Edit PDFs for Free with PDF Hammer

PDF Hammer is a website that lets you edit your PDFs online, for free. You don’t need to download any software - the PDFs are edited right inside the browser after you upload them to the site. Right now, you can re-arrange the pages (reorder them), delete pages, and append one PDF to another. Soon you will be able to rotate pages and apply watermarks and stamps to pages with this service. Although it would be nice to really edit the PDFs by adding or removing pictures and text, this service can still be useful for some basic PDF manipulation needs.

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Are you frustrated with navigating multiple websites and managing too many passwords? PageOnce is a new site that wants to make it easier on you to login to your various online accounts. You simply select your personal accounts from the sites you use - social networking, email, travel, entertainment, banking, credit cards and more and add them to your personal page. From this page, you can then see all the data that you would normally need to log in to the web sites to view. For example, you can find out what’s new in facebook or MySpace, track your investments, view your airline miles, or view email from multiple accounts. Even better, if you ever need support from one of the services you added, the support number is provided to you on your PageOnce homepage. The site is in private beta, but when launched, it will certainly be useful!

ShinyLetter is another way to use the web to send snail mail, which something that I love to do since I never have stamps. With ShinyLetter, you type out your letter online, just like it was an email, then you can send it anywhere in the world for $2.00. Although that’s pricier than a stamp, it certainly is convenient. Your letters can be up to four pages and there’s a nice selection of font styles to choose from. The letters are printed out on high quality paper, too. ShinyLetter is brand new, so there still might be some kinks they need to work out.

OK, they probably aren’t secret, but when I saw this list I was really amazed. I thought to myself, how could I have used Firefox all these years and not known about all of these?!! I new the new tab and full screen shortcuts, but certainly not Ctrl + K. Anyway, I’m betting that if I didn’t know all of them, there’s a good chance some of you didn’t either. So, without further ado, here are the Firefox keyboard shortcuts you’re going to wonder how you lived without:

1. CTRL + K - moves your cursor up to the search engine plug-in box. Once you’re there in the search box, use CTRL + the up or down arrow keys to scroll through the different search engines.
2. CTRL + SHIFT + T - re-opens the last closed tab.
3. SPACEBAR : scrolls down the webpage you’re on.
4. SHIFT + SPACEBAR : scrolls up the webpage you’re on.
5. F11 - removes the browser bars and makes the webpage full screen. Press F11 again to go back to normal.
6. CTRL + T - Opens a new tab window.

Well, I don’t normally bother blogging about utilities and tools, but PDFCreator (which I saw on LifeHacker) caught my eye. Have you ever needed to squish a bunch of PDFs onto your thumb drive and didn’t have room? Or perhaps email them somewhere, but they were too large? According to this post on LifeHacker, PDFCreator can shrink a giant PDF to a much smaller one just by using the “print to PDF” feature to print your PDF to another PDF. Nice! In addition, PDFCreator does encryption, autosave filing based on tags, and PDF merging. You can also save files as PNG, JPG, and more. Now, if only it was portable…

Frequent fliers will be interested in the identity-verification service provided by the startup, Clear. Launched in 2003, travelers can pay $99 per year to receive a pre-screened ID card which lets them zip through airport security at one of the participating airports. Members receive a high-tech card which is inserted into a Clear kiosk, which also verifies the fingerprint or iris image that you selected during enrollment. A Clear attendant also checks your boarding pass, Clear card, and ID, but this only takes a few seconds. After that, you still have to go through the metal detectors and x-rays, but the Clear attendants assist you with speeding up that process as well. According to the Clear website, their members get through security 30% faster! (Via somewhatfrank)

Things have been a little busy for me lately, but just because I’m not posting here, doesn’t mean I’m not blogging! Check out my latest on RWW:

Postalz & Scrapblog - Doing More With Digital Photos

When
you go on vacation, you no longer pack canisters of film for taking
vacation photos - you just pack a digital camera and a handful of
batteries. If the hotel has wi-fi, you might even upload photos from
the day’s activities to flickr in
the evening. However, when it comes time to send postcards back home,
you still have to browse through the assorted offerings from the gift
shop, emblazoned with hokey “wish you were here” sentiments overtop
images that look nothing like the place you’re visiting.

In this post we look at web 2.0 services that give you more options with digital photos - postalz and scrapblog.

