PDFCreator is a handy little application that installs as a printer and creates PDFs from any file that you are trying to print. To convert a document to PDF simply open the document up the usual way, select Print and choose PDFCreator as your printer. PDFCreator then opens up a window that allows you to enter meta data for the file like Document Title and Author and then you hit Save to save it as PDF.

Here’s a tip on how PDFCreator can be used to help with filing expense reports. When you’re making hotel reservations or airline bookings while working remotely and without access to a local printer, you can print your reservation confirmations to PDFCreator and save them as PDFs on your computer. Now you can email the PDF version of the confirmation to someone who can print it for you and you have easy access to your invoices when it’s time to file your expense report.

Google is known for their free services, open APIs and their “don’t be evil” motto. For most part they aren’t evil, but keeping their search algorithm a secret is just plain evil. Microsoft is known as a closed source software giant with a desktop OS monopoly. What makes Google any different when they have a proprietary search algorithm and they have a Web monopoly? Why don’t they open their search algorithm? The reasons are very similar to why Microsoft has kept their code closed and ironically Google too can become victim of the power of social computing and open source. (more…)

Have you tested your Web site in different browsers and on different platforms? Web designers tend to focus on the one or two that they deem most important and often forget to test their Web sites in other browsers and on other platforms. That normally means testing sites in IE and Firefox, but the different versions of IE and Firefox and different versions of operating systems are ignored. Besides, very few have access to all the different browsers and operating systems, not to mention the hundreds of combinations that you get when you include screen sizes, Javascript versions and Flash enabled.

Browsershots is a free, open source solution for your problem. Browsershots takes screenshots of sites and displays the screen captures in .png files. You can use Browsershots as a free online service, but what makes this product cool is that it’s available as an open source (written in Python) download so that you can run it on an internal server. This is very useful when you need to test a site that isn’t live or accessible from the Internet yet. (more…)

This Zurich based Google engineer has a few interesting Google hacks, check out his interesting projects. Most of these hacks use algorithms to parse Google search results.

I also like his thinking that while Google is a great company and they produce great products, they are a power house that keeps many secrets and can easily become corrupt. It would be much more comforting and encouraging if it were an open source project and everyone had free access to the search algorithms with the ability to contribute. Sure there will be smartasses that benefit in the short run, but an open source community will find ways to hone the ever growing algorithm closer to what people want from it. Google’s income comes from its ad network, what is the downside of making their search open source?

If you have multiple computers all connected to the same network and would like to access them from one mouse and keyboard, Synergy might be a good alternative to a KVM switch. With Synergy, you can redirect your mouse and keyboard to another computer and screen by moving the mouse to the edge of the current screen. Synergy can be configured to arrange screens the way they are physically arranged to become one big virtual screen. You can also copy & paste between computers and screensavers can be synchronized. It’s great for developers and system administrators that run multiple computers with different operating systems. Synergy is an open source project.

If you ever wanted to test open source software, this is pretty slick! OpenSourceCMS gives you – as an administrator to their sites – access to test the best php/mysql open source software. The site’s name is misleading because you’d expect it to be related to content management, but the list of applications available is extensive, including:

• Portals; e.g. Drupal, Mambo, Joomla
• Blogs; e.g. Serendipity and of course WordPress
• eCommerce, Forums, Image Galleries, etc..

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