Save office files as pdf documents

PDF has been a very popular method of distribution of documents so as not to allow the recipient from editing and changing the document. There are many stand alone programs available, which can covert an office document into a pdf document.

Earlier, there used to be a built in feature in MS Office 2007, which allowed users to save the document in pdf format. But due to dispute with Adobe, the creator of the pdf concept, Microsoft had removed that feature from Office suite.

But now, Microsoft has again started to bundle the same feature in the form of a add-on utility, which you can download from the Office 2007 download center, but you have to have a genuine copy of Office because the download checks it before any installation.

Secured email messaging through Lockbin

Many email services today use SSL, the secured Service language to protect the privacy of your messages. But your emails are still not safe. There are lots of freely available programs on the Internet, which can sniff your message easily, specially at the Hi Fi spots.

Lockbin, is a special and free online web tool, which encrypts your message with a code words supplied by you and sends an email to the recipient along with a link to retrieve the message. However, the recipient can read the message only if he enters the code word, with which you had encrypted the message. Now it is upto you how you send the code word to the recipient, it can be through IN, chat, email or phone.

Simple service, but still useful.

5 great Gmail web tools for doing things other than email

Gmail is a wonderful email service. The secure and robust email service from Google is probably using one of the most powerful spam blocking techniques and the ever increasing storage capacity, which is more than 2.6 GB at present, and still counting, gives you something more than you can wish for.

But there are lots of other application, which can over ride on Gmail and give you a unique experience.

One such application, which allows you to use the spare storage capacity of your Gmail account virtually as your hard disk, was mentioned elsewhere on this blog.

Here are some other applications, which you can use with Gmail.

Gmail Music: Allows you to store MP3 files in your Gmail account and play them on any computer using a web-based GUI. This application has been developed by SourceForge.net project.

GTDInBox: This is a firefox browser add-on, which allows you to be more organized. It incorporates a Getting Things Done tool with Gmail. It was once ranked #12 in the 'Top 50 Firefox Extensions' article in .NET Magazine. Gmail Todo is yet another tool from the stable of SourceForge.net project, which also allows you to do the same thing.

Gspace: Just like GmailDrive, this tool also lets you turn your Gmail account in to a virtual web drive that you can upload files to and store them. It is a firefox add-on makes your Gmail account look like a FTP host.

gTalk Sidebar: This great firefox add-on Google Talk into the Firefox sidebar for easy chatting on the same browser window you are browsing. This tool can also be used to send off mails quickly.

These are great web tools. Try them, they are free.

Learn foreign language online with Mango

Learning a foreign language is often a tedious and time consuming job and generally requires special tutors.

But Mango is a new online web tool, which makes learning foreign languages a whole lot easier. It is currently in Beta and is FEE at present. Signup process is easy, no email required, no passwords.

The unique plus point of Mango is that it uses both audio and visual technique for learning. You go through different slides; the quality of learning material and quality of audio is great, there’s a lot of the materials, and it’s free!

Why don't get it NOW.

Fluther | Yet another place to find answers to any questions

After the success of Yahoo Answers, there are now many sites on the web, which provide answers to your questions. After the launch of websites like Microsoft's QnA and Ask Metafilter, now you can find your answers at Fluther.

The exact meaning of the word Fluther is a group of jellyfish. Fluther community of users, who ask questions and other answer that. It tracks your activities and let you monitor questions you've asked or answered in real time. They also promise to send your questions to so-called experts, who are considered experts because they have successfully answered questions on related topics in the past.

The Big 'G' Google is also present in this market, but on a more serious note. Google Answers, relies on paid experts to generate answers, and therefore, it costs you to get your answers through them..

Fluther is hand-tailored for you. The more you participate, the more Fluther gets personalized for you. Fluther also a large tag cloud, which displays the topics of questions asked in a easily comprehendible tag cloud format.

Fluther has installed a ranking system also, where you get points for good and bad answers. People rate you based upon the quality of your activity on Fluther. And based upon your ratings, you are given access to advanced features.

In all such website, one thing I really wish. If these services could start a feature, where the person can also be able to discuss the answer in real time, it will be really interesting.

You can find many other services also on this question / answer these. With the presence of Wondir, Oyugi and Yedda, this space seems to be getting over-crowded.

del.icio.us tags: fluther, answers, questions, google answers, QnA, Wondir, Yedda, Oyugi, yahoo answers, ask metafilter

14 great web tools for taking screenshots (Part II)

[This is the second part of this series. You can find part I here.]

