Although these tools are highly similar in concept, they show differences in overall functionality and abilities. Today we’ll review the most prominent of these sites for you, so you may find the one that ultimately fits your every need. Here they are, in no specific order.

Issuu

What Issuu currently lacks in word of mouth, it makes up for in raw style. You won’t encounter anytime soon a more beautiful and fine-tuned site to publish PDFs online than Issuu – especially graphically. With slick looks, this player will continue to conquer the hearts of many nerds.

You can browse Issuu’s ‘collection’ based on category, rating and overall popularity. The level of Issuu content is very high, and you’ll encounter many professional magazine publications. If you’re looking for a good eBook read, Issuu can help you a long way.

In terms of interface, Issuu heads a more experimental path. Away with the well-known PDF reading set-up, hello eye-candy intuitive experimentation. Issuu allows you to read your PDFs like a real magazine, two by two. You can click the page to zoom in and have a more detailed view. Intuitively flip the pages, or use the OSX-doc-like index at the bottom of the page.

The design, as well as the revolutionary interface makes Issuu my new personal favourite.

Check out a MakeUseOf PDF example on Issuu here.

Scribd

If Issuu is my ‘new’ personal favourite, whose throne did it take? Reader, meet Scribd, another wonderful PDF publishing site. If you think Issuu is too much mumbo-jumbo, this might be what you’re looking for to publish PDFs online.

The Scribd online reader once again deviates from the conventional interface – although not as extreme. Scribd also allows you to read your PDFs per page, or in a two-by-two ‘book’ format. The ’scroll’ view is the more interesting part of the interface. Simply move your mouse towards the bottom of the page and click to gently scroll down your page. Although you can summon a graphical index of pages, this mode is more aimed to userswho are off to read instead of scan the documents, and makes a great interface for reading eBooks.

Last month we used Scribd to promote the online viewing of one of our MakeUseOf manuals – The iPhone Guide. The pilot proved a success, with the document even making the Scribd hotlist. Check out a MakeUseOf PDF example on Scribd here.

Google Docs

Google Docs – for those of you who’ve been living under a rock in the past few years – is the cloud computing office application by internet and software giant Google. This free and online suite covers all bases – word processing, spreadsheets, and so on. Not everyone knows this, but besides functionality for txt and doc files, Google Docs perfectly integrates with PDF files.

Strictly following the definition we gave at the start of the article, this site might not be allowed a place in this list. However, because Google Docs allows you to not only ‘view’ your PDF files, but also gives you a (1.0) platform for spreading them, I personally think it should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Alas, a 2.0 platform is not included, but the basic functionality for this application allows you to pretty much do what you want with it – upload your files and make them public. Next, you can share the link with pretty much everyone you know. Embedding the document is sadly not possible. Incredibly simple and easy to use, albeit limited in functionality.

Check out a MakeUseOf PDF example on Google Docs here.

Have you ever published a PDF online? It’s easier than you think! Tell us which site(s) you used and why you did(n’t) like them in the comments section below.

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• Use PDFVue To Fill Froms & Edit PDF Files For Free Online (10)
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The one downside of a PDF is that you’ll need a PDF reader. Sure, there are some great free applications out there, but it’s yet another install – especially if you’re not on your own computer.

More and more services are developed to let you view PDFs online in your browser. With all the code on a remote server, no downloads or installs are necessary. PDFs are entering the domain of cloud computing!

Today we’ll take an in-detail look at a few of these services – PDFMeNot, Vuzit and SamurajData – simple, extensive and minimalistic.

PDFMeNot

You might know the guys behind PDFMeNot from other successful projects like BugMeNot (access ‘must register to view’ sites) and RetailMeNot (giving you wonderful discounts by providing tons of coupons).

Like said previous projects, PDFMeNot trades in simplicity and great functionality. Don’t expect something fancy, with tons of offers and premium accounts – PDFMeNot does what you want it to do, does it well, and does not bother you with anything else.

PDFMeNot allows you to upload a PDF file from your computer, or to provide a valid web link. After some moments, during which the PDF gets read and processed to a more web-friendly format, you’re able to view your document(s) in-browser.  Since popular documents get cached, you won’t always have to wait out the conversion process.

The web viewer temporarily caches the whole document and provides you with a basic interface. You might not be able to make annotations, or do any kind of markup, but PDFMeNot does a good enough job as a reading tool.

Vuzit

To be honest, Vuzit isn’t really a tool to view PDFs online. However, on the site you’ll be able to find a ‘free test tool’ that does everything we need it to do.

Like PDFMeNot, Vuzit allows you to upload a file from your hardrive, or locate an existing file online. You might want to watch out what you use it for, though, as Vuzit shows a few of the most recent documents on its webpage – explicit and private content are thus not recommended.

The site keeps your document cached for some time, which allows you to give the link to your friends and/or colleagues. Vuzit makes an excellent choice if you want to pass a document along, and not everyone might have the means or the appreciation for PDF files. Furthermore, Vuzit also has a nice little ‘download’ button, for those people who still prefer an offline back-up.

The basic Vuzit interface and functionality highly resembles that of PDFMeNot – it even looks a tad better and comes with search functionality.

SamurajData

If you’re a minimalist, you might prefer SamurajData. This is without any doubt the lightweight PDF reader, with minimum looks and minimum functionality.

