What was it that attracted me to Nitro? I’ve honestly never met a team with so much life and enthusiasm. Nitro is incredibly passionate about innovation, technology, and straight up delivering a solution that effortlessly makes people more productive. I know a lot of people and companies like to say they “work hard and play hard,” but I’ve never seen it in action until I met everyone at Nitro. Yes there’s a ping pong table, video games, endless snacks and drinks and everyone might seem like a playful bunch but they’re a pack of hunters that sniff out and eat numbers for dinner. They’re so dedicated to their work and products and everyone continues to hit all their goals so of course they balance that with things like team bowling trips. Nitro is also a bit of an underdog in Silicon Valley, and it’s a challenger brand in it’s vertical for sure, but that makes this love story even better since everyone loves to see the little guy win, right?

In case you were wondering, yes this love story has a happy ending. The feeling must have been mutual because the girl got the job! The hiring process, onboarding, and starting right away was so smooth I thought it was too good to be true. I even got an adorable stuffed wombat (like the Nitro mascot Milo) on my first day. As one of Nitro’s newest Nitronauts I’ve finally stopped pinching myself and spent the last two weeks in a whirlwind of meetings getting to know everyone, soaking in as much information as humanly possible, scarfing down a bunch of Cheetos and Diet Coke, and getting down to business and diving right into work.

Of course getting the job wasn’t really the end of my story, it’s just getting started. Feel free to follow along this crazy Nitro story and if you’re thinking of trying something new or think you want to come work with me, I say go for it! Write your own story and start on a journey you didn’t know you were looking for.

Create your resume with a PDF. With so many different file formats and machines, use a PDF to ensure a potential employer is seeing your resume the way you want.

Edit your cover letter directly in Nitro Pro. Need to change the address of your cover letter for a different job you’re applying to? You can use Nitro’s paragraph text editing to easily make quick changes in your PDF documents without having to convert it into another format. (Pro Tip: Make sure that you change the name of the company too. You’d be surprised by how many cover letters have the wrong company name listed!)

Scan your portfolio using OCR. If you’re an artist or designer and have printed work, you can scan your pictures using Nitro Pro into one, easy-to-navigate PDF with bookmarks for each image.

Sign your offer letter with QuickSign™. You got your first job! Now it’s time to sign the offer letter. Rather than printing your letter, signing, scanning, and emailing it back, use Nitro’s QuickSign feature to sign your letter without leaving the application.

Fill out your W2 Employment form. Once you’ve finally got your job, filling out a tax form can be very confusing (dependents, allocated withholdings,  etc.) so eliminate one headache by completing your form in Nitro Pro.

There are plenty of ways to give you an advantage in the job market (wear a tie, be yourself, sit up straight) but one of the easiest ways you can get started in your job search is by utilizing more of Nitro Pro’s features.

Did we mention we’re hiring? Check out all of our open positions at Nitro now: http://www.nitropdf.com/about/all-jobs

What is OCR?

When you scan documents, it creates an image or picture of that item. Traditionally you cannot edit this image, but you can view and resize it as a file. But what if you have an image that contains text you would like to be able to modify, like a web page design or a scanned magazine article?

That’s why Nitro is equipped with an automatic Optical Character Recognition tool, to effectively help turn printed or handwritten text from a scanned document or image into a fully searchable and editable digital format.

Why use OCR?

When you’re trying to get organized, OCR technology makes it simple and practical for you to find files. Instead of spending time sifting through folders, Nitro’s OCR technology allows you to simply type and search for what you want within seconds.

That’s not even the best part. When you convert your scanned document to Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, Nitro will automatically detect it and apply OCR to your document for easy editing for every file.

OCR is a great tool; helping thousands of Nitro users make their workflows simple every day. View our 2 minute tutorial to see just how easy OCR can be.

Once a month, the Nitronauties will get together for a night of mischief. Historically these events have involved dinner parties, BYOBW (Bring Your Own Boxed Wine) movie nights, karaoke, etc. However, during what I assume to be some sort of New Year’s Resolution mental breakdown, a handful of Nitronauties decided it would be a great idea to participate in weekly boot camp classes. Gina lined up a trainer at the local Crunch Fitness, Jorge, who would be working exclusively with us for the next 2 months.

When the idea came to the table, my first thoughts were “absolutely not” and “how do I get out of this?” But after long deliberation, a lot of peer pressure, and 3 packets of beef jerky (compliments of the Nitro pantry), I gave in. What’s a little once-a-week workout class anyways, right?

