 1 1/2″ Rounded NoteTabs in various assorted colors,
including two sets of Neon (Yellow/Clear and Magenta/Clear or Blue/Clear and Magenta/Clear), and Citrus (Lemon/Clear, Green/Clear) in packs of 10.
For those needing a more expansive writing area, Avery makes 3″ Square NoteTabs (with 1/2″ tab surfaces), which work exactly like the Post-it Note-Taking tabs. However, unlike the slick tab surface of Post-it’s tabs, Avery’s have a paper tabbed surface, although the body is still a slick poly-style.
Some of the combinations seem standard, with a clear writing surface and a colorful tab in pastels or neons. However, the Cool Green and Taupe varieties have colored writing surfaces. Although writing surfaces purport to be see-through, one imagines that it might be hard to read the printed page, depending on the colors of the papers to which the tabs are affixed. Cool green on a dark page might be iffy.
In addition to these standard tabs, Avery has partnered with Martha Stewart, Doyenne of Domesticity, to create a special line of notes available only at Staples. The tabs come in two styles, the straight-top Classic and the curvier Flourish
and in three sizes (1″ x 1 1/2″, 2″ x 1 1/2″ and 3″ x 1 1/2″) in assorted packs of 24 or 40. The color assortments include Custom Blue, Custom Green, Dark Yellow, and Pastel Pink tabs, with clear extended writing surfaces.
Avery has two other intriguing products. The 3″ x 7 1/2″ Perforated Tabs, are positionable vertically or horizontally on the page, and can be adjusted to the size(s) you prefer (like when you’re reading narrower or shorter books). Much like adjustable-sized paper towels, you can tear off as little or as much as you like, and even reposition the detached, non-tabbed portions to affix notes on other sections of the reading material.
Finally, Avery PocketTabs bring together two disparate needs — the ability to mark your place and the opportunity to hold onto small resources.
The sturdy adhesive-backed tabs are re-positionable without lifting ink or damaging the underlying paper. The poly translucent pockets hold receipts, business cards, digital media, ID cards, and more, with a secure closure. The PocketTabs come in two sizes, square-ish 5 1/8″ x 6″ and half-page 5 1/8″ x 8 5/16″, in assorted Pastels, Neons and Taupes.
SEE JANE WORK
The big guys, Post-it and Avery, aren’t the only ones who know how to stick around and show off. See Jane Work carries a spiffy line of Sticky Tab Dividers from Semikolon in wide array of truly gorgeous colors. Create tabbed sections in journals, binders, cookbooks, and more, and keep your loose papers fashionably sorted.
Each set comes with approximately fifty 2″ x 3/4″ tabs in each of twelve colors, for 600 tabs per set. They’re designed for labeling — not note-taking — but what they lack in size, they make up for in dazzling color and the ability to snappily customize and accessorize.
No matter your tabbing style, there’s something to suit your needs, whether you’re a student, a professional, or a family filer. Happy tabbing, and don’t forget to enter the Filertek Contest!
Paper Doll Talks Tabs (Part 1) — and Throws a Filertek Contest
Over the past year, I’ve been teaching Paper Mommy how to use a computer, and in particular, the internet, via long-distance. (If you’re trying coach computer issues over the web, Log Me In is a godsend!) She’s doing a great job, and like her daughter, Paper Mommy prefers the clean, organized lines of Twitter to the clutter of Facebook.
Most of her technological questions deal with the basics of maneuvering through email, social media, search engines and browsers. The terminology can sometimes be a sticking point, though, as I learned when I tried to convey what I thought was a simple concept regarding the purpose of browser tabs. Eventually, Paper Mommy was able to visualize that the tabs in her browser were supposed to be the digital equivalent of file folder tabs. Ah-ha!
Once we had that cleared up, she had just one more question. What did the browser tabs have to do with the tab key on her keyboard? (Some lessons take longer to explain than others.)
All of this got me thinking about the importance of tabs in keeping paper organized. When papers are at their tidiest and most efficient and effective, tabs serve as “Peek-a-Boo” alerts to let you know, “Hey, that thing you want? It’s right here!”
For the most part, the big guns in the filing business have created the kinds of built-in innovations we’ve talked about before, like Smead’s SuperTab oversized tab filing folders and FasTab hanging folders with built-in tab areas, and Pendaflex’s Ready-Tab Reinforced Hanging Folders and Ready-Tab Extra-Capacity Hanging Folders with Lift Tab™ Technology.
But what do you do when the tabs that would make your organizing life so much easier just aren’t built-in or part of the kit? Over the next two posts, we’ll be looking at some special alternatives to help you create tabs wherever you need or want them. Today, the focus is on hanging folders.
