File Formats

Internet Tip

Adobe Acrobat Alternatives

by on March 16, 2011


Adobe Acrobat alternatives are a favorite topic among my readers. Lifehacker.com recently did a PDF roundup, and asked their readers to vote for their favorite PDF tool. And, the winner was Foxit for Windows and Linux. Foxit is a free PDF reader with a small footprint, and a $29.99 PDF Creator. For the rest of the winners, read the article Five Best PDF Tools.

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Internet Tip

Managing Your MP3 Collection

by on January 19, 2011


The size of your MP3 music collection got you down? Windows users can use the free WinMP3Packer to decrease MP3 file sizes without any loss in audio quality. The “trick” is converting each song to a Variable Bit Rate. How much you will save depends on how much of your music is stored in an inefficient constant bitrate format. For details, check out Lifehacker.

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How to Port Your Data In and Out of Google

September 22, 2009

Although Google creates wonderful, free products that so many of us love and use, from a purely information management viewpoint, we should all be a bit more concerned with data portability. And Google agrees! The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose one goal is to make it easier for users to [...]

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6 Tips to Getting the Most Out of Google Docs

April 21, 2009

Because Google Docs is free, cross-platform, and easy to use, it is an increasingly popular tool for online collaboration. Whether you are an existing Google Docs user, or just thinking about trying it, Daniel Shane has six tips for getting the most out of Google Docs. Tip one introduces the built-in chat client to make [...]

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How to Create a PDF on a Mac

January 13, 2009

Unlike Windows users who need extra software to create PDFs, Mac users can easily convert any document or web page to PDF with tools built right into the Mac OS. The basic steps are to select Print from the File menu, then click on the PDF button in the lower-left hand side of the dialog [...]

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Read Only Files Copied from a CD

September 24, 2008

When copying files from CD to your hard drive, it’s important to realize that the Windows “Read Only” property will be copied with the file. To enable writing to the file on your local computer, you will need to highlight the file name in Explorer, and right-click to open Properties. Make sure the Read-Only attribute [...]

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How to Fix a Corrupt Powerpoint File

July 29, 2008

Getting a dreaded “corrupt file” error is very frustrating, but PowerPoint users have a number of ways of recovering. For example, if the error appeared after a Windows crash during a Save operation, you can usually find a *.tmp file that contains your uncorrupted PowerPoint. Or sometimes, part of your presentation can be recovered in [...]

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How to Create a Screencast

May 14, 2008

Jing Project is a free tool for both Mac and Windows users, that lets you capture your computer screen as a static image or a screencast, and then share your screen capture as a URL. Which means that not only are they providing the software to create the capture, they are also providing free hosting. [...]

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How to Get Text Listing of a Folder’s Contents

April 15, 2008

If you’ve ever wanted to print a text listing of files in a Windows folder, this week’s tip is for you. First, create a simple batch file (you can put it in your Windows folder) called filelisting.bat with a single line in it (without the quotes): “dir /a /b /-p /o:gen >filelisting.txt”. Then modify the [...]

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How to Add Folders to Your Send To Menu

April 8, 2008

With the Send To function on the right-click contextual menu, Windows users have one-click access to various destinations such as Mail, Desktop, and My Documents. You can easily add new shortcuts to frequently used folders such as My Pictures or My Music by following these instructions for Windows XP. Vista users will also need this [...]

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