Web Worker Daily’s post on paperless web workers.

Paperless Joy: the blog and travels of a traveling worker.

Paperless Home Office: From My Other Blog is a Porsche. It’s mainly a love-fest post for iGoogle, but it shows how the power of a single application or device can help you make the leap forward. For me, that device was the Amazon Kindle, but for every worker, there’s a different choke point for going paperless.

My Squidoo lens on the paperless home office– a handy set of resources, many of which I talk about in greater depth here on the Paperless Home Office blog.

Technorati Profile

Your scanner is a very important part of your paperless home office. It is the key to getting data in, so you can get data out. There are two absolute must-have features in a scanner, and one that’s nice-to-have but not necessary.

The best scanner bang for your buck, and the one I use for my paperless home office is the HP Photosmart c6180 . Now, normally I don’t recommend all-in-ones, but space is a premium for us, and the scanner in this product meets all our needs and more (it scans direct to my email program, for when I want to scan and fax-by-email in one step). And more importantly, it has the two absolute must-have features you need in a scanner.

First, your scanner must have a sheet feeder. That’s the contraption on top of your scanner that you stick a bunch of papers into and have them automatically fed into the scanner. If you have ever had to scan a 30-page document using a flatbed scanner, I won’t need to tell you how useful this is. Not only does it save you a lot of opening/closing the scanner (and therefore give you back that time spent babysitting the scanner), but it is usually mounted on top of the scanner! Why is that important? Because the most common place you’ll find someone’s flatbed scanner is underneath the pile of papers its supposed to scan! Instead of bringing in a dedicated clutter magnet, get one with an awkward structure on top to help you resist temptation!

The second must-have feature is a USB drive reader or card reader. This one little feature (found only on a few models) lets you scan directly to the USB drive or media card. Instead of tying up your computer while you scan, you can drop your files into the scanner, hit “scan” and get back to work!

Finally, a nice-to-have feature is a duplexing sheet feeder, but that’s only really useful if the papers you receive are printed on both sides. Aside from credit cards and insurance documents, where the legalese is on the back of the page in 30% gray print, or scanning books, it’s not 100% necessary to have this feature.

They call it the Paperless Paperback. Hammacher Schlemmer is re-branding the Sony Reader prs-505 as a VAR product.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that– the Sony reader is a good device (though I’m selling mine on eBay next week), and Sony has been co-branding its reader with other major brands, including the James Patterson special edition.

If you’re a paperless office devotee, you’ll appreciate how one book editor uses his Sony Reader. He accepts electronic submissions only, formats them for the Sony, and drops them onto his Reader. Then he takes them home and reads them to decide if he wants to publish the book or not. This is one of the best uses for an ebook reader, to my mind (though I would recommend the Amazon Kindle instead, since you can make notes in the book and your assistant can just email the incoming book to you… but more on that in another post).

Getting Started on a Paper Free Office – from 1 Hour PA.

Can You and Your Business Do Without Paper Yet? at Salesteamtools.

Email, Internet Add to Paper Use at the Detroit Free Press

Living the Paperless Home Office Dream is coming soon to this website. Yes, soon you will be able to buy the audiobook and, possibly an ebook version of this useful resource for small business owners, home office workers, and private individuals. You’ll learn the important steps to creating a paperless workflow, managing your documents, and making it all searchable.

The audiobook is scheduled to release in Fall of 2008, so check back for release updates and upcoming presentations!