Filertek Dry-Erase Hanging File Tabs first showed up on Paper Doll‘s radar after the 2011 NAPO conference. This stand-alone plastic hanging file tab has its own patented, built-in, dry-erase writing surface, so even if you have hanging folders without any built-in tabs (or a bag of those nasty, old-fashioned, plastic filing tabs), you can still have clear, bright, easy-to-read labels.
With Filertek, you write directly on the tab with a dry erase pen, flip down the little visor-like cover (available in clear or assorted colors) and click it closed.
Paper Doll isn’t too proud to admit it: I have chubby, little sausage fingers. Writing on those tiny strips of paper and threading them into those traditional (sharp, annoying) hanging file folder tabs has always been a bane of my paper organizing life. I really like that with Filertek, to reuse and relabel a tab, you simply flip the cover up, wipe the tab clean and write a new label. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Of course, you can also attach a removable adhesive label (that you’ve printed on your labelmaker) and then close the cover.
And if you really like kicking it Old School, you can insert a pre-created paper label, too, but it slides in from the top after you’ve closed the cover, so there’s no fussing with threading a narrow label horizontally into the old file sleeve.
Once your preferred label style is in place, just attach a Filertek tab to a hanging folder by snapping it in place.
Filertek comes in clear or color tabs (blue, yellow, green, pinky-peach and orange). I’d like to see them upgrade to some prettier shades, but aesthetics are certainly in the eye of the beholder. Filertek is available in packs of five or twelve, and in boxes of 25 or 50, in either clear or color. Every package comes with a special odor-free, black Filertek dry erase pen.
Filertek Dry-Erase Hanging File Tabs can be purchased directly from The Pencil Grip, the North American distributor, or through Amazon.
Now, for the Paper Doll/Filertek Contest. The rules are super-easy:
1) Tweet or post a Facebook update about this blog post. You can do it manually, or use the Bookmark & Share links at the bottom of this post.
(On Twitter, make sure your tweets aren’t protected (hidden). On Facebook, set the access for the post to public.)
2) Include a link to this Paper Doll post and the hashtag #PaperDoll-Filertek.
3) Come back and post in the comment section below, with a link to your tweet or Facebook update.*
*UPDATE: The OnlineOrganizing.com system does not allow clickable links in the comments. If you’ve tried to post your comment and have had a problem, please post your link WITHOUT the http:// portion (i.e., just www.Twitter.com/whatever) and it will post without trouble. Sorry about that, folks!
That’s it! But be speedy — the contest closes at Noon in the Paper Doll (Eastern) Time Zone on Friday, June 15, 2012. Two randomly selected winners will each receive both of the following:
- One 25-pack box of CLEAR Filertek Dry-Erase Hanging File Tabs
- One 25-pack box of COLOR Filertek Dry-Erase Hanging File Tabs
You can’t win if you don’t begin, so be sure to enter, and let the world know about the contest.
While you’re at it, visit Filertek at Twitter, Pinterest and on Facebook, and Paper Doll at Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. To make sure you never miss a post, subscribe to the RSS feed up there to the right, just below my photo.
Of course, when we’re using hanging folders isn’t the only time we need tabs. Surely, there are moments when we’d like a textbook or cookbook to help us quickly delineate categories. Sometimes we just wish we had some pretty tabs to mark our places in notebooks or loose stacks of paper. And once in a while, wouldn’t it be nice to have a tab that also provided a place to take some notes or tuck some items away in a flat pocket?
In our next post, we’ll be looking at ways to have the convenience of tabs that do all of the above — even when we’re nowhere near file folders. Here’s a sneak peak of just a few of the items we’ll be reviewing:
See you next time. Until then — good luck in the contest!
Paper Doll Puts Pen To Paper: A Shoplet Sanford Writing Pens Review
Readers will recall that I recently promised an ongoing, if irregular, series of reviews for our friends at cool office supply purveyor Shoplet, operator of the nifty and prolific Shoplet blog.
I was particularly pleased and intrigued by the package that recently arrived from Shoplet for my perusal, as it contained three different Sanford Brands writing tools:
- a four-pack of Paper Mate InkJoy 700 RT Ballpoint Pens (two black, one blue, and one red)
- a Sharpie Premium Pen
- a three-pack of Sharpie Gel Highlighters (yellow, orange, pink)
(Think you don’t know Sanford Brands? Sure you do — they’re part of the Newell Rubbermaid family.)
