The paperless (post) office

As regular Macworld readers may know, I'm a big proponent of the paperless office,I even wrote an e-book about it, Take Control of Your Paperless Office . Besides eliminating as many sources of incoming and outgoing paper as I can, I scan pretty much every piece of paper I receive, convert it to searchable PDF format, and then recycle or shred the originals (except when there's some important legal reason to hang onto them). But a few years ago I took an even bigger step, which was switching to paperless postal mail. I pulled this off thanks to a company called Earth Class Mail, which has saved me untold time and effort (not to mention paper clutter).

The concept is straightforward. You sign up for an account, fill out a USPS form granting Earth Class Mail permission to receive mail on your behalf, and then change your mailing address to point to one of its addresses (in any of 19 cities around the country) rather than your home or office. When a piece of mail arrives for you at Earth Class Mail, the company scans the outside of it (or, if it's a large package, takes a picture of the box) and sends you an e-mail notification. You can then log in to the company's secure Website to view this image and request that Earth Class Mail do any of several things:

-- Open the mail, scan its contents, and make them available as a downloadable PDF file.

-- Hold the mail for pickup (at certain facilities only).

-- Recycle or shred the mail.

-- Forward-ship the mail, with your choice of carriers and delivery types, anywhere in the world.

-- Electronically deposit any checks found in the mail to your bank account.

-- Archive the mail in the company's secure facility.

You can manage all these activities using your Web browser. A third party, MS Consulting, LLC, even makes a $10 iPhone app called iClass Mail that offers a subset of these capabilities.

Simplifying your filing

Once Earth Class Mail has scanned a mail piece for you (the outside, the contents, or both), you can view it in a Web browser or download a PDF to your Mac. You can then organize the PDFs along with your other files in the Finder, or perhaps store them in a document manager such as DEVONtechnologies' $150 DEVONthink Professional Office or Bare Bones Software's $39 Yojimbo ().

If you think you'll rarely, if ever, need to consult the PDF, you can skip downloading it at all, and instead click a button to save it in your Earth Class Mail Archive folder, where it can remain indefinitely--even if you've shipped the original somewhere else. The downside: this online archive is a single big folder, and isn't searchable.

Easing international mail

I've been using Earth Class Mail for nearly four years. I signed up for the service shortly before moving to France because I felt it would be useful to maintain a mailing address in the United States. For one thing, it lets me buy things online that vendors refuse to ship internationally; the vendor sends it to my address in Beaverton, Oregon, and then Earth Class Mail ships it to me in Paris (giving me yet another chance to contribute to the French economy by paying import duties).

Secondly, having a U.S. street address associated with my credit card enables me to use the U.S. version of the iTunes Store (and, now, the App Store), giving me access to English-language media that would otherwise be available only in French, if at all.

Eliminating paper check hassles

But the reason I chose Earth Class Mail over several competitors was that they promised electronic check deposit service--receive a check in the mail, and after it's scanned, an automated mechanism deposits the money in your bank account without requiring you to mail a physical check (and deposit slip) to your bank. This was important to me because I get paid for much of my writing (including this very article) by check. Depositing U.S. checks in a French bank is somewhat less pleasant, and almost as expensive as, getting a traffic ticket--and mailing a check back to a U.S. bank introduces its own set of complications and delays.

Initially Earth Class Mail's electronic check deposit only worked with Wells Fargo Bank and required a special (and expensive) business account. However, the service now works with any U.S. checking account. Although it takes several days for checks to clear even with the electronic deposits, it's still faster, and considerably easier, than any alternative I've found.

In fact, you can optionally configure your account such that envelopes under a certain weight are automatically opened and scanned; you can also configure the check deposit feature to automatically deposit any checks that are found when a scan is performed. Thanks to that combination of settings, I enjoy what feels like direct deposit of checks from people and companies from whom such a service is unavailable.