In the earlier post, we had introduced, eight web tools for taking screenshots. Here we take a look at six more tools, which you can use for capturing screen images to be used in your blogs or online articles.

Browser Add-ons

Snissa: Simplicity is the key here. Ideal for taking screenshots of the entire webpage.

Screengrab: Creates an icon in your status bar, simple to use. You can select an area on your screen or an entire window for screenshot.

Standalone programs

PrintKey: A sophisticated version for your printscreen function. Resides in your system tray and gets activated with the press of PrintScreen key. Then you can save the image and edit it as well.

I4X Screencatcher: Allows you to take screenshots of the active window, your whole screen, an area you select or a selector box.

InstantShot: An advanced screenshot tool for OS X, supports JPG/TIF/PNG selection and timer functionality. Options include capturing a region, hotkeys, several output formats, image scaling and many others.

Web based

Thumbalizr: Just enter the target-URL and press the "thumb it"-button. Wait a moment and a screenshot of the desired page will be taken.

14 great web tools for taking screenshots (Part I)

If you are a blogger or a journalist, you would understand the need of a good and handy web tool for taking screenshots of a website. There are many of them, some are web based, some are standalone executable programs and some are just browser add-ons. Still more, some are free and some require you to purchase them. My personal favourite being SnagIt.

In this two part series, we take a closer look at some of the most common screenshot web tools.

Browser Add-on's

Save as image: A neat firefox add-on. Takes screenshot of all of the contents of your current page, even if it above or below what you currently are seeing. After takinga capture, it prompts you to save avoiding hassles of opening your image editor and pasting the image there. You can also crop the image before pasting.

Pearl Crescent Page Saver: Another Mozilla Firefox add-on. It also gives you an option to capture the entire page or just the visible portion. Lets you save the image either in pNG or JPG. Also allows you to save the image either in full size or scaled down. The pro version, costing around $15, gives some more features.

Picnik for Firefox: Very easy interface, nice tools, and you can add text caption to your images. Launching a new premium subscription service today. At a price of $24.95 a year, you get of access to host of advanced effects and fonts.

Standalone programs

SnagIt: The king of all screenshot capturing programs. It is a powerful image, text, video, and Web image capture program with many features and options. Here is nice guide for using SnagIt. It costs you $ 39.95, and there is also a trial version for free. Torrent version is available here.

FastStone Capture : A powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages. It also has innovative features such as a floating Capture Panel, hotkeys, resizing, cropping, text annotation, printing, e-mailing, screen magnifier, screen ruler and many more.

WebShot: Freeware and allows you to take screenshots of a web pages or the entire websites. The main advantage is its powerful command line utility which enables you to automate the process of taking screenshots.

Paparazzi!: For Mac OS X, allows you to take screenshot of the entire webpage in contrast to the built in feature of Mac, which allows you to capture only the visible portion.

Web based

WebShotsPro: Now downloads, no purchasing, no installation. Just visit this website adn enter the URL of the page for which screenshot is to be taken. But you may have to wait a bit, because there is a queue.

[Part II of this series coming soon.]

Yuuguu | Share your screen with this great remote desktop sharing web tool

Yuuguu is the latest cross platform collaboration tool, which everyone to share their computer screens with each other. This latest remote desktop sharing utility requires a small software on both (all) the computers and invitation are sent from one computer to the other. One screens are shared, you can use chat feature to explore the collaborative possibilities. Voice chat is also available for your convenience, but at a small cost.

Yuuguu is different from other such services as it combines the IM features with remote desktop sharing. Here you can make a buddy list, invite them to share your screen when they are online, show them what you are looking at on your computer, let them move your mouse and use your keyboard as though they were sat right next to you, and easily start a conference call together.

Yuuguu, derives its name from a Japanese word , which means fusion. It supports any device with browsing capabilities, meaning that you can also use it through mobile phones.

Yuuguu is similar in use to utilities like GoToMeeting but I find it much simpler to control and use.

It's founder Anish Kapoor says, "Yuuguu takes Web collaboration to a new level by integrating community, messaging and collaboration in a whole new and natural way."

I wish, if they had incorporated some sort of video interaction between the participants, it would have been a complete package. But still, a great utility.

del.icio.us tags: Yuuguu, Desktop sharing, Desktop, remote sharing, screen sharing, collaboration

YouConvertIt | A free online conversion tool for converting anything to anything

There are a lot of online conversion tools available, like zamzar, which convert documents, images, audio files and video files from one format to the other. But most of them are restricted to be able to handle only a few formats.