But first, are you familiar with IPS, or Icky Produce Syndrome? How often, after reading an article on the health benefits of some fabulous, if underutilized, fruit or vegetable, do you make a point of heading to the nearest grocery or farmer’s market to try the newest superfood?
You buy it, perhaps search the web for a recipe that will make the odd item seem more palatable, and maybe even try it, despite the dubious or perplexed reactions of your loved ones. (Seriously, have you ever seen a Buddha Hand?
It’s just freaky. And that’s before it spoils!)
The produce eventually hides in your fridge, moving ever farther into the recesses of the chill chest, until it reappears, days or weeks later, when you’ve given yourself over to a hearty clean-out, and find the item is dried up (at best) or moldy.
What does that have to do with writing implements? Everything! Office supplies can be addicting — like the superfoods, new writing tool holds the promise of a magic wand. To the student, it’s the thing standing between mediocrity and genius. To the list-maker, it has the potential for bringing those never-ending tasks to completion.
We buy with a flourish, but we are too often disappointed when the pens and pencils, highlighters and markers fall short of their promises, or of our expectations, and then they languish as clutter in our drawers, or the bottoms of our bags, or our pen mugs, ignored until the ink dries to dust. That’s why an inside look can be so important, and hence my delight at reviewing these office supplies.
When it comes to pens, Paper Doll is very picky. For more than fifteen years, I’ve primarily used one specific rollerball gel pen, with brief forays into the land of fine markers, or felt-tips. However, I love testing out alternative pens, because so many of my clients are on a lifetime search for the “perfect” pen — one with the right heft and balance, the ideal flow of ink, the preferred grip, and so on. Pens are very personal, as even in this digital age, so many of us take our first creative steps on any project with an old-fashioned (if newfangled) pen.
To be honest, I’m not much of a ballpoint pen kind of gal. I usually find them the wrong weight and shape, and most often, I find that the ink flows too weakly, forcing me to exert extra pressure to achieve the desired result, or intermittently, leaving blobs.
The Paper Mate InkJoy 700 RT Ballpoint Pen surprised me.
The InkJoy definitely has less heft that I would personally prefer, but that’s its only drawback. The retractable pen’s hourglass design is almost imperceptibly narrowed in the center of the barrel to make it rest more easily between the thumb and forefinger, and the rubber grip is a little shorter than might be expected, but satisfyingly smooth. The color of the ink is indicated, almost covertly, by a tiny, flat, colored disk at the top of the pen, perpendicular to the “clicker.”
The joyful aspect of the InkJoy is that the ink flows very smoothly, as though it were a gel pen, rather than a ballpoint. No extra pressure needs to be exerted, and the ink releases smoothly, gliding across the paper, without effort.
Again, the main advantage of the InkJoy for me is that it behaves more like a rollerball than a ballpoint, requiring less exertion. If you actually like putting your hand (or even shoulder) into it to make the paper “bumpy” on the reverse side, I suppose you can still do so.
The Sharpie Premium Pen is the newest in a line of nifty Sharpie advances. Although it wasn’t a rollerball, I was a fan of the original fine-point Sharpie pens that came out a few years ago. Functionally, they were dandy, and though the form was nicely streamlined (even skinny), the outer coating had a mild tendency to flake, and I wondered if Sharpie might create an upgrade in form. The Sharpie Premium is that upgrade.
Indeed, the Sharpie Premium Pen seems to take the best of two product worlds. First, it has the smooth dependability of the smear-resistant (when dry) Sharpie Pen; both also have the advantage of not bleeding through paper.
Second, the Premium Pen has a sleek look. When I eyeballed the Shoplet package, I was let down for a tiny second when I saw that the outer casing of the Sharpie Premium Pen was stainless steel. I’d loved the idea of the stainless steel traditional Sharpie marker a few years back, but that barrel, even thicker than those of regular sharpie permanent markers, was just too thick for my hand. Sharpie sidestepped that problem with the Premium Pen.
The refillable stainless steel barrel of the Sharpie Premium Pen is narrower than its marker predecessor, and the rubberized grip is smooth and has just the right amount of, well, grippiness. The one concern you might have is the same as with any fine felt-tip pen, and that is that one might press too hard and bend or damage the tip. I found that applying a natural amount of pressure yielded a smooth flow of ink, so unless you have a particularly heavy hand, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Finally, I got to try out the the Sharpie Gel Highlighter …and it is weird. Weird like the Buddha Hand. Which is to say not to say it’s bad, just that it takes some getting used to, and then you might find yourself singing its praises.
I’ve never used a gel highlighter (indeed, I’m not sure I knew they existed before this Sharpie version), and for want of an apt comparison, the functional aspect seems more like an roll-on anti-perspirant or the slick 1980’s lip gloss Kissing Potion than a highlighter.