Instead of displaying the PDF in your browser, SamurajData converts the document to a series of GIF images. As you might know, these images take up very little memory, but come with a certain loss of quality. As such, your text might well be readable, but you won’t have the most pretty of documents.

SamurajData uses no flash, and instead has a completely HTML-based interface. You can browse the different pictures (read: pages) and optionally rotate them.

In short, if you’re looking for a really lightweight solution to view PDFs online, SamurajData probably is your man. However, if you’ve got a decent internet connection, I highly suggest to you to give one of the former two options a shot.

Another option you might also want to consider is Scribd.

Do you ever use an online PDF solution, or do you prefer to read your documents offline? If you do, what website do you use? Tell us all about it in the comments section below!

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If you are a web developer, you sure have to take care of browser compatibilities and ensure that your web app looks and works almost the same, if not entirely the same across different browsers and platforms.

If you have been looking for an easy solution to see how your site looks in different browsers, then check out the new Adobe BrowserLab. Adobe BrowserLab provides you with exact renderings of your webpages as they would look in different browsers and operating systems. The service might remind you of Browsershots which also provides you with screenshots of your site in different browsers. There is however, no waiting required in Adobe BrowserLab and you get to see the results almost instantaneously.

Adobe BrowserLab allows you to preview your work in Firefox 2.X Windows, Firefox 3.X Windows, Firefox 2.X Mac OS, Firefox 3.X Mac OS, IE6.X and IE7.X and Safari 3.X; which is less than what you can get with Browsershots but includes the popular browsers.

You can view the results side by side (2-up) view, or any individual screenshot (1-up view) or compare the renderings with the “onion-skin” view which overlays one screenshot over the other (as seen below).

You can install BrowserLab MXP extensions to integrate Adobe BrowserLab with Dreamweaver CS4, which would then allow you to preview and compare the local files which you are developing for your site.

Looks too good to be true? Well it is true, at least for a certain period of time anyway. Adobe BrowserLab is a limited free preview service. While Adobe is testing the service, they are letting people hop on board. The final product would most likely require you to shell out some bucks. However, with the time most webapps take these days to drop out of beta stages, you might be able to use BrowserLab for at least a considerable amount of time. You can give it a thorough spin and decide if you would like to spend some money to avail its services in the future.

Interested in webdesign? Check out our MakeUseOf posts to help you become a web-designing wizard.

What clever ways do you use to preview your work in different browsers? Virtualization? Or you install all the browsers? Let us know about them in the comments.

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Sure, the latest version of Reader has more bells and whistles, but you just want to read the flubsy PDF! Just open it like a web page and read it like a web page. Well, I went a-searching and here are some light alternatives to the hefty Adobe Reader.

FoxIt Reader

Download Size: 3.56 MB
Installed Size: 7.14 MB

The FoxIt layout is very similar to Adobe Reader and has a lot of the same functionality. You can add notes, zoom, search on text, view the document without images and more. It opens so quickly though!

Some of the more advanced functions are only available if you opt-in to FoxIt’s updates and eBay toolbar. The bills have got to get paid somehow I suppose. Overall, a fine piece of software backed by over 50 million downloads of it so far.

PDF-Xchange Viewer

Download Size: 17.9 MB
Installed Size: 25.5 MB

When you open PDF-Xchange Viewer, it is readily apparent that it is more than just a PDF reader. You’ll find all of the functions you would in FoxIt without having to sign up for updates or the eBay toolbar. That’s always a plus to me. Yes, the download is larger and it does take up more space when installed than FoxIt, however it also offers you the ability to customize its appearance and how it functions. You can set the threads to use for image rendering, amount of RAM to utilize, and text and image rendering quality amongst other things.

Perfect PDF Reader

Download Size: 22.4 MB
Installed Size: 14.6 MB

Yes, there seems to be a discrepancy there, doesn’t it? The download package contains some additional software that isn’t necessary for the base functions of Perfect PDF writer. That fact alone leads me to believe that the name Perfect is, yet again, a misnomer.  Why do companies insist on claiming perfection?

The interface is reminiscent of Office 2007 with it’s little orb thing in the top left corner and similarly confusing layout of menu items. You may be able to surmise that I am not a fan of Office 2007 as well.

Perfect PDF Reader has a limited tool set, making it essentially just a PDF reader. The one option I really don’t understand is the Open in Reader shortcut. Isn’t the point of this to take Adobe Reader out of the equation? Overall, I wouldn’t recommend Perfect PDF Reader.

Cool PDF Reader

Download Size: 632 KB (That’s right, less than 1 MB.)
Installed Size: 632 KB (No coincidence here.)

Cool PDF Reader is a straight-forward executable to read PDF’s with. Open it up, navigate to the PDF you wish to read and boom, there it is. You can zoom in, zoom out, page forward and backward and well, that’s about all.  If the name of the game is something small and fast to simply read a PDF, this is the winner. If you download the standalone version, you can also run it without permissions or from a USB drive.

Which one is best? That’s truly dependent on what your tastes are. For me, I like PDF-Xchange because it has some neat editing controls. FoxIt obviously has something going for it, based on the sheer number of downloads. Perfect PDF will appeal to the neophyte user whose first introduction to software included Office 2007. Cool PDF is definitely for the purists.

