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.

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.

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 move their data in and out of various Google products. Learn more at The Data Liberation Front.

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 collaborating even easier. Read the full article at Six Revisions.

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 box. For illustrated step-by-step help, read Ask Dave Taylor.

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 box is unchecked, and then save the modified settings by clicking Apply and OK.

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 Microsoft Word. For more tips on
recovering corrupt Power Point files, read Microsoft Office Online and Echos Voice.

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. How could you use this? It’s up to you. Add your Jing captures to your chats, your social networking, or your websites. Use to for fun, or to demonstrate computer stuff to friends and co-workers.

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 Folder context menu so that your batch file displays whenever you right-click on a folder in Explorer. For complete instructions, read The Elder Geek.

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 tip to avoid a common error.