Tech Geek

I do not own Adobe Acrobat and I probably never will. I'm sure it's a very fine program, but I doubt I'll ever be able to justify the high cost for the limited amount of time that I would use it. But there are times that I need to do a little more with a PDF file than just view it. I recently found a new-to-me tool that gives you a lot of functionality for free and lets you do even more for only $20/year.

PDFill PDF Editor lets you create and edit, including adding form fields to be filled in later, PDF files. I may very well buy this and use it next year to create my Medical Release Forms in a PDF format that can be filled out on the computer and then printed. I haven't played with those features yet. I have played with the features that allow you to easily merge, split, and re-order the pages in PDF files.

After you download PDFill PDF Editor from http://www.plotsoft.com/download.html you will have a trial version of the editor installed that adds watermarks to anything you do. You will also have the Free PDF Tools and the Free PDF & Image Writer that come with the package. These do not require you to register in order to gain full functionality.

When you first run the program, it will scan your system to see if you have GhostScript installed. If you don't, a window will pop up asking you to download it, either automatically or manually. I clicked the Download Automatically button and it started the installation automatically. You must install GhostScript in order for the software to work. GhostScript is an open source PDF interpreter and PDFill provides a graphical front end for this software.

Once the GhostScript installation completes, you will have a new printer driver installed that lets you print to a PDF file or to an Image (PNG, JPG, BMP, TIF, or GIF) file. First, run PDFill PDF and Image Write (Free) from your Programs menu and select the output settings you could like. I un-checked the box next to Simple GUI (Hide this Dialog in Saving File) so that when I use the printer driver it asks me what format I want to end up with. Then go to whatever program you're working from and use the Print command to send the file to this tool.

The other free tools are under PDFill PDF Tools (Free), which you can also run from your program menu. From http://www.plotsoft.com/pdf_tools_free.html you can see all the capabilities of this tool:

1. Merge Merge two or more PDF files into a single PDF file.
2. Split or Reorder Extract pages from a PDF file into a new file.  Reorder the page sequence into a new file.
3. Encrypt and Decrypt with Security Options Encrypt or Decrypt PDF documents (Master Password or User Password may be required).  Protect PDF files with passwords and prevent PDF files from being printed, copied, changed, filled, extracted, signed, assembled or merged. Supports Adobe® Standard 40-bit Encryption and Adobe® Advanced 128-bit Encryption
4. Rotate and Crop Rotate a PDF page by 0, 90, 180 and 270 degree. Crop a page to modify its layout of Print or View by specifying its margins.
5. Reformat Put multiple pages into one page to save paper and inks when printing hard copies. Add note lines for handout.
6. Header and Footer Add Headers and Footers to present information, such as date, time, page numbers, or the title of the document, in the top or bottom margins of a document.
7. Watermark by Stylized Text Add Stylized Text Stamp.
8. Watermark by Image Add Stamp using image file (bmp, jpg, gif, png, tiff, and wmf).
9. Convert Images to PDF Convert images (bmp, jpg, gif, png, tiff, and wmf) into a PDF file with layout options.
10. Convert PDF into images Save PDF pages into images (png, jpg, bmp and tiff) with DPI options.
11. PDF Form Fields: Delete, Flatten, List Delete, Flatten or List the PDF Form Fields inside a PDF file.
12. Convert PostScript(PS) File into PDF Convert PS file into PDF so that adobe reader can read it.
13. Add Information Add information (Title, Author,  Subject, Keywords, Created, Creator, Producer and Version) to the PDF document.
14. Free Scanner Scan your Paper Form or Photo into images (PNG, JPG, BMP, TIF and GIF) or PDF
15. Create Transparent Image Create a transparent image with options to adjust one Color and the left Colors' transparency.

I haven't had the need to use all of these tools, but the ones I have used have worked well. One way, for example, that I use them is to pull the Leader Sheets out from the PDF files of the Here We Stand Confirmation Curriculum. Then I e-mail just those two sheets to my small group leaders and they can have the chance to look them over before our class meets. I also extract and e-mail the Learner Take-Home sheets to each student's family, because I've found that my kids don't always remember to take them home. (I'm sure that none of you have ever run into that problem!)

The interface isn't always the easiest or prettiest, but this seems to be a pretty powerful set of PDF tools and I hope you find them helpful.

Blessed Advent,
Pastor Andy

One day last fall my colleague and I had gone to Polson for a clergy meeting with our bishop and the clergy from our cluster and the cluster to the south of us. I'm sure you can guess the general agenda of our conversation, but that's not what I want to talk about here. After the meeting ended and we had eaten lunch, we had one more stop that we wanted to make. Both of us, with growlers in hand, knew roughly where Glacier Brewing was, but neither of us was quite sure.

We didn't have a GPS with us and we certainly weren't going to stop and ask for directions. So we headed in the direction we thought it was and I pulled out my cell phone. I don't have a fancy cell phone with a big touch screen or anything like that (not that I don't want one, but that's another story). I just have a regular old flip-phone. I dialed 1-800-GOOG-411 and a nice computer voice said "Calls Recorded. Google. Say the business and the city and state." I said, "Glacier Brewing in Polson, Montana." The helpful computer voice said, "Glacier Brewing Company on 10th Avenue East in Polson, Montana. I'll connect you."

Well, I didn't really need to actually call the brewery, so I said "text message" and the service sent me a text message with the address and other information for the business. If I'd stayed on the line, it would have connected the call for me. I did just that the other day as I was pulling out of my driveway to pick up a Costco pizza. GOOG-411 connected me to Costo and the pizza was waiting for me when I strolled in 11 minutes later!

GOOG-411 is a free service that works from both mobile and landline phones, although it doesn't work from pay phones. It only works for business listings, you can't use it to find home phone numbers. It could really come in handy if you needed a tow truck in a strange community and didn't have access to a phone book. Or if you thought you knew the address of that church you were meeting a colleague at, but found out that you hadn't remembered it quite correctly.

Google has a full list of the commands that the service recognizes posted here http://mobile.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76436 and a video explaing the service here http://www.google.com/goog411/.

Why does Google do this? There isn't any advertising and they may not be making any money on it. But they are gathering a phenomenal amount of data. Specifically they are learning how different people pronounce phonemes. It is, perhaps, some of this research that has given Google the ability to add captioning to YouTube videos, as described here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme. I'd also write something about Google Voice here, but I don't have it yet!

Blessed Advent,
Pastor Andy

P.S. Thanks to a tweet from @lensweet, I'm listening to some Gaither Christmas Music from http://www.gaither.com/news/2009/11/christmas-gaither-radio/. Not my thing for every day, but a nice addition to my office on a very chilly afternoon!

Full disclosure: The story I described above is fiction, but it certainly could have happened the way I described it! We did have a meeting in Polson this fall, and we did go the brewery after the meeting. But I didn't have to use this service at that time. Actually, last spring, I had to use GOOG-411 last spring to find the church, since my colleague wasn't sure exactly where it was. And I have also used it to find the brewery, though with my parents, not my colleague. I didn't want to admit to knowing where the brewery was and not the church! :)