There are many other PDF reader options out there – which one do you use? Why do you use it? Let others know about it in the comments.

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There is. Well, sort of. There’s going to be. It’s called Presentations, and is the latest offering from the folks at Adobe’s Acrobat.com, the makers of (among other things) Buzzword, a fantastic online word processor.

To get to Presentations, go to the Acrobat.com site, and look at the bottom. There’s a link for Presentations near the bottom – this is Adobe’s way of making sure you know it’s not a full-featured release yet. But it’s still darn good.

I was able to have a brief discussion with the folks at Acrobat.com before Presentations was launched, and they mentioned something that’s critical to Web-based apps being successful. There are three basic principles and points on which Presentations was founded: ubiquity, collaboration, and user experience. In all three realms, Presentations scores high.

The basic product is the same as any other presentation software – it lets you create slides, and then show them to other people. Adobe’s offering, though, offers a bunch of stuff that’s different and better. The best thing, in my opinion, is how much better the collaboration features are – better than PowerPoint, and better than any other online presentations tool.

A huge number of people can be working on the same presentation, or the same slide, or even the same word or image. You’ll see avatars for each person working on the presentation, listed next to the slide they’re currently editing. Conflicting changes are presented to the users, just in case your work overlaps with another collaborator.

There are a bunch of other great features to Presentations – the little things are what really shine. There are a number of themes available, which are easily customized to your liking (great for corporate use, where they tend to mandate a template). Diagrams can be created separately, and then moved around and edited together.

The navigation system is also a major upgrade from other applications. Even when you’re in presentation mode, you can bring up a small dock-like list of all your slides, letting you easily choose the one you want – avoiding that terrible “scrolling-through-everything-to-find-the-right-slide” moment. You drag the window to change the view of the slides, depending on how you want to edit them.

But it’s not all candy and rainbows, unfortunately. Acrobat.com notes frequently that Presentations is very much an early, unstable release, and it has some major notable features missing. There’s no spell-check, no support for importing movies other than .FLV files, and no import and export with PowerPoint – you can only save a Presentation to PDF.

There’s also no sharing of themes, no way to invite someone to view the presentation as anything other than a co-editor, and no way to make comments or notes on slides and presentations.

For now, Presentations is a slick, usable application. But as bugs get fixed and features get quickly rolled out, Presentations is going to bring ubiquity, collaboration, and user experience to a new level within the world of presentations. They’re easier to create, easier to navigate, and Presentations is a gorgeous app.

Worried about your next presentation? Tina shows you have to blow your audiences minds away with 10 Powerpoint tips.

What tool do you use for giving presentations? Present them to us in the comments.

Photo: garethjmsaunders

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That’s where doPDF shifts into place. This free PDF converter not only rescues you from having a hole drilled into your pocket where loose change starts to seep out but it also saves you a whole lot of productivity time as well.

Here’s How to Get Started

doPDF is extremely simple to use so if you don’t have a lot of patience with 3^rd party applications fear no more because you’ll have a smooth time with this software.

First you need to download this app. Once you’ve installed the application just open up a document in Microsoft Word, NotePad, WordPad or pretty much any other text editing software. I’m going to use Microsoft Word for the sake of this tutorial.

Next you have to go to File-> Print-> doPDF.

Now you just have to click OK and a small window will pop-up asking you where you’d like to save your new PDF document, once you’ve chosen your preferred location then click OK once again.

And you’re finished, it’s as easy as that! With these few steps you’ve just created a high quality PDF document.

Before the conversion:

After the conversion:

Conclusion:

The entire process from begining to end shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. It is possible that as doPDF converts a document the file can suffer from minor unusually formatted images or texts, however for the most part doPDF is pretty accurate.

At the moment there’s no option to print web pages (for example: news articles or pages off a forum) that automatically divide into separate pages, thus you’ll most likely end up with lines that divide the article or page throughout your PDF document, if you decide to print directly from the web.

Another quick issue I discovered was the size of the file doPDF creates. The size of the document can be a bit large and sometimes daunting depending on how many images a page may contain, though if you can manage to use WinZip or a free similar app to ZIP the file up, it shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Please feel free to MakeUseOf the comment box below and leave us your thoughts.  What similar apps do you use?

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So what do you do when you want to fill out forms online or edit a PDF? Need to mark up a PDF? Well you can’t do that with the free version of Acrobat Reader. So we have to find another solution!

Nifty website pdfVue does exactly what we need it to do. As long as we aren’t working on top secret documents (or even tax forms for that matter) we should have no problem in uploading our documents to PDFVue’s server and then manipulate them using their online Adobe Acrobat Pro-esque editor.

Let’s see what PDFVue has to offer and how we can Make Use Of It. (Pun intended – suck it up!)

It looks like they want you to click on the folder icon on the top left under the PDFVue logo. This will let you browse to your PDF file on your local machine. I chose a invoice I had in PDF format and uploaded it. It was under 100KB and took about 45 seconds to upload to their server.

When it was complete I had my full invoice in a web editor. I was able to mark it up, draw funny shapes and even stick sticky notes over crucial data so I wouldn’t get sued!