When the day finally arrived to commence our 7-week program, we were all very optimistic – almost too optimistic. We signed our waivers and walked straight into the workout room where we met Jorge, a tall, muscular man with an award-winning smile, incredible charm, and 0 tolerance for laziness. Jorge came prepared with his fellow trainer, Arthur… because getting these ladies in shape couldn’t be done by one man alone!

From the moment we walked through the doors, we realized this program was no joke.  Jorge and Arthur called our boot camp sessions the “Waste Management Program,” complete with a booklet containing a grocery list and ingredients to cleanse our bodies of the delicious junk food we can’t help but consume in the Nitro office on a regular basis. Each workout class is an hour long – with 30 minutes in the studio for floor exercises, squats, push-ups, and yelling – and 30 minutes in the spin room so we can, in Jorge’s words, “GO FOR A RIDEEE!” But the workout doesn’t stop there! Arthur emails us with daily exercises to complete on our own to ensure optimum fitness.

I have to admit, the greatest part of our boot camp classes is that they feature challenging workout moves as opposed to, you know, a glorified dance party, or a pricey contraption that doesn’t accomplish anything, or something that requires you to listen to Jillian Michaels’ voice for extensive periods of time. In terms of actual fitness activities, the Waste Management Program taught the Nitronauties quality, productive varieties of real exercises that we can easily do on our own after the boot camp is over.

I never thought I would say this, but I love our boot camp classes. I spend time with all of the Nitro ladies, and make fun of everyone as we trip and fall over one another – all while getting in shape! These boot camp classes have given me so much more than toned arms and legs – they’ve given me new friends!

Create PDF files from receipts. Maybe you don’t necessarily have access to the kind of massive accounting departments that larger enterprises enjoy, so staying organized can seem daunting – particularly in terms of tracking receipts. PDFs give you the power to streamline the process in an efficient, cost effective way; just scan and organize your receipts all in one file.

Complete government forms. Filling out government forms can be a huge hassle, especially if you’re doing it by hand. PDF forms not only allow you to go back and fix a typo, but also are capable of processing mathematical calculations automatically. No more wasting time working out 8.5% of box B divided by the sum of boxes A, C, and D, raised to the power of E=MC².

Combine PDF Files. Combine all of your past year’s financial statements into one easy-to-manage document that you can send without risking paper cuts.

QuickSign/Digital Signatures. Bypass the print, sign, scan, send tedium to save major time securely signing paperwork while keeping everything all on your desktop – no file folders or couriers required.

Redaction. Every company has sensitive, material information that needs to stay within the organization. If you’re using an external accountant to keep the books, companies such as Nitro provide PDF redaction features that keep your private information, well, private.

This year, while filing your 2012 tax returns, don’t be afraid to get creative – use the PDF to your benefit, and make tax season pain-free.

In 2010, the average amount of paper waste generated by each person living in the US was 334 pounds.¹

The average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year.²

The “paperless office” has remained a fantasy for about 20 years.

It’s time to make it a reality and bring these numbers down!

That’s why we’re very excited to partner with the Paperless2013 coalition, a group of like-minded companies working to take the “paper” out of paperwork. With our background in digital documents, it’s a no-brainer.

Along with the other sponsors of Paperless2013, like Google Drive, Fujitsu, and Eventbrite, we can offer our users a truly complete solution to help make their lives paperless. In the coming months, we’ll be participating in some exciting promotions to make this dream world a reality.

Take the pledge to go paperless in 2013 by subscribing to the coalition’s monthly newsletter with the latest tips & tools, and by following us on Twitter and Facebook.

¹ American Forest & Paper Association

² US Environmental Protection Agency

It’s not some stuffy cubicle farm with TPS reports due every week, and grumpy bosses who own too many cats.

Yeah, we’ve been there!

That’s why Nitro is great. When we’re not busy kicking ass, we’re kicking back with perks like ping-pong tournaments, gourmet food, plenty of beer, and fellow Nitronauts that we genuinely like to hang with.

Working here is more like play!

Now it’s high time everyone else learned our secret—Nitro is the Best Place to Work! To that end, we’ve entered the Great Place to Work Institute’s “We Love Our Workplace” video contest and we need your help to win.

Check out our video, and if you like what you see, vote for us! Then share the video with your friends and family. Who knows, they may end up joining Nitro themselves.