It highlights brightly and cleanly, and thus far, seems to live up to its promise to neither bleed through paper nor smear across inkjet inks or anything written in marker or pen. Sharpie notes that it highlights text just as well, no matter the paper type, though I did find that the brightness of the highlighting somewhat decreased when used on glossy magazines.
From the form perspective, it’s atypical. The barrel is somewhat flattened, rather than rounded, and until I read the directions, I didn’t quite realize that the bottom of the highlighter should be twisted to advance the sturdy gel stick. Thus, unlike a traditional short-tipped highlighter that dies too quickly because it has dried out or absorbed the ink from the paper, this gel highlighter should be far longer lasting. Indeed, Sharpie claims that the Gel Highlighter may be left uncapped for days without drying out. (Paper Doll didn’t try that — the potential for drawing on myself or my clothes was too great.)
Don’t let your home or work office suffer from the writing tool version of Icky Produce Syndrome. Research your preferred qualities, and if something you buy turns out not to fit your needs, consider a one-to-one trade with a friend or colleague so you can keep testing, without excessive spending…or finding a dried up Buddha Hand in your pencil case.
Disclosure: I received these products for review purposes only, and was given no monetary compensation. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Who else would claim them?)
Paper Doll Shares How To Print Only What You Want and Need
Certainly, some sites have links to create “print-friendly” pages, but it’s not a common enough occurrence. While various sites and apps allow you to convert a website’s HTML into PDFs, the real trick is eliminating all the detritus you don’t actually need. And, although some PDF conversion services have add-ons for editing HTML before creating printable PDFs, you need to purchase a license to customize, and that’s really overkill when all you want to do is save your ink and paper costs.
BOOKMARKLETS
You remember bookmarklets, those little bits of javascript code that let you put a little link in any browser’s bookmark bar? Instead of taking you to a bookmarked URL, they do little flourishes of magic — pin pictures to Pinterest, shorten your links, or, in this case, eliminate all the icky extras from a website so that if you must print, you can print a nice, clean version.
Generally, to put a bookmarklet in place, you merely drag and drop a linked button icon from a service’s website onto your Bookmarks or Favorites bar and you’re good to go. (Internet Explorer users must right-click the icon and select “Add to Favorites.”)
Readable converts web pages to text-only and re-formats the text according to your specifications. To get started, you select your preferred style from a wide variety of options: font family, font size, background color and whether you’d like the ensuing page’s formatting justified. You can even refine your view more narrowly, selecting how you’d like to see headline fonts, line spacing, link colors and more:
As you make your selections, the preview screen displays the results of your changes, allowing you to tinker until everything fits your ideal. Once you’re set, just click and drag the Readable bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar, and your preferences will be saved.
As originally designed, Readable deals primarily with articles pages, like those on online newspapers and blogs — anything that contains one large block of text; then, it automatically processes those pages. It even works just as well on sites written in languages that read from right to left, like Hebrew.
On other types of sites, Readable operates in manual mode — you select the chunk of text you’d like reformatted, and then click the bookmarklet, and, if you desire, print, saving ink and paper. When done reading, you just double-click the background to dismiss Readable’s overlay.
Evernote recently acquired Readable, launching it as Evernote Clearly. It’s already available for Chrome and Firefox, and will soon launch for other browsers. The original Readable remains operational.
Print What You Like works similarly, allowing you to customize any web page so that you can retrieve a printable copy with just the elements you want. Install the bookmarklet, or just enter the URL of the page on the Print What You Like website, and the page is displayed with a sidebar, from which you can choose your setup options:
To further modify your view, click on any portion of the text to select it, and then opt to isolate it (and make everything else disappear), remove it (and keep everything else intact), widen the column, or change the font style or size in any select portion of the page (leaving everything else in place). If you wish, hide the background or specific images. Save documents as HTML or PDFs, or just print, whether or not you’ve elected to save. You can also create “clips” to save small elements to later group with other segments and print as one page.
Whereas Readable is designed to pre-set one style for all your reading, the basic version of Print What You Like is meant to allow you to make viewing selections on an ad hoc basis. If you choose to sign up for an account, Print What You Like offers advanced features, like preserving your display preferences and collating multiple website pages into one document or print job.
Joliprint automatically turns any web page into a clean, streamlined PDF for reading later — on your computer, phone or Kindle — and prints easily with a single click. You can install the bookmarklet in your browser, or if you choose to use it rarely, just visit the Joliprint site and enter the URL of the page you wish to “sanitize.” (Be sure to enter the actual article page, not the home page of the website.) Or, as with Pinterest, if you see a Joliprint button on a website, you can also just click that to achieve the same effect.