The tab at the upper right hand side of the screen that says Forms will give you the ability to edit forms and save the finished product. Using this feature, you can add text boxes and all sorts of corporate goodies.

Now I definitely won’t say this is a Acrobat Pro replacement for me but it will get the job done in a pinch. Of course if you are editing confidential information I would not go uploading it anywhere.  Pester the hell out of your boss until you get the tools you need to do your job!

There are also collaboration tools and some other nifty features discussed in the getting started guide available here.

If you have a Mac, Jackson has covered FormulatePro and in our directory, we have also looked at PDF Escape.

Do you use any of these or a similar tool to edit PDF’s? If you do let us know about your favorite – in the comments!

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Most modern image editing software uses layers to allow you to make changes on top of what’s already there in a non-destructive way. This means you can edit your image as you like, making each change on a new layer, and just hide or delete layers to see the previous version.

Layers are fundamental to Photoshop and if you’re editing without taking advantage of them, you’re really not using the program to its full potential.

Think of each layer as a piece of transparent plastic or glass that you lay over the original image. You can make changes to each layer without affecting any of the others. When you paint or draw or type on one layer, you can still see through to the layer below.  You can also remove layers (delete or hide) without affecting the others. Very convenient.

To get started you need to make sure your layers palette is open. If you don’t see it in the bottom right of your screen, then click on Windows in the menus and choose Layers or hit F7 on your keyboard.

Now here’s what the layers palette looks like

… and here’s the image itself.

The little eyeball next to each layer indicates that layer is visible.  Clicking on the eyeball toggles the visibility.  The icons (with the checkerboard backgrounds) represents each individual layer and the image in each shows the relative position of the layer contents on the image as a whole.  You can manually change the name of each layer.  This comes in very handy when dealing with 10, 20 or more layers in one image.

In the image above, each of the three items are on their own layers, so I can move them around or make other changes to them, without affecting the other layers.  Here’s an example:

Here are some things you can do with layers:

Add text to a picture

When adding text to an image you add it on its own text layer. Text layers can only contain text and only text layers can contain editable text. You can make changes to a text layer (eg: drop-shadow etc.) without affecting the image below it.

Create a montage

You can create a picture montage with each image on its own layer, thereby making it easier to move them into the proper place.

Using an auto-select layer might come in handy when creating a montage. By default you must select which layer to edit in the layers palette. With the auto-select layer checked, Photoshop selects whatever layer it thinks you want, based on where you click.

Darkroom type effects

There are special layers in Photoshop called adjustment layers. These allow you to non-destructively make adjustments to your image. You can use these to increase contrast, or mute some overpowering colours or even convert your entire image to black and white. I’ll look at adjustment layers in more detail in a future post.

All layers have an Opacity slider. This lets you either reduce the opacity (make it fade away) of whatever’s on the layer. In the case of adjustment layers, the slider allows you to reduce the strength of an effect.

Layers have Blend Modes which are special ways of blending a layer with the ones below it.

You can also add effects to a layer, things like drop shadow and gradient overlay. Once applied, these effects are listed in the layers pallette and can be easily edited later without affecting anything else you’ve done.

These are but a few of the many things you can do with layers in Photoshop. In fact, just about everything you do to an image should happen on it’s own layer, so you can easily revert to a previous version.

Please note: I’m using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial. YMMV on other versions. Please ask in the comments if you have any questions about the version you’re using and I’m sure I or someone else will be able to help.

Picture credit: Daveybot

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However sometimes you get a PDF file from a friend/colleague or from the Internet that is password protected. Some require a password to open, others have the fonts, images and other content protected and others prohibit you from printing the file. You can of course contact the person concerned to get the password, but there can be plenty of situations where you would want to use a password protected file otherwise! So, here I will try to tell you how to unlock pdf files be it for printing or viewing.

Freeware PDF Unlocker

Freeware PDF Unlocker is a free utility that allows you to remove passwords and open protected PDF files. What it does is that it creates another copy of the PDF file that can open without any password and that can work without limitations.

Getting it to work is a little cumbersome. You have to follow different approaches for different types of passwords. There is no GUI (user interface) available. However when you install the software it creates a CMD file on your desktop. All you have to do is to drag and drop your password protected file onto this CMD file and it will do the rest.

For removing passwords that prohibit you from tasks like copying and printing, you need not do anything and the CMD file will work as it is. Just drag and drop the file and you will get a “no password” file.

Now we come to the other type of passwords that prevent you from opening the PDF file. First off, allow me to clarify a bit here. The software is not for cracking passwords. However, it is great for another scenario. Suppose I send you a file that requires you to enter a password to open the file. Of course I will provide you the password if you are the intended recipient. You open the file, read it, find the contents useful and would like to get back to the file in the future.

So do you remember yet another password with all the passwords you are already trying to remember inside your brain? Or do you write it down? You could use some password storage solution but since you are not distributing the file and the password has already served its purpose (to allow only you to read it) why not just remove it?

Wondering why I cooked up that story? To try and explain to you that to remove this kind of password you require the actual password!

Ah.. Did I hear you groan with a ‘what’s the use then?’ Well, it seems like a catch-22 initially but I have been using the feature to my advantage for some time now. Basically its like “here, I am entering the password this one time, now give me a copy of the file that doesn’t require me to enter the password subsequently.” Its somewhat like enabling auto-login in Windows, you have to provide the password only once.