YouConvertIt is a great online conversion tool, which handles virtually any format and thus gives you total freedom, and that too at one place. With this tool, you can covert virtually anything into anything. The best part is that it is free. Even further, a conversion tool for units is also available on the same website.

To use it, you have to upload the file, select the desired format from a drop down menu and enter your email address. They will send you an email after the conversion and you can then download the converted file. It is just like zamzar. But there is no limit on the size of your file and also, at present, this service is free from any ads.

Save energy and environment with LocalCooling

I just didn't know that more than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we're not using them. Ooh, that's a huge figure.

But this happen, just because you forget to implement the various power saving options available to you. Now there is an automatic solution to this problem. You can download a 100% Free power management tool from Uniblue Labs, which allows users to optimize their energy savings in minutes and as a result reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions.

What does it do

It ...

• Cuts your power bills by saving energy
• Thus it reduces the emitted CO2 resulting in reduction in Greenhouse effect.
• Provides you total control on your power settings.
• Shows you in detail how much you have saved since installing the software.

del.icio.us tags: power saving, energy conservation, environment, greenhouse, CO2 emission

Viigo | The RSS feed reader for your cellphone

With each passing day, more and more people have been using cellphones for accessing Internet. With this there is a growing need for a reliable, convenient and convenient RSS feed reader for cellphones. Viigo fills this requirement in an effective way.

Viigo gives an instant access to Breaking News, Sports, Entertainment, Weather, Markets, Blogs, or any RSS Feed you want. There is also a huge list of several channels and blogs, which you can choose to start from. It also lest you updated about the local events, local weather, news and sports. You can even track your courier packages from the world's most popular mail and package carriers.

Try it, the price is really impressive. It is $0.00.

P.S.: You can find a review of BuzzMe, another RSS feed reader here.

del.icio.us tags: RSS, feed reader, Viigo, Mobile, cellphone

Speed up loading of Acrobat Reader witht his free webtool

If you are one of those frustrated with the long long time taken by the Acrobat Reader to load, then use following trick.

Download Adobe Reader SpeedUp from Softpedia, install it and you are through.

It actually speeds up Adobe Reader's launch time by disabling the majority of plugins that are completely useless for most users. It's completely free from any malicious scripts.

Or, alternatively, if you don't want to use any third party program on your machine, follow these steps.

1. Go to the installation folder of acrobat reader (eg. C:\program files\adobe\acrobat\reader\.. ).
2. Move all the files and folders from the “plugins” directory to the “Optional” directory.

It will prevent Acrobat Reader to open the (mostly) useless plugins and load the Reader faster.

Use Migratr to move your photos among different image hosting sites

On the Internet you can find several image hosting and sharing website like flickr, picasa, snapfish, webshot etc. and there are many occasions when a user want to shift from one of the service to another because of any reason but doesn't shift just to avoid the hassle of downloading the images from old service and uploading them on the new one.

But now, with Migratr, you can easily do it. This free webtool is developed by an independent developer Alexander Lucas and is able to work with Flickr, Picasa Web, 23HQ, SmugMug, and Zooomr at present.

The process is very simple and is completed with a simple click. It first authenticates your downloading site, then downloads the images, then stores them in a local directory, then authenticates your upload site and then finally uploads your images to this site. All the mata data associated with your image is also transferred.

The best part of this service is that out of the above steps, you can choose any step and skip other steps. For instance, if you just want to download the images, skip the last two steps. If you need to upload bulk images from your PC, then start from the fourth step and skip first three steps.

GIMPShop | Work in GIMP like Photoshop

When I started this blog, I was a total novice at Photoshop. I new that this is a powerful tool, but didn't know much about how to operate it. Besides this, I didn't have the license also and didn't want to spend hefty amount purchasing it.

So, I decided to try Gimp, the freeware, opensource solution, which practically does all the jobs of tweaking an image.

But those users, who are adept at using photoshop, find Gimp a bit difficult because of its different interface and different menu structure.

To solve this problem, Gimp has now introduced GimpShop, the cousin of Gimp, which has most of the menu structure and other features similar to Photoshop.

Let's see the next move of Photoshop.

PortableApps Suite | Now carry your PC applications and data with you

Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and any other thing you like with you. There is absolutely no need to leave any of your personal data behind. All this is possible with PortabeApps Suite. The best part is that it is absolutely free, no trial versions, no spyware, don't require you to give your email address.

It is basically a suite of programs bundled into a single setup kip and can be run from a removable device like USB Disk.