Now, a few years later, a number of banks, as well as PayPal, let you scan your own checks or snap a photo with an iPhone app and deposit them electronically. That's great as long as you have an account at the right institution and you can meet their other criteria (such as maximum check amounts), but for those with more-extensive check depositing needs, Earth Class Mail remains the service to beat.

Convenience at a cost

Earth Class Mail can be expensive, depending on which services you use. For standard plans, which handle 100 pieces of mail received per month, the company charges $20 per month, plus a $25 one-time setup fee. Scanning envelope contents is extra ($1.50 per piece for black and white or $2 per piece for color, regardless of the number of pages); if you want searchable PDFs or secure shredding, you'll pay another $5 per month for each service. Check deposits cost $20 each, or $35 per month for unlimited deposits.

A Comprehensive plan, at $40 per month, handles 200 pieces of mail and bundles several other services, including searchable PDFs. Regardless of your plan, mail forwarding costs extra (a per-piece charge plus postage), and the company also charges a monthly fee of $0.25 per letter or $1/pound per parcel for storage over 30 days. Finally, there may be an additional monthly address cost ranging from $3 to $30 depending on whether you prefer a street address or a Post Office box, which city you want the address to be in, and whether that address is for a processing center. (If it's not, you'll have to wait several additional days for mail to move from your mailing address to the processing center to be scanned.)

Earth Class Mail's prices have gone up since I first signed on. And there have also been some hiccups. Still, I've stuck with the service because I haven't found anything else that includes the same range of features at any price.

Other options

If all you need is a service that will accept and scan mail for you (and don't need electronic check deposits), you have many choices. All of the follow services are cheaper than Earth Class Mail, but I haven't tried them personally, so I can't vouch for their quality:

-- American Mailnet: Online plans start at $14.99 per month, plus a $30 setup fee. All plans include at least 200 scanned images per month and free shredding.

-- Mailbox Forwarding: Plans range from $10 per month (including 40 scanned mail pieces) to $40 per month (with 60 scanned mail pieces); shredding is offered free.

-- Maillink Plus: Mailbox rentals start at $10 per month (with a 3-month minimum); scans are an extra $1 per page.

-- My U.S. PostBox: Plans start at $20 per month, plus $0.50 per page for scanning or $0.50 per piece for shredding.

-- St. Brendan's Isle: Plans start at $12 per month, not including scanning--that adds at least $8 per month, depending on volume, plus per-piece charges of $0.60 or more.

-- USA2Me: Plans start at $5 per month, plus a $30 setup fee; scanning costs $3 per month for the first 6 pages, and $0.50 per page thereafter.

-- USAMail1: Costs $50 for the first 3 months, and $10 per months thereafter. Scanning is extra--$2 for the first 6 pages and $0.25 per page thereafter.

-- Virtual Post Mail: Plans range from $10 to $60 per month, with a 50-percent discount for the first 3 months. Each plan level includes a certain number of free scans, with additional fees charged thereafter. Mailed check deposit is available for $5 per deposit (plus $1 for each additional check).

If you look through these sites, you'll see that many mail-scanning and -forwarding services are geared toward people who spend a lot of time on the road or otherwise lack a stable address. Earth Class Mail seems to be a better fit for small businesses (a single account can include multiple mailboxes with different names), especially those that process lots of incoming checks and want to eliminate as much inter-office paper as possible. But it's also a good fit for misfits like me, who have peculiar needs for processing mail and appreciate the paperless aspect too.

Is the iPhone over?

Latest market-share data, forecasts show Apple's breakthrough smartphone stalling out

 — When people discuss the U.S. smartphone market, the following points usually are made:

* Google's Android is gaining market share at a furious clip
* Research in Motion's BlackBerry is losing much of its market share to Android
* Microsoft's smartphone strategy is a disaster
* Nokia is stumbling in the U.S., though still a force elsewhere
* Android, RIM and Apple are in a virtual three-way tie these days for market share

What you don't usually see is anyone pointing out the obvious, which is this: Apple appears to have reached a plateau in smartphone market share.