Continue reading »

Christmas is over and now you have a stack of gift cards but are short on cash to pay your bills…what are you going to do? A website called Swapagift.com can help! Launched in 2003, Swapagift.com will let you buy, sell, swap, and exchange gift cards or use your gift cards to pay bills. You can even mail them in for cash! If you wanted a gift card to your favorite store and didn’t receive one, you can also visit the site to buy gift cards at a discounted price. If you want to swap cards with another user, you can directly do so directly - one-for-one - or you can swap several cards for a single card. You can add cash to the transaction, too, if the cards aren’t of equal value or popularity. It is $1.99 to list a gift card and the listing stays active for 150 days (or until it sells or swaps). If you want to pay bills or receive cash for your gift card, you must refer to the preferred merchant list for bill paying or cash. So, get what you really wanted for Christmas! And feel free to send me your unwanted Starbucks cards!

Lately, I’ve been reading about some new ways to work with your documents offline and then sync them back to an online service. While initially this seems to go against the idea of an online office suite, working offline in this way has some benefits. For one thing, the internet is not everywhere yet. Although wi-fi is now being slowly introduced on some airlines, many business travelers still need to be able to work on their files on the go and this still is not an option on all airlines yet. Then there are other jobs that take people “into the field” that also often involve working on documents when no internet connection is present. Without offline capabilities, a lot of work could come to a stop.

Another useful aspect of working offline is that you have the ability to work in your traditional “offline” office software, which is, at the moment, much more robust and feature-rich than its online counterparts. Suites like Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, StarOffice, and others let you to do a lot more than a free online service like Google Docs, though this may change in the future.

Until recently, the choice between web office suites and offline suites was an “either/or” choice; however, now, there are options available that give you the best of both worlds. Here are a few services and tools I’ve found, some of which are now just on the verge of launching, that promise to bring you the new “blended office suite”:

• DocSyncer: DocSyncer is a yet-to-launch service that syncs up your Microsoft Office documents with Google Docs. The screenshots look nice, so it’s worth signing up to see how it works out.
• OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs: This OpenOffice extension exports & imports your docs in and out of Google Docs. With this, you can upload OpenDocument Text (.odt), StarOffice (.sxw), Microsoft Word (.doc, but not MS XML), Rich Text (.rtf), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Comma Separated Value (.csv), & Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps) files into and out of Open Office.
• Microsoft Office Live: (Private beta) Your documents are online in the Microsoft Office Live workspace, but when you go to edit them, the editing is done in Microsoft Office software, which you have on your PC. Those edits are immediately reflected in the version on Office Live. Documents can also be shared with others who can comment on them or edit them and the different versions are tracked in the Office Live workspace.
• Zoho Writer + Google Gears: Zoho Writer lets you click a button to go offline. The first time you use the feature, you will be prompted to install Google Gears. After installation & a browser restart, click “Go Offline” again to make your documents (15 docs by default) available offline. When you’re offline, you can go to http://writer.zoho.com/offline to access and edit your files.
• ThinkFree, Premium Version: ThinkFree just announced that they will begin offering a premium version of their online office suite that offer users the ability to work offline. The premium edition will be $5-10/month and the free version will be rebranded as ThinkFree Online Basic Edition and supported by advertising. The private beta will begin in January, 2008 and the wider beta in February.

Do you need to work offline? If so, what software or services are you going use?

This post breezed by on LifeHacker, but I thought it was worth a second look. A free software application called iTunes Agent lets you sync up your non-iPod mp3 player with your iTunes library. Seriously! As great as iTunes is, it is, unfortunately, locked down so you can only use it with an iPod. With iTunes Agent, you can create a playlist for your non-mp3 player in iTunes and then sync that playlist to your mp3 player. iTunes Agent rests in your system tray, always on the lookout for new devices being connected to your system. If a device it recognizes is connected, it enables you to manage it via a playlist in iTunes. You can even associate your mp3 player with a Smart Playlist, like “Party Shuffle”, and always have a new collection of tracks on your player.

The software supports almost any non-iPod device from your PSP to your Walkman phone to your Creative Zen. In fact, the only criteria to determine whether or not a device is supported is whether or not you can map it to a drive letter under “My Computer” in Windows. Since Microsoft Zunes don’t show up as a drive letter, you would first have to follow the steps in this hack to get your Zune to show up as a drive letter before you could sync your Zune to iTunes with this software (in theory…anyone who tries this please let me know! Especially with Zune 2 software!).

To use the iTunes Agent software, you’ll need to install the .Net framework version 2.0 (if you don’t already have it), then download the iTunes Agent software. Although the website doesn’t specifically say, it appears that the software supports both mp3 files as well as acc (m4p). Of course, if you run into trouble with your device, you could always rip the DRM from your iTunes music by using QTFairUse software.

Even better, stop buying DRM’d music!!