The list of programs include:

• Office tools (AbiWord, OpenOffice.org, Sumatra PDF, etc.)
• Internet browsers and tools (FileZilla, Miranda IM, Mozilla firefox and Thunderbird, etc.)
• games (sudoku portable)
• Graphics tools (GIMP Portable)
• Music&Video tools (Audacity portable, VLC Media Player Portable)
• Mac-on-Stick operating system and some utilities (7-Zip, CalmWin Portable, etc.)
• The platform is open source and more and more applications are going to be added.

You can download it here.

FastStone | Free webtool for easy and effective screen captures

I love Snagit for taking the screenshots of different for this blog. It is probably the most versatile software, with lots of cool options to tweak the screenshot. But, most importantly, it is not a freeware. You have to purchase it to use it legally.

But, there is also a great freeware, which does most of the jobs Snagit can do. It is FastStone Capture.
It is lightweight (only 1340 kb) and offers the output in a variety of formats. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages.


Features:

• A small floating draggable Capture Panel
• Uses minimal memory space
• Global hotkeys to activate the program's capture capabilities anytime, anywhere
• Efficient tools to capture windows, objects, full screen, rectangle/freehand-selected regions and scrolling areas
• Supports various browsers IE, FireFox and Opera
• Option to specify destination (internal editor, clipboard, file or printer)
• Text/Arrowed line/Highlight/Watermark annotation
• Drop-shadow, torn-edge and fade-edge effects
• Add caption
• Resize, crop, zoom in/out
• Undo/Redo
• Support external editors, which allows you to add virtually unlimited editing capabilities to the program
• Save as BMP, JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, GIF, TIFF, TGA and PDF
• Send e-mails
• Screen magnifier
• Screen color picker
• Support multiple monitors
• Option to run when Windows starts
• And many more ...

You can download it here at PCWorld or directly from the FastStone website.

Krutos 2 | A free webtool to encrypt and secure your data

Kruptos is a robust 128 bit file encryption utility, which allows you to safeguard your important files on your hard disk or portable storage devices by utilizing its powerful file shredding capabilities and the ability to generate self decrypting files.

It runs on Windows 2000 or XP through MS .net framework. The best part is that it is free, simple to use and easy to install. No spyware, malware or malicious scripts. No method is deviced to break the password. If you loose your password, you loose your data. Simple, but effective. They claim it to be ideal for secure trasportation of files on potable storage devices, such portable hard drives, USB storage keys.

Another way to determine hex code of a color / pixel

Many times webmasters and bloggers need to know the hex and RGB color codes of a particular shade of a color. There are many ways to do that. Some like ColorCop, ColorPicker and another tool have already been discussed in this blog.

Now we found yet another cool free webtool, which directly copies the hex color code of a pixel to your clipboard, from where you can paste it to anywhere. The task made more easy. You have to follow these steps.

1. Download (485kb) Instant EyeDropper and install it.
2. Run it.
3. Move your mouse pointer to its icon in the system tray.

4. Press and hold the left mouse button. Holding it, move your mouse pointer to the target pixel.

5. Release the mouse button.

That's it. The clipboard now contains the color code - in HTML format

SiteAdvisor | Get pre-warning about malicious sites with this firefox add-on

Are you concern about the security of your systems. No we are not talking about the viruses, but the spywares and identity theft scripts.

Although there are many programs and scripts, which clean your systems, but most of them are post-facto. They operate, when you are infected.

One of the programs, which give you a pre-warning, i.e. warning before getting attacked by a malicious site, is SiteAdvisor. This plug-in performs a background check on the Web sites you visit and raises a flag, whenever you visit a dubious looking site. It also gives you a warning icon next to potentially dangerous results from popular search engines, along with an icon in your status bar that shows the risks and annoyances associated with the page you're viewing.

SiteAdvisor was founded in April 2005 by a group of MIT engineers who wanted to make the Web safer for their family and friends. The pro version of this McAfee service adds features such as e-mail and IM link checking for $20 per year.

The free version is available for download at PCWorld.

Add web 2.0 like refelections to your images with javascript

Do you always fancy those web 2.0 like reflections to the images, which fade into background. But what if you didn't know the use of photoshop or gimp, and didn't have enough time and pateience to learn that.

No issues. Follow this procedure to add reflections to any image on your web page.

1. Go to this cool website.

2. Download the zipped file "reflection".

3. Unzip it and recover the reflection.js file.

4. Load it to your template. For it, you have to upload it to a free file hosting site, and note its URL there.

5. Paste the following code to the template. Before pasting remember to replace the src value with the URL noted in step 4 above.

6. Now you are ready to add reflections to the images. For it, just add a class="reflect" to the image.

7. You can easily change the height and opacity of the refelction if you so desire.