AskHN: Is there a way to defeat snail mail?
I have been wanting to move away from snail mail correspondence. I do e-bills whenever I can, opt for electronic W2s etc. I detest snail mail, its a waste of paper, it makes things messy, and it takes up tons of actual space/time etc sorting thru and keeping records.
I also travel a lot, so often, I will return home to find a bunch of mail in my mailbox, which will likely take up precious time I could be spending on more pleasurable tasks such as hitting my head on the wall. As "every problem is an opportunity", I figured out a solution.
At first, I wanted to have a wifi enabled mailbox with a built-in scanner, so the mailman would have to insert standard size envelopes into a slot which would then open that piece of mail and scan the letter, upload the document to the web and shred the paper version. My lil way of fighting the "mail" establishment. After some searching, I come to the conclusion that, I have neither the time, money or mechanical engineering expertise to build such a device. (although. if you're a gifted mech-e and can build such a system, I'm all ears). I did a little Google search of "smart" mailboxes, and the "smartest" solution I found was a How-To article on Life Hacker, which alerted you on your iphone when you mailbox at home was opened. I still needed a better solution. I keep getting dinged by insurance companies and all those evil snail mail sending entities because I don't go thru my paper mail every day (or week, or month for that fact), so I desperately need a solution.
Back on Earth, I seem to find a solution that's bound to work. I asked someone to bring my mail in periodically, open them and scan them on a scanner which is in the kitchen in my absence. I figured it shouldn't be too hard to find a relatively "smart", wi-fi enabled, all-in-one printer which can directly upload to the web (e.x. to Google Docs or Shoeboxed). I spend hours looking for the right device, and I finally get an HP 7510, which is supposed to support HP's new "PrintApps" concept and per their website, scanning directly to google docs from this printer should be a breeze. Alas, upon getting the printer, I realize that the google docs application isn't really there in their "App Market". All the available apps generated more useless paper artifacts which would only add to my mail clutter.
I just spent over an hour on the phone with HP, to see if they could tell me whether apps are for specific printer types or not. Only problem is that their Customer Service/Tech Support is worse than the half assed device I ended up buying.
It all seems so stupid to me. I mean, heck it's not rocket science. WiFi enabled devices such as this should at least be able to send scanned data to the web. It's absolutely something HP can support, but I get the feeling that they're choosing not to. If people are all about digital documents, they may be afraid that they'll loose printer customers. So, they include these "shitty" print apps, whose main purpose seems to be to generate more useless paper. I'm so frustrated that something like this doesn't always exist. It's 2012 for cryin out loud, we should've been able to do this since the advent of wifi. It seemed doxie go WiFi would be capable of handling the task. But by now, I've had it up to my eyeballs.
Question(s): --------
Does anyone know how to hack the new HPs, so that I can put my own, more useful software on it, which lets it communicate with and upload directly to the cloud? At this point I'm really frustrated, I could buy other scanners which also boast this technology, but I don't want to go thru hell to set it up. Anyone work one of these HP Apps? I would also deeply appreciate any advise you can give on how to tackle this situation. Shouldn't something like this be already exist?