Thursday, December 2, 2010

My "Good Way to Use Technology" Tip of the Day (Or Whenever I think of Something!)

I am chronically bad with keeping paperwork and being able to find it.  I am just horrendous at filing and I spend way too much time sifting through piles of papers.

I have developed a little 'trick' which helps me out immensely.  What I do is use Yahoo! Mail as my filing cabinet.  When I get a paper or document or bill that I know that I will need at some point in time, I will scan it and send it to my email address.  Further, with the printer, I can specify the subject line for the email, so I will put in something like [Records] ING Statement for October 2006.

For those that don't know, Yahoo! no longer has a limit on the mailbox size, so go crazy, scan and email as much as you want.

Further, I have folders setup in my Yahoo! in conjunction with rules in my email.  So - when my Yahoo! receives an email with the subject "[Records] ING Statement" at the beginning, it automatically files in into my [Records] ING folder.  Cool and nifty.  I will not have to sift through mountains of paperwork to find that elusive bill.  Everything is not only in my email, but it is also automatically grouped together.

Of course, storing content online, is this a good thing - or a bad thing?  The good in this case is that you receive a wonderful benefit of being to review these documents from anywhere where you have access to a web browser or interface of some sort.  The very logical "bad" of this technique is that having these (assumedly) confidential document in one location, and if you're on a public computer, one can never be too careful about spyware, inadvertantly saving one's email password, etc...  As is this case, common sense should prevail and one needs to way the advantages against the disadvantages.
As Austin Powers might say "easy-peasy lemon-squeezie"!

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