Discussing the latest comScore U.S. smartphone market results, Business Insider's Henry Blodget writes that "Apple's iPhone share increased slightly, but is dead in the water and has now fallen way behind Android (in smartphones)."

So true. While Android climbed to 33.0 percent U.S. smartphone market share in February from 26.0 percent last November, Apple essentially stayed even, moving to 25.2 percent from 25.0 percent. (BlackBerry maker RIM saw its market share decline to 28.9 percent from 33.5 percent in November.) Presumably these numbers include sales of Verizon iPhones, which became available on Feb. 11.

Then there was the IDC forecast from last week, which drew a lot of attention because it predicted Windows Phone 7 would become the No. 2 smartphone platform worldwide by 2015, trailing only Android.

What people may have overlooked while marveling over IDC's predicted 45 percent global market share for Android (and perhaps laughing at the WP7 market-share prediction of 21 percent) was that IDC sees Apple spinning its wheels, falling to 15.3 percent of the global smartphone market in 2015 from 15.7 percent this year.

Since smartphone sales are expected to increase over the next several years, a vendor could lose market share and still sell more devices. That's been RIM's mantra for the past year. But I'm not sure that kind of reasoning will satisfy Apple investors as they watch the company fall into second-tier status in a market it practically invented with the release of the first iPhone in 2007.

It also makes you wonder what's in store for Apple in the nascent tablet market. The iPad may have more than 80 percent share now, but it had the tablet market to itself for the better part of 2010 and already has a new version of the iPad in stores while competing devices such as RIM's PlayBook aren't even available yet.

I'd love to hear what readers think of the iPhone's prospects down the road, as well as which tablets might challenge the iPad for market supremacy.

Android tips: 7 ways to get around your Google phone faster

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When you think of Android smartphones, "productivity" probably isn't the first word that comes to mind. But you don't have to use a BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 device or another boring "enterprise-friendly" handheld to get a lot done in a little time -- whether it be for work or play.

The following seven Android tips will help streamline your general Android navigation processes so you can move around your device, and access of your favorite apps, media and services, faster and more efficiently.

(Note: The Android tips and tricks described below all work on my Motorola Atrix 4G running Android v2.2.1, but some of them may not be available for all devices or operating system versions.)

1) Customizing Your Android Home Screens

Customizing the individual home-screen "panes" on your Android smartphone is one of the easiest ways to make it your own, as well as reduce the time it takes to access your most frequently used applications. And you can move any application to any home-screen pane.

To move an app from either your "app page," where all your Android software is stored, or from one pane to another, simply press and hold the application for a second or two, until a colored shadow appears beneath it. If you're moving an app from your app page to a home screen page, you'll immediately be returned to the last home screen page you were on before jumping to the app page.

Moving apps around an individual pane, or between panes, is as simple as dragging your finger to the left or right, up or down, after holding the icon for a second to select it. And you can ditch unwanted apps from your home screen panes by holding their respective icons until they're selected, and then dropping them into the trash can, or other similar icon, that appears on-screen.

2) Create Home Screen Widgets for Favorite Apps

One of the coolest things about the Android OS is the ability to use a variety of "widgets," or icons that sit on your home screen and display information so you don't ever have to open the actual applications or services that they're associated with. Widgets can save time and show information you might have otherwise missed.

To assign an Android widget to one of your home screens, just press and hold a blank space on one of those home screens, i.e., a place with no other widgets or applications. And then choose the Android Widgets option for access to third-party app-widgets. On the following screen, scroll through all your third-party widgets and pick the ones you want to display on your home screen panes.

You should see another widget-option after holding your finger on a blank home-screen page, as well, for core system widgets. But its name will differ based on model, manufacturer and OS version. For in example, my Motorola Atrix 4G has another widget-option called Motorola Widgets that offers another set of widgets, including ones that let me toggle my various wireless-radios on and off, and quickly start and stop music, etc.

Not all Android apps offer widget-functionality, but many do, so be sure to check to see if your favorite app has a widget.