The procedure to remove such passwords is as follows:

• You would have to edit the CMD file on the desktop.



• Just right click on the icon and choose “edit”. Enter <theOpenPassword> against the -sPDF option (you might have to scroll to the right of the window if you don’t see it).



• I would suggest to save the file with a different file name indicating that you can use it to remove open type passwords. That way you won’t have to edit the commands every time or type long options in the command line.
• Now, like before, just drag and drop the file with the password onto the CMD file and you will get the no password version.

How To Add A Password To PDF Files

As a side note, in case you are wondering how to password protect a PDF document, you can use a couple of solutions. I do it with OpenOffice. Go to File > Export as PDF and then to the security tab. You can put in a password for opening a file and another for restricting content usage.

If you don’t have OpenOffice you can try PrimoPDF. I wouldn’t recommend Adobe’s offerings because they are pretty heavy and slow albeit more powerful.

If you know similar tools to achieve the same results, share them with us in the comments.

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So with the news that Gmail now supports the reading of PDF files, I realised I could now do away with Adobe Reader being on my computer altogether. Hurray! Goodbye Reader and thanks for all the bloat!

Being sent a PDF file by email? View PDF in Gmail.

If someone now sends me a PDF file by email, all I have to do is click the “view” button in Gmail. This then sends the file to my Google Docs account for viewing (you may have to log into Google Docs first)

After logging into Google Docs, their lightweight PDF viewer immediately opens your file. As you can see below, the viewer gives you the ability to download the file and print the file.

Plus, just like Adobe Reader, you have the strip down the side which allows you to see thumbnails of all the pages so you can jump straight to a particular page.

Once you’ve finished looking at your file, just close Google Docs. Easy. No need to use Adobe Reader or FoxIt or any other installed software.

2. PDF file on your computer? Open it in Google Docs.

But what if the PDF file is not in your email? What if the PDF file is on your computer? Well then you can either upload it to Google Docs or to Gmail for reading in Google Docs.

To upload to Gmail, you can use a favourite tool of mine called Backup to email (or gmail) which integrates into your Explorer right-click menu. Then when you have uploaded the PDF file to Gmail, repeat stage one to view your file in Google Docs. You can also use Gmail as a nice little storage facility for your PDF files long term.

To upload your file from your computer to Google Docs (cutting out Gmail), Docs provides a variety of ways to get your file there. The easiest route is to go to Google Docs and use their file uploading tool.  The only snag with uploading it to the Google Docs server is that there is a 10MB file size limit.

If you do a bit of online searching, you can also find things such as a desktop tool to quickly upload documents.

Then again, once your PDF file is in Docs, just use their lightweight viewer to open it.    When you have finished and you don’t want to keep the file online, just delete it.   You will still have the original file on your computer.

What is absolutely amazing is the crystal clear picture quality and the very fast loading speeds that Google Docs provides. It really does put Adobe Reader to shame.

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Some of the most popular AIR apps are eBay Desktop, Twhirl (Twitter), Klok (time management), and GMDesk (Google Tools), all of which we have reviewed on MakeUseOf here and here.

AIR is open for web developers to (rather) easily create applications. So how can you find out about interesting new AIR apps? A directory would come in handy. There are two very good alternative resources.

1. RefreshingApps

RefreshingApps provides a showcase for Adobe AIR applications.

New apps are introduced with a quick review in blog post style. The points “Design eye” and “Technical eye” are always included. Apart from the reviews, the site also has AIR-related news, interviews and resources. Users can submit new apps, comment on posts and rate (vote) the reviewed apps.

All reviews are tagged, which is also the easiest way to find an application for your specific desire. Showcase tags include productivity, social, twitter, video, youtube, music, designer, and many more.

The user votes are the basis for the AIR apps Top 5 chart, which is currently led by the above displayed Flaivor, an application for watching quality web videos on your desktop. As you can see, the number of votes is not exactly high.

Also the amount of showcased apps isn’t huge; the full A-Z list comprises just over 60 AIR apps. But since the name of the site is RefreshingApps, quality clearly beats quantity, a characteristic that is to be desired.

2. Adobe AIR Marketplace

The marketplace is maintained by Adobe staff members and registered users.

The place can be viewed in four categories: staff picks, most recent, most popular and highest rated. Registered users can not only submit new applications, they can also comment and rate all submissions.

Currently, there are 284 apps available in the AIR Marketplace, which possibly includes close to any app that is out there. Naturally, the directory has a very professional look. Applications aren’t just listed, they also receive a dedicated page, which includes reviews, a download link, all vital information in a separate box, and much more. In other words, information is served in easily digestible pieces.

How do you find out about new AIR applications?   Do you have your own AIR directories?

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I quickly Googled around looking for a free, easy solution. Lots of places claimed to do what I wanted but the first one that did it EASY and FREE was doPDF.

It is a small download, less than 2MB and when it finishes installing you will have a new printer added to your system. When you need a PDF, all you need to do is “print” to the new doPDF printer. (It can be accessed using File -> Print menu in pretty much any Windows program i.e. Word, Excel, Paint, some image viewer etc.) I know I make it sound simple and all – but it really is THAT EASY!

