I have spent over 120 dollars at Kinkos printing, signing, scanning, or faxing documents. Over the course of the past six month my company has been trying to sell our contract so that mean’s we the employees have to fill out a boat load of forms to verify employment and background check paperwork (I know, they should already have it, but that’s another story). So that means, sending in Birth Certificates, ID’s, and filling out countless other forms.

I  don’t have access to a scanner and I am damn well not going to print out War and Peace on my OfficeJet. I went to Kinkos. They charge $1.00 to scan a page, $2.49 to fax one page and $1.00 every page after that. Yes, I know I can go sit at the stupid scanner station and scan my documents but the scanner is not auto loading and it’s freaking BROKEN! I went to ask for help and I got in return, “Sorry dude, it’s broken.” Wonderful, put up a sign at least so I don’t log into the machine and waste my precious $0.25/minute while I try to speak in Bro Speak to explain the problem to you.

Anyway, I stumbled upon two fantastic iPhone applications. Zosh selling at $2.99 and JotNot Scanner selling at $4.99. Zosh allows you to add text, dates, and signatures to PDF documents all using the iPhone/iPod Touch touch screen. I just set up a Zosh account and emailed my PDFs to mydocs@zosh.com. I got an email back (in less than a minute) saying your documents are ready to edit. I fired up the app on my device and signed and dated documents without ever having to print them out again. This $3.00 app has saved me a lot of money. I have to sign an expense report and time sheet every two weeks, Statement of Works, and other contacts for my job (I work from home so I don’t have access to a normal office environment.). With Zosh I never have to step foot in Kinkos to print again. After I was done editing my document I was given the option email the document to myself or anyone else my little heart desired. I think this app is a fantastic companion to people who don’t want to deal with the hassles of printing out the PDF, don’t have Adobe Acrobat, or don’t have an electronic signature.

The core Zosh features;

• Sign PDF’s
• Add custom Text to PDF
• Add Dates to PDF
• Stores most recent entries as Shortcuts
• 4 Colors of Ink
• Tons of fonts
• Move, Resize, Rotate, Delete entries
• Multi-touch zoom
• iTunes Link

JotNot Scanner is the second part to making my personal iPhone office awesome. I needed to send copies of my Birth Certificate and ID. Well that’s two bucks right there at Kinkos. I then calculated time to drive there and then back home. I would have gone if I was hungry because Kinkos is close to Kasper’s Hot Dogs. If you’ve never had a Kasper’s Dog then you haven’t lived. But I wasn’t hungry and it would have cost me more than five bucks to go there and back. So I rubbed my magic iPhone to see if a Gene would pop out. Shazzam! JotNot Scanner: The Gene to my Aladdin. I placed my documents in a well lit area on a flat surface and took a picture using the app. It has a built in stabilizer which automatically takes the picture when your hand (or whatever you’re holding your phone with) reaches a steady point that it finds to be optimal. You preview the picture and either retake or go forward. The app gives you an option to select the areas you want scanned by dragging the four corners of a box to build your frame. Click the “Process” button and you’ve got a freshly scanned document with a PDF extension. There are three options to transmit the document after that: email, send to Evernote, or save to WebDav/iDisk MobileMe.

Here’s a screenshot of one of the letters I scanned:

Not bad huh? Five bucks and it looks just about the same if not better than the POS scanner I would be forced to use at Kinkos.

The core JotNot features:

• Scan Anything
• Use existing pictures in photo roll and convert to PDF
• Email newly scanned documents
• Evernote integration
• WebDav/iDisk MobileMe Support
• iTunes Link

Put that in your pipe and smoke it Kinkos. $8.00 investment to never see you again. I just wish I found these apps earlier.

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