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Ask TUAW: Return to open, messed up Mighty Mouse, PDF alternatives, Boot Camp expansion, and more
It's time once again for Ask TUAW! For this round we take questions about cleaning a malfunctioning Mighty Mouse, opening files and applications with the return key, expanding a Boot Camp partition, finding alternatives to Adobe Acrobat, caring for your notebook battery, and more As always, your suggestions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!
Amazon to charge per megabyte to send personal documents OTA to your Kindle
So far, sending files to your Kindle cost a flat fee -- one dime per document for conversion and download over Whispernet. Looks like that honeymoon is over, as Amazon's announced that as of May 4th, the Personal Document Service will be a variable fee of $0.15 per megabyte, rounding up. It's still free of charge if you transfer the documents over via USB, and sending them to "name"@free.kindle.com will return converted files to your email address gratis. If you're trying to be frugal, we might suggest combining all those pending transfers into one fat PDF and sending it off sometime this weekend. [Via GearDiary]
The Chronicles of Spellborn art book now available as free PDF
The newly launched fantasy game The Chronicles of Spellborn is a (air quote) freemium massively multiplayer online title from Acclaim, where three areas of the game are available for free, while subscriptions truly open the game up for its players. Those gamers in the EU who jump into The Chronicles of Spellborn are able to buy the title as a boxed product and thus get the art book which accompanies the box release, but no such luck for North American players. That is, until now. Acclaim has opted to release the art book as a free PDF file, which you can find over at MMORPG.com. It's a nice, in-depth look at the game spanning 151 pages of art content and lore. The High Houses, the game's myriad Inhabitants, and of course weapons and armor are all included in The Chronicles of Spellborn art book. If you're already into TCoS or are just curious about it, be sure to grab your free download at MMORPG.com.
EVE Careers Guide available as free download
A major strength of the sci-fi massively multiplayer online game EVE Online is that there are no classes and certainly no professions that a player is locked into. EVE's professions are freeform, but this can lead to new players being unsure about what to do (or be) in the game. The title's developer CCP Games is attempting to remedy this. One of the resources that complements EVE Online's New Player Experience in the Apocrypha expansion is the "EVE Careers Guide", which introduces new players to the gameplay possibilities in New Eden. It's largely put together by Benilopax of Warp Drive Active: Industry podcast fame and Richie Shoemaker (aka "Zapatero"), the Editor of E-ON -- the official magazine of EVE Online -- who we've interviewed at Massively in the past. The EVE Careers Guide is a PDF file with interactive links throughout to navigate between sections, providing a comprehensive look at the game for rookie pilots. Zapatero welcomes new players to EVE Online, explaining the game in broad terms: "Many have found their own path in EVE by taking turns that are wildly divergent from what its makers envisaged. EVE is about relationships, prejudices, trust, greed and creativity more than it's about spaceships, trade and combat. New Eden is a very human universe, and with almost 300,000 people making up the population, it's a very dynamic one. Yes, it's harsh and uncompromising, frustrating and callous, but it's also illuminating in scope, vast in stature and utterly unique."
HTC's Magic manual exposed for your downloading pleasure
We've seen it in slimming black and striking white (way before Labor Day), and now we've got some titillating pictures of what's going on underneath courtesy of HTC's own service manuals, leaked in PDF form for both the G2/Magic and the T8290/Quartz. Both offer nearly 100 sultry pages of assembly and disassembly information, including a full photo spread showing the phones' naughty bits splayed to the winds. For those who read the articles, there are full descriptions on how to re-flash the pair, which should come in handy if you're never content to leave good enough ROMs alone. The only question now is: where can we get a pair of those dashing pin-striped gloves? [Via ModMyGphone; thanks, Meerhaj]
Ask Engadget: What's the best e-book reader?
Tim from Australia sent in a question via our super-sophisticated submission method (that'd be e-mailing one in to ask at engadget dawt com) regarding e-readers, and given that Sony just pushed out a new one of its own, we found this one particularly timely: "I'm starting a PhD next year and I'm looking to get an e-book reader so I can read PDFs of journal articles on the bus. It would have to be readable in direct sunlight and have a display large enough to read pages of about 400 to 500 words. Stylishness would also be nice. I don't know the going rate for decent e-readers but I'd be prepared to spend up to $500." So, intellects -- what's the best piece of kit to snag for visually inhaling those scholarly articles in PDF form? Will it handle the occasional FCC user manual, too? Because that's really important, you know.
Forbes: iRex to introduce 10.2-inch E-Ink Reader 1000 on Monday
If you don't like spoilers then look away, now -- seems Forbes has all the details related to iRex's 22 September announcement. The Netherlands-based group is set to release an evolved iLiad e-reader called the iRex Reader 1000. Like Plastic Logic, iRex is targeting business users with its new 10.2-inch E-Ink e-reader able to display "any file format" including PDF, Word, and HTML-rendered documents -- sorry, no video, no color. The Reader 1000 brings a stylus with touch-screen for making notes and markups for up to 80 hours on a single charge. The base Reader 1000 is boldly expected to start at $650 (compared to the $359, 6-inch Kindle). It then ramps to $750 for the writable screen version before topping out at $850 to add WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G data connection. Now get to it CIOs, we suspect you'll need some time to argue the case why some personnel require a laptop, smartphone, and e-reader to get through the day.[Via mobileread, Thanks Spencer H.]
