Soft District

OCR means optical character recognition. The free OCR software is very helpful when you are dealing with documents that are only available in their physical form, that is you don't have an electronic version of them and you have to introduce them in your computer for editing, publishing them or using them in any other way . Well, it would take you a long time to re-type everything that is being written there, so why don't you try to look for a more simple and easy solution: first scan the documents and then use an OCR software to recognize the characters written there and after that save the document and feel free to edit it and use it as you feel like it.



Free OCR 2.6 is an example of such free OCR software that is very easy to install and use. It supports multi page documents, faxesas well as most image types, including the compressed ones that are not supported by other software applications. This is the latest version of the software and it brings some new and improved features like the possibility to fix the minor bugs in PDF by rendering code, the introducing of the PDF button that can now open the PDF files that are already scanned by this OCR software, the possibility to select images from a scanned document and place them on the clipboard, crop the scans before using the OCR, a special button that was added with the purpose of removing the line break from the OCR text, the ability to fix the bugs that cause the OCR to crash when opening PNGs and finally a totally improved user interface.



Simple OCR 3.1 is the most popular free OCR software because it is very easy to install and use and because it offers a variety of useful tools.

It converts scanned images into editable formats like MSWord. The latest version came to meet the users' requests and added a tutorial and a validation stage. The only problem with this software is that you can use only the printed character recognition for unlimited free use. But the handwriting recognition id offered only as a free trial for a period of 14 days. After all free software does have its drawbacks. You can set up this software to read directly from the scanner or by adding a page with one of the following extensions: .jpg, .tiff, .bmp, etc. You can control the conversion from scanned document to editable document by using some features like text selection, image selection and text ignore.



You know that scanned documents are not always perfectly readable, so it's only normal to check the accuracy of a scanned document after it was converted by using the OCR software. That is why immediately after conversion it will pass through a validation stage where it will be checked and corrected. You can use the built-in spell checker or you can do this yourself. The last step would be to save the converted text into a .doc or .txt format that you can edit later.

Of course these are only two examples of free OCR software, but there are a lot more tools that you can use, too.

Successful businessmen don't just happen to have all the luck in the world and their business doesn't grow out of anything and develop in no time because the customers like the guy or like what the store looks like. It takes a lot more than that. Usually the most successful businessmen have eyes to see and ears to hear, as they say. I mean they start a business only after they have done some research on the market and they saw a window of opportunity, something that is needed and lacks in the area. After the initial impact of the business, it must develop and also maintain its standards. And one can do that only if they have some serious feedback from the customers. They must know the customers' wishes, complaints, satisfaction degree and opinion about the quality and price of the products. Only when you have all this data you can analyze it and realize what is going on wrong and what could be done to make the business go better and satisfy the clients.



Normally it would take a team of professionals and a lot of costs and equipment to do that, but now all this is done by simple purchasing and using a sales management software application. Here are some examples of such software you can choose from: Batchbook, BigContacts, Oprius, Highrise, Relenta, Pipeline Deals, ACT! by Sage 2010, Sage SageCRM / SageCRM.com , Sage SalesLogix, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Epicor - Sales Management
, NetSuite CRM+, SAP CRM 2007. Before purchasing any of those just follow the links and use the free trials to see which one is best for you.



Usually these sales management software applications are used by small or medium sized businesses, family businesses even, because large companies have entire departments covering this area. But these users need a strong data base first containing all their customers and staff and other more complex features like: sales opportunity management, communication, scheduling, reporting and document management.



This kind of software is also known as CRM and this can mean Customer Relationship Management or Contact Management software - it still refers to the same thing and has the same purpose - the management of your sales based on customer control of course. Sales are dependent on customers because if there are no customers there are no sales. So the only things you can do is try to keep a balance between the two and adjust the sales according to the customers' requests and preferences.

That is why it is so important to have all the contact data of the customers, including their email address, so that you can send them newsletters with your latest offer. This software application helps you deal with the clients and make them feel welcomed and valued. I mean you are reminded to send birthday cards and holiday cards either digital ones or real ones, so you get a reminder on the email with the upcoming holidays and the list containing the email addresses or a reminder of a customer's birthday and so on. Then you can manage all a lot better if you have immediate access to all the necessary data like who bought what, on what date and the cost in case there are some problems. This way you keep track of customers and avoid duplicated contact. You can also keep track of your orders and sales and schedule everything accurately. You can also synchronize the clients' requests to the merchandise orders you make and a lot of other details.

The bottom line is that it takes a bit of time in the beginning, but this software really helps.

I like taking photos when I go on holiday, especially if I have the chance to see beautiful places and landscapes. And I like taking pictures at parties where there are so many people that they don't seem to notice me and this gives me the opportunity to have some wonderful snapshots and the funniest photos.



The problem is that I use very high resolution because I want my photos to be very clear and detailed, so , of course, they are very large files that take up a lot of space on my hard disk. And, as I have used only digital cameras for about ten years now, you can imagine what a huge amount of photos I gathered during all this time. And I am not willing to give up any of them. That is why I thought of a way of making them occupy less space somehow ( I know I can make a backup copy on DVDs - I did that, too - but what if the DVDs get damaged and I end up with nothing?).Not to mention the nerves and anger when I want to send an email to my sister with photos from my last birthday and I get the message :"The file you are trying to send is too large".



So I found these free zip software applications that make wonders. They compress the files appointed by you and shrink them somehow, so they will be take less space from your hard drive and you will be able to send them via email or instant messages anytime and anywhere. All these software applications are very easy to download, install and use on your computer and the fact that they are completely free comes as a bonus.



Once you have installed the software just pick the file you want to ZIP , right click on it and select "add to archive" and this is it. your file will be shrunk and will have a new extension: .zip, .rar, .cab, etc. If you send these zipped files to somebody else, they will be able to open the file and decompress it only if they have a similar software installed on their computer. However, some of the free zip software applications have an additional option , allowing you to make autorun or autoexecutable files that can unzip themselves and come back to their original dimension and form as soon as you double click them. These autorun files do not need the same software to be installed on the computer where they were sent.

Here are some examples of free zip software: CoffeeCup Free Zip Wizard, 7-Zip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Bzip2 - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Freebyte ZIP - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, IZArc - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Info-ZIP - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, StuffIt LITE - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, TUGZip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, UHARC Media Compressor, QuickZip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, ZipGenius - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Petite - Free Executable Compressor and UPX - Free Executable Compressor.