Zoho just announced the launch of their Docs product for Android. It already existed on iPhone and iPad, and the Android version looks pretty much the same. It lets you access, search for and view documents created in online versions of Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show and Docs,and share private documents with other Zoho users. Small regret, no advanced features like editing documents from the mobile device.

Zoho is one of the smaller competitors to Google and Microsoft in the Cloud Document space. Cloud Document Access from mobile devices is a natural extension, and now Android users can have it as well.

Very interesting study from AIIM, called “The Paper Free Office – dream or reality?”, contradicting many of the beliefs we have around PDF and other electronic document formats killing the paper document.

As you know, one of my big beliefs is the Less Paper Office – we are thriving to reduce paper for many good reasons, but it is not so easy, and paper will continue to be used for many years to come. This report confirms this belief with many key points.

One of the key points is this study, based on a survey conducted to 395 AIIM, shows that the paper reduction induced by PDF usage in e-Invoicing is very minimal, if not a total illusion. Indeed, 77% of electronic invoices received… are re-printed right away, sometimes more than once (10%). And in 16% of cases, those are re-scanned as PDFs again… and potentially re-printed by others down in the business process. Only 23% of the respondents process e-invoices electronically in their capture system.

This study, which can be downloaded from the AIIM web site, lists a number of other very interesting key points. Although paper usage is decreasing,

• 45% of the documents that are scanned are 100% digital – coming straight from the printer, no human alteration – so could be processed fully electronically.
• An electronic-only filing policy would halve the storage space needed for paper in 5 years, reducing office costs by 8%.

This report  also contains many key facts about the Digital Mailroom:

• 41% of respondents are using some form of digital mailroom. 13% of respondents (21% in Europe) are planning to outsource this mailroom activity to specialists like Xerox Services.
• On average, scanning and capture is considered to improve response time by a factor 6x.
• Their Digital Mailroom has paid back over a period of 12 months or less for 42% of the respondents, 18 months for 57%.
• Mobile capture is increasingly used – 38% of respondents have equipped their employees with portable devices to capture paper documents.

Anyway, a very worthwhile read.

A technology I’ve been envisioning as a potential game changer for the Future of Documents is just around the corner. Printed Electronics, ie being able to print circuitry onto paper or other physical devices, is not that far away. Once this is feasible, this will allow many objects – in particular documents – to remain fully traceable or even active, even throughout their ‘physical’ life.

So far, passive antennas or simple processors could be printed, but researchers at PARC, a Xerox Company and the Norwegian company Thinfilm Electronics have developed printed electronic which combine transistors with memory. These low-cost devices can read, write, or even perform some (simple) processing.

The current price of 5 cent for the 20-bit memory make it a pretty expensive storage option, but the day when you’ll be able to print a paper document with a small processor on it, e.g. to turn it into an “active” evergreen document, might not be as far as we think.

Today is a very sad day. One of the most, if not the most charismatic and visionary leaders of the tech world is gone.

Sure, some (me included) might bring back the old story of Steve Jobs visiting Xerox PARC in 1979 and taking inspiration there, as this New Yorker article: Xerox, Apple, and the creation of the mouse computer details.

But let’s be real,  Xerox was not good at monetizing its innovation at that point. With the Macintosh, Steve made a blatant success of what Xerox failed to do with the Alto. Steve then went on to reshape the Future of Personal Computing, Office of the Future,  Mobility, and many other aspects of our tech lives.

We’ll miss him…

Interest post from my colleague – and frequent flyer – Mark Boyt. He posted on his personal experience with e-ticketing. Sure, there are great apps out there, but there’s nothing like paper, at the end of the day, to feel more secure when comes the time of boarding.

That’s the topic of my last e-Newsletter – although documents can be readily accessed via mobile devices, users are still grappling with issues related to readability, navigation, formats, security and lack of editing/manipulation capabilities. Mobile devices are certainly going to reduce paper consumption, but there are still times when you feel better having a paper document in hand. The question therefore becomes – how do I get that paper printout at the point of need, from my mobile device, and make the best of both worlds?

If you have not received that e-newsletter, I will be trying to post it here shortly. To subscribe to my e-Newsletter, please register here.

Accessing documents from a mobile phone becomes a regular need in our modern but is not – always – easy. In particular, finding the right document can be a challenge on such a small mobile phone. Plus, that usually assumes the document is stored somewhere online, not always with the greatest security levels.

Document repositories usually rely on native HTML browsing, although there exists dedicated apps which provide richer user interfaces (e.g. Mobile Entree for Sharepoint, Sharepoint mobile extensions, etc…).

Docushare now has its own app, and it’s pretty cool. Called DocuMob, it allows remote repository browsing from iOs devices. |The user can securely access and navigate collections, perform full-text search, find, view and share content, email the original link to the document, or print. Microsoft Office documents are natively supported by Documob.

Although most of these tools are about browsing and viewing, the next frontier will be editing, and printing / scanning documents from those mobile devices.

Interesting roundup of Cloud Document Solutions – ITWorld compares the three main contenders, ie Office 365, Google Docs, and Zoho Docs, for editing storing and viewing documents. And the winner is… Office 365, although this victory is probably due to the fact that it is the closest tothe desktop office applications we’re used to.

Office 365 is slightly better than Zoho on Office applications, storage, compatibility (at least with desktop office documents), but is not as good on sharing and collaboration. Zoho has the best (and most uniform across platform) mobile access solution, but Google is a close runner up on many aspects – and is the least expensive.

Interesting read anyway.