(Note: Android widgets that update themselves can drain a lot of battery power, depending on individual settings, so it's not a wise idea to pack your home-screens with widgets that you won't actually use.)

3) Create Android Home Screen Shortcuts for Favorites Websites

Just as you can create home screen widgets for certain applications, you can also make home-screen shortcuts for your favorite Web pages, so you never have to launch your browser and navigate to those pages.

To assign a custom Android shortcut to your home screen, navigate to the Web page for which you want to create a shortcut, tap your Menu key to bring up additional options and then choose More. On the following screen, select the Add Shortcut to Home option. A new shortcut for the Web page of your choice will appear on the home-screen pane you were on last, unless there's no more room for another shortcut, in which case you'll be informed that you can't fit a new shortcut on that pane.

You can also create a shortcut to certain Android system options, such as your Android Settings menu or your Contacts, by pressing and holding a blank space on a home-screen pane for a second or two. But instead of choosing one of the widget-options, as described above, pick Shortcuts. Then choose the specific shortcut you wish to add from the options on the following screen.

4) Quickly View and Jump Between Your Last Used Android Apps

One of the best ways to quickly jump back and forth between frequently-used Android applications is by holding your finger on the Android Home Button for a second or two, until a set of eight application-icons labeled Recent appear on screen. You can la

unch any of these eight apps by simply tapping their icons on the Recent page. The apps included will change based on which ones you've most recently used.

5) See All Android Home-Screen Panes on One Screen

The Android OS lets you quickly view miniature versions of all of your home-screen panes on one page. But the process for accessing this all-pane-view is different depending on your device and OS version. To access this view on my Motorola Atrix, I simply hold down the circular, on-screen Home button until all of my home-screen pages appear. From there, I can easily click on any pane to quickly access it, instead of scrolling through multiple panes first.

To access this multi-pane-view on the HTC Droid Incredible running Android 2.2, you must double-tap your Home button--not the on-screen "key" but the actual button.

6) Employ Custom Android Folder to Organize Apps

In addition to customizing your home-screen panes and adding both widgets and shortcuts, you can add folders to your Android home screens to further customize and organize content on your smartphone. Create a new folder the same way you would a new shortcutby pressing and holding a blank space on your home screen until an options menu appears. Choose the Folders option, and a new folder will be assigned to your home screen. You can then fill up your folders by dragging applications over the folder-icons and dropping them in.

7) Double-Tap Your Android Home Button for Custom Functions

Some Android devices, including the Motorola Atrix 4G, let you customize your home button, so it performs different functions when double-tapped. For instance, you can set the Double Tap Home feature to open up your camera or your phone's dial-pad, etc., whenever you double-tap your Home button.

To do so, open up your Android Settings, scroll down and click the applications option, and then, on the following page, choose Double tap home launch. Next, pick the function you wish to launch after double-tapping your home button, and you're good to go.

IE9 vs. Firefox 4: A tale of the tortoise and the hare

Microsoft and Mozilla have different ideas on launch day downloads, but it's all about how the browsers fare in the long run.

It's an exciting day. Yes, it is April Fool's Day--which is quite fun, but that isn't what I am referring to. New browser usage stats are out; giving us something other than just the marketing spin Microsoft and Mozilla try so hard to put on their own launch day numbers. These initial numbers, though, are a flash in time and illustrate a sort of tortoise and hare approach that requires taking a longer view.

Net Applications has published its browser statistics for the month of March.IE9 was officially launched on the evening of Monday, March 14, and Firefox 4 wasn't available until about a week later, on March 22, so this month's results don't necessarily paint a full or fair picture of how those browsers are faring thus far.

First, let's just take a look at the Net Applications browser usage data. Looking at the global data, Chrome and Safari are the big winners with gains of 0.64 and 0.25 percentage points respectively. Firefox eeked up 0.06 percentage points, while Internet Explorer fell 0.85 percentage points to a new low for the Microsoft browser.