Once selected, Joliprint will prepare your document, turning the website into a simplified, printable PDF document you can download, open on your computer or digital device, print, or share with others via Twitter, Facebook or email by using the customized link Joliprint provides. For example, I chose a Time Management Ninja post that Print Preview indicated would print as ten ink-intensive pages, and clicked on the bookmarklet. In seconds, I received the following pop-up:
Each of the icons was clickable, granting me options for preserving or sharing the article, including a simple shortened link to a downloadable PDF: http://prin.tt/MRxkUI. That version? Only two pages!
Joliprint also enables several “save for later” reading list options, like InstaPaper, Google Reader, and Read It Later, as well as Twitter and even your own email account, to feed directly to Joliprint. Most recently, Joliprint has added an option to let you create a “magazine” of your content for your iPad or other tablets.
On the plus side, Joliprint is swift and tidy. However, you can’t customize the document, so you have to accept whatever deletions Joliprint uses, and may end up printing more, or less, than you wanted.
PrintFriendly may be the most deft of the page-cleanup-and-print options Paper Doll reviewed. (It definitely has the cutest website, with smiley-face trees to remind you that it’s good for the environment.) Using PrintFriendly is supereasy — install the bookmarklet, type or paste the URL into the PrintFriendly site, or click a (Pin-It/Tweet-It style) button installed on a website.
As with Joliprint, one click of PrintFriendly automatically removes the ads, navigation links, extraneous graphics, etc., but you still have the option to manually remove anything else you don’t want. Just mouse over the area you don’t want — as you hover, PrintFriendly highlights the section. Double-click or click the “Click to Delete” button that pops up. Select specific images to delete, or click the “Remove Images” box to maintain text only. You can also change the font size, increasing it to accommodate tired eyes or decreasing it to reduce the number of pages.
Once your document looks the way you want, print it, save it as a PDF, or email the document, as you like, happy in the knowledge that you’ve streamlined your content, increased your focus, soothed your eyes and reduced your use of ink and paper.
Printliminator works much like the other services mentioned. Install the bookmarklet, and when you’re surfing a page you’d like to print (without all of the extra junk), click the bookmarklet. A small, unobtrusive set of controls pops up in the upper right corner of your window:
Roll your cursor over any section of the web page and a thick red outline will appear around discrete sections. Click once and the material within the red outline will disappear. (Be careful to click only on white space; if you click on any link or linked graphic, you’ll be taken to a new page, and you’ll have to start over.) Conversely, you can also select an area, use Option-Click, and everything except your selected area will disappear.
Once you’re satisfied that enough material has been deleted, click “Send to Printer” (and once there, print to PDF, if you’re so inclined).
All of the above sites offer easy-to-install bookmarklets to maximize your reading and printing experiences, and all except Readable and Printliminator allow you to enter the URL on the service’s website in lieu of installing a bookmarklet. None require registration. Print What You Like, Joliprint and PrintFriendly can all be installed on your website or blog to enable your readers to more easily print or share your content.
In addition to bookmarklets, there are other options for reducing your ink and printing costs and streamlining your web reading.
EXTENSIONS/ADD-ONS
PrintEdit is a free Firefox add-on that lets you edit any web page content while you’re still in Print Preview mode. Remove unwanted pages, sidebars, blank pages and useless information, and compact the layout so you can print fewer pages.
PrintPlus does the same for Safari and Chrome users.
SOFTWARE
Fineprint is one element in a suite of software options for easily creating intuitive, ink-and-paper-saving PDFs. When you install Fineprint, it creates a virtual printer within your system (just like when Mac users print “to” PDF), only when the website (or other document) appears in the preview section, you then have the ability to delete pages and add headers, footers, or watermarks. Fineprint also allows you to shrink and scale pages to print multiple pages to one sheet and archive print jobs.
There’s a free trial version; to remove the Fineprint banner that appears, you must purchase the full version (for $49.95) to receive the registration key.
GreenPrint, which we discussed a few years ago, has grown by leaps and bounds. Now, the company’s analytics, reporting and advisory products and services, particularly for large businesses, take the center stage, but at $19, GreenPrint Home Premium still provides the ability to customize any print job, eliminating unnecessary images and pages, thereby reducing print costs.
Both Fineprint and GreenPrint are only compatible for Windows 7, XP and Vista. GreenPrint has discontinued its Mac and free online versions.
Paper Doll encourages readers to experiment with all of the free bookmarklet options before plunking down money for paid alternatives. Happy printing!
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