Category: mac

Mac Scan

March 3rd, 2008 · Peter Paul Bakker · mac, scan No comments

Tonight I finally got around to change from windows to mac for the scanning of documents. I tend to scan important documents and store them in electronic format in a safe place. It took quite some time to find the correct settings to use.

On windows I used the office document manager that you can install as an optional component in office. I store the contents into tiff. The nice thing was that it automatically performed OCR on the documents (even in Dutch) and I could enable an indexer for tif (or tiff) files. This made it possible to search on these files and also copy-paste directly from the documents.

So the first thing I tried on the Mac was to scan documents. OCR does not seem to come out of the box for the Mac. For my HP 4200 printer I downloaded the HP device manager/HP Scan Pro.

Then I scanned some documents, you can select PDF or TIF. The documents that I saved were rather large in size: more than 500kb each for grayscale (8 bit) at 100 resolution. The “TIFF to preview” option in HP Scan Pro with grayscale at 150 resolution and ‘medium’ sharpness is being calculated at 2.6Mb. That was a big contrast with the scans from windows, where 1 page documents were around 40kb each.

Just now I found the trick. When scanning is done and the tiff file is opened in Preview, you can choose “save as” and there you select the compression to use when saving the tiff file. Choosing “LZW” compresses the tiff file from 2.1Mb into a 144kb file. Quite acceptable. This is for 8-bit grayscale at 150 resolution.

Actually, for black-on-white text, sharper results you get with 1-bit, 200 resolution. Then save with the PackBits compression. This results in a 61Kb file.

Choosing “OCR to Text” gives me the warning that OCR is not installed. Reading from the HP site, the OCR software is only provided on the original CD that came with the printer. I have to see if I still have that: “readiris”, an OCR solution for the Mac, is supposed to be included. That’s for another day…

More Mac Wireless Keyboard for Nokia E51

March 1st, 2008 · Peter Paul Bakker · gadget, mac No comments

Using the internet browser on the E51 with the Mac Wireless Keyboard (MWK) was a bit annoying: pressing the return button on top of a link or button only “activated” that control but it did not press the button or follow the link. I had to press the big square button on the phone to do that.

But I found a solution: use ctrl-return!

Next step: would it not be nice to map the function keys to phone shortcut keys?

That is functionality that is provided on the wireless keyboard(s) for the Palm. I found this because I wanted to link the MWK to my Palm TX.

The only wireless keyboard drivers for bluetooth that I found were for very specific keyboads. No generic driver. I tried some of them, the Palm driver would recognize the MWK, but then warns that the device is not a wireless keyboard. No success.

Mega keyboard for a little phone

February 28th, 2008 · Peter Paul Bakker · gadget, mac No comments - Tags: , , , ,

This is an experiment. Last weekend I picked up a new phone: a Nokia E51. It is slim, relatively small and has lots of great features, such as voice over IP (via WiFi) and fast data connections.

It was tempting to get one of the new blackberry phones, that come with the qwerty keyboard. But that phone was bigger and thicker.

Then I spotted this ‘wireless keyboard’ icon on the Nokia in the office tools. Hmmm, Apple has this nice wireless keyboard with bluetooth support. Will that work?

Well, I just picked one up, and in a couple of minutes I was up and running. I am actually typing this blog entry from the keyboard on the E51. It works!

This opens up possibilities. No longer I have to bring the whole laptop, but only the keyboard and the phone, and I can generate emails and notes.

There is also support for other phone keys: the arrows work like the “move” key on the phone, the left and right command work like the left and right blue option buttons on the phone. This makes it possible to navigate through the apps on the phone.

I like this!