4xPDF Blog

Nitro adds support for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and PDF to Excel

Karl De Abrew — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:31:40 +0000

Nitro PDF Software, builders of Nitro PDF — the alternative to Adobe Acrobat, have announced PDF support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Chris Dahl, CTO of Nitro PDF Software says that:

“..we’ll definitely be taking into account the specific requirements and benefits of Windows 7, and developing our software accordingly to fully leverage the platform.”

In addition — desktop-based PDF to Excel functionality was included in the most recent release, Nitro PDF Professional 6.01. The free online version of this is based around the same underlying engine — and it’s called, again, you guessed it — PDF to Excel…

Disclosure: I’m a shareholder in Nitro PDF Software …

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Nitro adds support for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and PDF to Excel

Dual-screen e-book reader announced by Barnes and Noble

Karl De Abrew — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:24:41 +0000

I guess as one of the power-sellers of paperbacks, it seems apt that Barnes and Noble are one of the big players to release a dual-screen e-book reader.

InformationWeek say that the “Nook” (can’t really say the name is too exciting, for me anyway… is it some sort of weird twist of ‘noble’ and ‘book) is based on the Android operating system, sports a 3.5 inch screen using E Ink technology. As you would expect it has a built-in wireless connection to allow for purchases of books from the B&N library.

A bunch of other fancy features like e-book lending, to a range of devices PCs, Macs, as well as iPhones, (some) Blackberrys, and Motorala smartphones. Pretty much a fairly comprehensive selection…

But most important for us here at 4xPDF — you can view PDF files sent across from Mac or PC. So instead of carting around your laptop to try to read documents, or say squinting to read them on your phone — you can now use something much more suited to do so.

I’d say that there’s a fair chance of success here given that Barnes and Noble have many a place to sell in-store, obviously. And I guess for a business that stands to suffer considerably by a drop in sales of physical books – the Nook is at the very least form of insurance — although, perhaps a little highly priced for most at $259.

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Dual-screen e-book reader announced by Barnes and Noble

Cogniview’s PDF to Excel converter ready for Windows 7

Rowan Hanna — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:46:02 +0000

It won’t just be Windows 7 that’ll be released on October 22nd according to Cogniview. Founded by a team of experts in the field of “Artificial Intelligence, Information Retrieval and Software Engineering”, Cogniview are due to release an update of their flagship product, PDF2XL.

Yoav Ezer, CEO of Cogniview says that all four versions of their software will be ready to roll.

Specifically, as you’d expect PDF2XL is a product that converts …, well, PDF to Excel. Whilst I haven’t used it myself, the concept sounds very handy.

They say:

The one-time purchase of Cogniveiw’s PDF to Excel converter allows their customers to save countless man-hours, and also offers significant cost-savings as the software does the work that would normally require a full-time data entry assistant.

There’s quite a few other players in this field so it’ll be interesting to see who ends up dominating the market…

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Cogniview’s PDF to Excel converter ready for Windows 7

PDF for SharePoint added by Adlib

Karl De Abrew — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:11:41 +0000

Long time PDF industry player, Adlib have released a set of PDF services which extend Microsoft SharePoint’s functionality — specifically they target the provision of “out-of-the-box” PDF integration. With PDF for SharePoint, Adlib says that you can:

Convert to PDF
Perform OCR
Convert to PDF with a Watermark
Merge Documents

Scott Mackey, Director of Product Management for Adlib (and someone whom I’ve met many times at a variety of PDF-industry conferences) says that -

“… CAD documents can be converted to PDF making them accessible to field operations and manufacturing. Scanned documents can be converted into searchable PDF’s using the OCR workflow enabling them to be found using search. A collaborative team effort that results in multiple documents can be aggregated into a single PDF document using the Merge Documents workflow. All of these capabilities are delivered as a natural extension of the SharePoint environment…”

A mammoth patch for Reader (and family)

Karl De Abrew — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:05:29 +0000

Early last week – Adobe rolled out a substantial path which covered just under 30 security issues. These vulnerabilities were said by ChannelWeb to leave users susceptible to attacks by infected PDF-apps.