(Did we mention we’re hiring?)

VOTE FOR NITRO!

http://www.greatplacetowork.com/2013-video-contest-entries

Our prize money will be donated to a very worthy local cause. City of Dreams helps change the lives of children living in San Francisco’s low-income housing by providing mentorship and guidance away from negative influences.

1. Re-create the PDF to reduce PDF file size

A handy trick for reducing PDF file size is to re-create or ‘re-fry’ your PDF. By creating the PDF again you can strip out plenty of unwanted objects, remove tags, and compress images further. You can do this with any tool that supports ‘print to PDF’ functionality. For this trick you can use our free Nitro Reader.

1. Open the PDF file
2. Click File > Print
3. Select Nitro PDF Creator 2 from the list of printers
4. Click the Properties button and select Web-ready Conversion Quality
5. Click OK.

2. Reduce PDF file size with ‘Save As’

If you use a PDF editor such as Nitro Pro you can make use of the ‘Save As’ functionality to trim some fat off your PDF files. Chris Dahl explained it succinctly in a previous post:

PDF files have something that is called incremental updates, where any changes that you make to a document is appended to the end of the file without doing a complete rewrite. This is why the Save feature is much faster than a Save As, and also why PDF files saved this way can be large. The Save As feature will rewrite the entire file and provide you with a smaller file size.

So, to shrink the PDF, do the following:

1. Open the PDF in your PDF editor
2. Click File > Save As

3. Remove unwanted objects

PDF files can contain a bunch of different objects, including bookmarks, links, annotations, form fields, JavaScript, Named Destinations and embedded fonts — all of which can be removed from an existing PDF file. Like tip #2, it requires a PDF editing tool such as Nitro PDF Professional or Adobe Acrobat.

1. Open the PDF in your PDF editor
2. Click File > Optimize PDF > Select the Remove Objects tab
3. Choose the objects to remove
4. Click OK, then Optimize

4. Shrink all images in PDF files

For PDF files that contain many images, downsampling all of them can make a noticeable difference.

1. Open the PDF in Nitro Pro
2. Click File > OptimizePDF.
3. Pick from one of the 5 preset image quality options or select Custom for further downsample choices
4. Click OK, then Optimize

5. Reduce your PDF using magical fairy dust

We don’t think this one is real but some other PDF developers might. If you really want the easiest way and most options to reduce PDF files, Nitro Pro will automatically attempt to reduce your documents. You can download a free 14-day trial with the full functionality at www.nitropdf.com/try.

During his interview process with Nitro, Adrian created a microsite interpreting Nitro’s No Bullshit culture. He did all artwork and coding from scratch nailing the right tone. We liked the results and hired him on the spot. Today, we proudly feature his code under www.nitropdf.com/nobullshit.

At this meetup, Adrian will provide sample templetized code for creating your own animated step-through storyline. He’ll also share details on performance issues and optimizations he deployed to smoothen out transitions.

For this meetup, we will focus on the following topics:

1. The basics of keyframing using CSS
2. Building animation sequences using Javascript

Nitro will provide free Wi-Fi, beer and pizza.

Please pull the sample code from our GitHub account ahead of time and come with a fully charged laptop – we’ll step through a few hands-on exercises together.

Here’s the breakdown for this 2-hour event:

• 6:00pm – Pizza and beer, laptop setup
• 7:00pm – A quick intro to Nitro and the meetup topic (Tiho Bajic, VP of Engineering)
• 7:10pm – CSS3 animation basics (Adrian Ortiz)
• 7:40pm – Sample code modifications (Adrian Ortiz)
• 8:00pm – Wrap up and clean up

SIGN UP HERE

PDF creation software is becoming as popular and as commonly used in business today as Microsoft® Office. But when it comes to PDF, most companies are still turning to the 800-pound gorilla, Adobe Acrobat, because they don’t know something better is out there.

Our latest whitepaper explores the decision-making process of IT professionals as they compare the virtues of Adobe Acrobat with Nitro Pro—and reveals why many choose Nitro as their desktop solution.

In this free report, we’ll compare Nitro Pro to Adobe Acrobat Standard in the three categories that matter most to IT Managers.

The highlights:

• Cost of Ownership: Nitro Pro is less than half the price of Acrobat.
• Quality of Support: Nitro provides “Best in Field” support worldwide.
• Maintenance & Deployment: Acrobat has a massive install size and harsh compliance rules.