If you don’t believe me and you are too lazy to try it yourself check out this video courtesy of doPDF…

This is simply awesome. Do you use something other than Adobe Acrobat Pro to create PDF’s? If so and it is free we would LOVE to hear about it. Why don’t you leave your favorite PDF creator in the comments!

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But as we all know, Adobe is not the only company offering PDF readers and writers. There is no question that better, free alternatives to the ever so (un)popular Adobe Acrobat Reader exist. One example is the Foxit Reader.

To be fair though, we have to recognize that Adobe’s Acrobat Reader has come a long way. It may appear slow because it comes with many great and some not so necessary features. On the other hand, some of the latest improvements show that developers don’t turn a blind eye to the competition and the latest trends. So if you prefer to use the original software – or for some reason have to – read on!

Earlier this month Adobe Reader 9 was released. In all honesty, it seems to load faster than ever. Looking at the new features overview that’s just what Adobe promises. Version 9 also supports swf and flv files, introduced as “Native Adobe Flash®” support, and allows working with Acrobat.com (beta). Here’s a list of all of its features.

Now let’s have a look at some of the things you can do to improve your PDF experience with Adobe Reader.

Since version 8 you can customize the toolbar, adding and removing tools as you need them. Go to >Tools, >Customize Toolbars… and check all the options you can’t live without.

Before:

After:

Also with version 8 came the possibility to include bookmarks, comments and attachments in the search, along with the option to search just the current document or all PDFs in a specific directory on your computer.

For enhanced reading you should know your shortcuts:

[Ctrl + Shift + H] activates automatic scrolling.
[Ctrl + H] puts the document into reading mode, omitting all tool- and navigation bars.
[Ctrl + L] toggles the full screen mode.
F8 removes just the toolbars.
F9 makes the menu bar disappear.

If you can’t keep your eyes open long enough to read a whole document, here’s a feature you will love. Since version 6 Adobe Reader has a built-in text-to-speech synthesizer called Read Out Loud. You will find it under >View >Read Out Loud. Admittedly, it’s very simple and there are much better text-to-speech tools out there. However, it’s already included, it works and doesn’t require any maintenance.

To keep your browser from freezing when opening a PDF document, you should disable the >display PDF in browser option under >Edit >Preferences >Internet.

Under >Preferences you can also disable the Splash Screen in the >General category >Application Startup section.

What makes using Adobe Acrobat Reader easier for you? If you’re not using it, which changes could convince you to return?

Tina is a regular MUO author. In her offline life she’s a PhD student interested in unraveling signaling events that determine cartilage and bone development.

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Acrobat.com claims to offer the first real online word processor, web based file sharing and storage, ability to create PDF’s, online screen sharing and web conferencing.

Lets take a look at all of these one by one, shall we?

1. Adobe Buzzword

Adobe claims Buzzword to be the only real online word processor. They are justified in their claims as it turns out. For starters Buzzword supports the docx format, but that’s not all as it has a host of cool features that takes it closer to the desktop experience.

It offers options for header – footer, font colors, images, tables, special characters, comments etc. It keeps track of the version history of a file and your work can be shared or exported to various formats. How about performance? It worked well when I gave it a try (although i didn’t do any serious work).

Mark also took a previous look at Buzzword here.

2. Adobe ConnectNow

Adobe ConnectNow is for those of you who want to collaborate with someone over the Internet. It allows you to invite participants to view your webcam or share your computer screen. Not only can you share but you can also remotely control the screen and annotate it. You can also send a file from within ConnectNow if you desire.

In addition it has a white board functionality that lets you draw shapes, lines etc on the screen for on-the-go instant discussions and designs. It however requires you to install a ConnectNow plugin to share your screen with the participants.

Oh, I almost forgot, you can also chat with all the participants in your room. A very useful and productive app for those who want to share their ideas and work online.

3. Create PDF

You might be wondering why it’s called acrobat.com but still no mention of PDF? Well here it is. The Create PDF app. It presents you with an intuitive interface where you can see the files you created or uploaded to acrobat.com. In addition to that it has an option to upload files from your computer as well. You can convert them to PDF here and then download them. You can also view the documents that others are sharing with you.

You can sort the available files by a variety of criteria such as upload time, name etc. One special mention here would be that Adobe imposes a 5 document conversion limit. Not sure what the idea is behind this strategy. Why would they want to limit PDF conversion?

4. Share Files

Share files allows you to upload files from your computer and share them with your colleagues or friends. You can also send them messages notifying them of the fact that you have shared a new file with them. You can control the access level of the documents and keep them open or restricted. In addition, it offers all the file management features I mentioned in number 3 above. All the files you have stored in this organizer can also be embedded in a web page in the form of a flash preview of the document.

5. My Files

This is the central file organizer of acrobat.com. Actually I have already mentioned it twice in 3 and 4 above when I discussed the file management features within Create PDF and Share Files. In addition to that My Files has a lot more to offer. You can filter files according to their name, size, extension, author, share status, and upload date. You can view them as lists or thumbnail.

Finally you can upload files from your computer as well. Worth mentioning here is that as cool as all this seems did you notice I didn’t mention search? After uploading a handful of files, and as forgetful as I am, I went to My Files and noticed that there is no search option. So if you were to use the entire storage limit (which is 5 GB by the way) can you imagine a scenario when you won’t have to search for a file? What makes this even worse is that you can’t tag your files or organize them in folders (at least I didn’t find the option). I really hope they add this in the future.

