Dunkirk Systems bought me 2 presents for Christmas last year – a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner and a One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computer. I have been using both for the past few weeks and both are worthwhile, and dare I say revolutionary gifts, even with their simplicity.

The ScanSnap is unique in its packaging of existing technologies. As the name implies, it is a scanner. I saw headlines for it in several trade magazines, and after reading information on several Web sites and its own – including watching videos of it in action – I knew this was for me. It is a full-color, duplex scanner with a paper auto-feeder. The accompanying software includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard, optical character recognition to create searchable PDFs and a business card scanning application that creates both PDFs of each side of a card and converts it to text.

I have written before about how I need to eliminate paper in my life and business - and the solution I developed has been working well for me. But then there’s the burgeoning files of paper in my office that needs to be dealt with. My goal is to scan documents and items going forward that I don’t need to keep the original of, and then to slowly go back and scan similar items I already have. And backups – all must be backed up!

As I have gone through and scanned some older documents, I have found things I didn’t know or forgot I had. As I scan these items I am creating a hierarchy of file folders on my computer to organize them, eventually allowing me to scan the text within the documents as well. So in addition to solving the problem of stacks of paper, I am expanding my knowledgebase of information!

So far so good with the ScanSnap – I’ll report back on how things are going forward.

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At the New Years Eve party I attended someone mentioned they want to start their own business, a retail store. The catalyst for this was a prime retail location becoming available. Of course I jumped on that topic, throwing as much encouragement as I could to fuel the spirit of entrepreneurship.

To no surprise, one item that came up in the dialogue was healthcare. I say to no surprise for whenever anyone contemplates striking out on their own, healthcare is always raised as a question – the great unknown of having health insurance. I would go as far as to say it is a concern greater than stable income!

But what if healthcare and health insurance was not an issue? Hypothetically, what if one did not have to worry about this, or have it as a barrier for going out on their own?

Now I am not proposing any type of solution to this issue. There are many parties involved here, not just the insurance companies and politicians. And if you are a regular reader of The Hot Iron, you will know my bias towards capitalism!

As we head into the weekend, here’s a “what if” to ponder. Feel free to share any thoughts in the comments to this post.

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Several years ago at a networking event, someone told me I had to be on Ryze, a business-oriented social networking. As I am usually signing up for one service or another every day, I created an account and setup a basic profile. And that was it.

Since then, I get a weekly email message with my Ryze “stats” including how many people have viewed my profile, etc. After about a year of those emails, I revisited my profile and added to it, copying and pasting pretty much verbatim from my LinkedIn profile.

So anyone else out there using it?

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I just got word from Tim Courtney the next Silicon Prairie Social will be held on Thursday, January 24, 2008 at Mullen’s Bar and Grill in Lisle, IL. This is second in what I hope will be an on-going quality tech networking event for the western suburbs of Chicago.

The event is free, though you must register, and registration is now open. Check out the Web site for full details. Unfortunately I won't be there myself, but I have RSVPed in spirit. There is also the opportunity to become a sponsor, joining an excellent list of current sponsors. For those in the burbs, it is a must attend, and as well for those of us in the city - as we are all part of the local tech community.

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At one point last week as I was scrambling to put together the list of recipients for Dunkirk Systems’ holiday cards, I needed to go to LinkedIn to look up a couple of contacts. When I arrived at the social networking site I saw a familiar face, a wizard image LinkedIn puts up when it takes the service down for maintenance. When I went back after the maintenance window, I was pleasantly surprised to see more familiar faces.

If you have a LinkedIn account and you visit the home page, you can see updates to people in your network. As I have previously stated, this is a highly valuable feature of LinkedIn as you can find out changes for contacts, including if they have a new job. Now these changes include if a person has added a photo to their profile. The accompanying image is a partial screen grab from my own LinkedIn home page, showing networking guru Jason Jacobsohn recently added a photo to his profile.

This is a good step forward for LinkedIn, and as competition heats up from other social networking sites like Facebook, I am eager to see what other changes they will make.

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