…by Xerox. Pretty cool video showcasing some Xerox technologies contributing to make the world simpler.

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.

A bit provocative, this article in PC World evokes many of the aspects that are central to the Evolution of Documents – and the disappearance of Print Media.

Encyclopedia Britannica is officially going out of the print business, yet another sign of the “Less Paper Office“. All this for very good reasons, and is good for the environment, etc… But the author points two good reasons why this might not be such a good trend.

The first point is around electronic document permanence, which is central to this blog, and I feel is still an open question – will my digital documents still be readable 5, 10 or 20 years from now? What about the old iomega zip or floppies that I don’t have a drive for anymore? Even if I still had a drive and a device driver, would the media still be readable? And if then, could I still have an application that can open those old propietary formats? But, worst of all – how can I find the document that I am looking for on one of these media?

But the second point is even more important, and although I have touched upon at times, is equally important: It has to do with “trust” in digital document content.

Paper documents (especially books), freeze facts, ideas, concepts, ideas at a given point in time, and, as such, represent our history. That allows us to learn, retrospect, avoid repeating mistakes, improve. Document 2.0  is social and collaborative, and “evergreen”. This is all great, but has risks: anyone can rewrite or edit facts, and that “snapshot” at a given point in time is usually lost.

But the truth of the matter is, paper in that historical role has mostly disappeared a long time ago: In the late 90s, Xerox researchers had observed that ““we are not headed towards offices that use less paper but rather towards offices that keep less paper”.

So we need to evolve technology in the hope that the digital media can be more long lasting. We now have open XML formats (OOXML, ODF) or PDF/A that should be more better as they are standards (although often owned and sustained by major corporations). Plus, cloud storage promises that this information can be readily available, indexed that  it remains available – but also accessible years from now.

And it’s true that for a few documents – photos, kid’s drawings, etc… nothing will replace paper.

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.

Thanks to Michael Moore for finding the original “Digital Desk” (aka Lightworks) video that I mentioned in my previous post. Watch it… remember this was shot in the early 90s, and digitized from an analog tape…

It’s difficult to define the Future, which is why many people have different views into it. The Microsoft Vision of the Future, on which I blogged a couple weeks ago, was one video that certainly generated a lot of comments.

As you might remember, I found this video to be good, but  not quite as “visionary” as others in the past – most of the interactions looked like tablet – which sounds pretty commonplace today. Well, my own deception was nothing compared to many others. Read for example this (not so) “brief rant on the Future of Interaction Design“.  The author’s point is that the iPad – and tablets – are really a step back in the evolution of User Interfaces. Hands are used to manipulating, to touching, to feeling – so the glassy touch feedback provided by our favorite tablets is nowhere near as rich as other devices like… let’s say, a book?

So maybe the right path is not to continue improving more complex multitouch gestures, but instead focus on richer tactile interfaces – like in this Nokia HumanForm concept video below – based on Nanotechnologies, the phone is flexible and bendable,  reacts to gestures or flex/bend, and provides electro-tactile feedback.

And I like to believe Xerox research has contributed to define those new UI concepts. The  author of the rant above refers to Alan Kay (very  famous PARC researcher from the early days) and his Dynabook (although it was started before Alan joined PARC). Or, a reader alluded to early Xerox Research in Europe, where some multi-touch interfaces were prototyped in the early 1990′s in the “Digital Desk” concept called Lightworks. It had a great video that I can’t get a hold of, but here is a link to the history of this project – and true, it was really very powerful, mixing real (human drawings) with computer overhead projections, and multi-touch interfaces… surely inspired what we are seeing in the Microsoft video!

Microsoft often comes up with cool videos showcasing their vision of the future. The latest one, called “Productivity Future Vision” can be watched on Youtube:

As always, a very interesting and refreshing view of a possible future of technology. Although I have to admit I found this new video a bit less “visionary” than the Future Vision 2019 (produced in 2009)  that I blogged on a some time ago. Sign of times, most users now have tablet displays rather than ubiquitous displays in many different shapes or forms.

Will this vision really happen? Microsoft, having the largest R&D budget in the technology sector – is one of the few companies that can make their vision happen. Some argue the Return on their R&D investment is not always clear, but this huge company has turned out to be very successful in adopting new technologies such as Cloud Computing while maintaining or winning back their traditional business e.g. office productivity suites.  Let’s see if they can also negotiate the mobility turn, too, with Windows Phone 7 and their Nokia alliance. Now that HP/Palm is out, RIM is in a very bad shape, Apple is losing ground (and vision), and the Google-Motorola alliance might impact Android adoption, Microsoft stands better chances and could come back into the game.

Anyway, ComputerWorld article believes that this vision will really happen – and provides an interesting analysis on the video and the Office Labs too. Worth reading.