It is hard to try and spin those numbers from the perspective of IE9 and Firefox 4. Net Applications puts the current Firefox 4 share at 1.68%, with IE9 lagging behind at 1.04%--up from 0.63 and 0.59 respectively last month for the beta or release candidate (RC) versions. Certainly, the larger month over month gain for Firefox 4 is a contributing factor, but the real issue behind the general decline of Internet Explorer seems to be the 0.54 percentage point drop in IE8--the first loss for that browser in its history.

Now, let's slice and dice the stats a little. There has been a fairly public debate between Ryan Gavin and the Internet Explorer team, and Asa Dotzler from the Mozilla camp. Asa and I also exchanged some tweets in relation to the spin on the launch day figures, and my article putting the launch figures in perspective. The crux of both debates comes down to whether IE9 is measured against the browser ecosystem as a whole, or whether it is viewed strictly as a function of Windows 7 and Windows Vista since those are the only plattforms it is available.

Narrowing the results to just the United States, and just the Windows operating system the picture shifts some in Microsoft's favor. In the US, across all versions of Windows, Internet Explorer as a whole gained share by 0.19 points to 72.44%, while Chrome and Firefox both declined--by 0.10 and 0.08 percentage points respectively.

To be honest, I think both Microsoft's and Mozilla's views are right. That is one of the funny (awesome, silly, impressive--depends on your perspective) thing about statistics. Was Firefox 4 downloaded more than Internet Explorer 9 on its launch day? Absolutely. Not even Microsoft can deny that. But, with three times the potential pool of PCs, how could it not be?

That isn't a slam of Firefox 4, or an endorsement of IE9. I am simply pointing out the obvious fact that it is difficult, and somewhat silly, to try to compare the two head to head. It's like comparing how many copies Microsoft sells of Office 2010 for Windows vs. Office 2011 for Mac OS X.The Mac OS X audience only makes up about five % of PCs, compared with nearly 90% for Windows. Of course Office 2010 sells better.

Over time, the numbers could get foggier depending on how you spin them. Mozilla has pledged to pursue a more aggressive cycle of releasing major updates, so Firefox 4 could quickly become Firefox 5, then Firefox 6, Firefox 7, and so on before Microsoft ever gets around to launching Internet Explorer 10. So, Firefox 4 is crushing Internet Explorer 9 today, but when Firefox 5 comes out, that will quickly change.

The more accurate--or more important view--is the long term outlook for the browser as a whole rather than a head to head comparison of specific versions. In that view, Internet Explorer has seen a slow and steady decline--but so has Firefox. The "tortoise" in this race appears to be Chrome--slowly trudging along chipping away market share month by month.

As for the issue of Internet Explorer 9 vs. Firefox 4, I have an appointment scheduled in my calendar to compare notes with Asa after each browser has had a few months, and both vendors go through the process of pushing the browser through update channels. Check back in September and we'll compare notes.

European Parliament bounces back from suspected cyber attack

A Parliament pokesman says the situation is not related to an attack on the European Commission last week

The European Parliament has resumed normal e-mail service following a suspected cyber attack.

An attack on the Parliament's systems is thought to have begun on March 24, two days after the European Commission and the European Union's External Action Service detected a sustained and targeted cyber attack on their own systems.

However, the attack on the Parliament was not in the same league as that on the Commission, a Parliament spokesman said Friday.

"Following the attack on the Commission, our IT services started looking very hard at our own system. They noticed that there were abnormal levels of webmail activity, particularly overnight, when we wouldn't expect such activity," he said.

As a precaution webmail and some other external services were shut down and staff were told on Monday to change their passwords while an investigation was carried out. "The results of that investigation show that nothing was compromised," said the spokesman. "The scale of the actual hacking problem was not dissimilar to that faced by any large organization. The high levels of activity we were seeing were due to the way in which some mobile devices connect to our webmail."

