geeky tutorials, tips, guides and reviews
Looking for an easy way to turn your WordPress powered blog into a book? Anthologize is a plugin for WordPress that will turn WordPress into a platform for publishing electronic text. Anthologize gives you all the tools you need to publish your work in a new and exciting way.
While working on a new eBook, I needed an easy way to get Microsoft Office Word 2007 to export my writings as a PDF file. After doing a little searching around, I found an add-in that will do just that.
Working with WordPress is almost like learning a new language. Not only do you need to learn some of the basic fundamentals of PHP, but you also need to learn what WordPress tags go where, and what they do. Since nobody has the time to do that these days, I thought it would be about time to break out my WordPress cheat sheet collection.
A new online tool, JustPaste.it makes it easy to share text and graphics over the Web. This service allows you to quickly paste text directly from your word processor of choice onto the online page. You can then spruce up your documents with text formatting, colors and more.
Looking for an online resource where you can put together your resume? If you are looking for a new job, or perhaps just wanting to organize your previous work experience, one unique place to get the task of organizing a resume is JobSpice.
This web site allows you to sign up and then easily create a resume in minutes. All you do is fill in the blanks, and add more information when needed by clicking the add new section link. Some of the details you can list include:
Once you get the basics filled out, you can then preview the resume and pick the style you want to use for it. Each one is different, but they all give your resume that professional look and feel. When finished, you can share your resume, save it, print it, or save it as a PDF file.
Write up your own resume today with JobSpice, it makes organizing your thoughts during this sometimes tedious task a lot easier.
Ever been browsing an article or guide online that you wish you could print out, without all the junk that the web site provides? Print Friendly offers to make any web site out there easier to print. You can use their web site tool to enter the URL you wish to simplify for your printer, or use the bookmarklet to gain access to the tool at any time.
You can then e-mail the printer friendly version to your friends, tweet about it, or edit the document removing pictures or blocks of text.
Want to add this interactivity to your own web site layout, maybe under each article that you post? You can do that too by grabbing the Print Friendly button code. For WordPress users, there is even a plugin you can install to add it to all your blog posts automatically.
Overall, Print Friendly is a pretty nice service, if you are looking to do a little article simplification, perfect for print.
I love looking at bookmarklets. These handy bookmarks that allow just about any browser to do even more amazing things are really handy to have. Want to convert any web page to a PDF to read later? I have found a bookmarklet that does that too.
The people behind PDF Download have produced their own bookmarklet to convert web pages into high-quality PDF files free from any browser. Just drag and drop this link to your bookmarks toolbar, and click it when you want to export to PDF:
Here are the setup instructions for all the various browsers out there:
Only negative I could find is I got the “server is too busy” message more than a couple of times.
Know of anymore bookmarklets that will allow you to export a page into an entirely different format? Me neither, but if you do – please share. PDF Download’s solution will work for the time being though. Save on paper and export to PDF. That tree outside your window will thank you.
Need to find a file fast? Over the years, I have collected some of the best (and maybe not so best) free file search web sites out there. Here are the ten best resources to search for a file online.
What About Google? Of course, the ultimate alternative to all of these would be doing a file search in Google. How do you do so? Well, just start any Google search with filetype: and then put in the file type you want to search for. Taken from Google, here are the most popular file formats you may want to search for using this trick.
So if you are looking for a .txt file about hosting, you would type into the Google search box…
So, if you are searching for a file on the web – you might try these resources or this neat Google tip. Either way should get the job done for you.
So what needs to be done to make the PDF format better? Here are a few of my opinions, and some tools and services to make those requests come true.
Better PDF Editing Abilities
Need an easy way to edit PDF files without the expensive PDF editor? In the past, I have told you about creating PDFs via Open Office. However, what if you could convert those PDFs to Word doc files to edit instead? Pickup the Free PDF to Word Converter for Windows to get the job done.
Better PDF Browser Support
How about better PDF support for the browser? PDF files are notorious for crashing your modern web browser. So with that said, what tool can you use to make the experience better? A browser add-on named PDF Download. It’s features include:
PDF Download works with Firefox 2 & 3, Flock 1, and Internet Explorer 7 & 8 (beta) web browsers.
Better Printing Abilities to the PDF Format
Now this one isn’t really PDF’s problem, however I do have a solution. If you are wanting to cut down on the paper you use, printing to the PDF format can save you some cash in the long run as well as conserve that printing paper. All you need to do is grab PrimoPDF for Windows. It will add the ability for you choose “Print as PDF” from any print screen. All you have to do is select it as the printer of your choice.
So what other things bug you about PDF files, or have you found any other solutions to your PDF powered problems? It might not be the best standard in the world, however it can come in handy from time to time.
For some reason, PDFs remain a popular file format. Created back in 1993 by Adobe Systems, PDF (the Portable Document Format) makes it easy to share a document with text, specific fonts, 2-D vector graphics and images. Instead of downloading the PDF to view (as most of us do) I want to introduce you to a new way of dealing with these files without the need of any download.
PDFMeNot.com is a free Online PDF viewer. All you do is give them the URL to the PDF in question, and they will make it viewable for you using their online tools. They also allow for you to upload a PDF too.
If you like the service, you might be intersted in the fact that you can use it in a number of different ways too. From Firefox extensions to bookmarklets, they have many ways you can take advantage of the service.
The easiest way to use it would be to include “http://pdfmenot.com/view/” before your PDF link. As an example, try this link out:
http://pdfmenot.com/view/http://www.webhostingshow.com/includes/HostingGuideEbook.pdf
So add PDFMeNot into your web developer’s toolkit. This is one of those services that you might not need everyday, but you will be happy to have it when you do need it.
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