A limited number of users also received a beta-updater which Adobe says is going to assist in ensuring that security updates were efficient and accessible.

Adobe also launched the Reader/Acrobat JavaScript Blacklist Framework which allows users to prevent certain JavaScript function calls — this will allow IT decision makers to make these high-level decisions.

Gone are the days where a PDF was as safe as a printed page…

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A mammoth patch for Reader (and family)

Lockdown! Adobe says to disable JavaScript in Adobe Reader (yet again)

Karl De Abrew — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:36:54 +0000

Yet another major security hole for Adobe Reader — as detailed in ComputerWeekly.com [on 12 Oct 2009], they won’t say why, but they’re looking to release an update tomorrow.

But for now you can keep the pirates at bay by:

… users should use the “general preferences” dialog menu option to disable JavaScript – Edit > Preferences > JavaScript, and uncheck “Enable Acrobat JavaScript”.

ComputerWeekly.com report that according to Adobe — those running Data Execution Prevention (DEP) on Vista have nothing to fear…

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Lockdown! Adobe says to disable JavaScript in Adobe Reader (yet again)

Back to the future – save PDF and XPS from Microsoft Word

Karl De Abrew — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:56:26 +0000

An oldie but a goodie — looking for a way to create a PDF (or XPS if you must) directly from Microsoft Word 2007. Then download the Add-In from the Microsoft website.

Personally, I’m very happy with it — it’s a very quick way to produce a high-quality PDF (for non-print professionals). You can use it in almost the entire Office 2007 family.

At a cost of free it’s good value indeed.

Tech Superb give you the whole rundown.

Post from: 4x PDF Blog

Back to the future – save PDF and XPS from Microsoft Word

Google your PDFs

Rowan Hanna — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:25:55 +0000

Today Techwhack report that Google have updated their PDF search feature to include a quick view option. By using this, you’ll be able to take a look at a formatted version of the PDF without having to spawn a PDF viewer.

Google spoke about this new feature:

Today, we’ve added new links to “Quick View” PDFs in your browser with the formatting intact. The new links are based on the same technology that’s available in Google Docs and Gmail, as well as to webmasters through the Google Docs viewer.

I was able to see this by searching for “Plagarism New1” and then clicking the Quick View option.

Pretty impressive, I thought…

Read the full article from TechWhack >>

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Google your PDFs

Prepublication: Adobe’s Designs on Web Analytics: The Omniture Acquisition

Karl De Abrew — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:03:32 +0000

The top-tier digital publishing industry website, Future of Publishing, has (pre)released the report titled “Adobe’s Designs on Web Analytics: The Omniture Acquisition” at a prepublication price of $75 USD.

The report is based on analysis of Adobe proposed acquisition of Omniture on September 15. The report author and publisher at The Future of Publishing, Thad McIlroy states that:

“I feel confident that The Future of Publishing team has got a fix on the upside of the deal. At the same time we’ve analyzed the possible negative implications and these are fully discussed in the report. I believe that we’ll be providing 360 degree optics.”

More details are available at The Future of Publishing>>

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Prepublication: Adobe’s Designs on Web Analytics: The Omniture Acquisition

LifeCycle E2 by the end of this year

Karl De Abrew — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:45:58 +0000

By the end of this year, Adobe seeks to release LifeCycle E2.

Announced at Adobe MAX 2009 – LifeCycle ES is said to be jam-packed with features. Based on a Adobe mainframe, it contains Document Services (complete with Rich Documents based around PDF and Flash), Content Services (including security based around PDF-rights management), Business Process Management, End User Access to LifeCycle (including Desktop-launched PDF conversion), and Developer Tools.

They’re also working on a “cloud”-based application said to be released in early 2010.

Only one thing — it’s charged on CPUs, number of users and documents. The minimum cost is touted as being $50K — ouch! Anyone got a coupon code?

Read the full scoop on CMSWire

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LifeCycle E2 by the end of this year