As you can see, the last three i.e. Create PDF, Share Files and My Files have somewhat similar features. Actually all of them are tightly integrated into each other so that you don’t have to go back to the welcome screen each time you want to convert a Buzzword file to PDF or share a file you uploaded.

All in all the suite ( if I may call it so) promises to be great. It has some minor glitches like 5 document conversion limit, no search and no tags or folders but with the fantastic UI, it’s sure to spice up your web apps experience! Check it out at acrobat.com. It requires a free registration. Let us know what you think and how you like it.

(By) Varun Kashyap – A tech enthusiast, programmer and a blogger who will be sleeping when this gets published. Wish him sweet dreams at TechCrazy Blog

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Sounds like tasks you can or want to do? Go ahead, the Adobe Creative Suite is for you.

Did I hear you asking about the cost? Well it can be a couple of thousand dollars or so depending upon the version you choose.

Fear not because here is a compiled list of software that will not only allow you to do all the above mentioned work but it also costs less. Uhmm….actually it happens that they are all free.

So here I present the open source alternatives to the popular Creative Suite applications:

Adobe Acrobat Reader ==> Sumatra PDF

Sumatra PDF aims to create a small, simple and fast PDF viewer. Its main features are showing PDFs and starting up really fast – and it does both just perfectly. Sumatra PDF is very portable since it has no external dependencies – it is just one file, so you can easily put on your USB stick and take it with you.
Download here

Adobe Acrobat ==> PDFCreator

No I didn’t write this twice by mistake. Pop Quiz – What’s the difference between Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat? Is there one? Lets see who answers this first!

PDFCreator is an open source printer driver that creates PDF documents. “Printer Driver” means that it allows you to create PDF files from any Windows application. The PDF files can then be viewed with a standard PDF reader. You have options to add security and encryption also.
Download here

Adobe Photoshop ==> Paint.NET

Paint.NET is a bitmap drawing and editing application. It is created in C# and is a .NET application. Paint.NET is a simple and easy to use application with an intuitive user interface which in some cases is better than Photoshop even. In addition, it packs features like any commercial program such as: layers, bezier/spline curve drawing and unlimited undo history. On top of that is has many filters that handles everything from blurring/sharpening to color control. Paint.NET requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (which is free but can never be open source!!).
Download here

Adobe Dreamweaver ==> Kompozer

Kompozer is an open source web development tool built on NVU (another editor but currently not under development). The project strives to fix bugs in the NVU project and add new features to it. Offers WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing mode, a CSS , HTML and all other regular features allowing you full control of layout as you work with your web design.
Download here

Adobe Flash ==> Synfig

Synfig is actually very powerful. You can do much more than you can do with flash. Synfig is an industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, designed from the ground-up for producing “feature-film quality animation” with fewer people and resources – and its free. So now you can create all those animations that you always wanted to do.
Download Here

Adobe Illustrator ==> Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source 2d vector graphics editor. Supports all of the standard drawing features. Curves (bezier), lines, freehand drawing including calligraphy stroke together with geometric figures can be used to build your drawing. Advanced gradient fill tool, bitmap tracing – and will let you export your drawing as both png and postscript. All normal file handling is performed natively in scalable vector graphics (svg) file format.
Download here

Adobe InDesign ==> Scribus

Scribus is a popular open source desktop publishing tool. As a DTP tool it supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation. Scribus also has additional features not normally found in a DTP tool such as vector drawing tools with SVG support and it even has support for OpenType Fonts. Scribus is available in more than 25 languages.
Download here

Adobe After Effects ==> Jahshaka (I love the name and the logo)

Jahshaka brings the power of movie editing and effects to the open source environment. Whether is comes to painting video, create and edit effects in real-time or perform advanced composition – Jahshaka lets you do it. You can even handle HD with ease.
Download here

Adobe Premier Pro ==> VirtualDub

VirtualDub is an open source video processor/editor. Its not for non-linear video editing, but it has powerful features for processing your video clips. The features include real-time downsizing, noise reduction, support for AVI2 (OpenDML), de- and re-compression of video and audio and an advanced set of filters. These filters include blurring, rotating, image adjustments and more. VirtualDub is a great video toolbox.
Download here

Adobe Encore DVD ==> DVD Styler

DVDStyler is simple and easy to use – it provides a quick and simple interface for adding DVD menus to your own movies. Adding movie clips is as easy as drag and drop. Menu screens are created by first loading a background – and then adding buttons. Then actions are assigned to the buttons to indicate which movie clips should be played when pressed.
Download Here

Adobe Soundbooth ==> Audacity ?

Now I am no sound expert, I have installed and used both soundbooth and Audacity and for me Audacity is just fine, although I must say that Soundbooth looks way more complicated and (sssshhh.. does that mean it does more work also?), but frankly speaking for the general user’s needs Audacity is more than enough. I can’t say for Sound Experts here. May be you can enlighten us on this one?
Download Here

There you have it. A Creative Suite Replacement. As a signing off note I would also like to mention Ubuntu Studio here. Yes yes, I know its Linux but then it comes with many of the above preinstalled (and others not mentioned here) and you can add even more, plus it has beautiful theming to give the Studio Look. You could perhaps even run it inside Windows (through virtualization).

