Does It Compute?

Making the Most of Adobe Acrobat

As scanning has increased, so too has the use of Acrobat. Many firms are starting to scan old files into Acrobat PDF files. Much of this is uncontrolled – I have seen PDF files as big as 5GB or even more!  This is just a disaster waiting to happen.  Here are some simple things you can do to make the use of your Acrobat files more efficient.

1.  Scan in smaller batches and assemble. Instead of scanning thousands of pages, scan in groups of (say) several hundred. (You may want to experiment on the best number) Then select “Create” then “Merge files into a single PDF.” Drag and drop all the files you want to include into the resultant screen (I have dragged over 600 files at one time). This will create a single PDF. Each file is listed on the Bookmarks Panel which makes the resulting document easier to navigate. To get the Bookmarks Panel to display when the document is opened, go to File | Properties | Initial View and select “Bookmarks Panel and Page.”

2.  Make sure your scans are OCR’d. What good does it do to have 5,000 pages of documents in a file if you can’t search for anything in it? Although Acrobat will do this, it is a slow process. If you plan to scan large amounts of documents, you need to invest in an OCR program. Some large printer/copiers claim to be able to OCR, but check carefully – I recently came across a relatively new Xerox copier that was “OCR’ing” using Acrobat 5!!  Check to see what version your scanner is using. If you are using Worldox, check out Symphony OCR from Trumpet, Inc. which OCR’s in the background and can save tremendous time and effort (and hence money).

3.  Embed an index.  If you have a very long document, searching can be quite slow. If you embed an index, it is very fast. In Acrobat 9, this is under Advanced | Document Processing | Manage Embedded Index. Select “embed index.” In Acrobat X, it is under Tools | Document Processing | Manage Embedded Index. Warning: for some totally illogical and counter-intuitive reason, if you save the file after you embed the index, it wipes out the embedded index.

4.  Use the Search function, not the Find function. “Find” simply finds the next instance of what you are looking for. “Search” lists all the instances, which makes it much faster to navigate through.

Other resources:  Rick Borstein’s “Acrobat for Legal Professionals” features a lot of “how to” columns as well as a wealth of other material. 

In addition, Ernie Svenson’s “PDF for Lawyers” can be very useful. He also writes the “Ernie the Attorney” blog. 

Happy Winter Solstice!

It’s Winter Solstice – er, Holiday – time again.

The Winter Solstice has traditionally been celebrated by homo sapiens in the northern hemisphere for at least 5,000 years as marking the point where the days start getting longer. Maes Howe in Orkney (north of Scotland) is a very large chambered cairn (about 100 feet in diameter and 22 feet high on the outside: the interior chamber is about 14 feet square and about the same height). The 45 foot long entrance way is constructed so that the setting sun shines directly through the passageway onto the back wall of the cairn on the shortest day of the year, setting directly over a stone (the Barnhouse Stone) placed a half-mile or so from the entrance. And of course a similar setup at Stonehenge is even more well-known.

Pre-historic/neolithic peoples were of necessity acute astronomers – their existence depended on crops and seasons. The Mayan long calender is more accurate than our current calender with its leap years every four years and “super leap years” at the turn of the century once every 400 years. Other calendars (in India and Mesopotamia – Omar Khayyam was a much better mathematician and astronomer than he was a poet) were also more accurate than our current one.

The early Puritans in New England outlawed the celebration of Christmas between 1659 and 1681 due to its pagan roots, as well as the fact that the lower classes used it as an excuse for “rowdy public displays of excessive eating and drinking, the mockery of established authority, aggressive begging (often involving the thread of doing harm), and even the invasion of wealthy homes.” (Stephen Nissenbaum, “The Battle for Christmas”).

Subsequent religious year-end myths were manifestly modeled on the celebration of the Winter Solstice.  So during this winter holiday season, I wish you all a Happy Winter Solstice. Spring is coming.

Technical Considerations for Worldox

I don’t usually do posts on technical issues that are of interest mainly to IT people. However, firms interested in Worldox seem to be saying increasingly “my IT guy has some questions.”  The following is intended to answer basic technical questions about Worldox.

Many firms are accustomed to defining hardware requirements on the assumption of SQL-based software. Worldox is a totally different animal and does not use SQL. The bottom line is that Worldox is not very hardware intensive and will probably run on an existing file server assuming it is reasonably up to date. See the Worldox site for a more detailed description of technical requirements. If you are running MS Server 2008R2, you must disable SMB2 (known to corrupt databases) and re-enable 8.3 support prior to installing Worldox.