The Parliament's IT services are still monitoring the situation. The Parliament and the Commission run on totally separate networks and it seems unlikely that the two attacks were linked given the differences in scale and focus. There is still concern that professional, systematic hackers with a clear agenda are behind the Commission attack but this is not the case in the Parliament.

A separate e-mail problem in Parliament on Wednesday brought the e-mail system to a halt for three hours. The spokesman said that this was nothing to do with any attack and was simply a glitch that has now been fixed.

Microsoft Tries Antitrust Tactic Against Google

If you never thought you'd see the day when Microsoft would declare itself the loser in any technology sector, be prepared: that day may have just arrived, one day before April Fool's Day.

The Redmond, WA-based software company has filed a formal antitrust complaint today in Brussels against none other than Google, the search and advertising company that seems to have stymied Microsoft in nearly every new market.

This would be the first time Microsoft has filed an antitrust complaint against another company, but we all know how intimately familiar Microsoft is with being on the receiving end of such complaints. Microsoft's past antitrust legal history and business practices makes this situation practically reek with irony.

Because now it's Microsoft that is feeling the pain of being behind, and they're doing everything they can to bring Google down.

Specifically, Microsoft has filed "a formal complaint with the European Commission as part of the Commission's ongoing investigation into whether Google has violated European competition law," according to BradSmith, Sr. Vice President and General Counsel for Microsoft. It was because of the EC's current investigation that Microsoft opted to file the complaint there, though it's clear that the US software company wouldn't mind a similar investigation starting up on its home shores.

Microsoft alleges that Google is using anticompetitive business practices to push Google's technology (like Search) over all other companies' tech on platforms that Google owns and operates (like Android). This is a direct clone of the US government's antitrust complaints against Microsoft in 1998, just swap out some nouns: "The US government alleges that Microsoft is using anticompetitive business practices to push Microsoft's technology (like Internet Explorer) over all other companies' tech on platforms that Microsoft owns and operates (like Windows)."

Eerie, isn't it?

Smith gets a bit specific in his examples, citing three instances where Google overstepped its bounds. Here, for instance, is the second of Smith's triad:

"[I]n 2010 and again more recently, Google blocked Microsoft's new Windows Phones from operating properly with YouTube. Google has enabled its own Android phones to access YouTube so that users can search for video categories, find favorites, see ratings, and so forth in the rich user interfaces offered by those phones. It's done the same thing for the iPhones offered by Apple, which doesn't offer a competing search service," Smith wrote in last night's TechNet blog entry.

Smith alleges that Apple gets perfectly good access to YouTube, while Microsoft is left out in the cold, just because Apple doesn't have search tools--and Microsoft does.

(Given recent allegations that Microsoft's Bing search service directly copies results from Google's search, one could argue that Microsoft doesn't have search either, but hey, why be picky?)

If the allegations against Google are true, this would indeed represent serious anti-competitive business practices by Google. Google's not made any formal statement yet, but the New York Timesreports that "...when told of the Microsoft claims, Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman, denied that the company had done anything wrong and said its practices did not deny Microsoft access to Google technology and content."

Another article from Computerworld cites an unnamed source at Google who indicates there wasn't much surprise about this complaint.

"Google said, 'We're not surprised that Microsoft has done this, since one of their subsidiaries was one of the original complainants. For our part, we continue to discuss the case with the European Commission and we're happy to explain to anyone how our business works.'," the article stated.The open source community, which stokes a deep distrust (at best) for Microsoft because of its past and current business and litigious practices, will no doubt crow with delight at the irony of it all, as it watches Microsoft try to bring down one of its biggest competitors using tactics Microsoft scoffed in the late Nineties.

Microsoft competitors should also note another quote from the Times story:

"'The company that was the 800-pound gorilla is now resorting to antitrust, where it is always the case that the also-rans sue the winners,' said Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management who has studied Microsoft."

By filing this antitrust complaint, Cusumano argues, Microsoft is admitting that it cannot compete in the same markets with Google: search and mobile.

Now the question becomes, is the inability to compete Google's fault? Or Microsoft's?