Do you agree with my choices? Or would you replace them with something else?

(By) – Varun Kashyap – A tech enthusiast, programmer and a blogger, who almost got mad testing all of the above for this post. Visit his Tech Crazy Blog here

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Adobe Media Player is an Adobe AIR application that streams video straight to your desktop. It has quite a robust catalog, which includes major networks and popular shows shows such as CBS’s Big Brother or Comedy Central’s Colbert Report. Searching for shows is quite easy, as all the episodes are assigned tags that relate to their content. It’s pretty fun to search for something you’re interested in and then finding new shows that cater to your interests. In addition to the major networks, there are several Internet TV shows, such as Revision3’s Diggnation and Tekzilla, and also Adobe’s own original programming, Adobe TV.

Adobe TV provides original internet shows that instructs, educates, and pretty much revolves around the the world of Adobe products. Right now, Adobe TV is divided into four channels: Photographer, Designer, Video Professional, and Developer, with multiple programs available within these channels. I specifically mention Adobe TV because the shows produced on it have quite a good production value for an internet media network. Also, it’s available for viewing right inside your browser outside of Adobe Media Player.

This media player allows you to view your desired content online or offline, since it gives you the ability to track and downloaded your favourite shows. It also updates you when new episodes come out, and you can even upload your own personal videos and use Adobe Media Player as your video library. Unlike Hulu, which is accessed through a browser, Adobe Media Player is only available through its desktop application due to its episode update and download services.

It’s nice to see that internet TV is gaining momentum, and will probably be quite a popular distribution media in the near future.

By: David is a creative individual trying to find his place in this world. Visit his tech blog, Beta Cubed – B^3

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Here’s my list of some of the popular and most anticipated Web 2.0 sites that are still in private beta, but already have a pretty large following!

	Hulu is probably the one site I’ve heard the most about lately and that looks to have the most promise. Imagine being able to watch any of the most popular TV shows online for free including Heroes, Bones, 24, and the late night shows also! Plus all of the shows are in pretty good quality. It’s video on demand plus video sharing. It will also include shows from Bravo, Sci Fi, Sundance, etc
	Jooce is another very cool looking service that will help bring the desktop to the web, also called a web operating system. Basically, it’ll look just like your local desktop, but all of the processing, software installation, etc will take place on the server, thus freeing your local computer resources. As of right now, they have an IM client, file uploader, file sharing features and a few media players. Eventually, though, it will have photo editing apps, and office suite, and more! Jooce came out of private beat only couple of days ago.
	Adobe Cocomo is are components being developed by Adobe that will allow for real-time collaboration across web apps. If you haven’t played around with Adobe Buzzword, definitely check it out because Cocomo will add cool features to that such as real-time chat while you write documents and a shares real-time whiteboard.
	Lifestrea.ms is a powerful new lifestreaming service from Germany that aggregates all of your inbound and outbound activity online and manages it in one place. Other services like this are Tumblr and FriendFeed. It’s like an RSS reader and a social network rolled into one product. As more information is gathered from your online activity, a fuller profile is created.
	Xobni takes the effort out of organizing, searching, and navigating your email. It extends your IM (MSN, AIM, etc.) program and email client (Microsoft Outlook, etc.) by adding additional sidebar menu. View sender profile for each email (contact details, phone nr., social networking profiles, sent attachments, etc.), threaded conversations, extremely quick search, and more. [Video Demo]

Are you looking out for some other site to come out of private betta that you think will be even better? Go ahead and post a comment to let us know!

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But Adobe has also entered the bustling online word-processing market by bringing out Buzzword. What makes this different though from all the rest is that :

• It’s Flash-based.
• It’s a simple eye-pleasing design (and it is remarkably easy to use).
• Buzzword is not tied to one particular operating system. So you can use this on both Windows PC’s and Macs.
• Nothing to install. All you need is Adobe Flash Player (which is normally installed on computers anyway).

After registering for an account, you are taken to the main screen extremely quickly. After choosing a new document, you can start to write something.

What I particularly like are the menus. Being flash-based, they open very quickly and smoothly.

Now when you look at Buzzword for the first time, you’ll think that there are hardly any features. But this is where Adobe has come one up on the others the features are there but they are tucked away in the flash menus!

Just click on one of the buttons and it will slide across the top of the screen, showing you the features inside :

Here are some of the other features that in my opinion are really great :

Automatic word count – as you type, there is a constantly updating word count going on in the bottom right hand corner. Good for writers who have to keep to a certain word count.

Zoom in and out – using a slider, you can zoom in and out of the document, making things bigger or smaller.

Special characters – you can insert lots of special characters into your document such as the German umlaut.

Uploading images and comments – you can insert images and comments into a document.

Document sharing – you can make the document private or you can share it with others.

You can find more in-depth information on Buzzword by going to the Buzzword Help page.

My only negative comment about Buzzword is that they have only seven fonts. So if you wanted to make a really nice document, you are limited by the number of fonts you can use. But if you are looking for a simple straight-forward online word processor then Buzzword is an excellent option.

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