Worldox can be integrated with Active Directory to meet security requirements. Security settings in Worldox are ported to Active Directory and vice-versa.

Worldox uses what is known as a “distributed database.” It creates stub files containing profile information in every directory it touches. The indexer (based on the ISYS indexing program) parses those files and creates an index. It also full-text indexes all possible documents (passworded documents and non-OCR’d PDF’s are not indexed for obvious reasons). Emails and email attachments are also indexed. Searches are based on the ISYS indexes.  The indexes by default are rebuilt from scratch once a week so that they are always “clean.”

In operation, the indexer checks for change records every 10 seconds. So in terms of activity, ask yourself: how many files can be opened, saved, created, etc. by X users in 10 seconds? The Worldox client intercepts all file I/O commands for supported programs and pops up the Worldox interface (instead of using Windows Explorer). Again, not very CPU-intensive.

Worldox recommends that the indexer run on a stand-alone PC. The indexer does NOT run as a service. The indexer includes a number of options (such as limited records management options; deleting files from the Salvage Bin after a given period; deleting empty directories, etc.).  For a more detailed description of requirements and optimal settings see the “Indexer” section of the “Installing and Configuring Worldox” document on my web site.

In short, of all the software programs I have ever supported over the years, Worldox is by far the most rock-solid.

Agilewords Integrates with Box.net for Document Review

I was recently contacted by the makers of Agilewords, saying that their product integrates with Box.net to enable online reviewing and even editing of documents stored on Box.net.

I use Box.net for storage and transfer of files with clients. So I store a lot of software patches, help files, configuration settings, etc. in Box.net folders.  Most similar programs such as Dropbox offer an upload/download model to keep files in synch. The idea of being able to review and edit online was intriguing.

When you install Agilewords to your Box.net account, it takes over some functionality. When you upload a document, you can invite someone to review it. The reviewer is issued an invitation, logs into Box.net/Agilewords and marks up the document online. This is similar to Word’s track changes, but Agilewords uses its own feature set. If the would-be reviewer does not respond to the invite (you can set a due date for review), they are reminded (nagged?) by Agilewords until they do. There is also an approve/reject function. Agilewords lets the owner of the document review and track various reviewer comments and reply to them through a convenient review panel or via a “track changes” view of the document.

This is particularly useful for example if you want a client to review/approve a document but you don’t want to give them the ability to edit or change it – you want to keep control of the document.

There is also an “editor” function in which you can give someone rights to edit the document online, replacing the upload/download scenario. Agilewords charges about $15-19/mo./user for anyone with editor rights (reviewing is free). You would have to examine how you work and collaborate with various people in order to evaluate whether this functionality would be worthwhile.

All in all, Agilewords provides a potentially very useful expansion to Box.net functionality.

Sarcasm Makes You Smarter

I read with interest and amusement an article in the Smithsonian Magazine on “The Science of Sarcasm.”

The core of the article is that:

“Studies have shown that exposure to sarcasm enhances creative problem solving, for instance. Children understand and use sarcasm by the time they get to kindergarten. An inability to understand sarcasm may be an early warning sign of brain disease.”

This is intuitively self-evident. To deal with sarcasm, you have to perform a series of mental shifts to “translate” what is being said. This (a) exercises your brain more; and (b) makes you more aware of multiple levels of meaning.

Some of the details were particularly interesting, however.  Thus college students in Israel were better able to solve problems on a cellphone company’s help desk if the complaints were sarcastic rather than just plan angry.

Sarcasm permeates society. Thus a study of telephone conversations shows that the phrase “yeah, right” is used sarcastically 23% of the time. New York City subway riders and airplane users have long since stopped taking messages in the form “We’re sorry for the delay and any inconvenience. Thank you for your patience and understanding” at face value. Sarcasm is also regional within the US. Thus:

“Northerners also were more likely to think sarcasm was funny: 56 percent of Northerners found sarcasm humorous while only 35 percent of Southerners did. The New Yorkers and male students from either location were more likely to describe themselves as sarcastic.” 

Does this mean that Northerners are smarter than Southerners?  Obviously not, but it probably does mean that they are used to dealing with the world in different ways.

So let’s hear it for sarcasm.