PDFpen 4 adds OCR and Word importing
SmileOnMyMac has released a major update to PDFpen, their PDF editing software which we examined at a while back. PDFpen allows you to edit PDFs to fill out forms (e.g. scans of existing forms), mark-up documents, etc. The biggest new feature for version 4 is the inclusion of basic OCR functionality that will turn a scanned document into editable text. In addition there is support for new file formats including importing Microsoft Word documents.PDFpen comes in two versions, a basic version for editing PDFs and a pro version that also allows you to create editable forms (i.e. forms that can be filled out by users with a PDF reader like Acrobat or Preview). PDFpen is $49.95 (or $99.95 for the pro version). Upgrades for to version 4 from previous version are $25. Demos for both standard and pro are available for download.
Back to School: Papers updated for the new term
TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings in September. Read on for a timely app update useful for students. PDF management app Papers has been bumped to version 1.8.5, bringing what the developers claim are 100 improvements. Top on the list is a new sharing feature called Papers Archives, which lets you share a PDF file and its associated metadata with a colleague. Papers isn't for everyone. Instead, it's specifically designed for students and academics, particularly those who deal with a lot of scientific periodicals in the course of their research. It lets you search them, sort them (manually or using Smart Folders), find them on any one of 14 different online repositories, rate them, browse your library in tabs, and much more. Papers costs $42 for a single-user license, but students qualify for a 40 per cent discount.
Adobe Reader 9 released
Adobe has released version 9 of its Adobe Reader PDF display software. The newest version includes a number of changes including faster launching, "PDF Portfolios" (bundles of PDFs and other document types), native Flash support, and support for the online Acrobat.com beta (through Adobe AIR) with a variety of online PDF services.Adobe Reader 9 is a free download from Adobe and is platform (Intel/PPC) specific.[via Macworld]
Firefox-Mac-PDF allows in-line PDFs for Firefox
If you switched to Firefox from another browser like Safari that supports in-line PDF viewing (that's the ablity to look at a PDF in the browser instead of downloading it), then you might have been disheartened to learn that Firefox does not support this feature natively. However, you will find Firefox-Mac-PDF to be a useful plug-in. Firefox-Mac-PDF allows for the same in-line PDF viewing that can be found in Safari. This plug-in requires Firefox 3 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher. You can download the plug-in for free from their Google Code page.To install the plug-in, just open the Add-ons panel by going to Tools > Add-ons. Once there, drag the downloaded ".xpi" file to the Add-ons. You will be asked if you wish to install the plug-in. Once you restart Firefox you'll be able to view all PDFs right within Firefox. [via Lifehacker]
Create a PDF of newspaper headlines with Automator
Some of you news hounds may be aware of Newseum, the "interactive museum of news." Every day, they publish the front pages of over 600 newspapers from several companies. Wouldn't it be cool to get just the ones you like delivered to your (virtual) door as a single PDF? Automator to the rescue!Dave Bednarski sent a great script he wrote to the folks at 37signals which serves that purpose. Basically, you enter the addresses of the papers you'd like to receive, filter for PDFs, download the result to the desktop and combine the lot by appending the pages into one big file. It's just that easy.For an added bonus, attach this script to an iCal event and have your news waiting for you each morning. All that's missing is your mug of coffee, and the muddy pawprints of the family dog on the carpet after he runs out in the rain to chase the paperboy.
Microsoft licenses Adobe stuff for Windows Mobile
Well, that's not much of a vote of confidence for Microsoft's own products, now is it? Despite the fact that Silverlight for Mobile development is well underway, Windows Mobile's patron saint has decided to license Adobe's Flash Lite and Reader LE packages directly and make them available to WinMo licensees straight from the mothership. Though Adobe's press release says that availability on specific devices will be "confirmed later," we imagine that it'll be a no-brainer for virtually every ODM to sign right up to offer the goods -- just ask any Nokia N95 8GB owner how cool the in-browser Flash support is.[Via Mobility Site]
Reducing PDF file size with a Quartz filter
Apple has an interesting video tip up this week on reducing the file size of graphic intensive PDFs created from the Print dialog. In their example they make a PDF from a Keynote presentation containing lots of graphics, and substantially reduce its size by selecting the "Reduce File Size" Quartz filter in the ColorSync options of the Print Dialog before choosing "Save as PDF..." from the PDF drop-down menu. In their example, without the filter the resulting PDF is 5.3MB and with the filter it's only 632KB. So I thought I'd give it a try on some of my own documents. But then I ran into a problem.The Print dialog ColorSync access to Quartz filters has disappeared in Leopard. The video tip was made with Tiger; it seems a little bit ironic that they would release it now with a feature that is no longer available in Leopard. However, digging around a little bit I discovered a work-around. The Quartz filters are still available on the Save dialog box in the Preview application (above). So to achieve the same effect when you're in the Print dialog instead of choosing "Save as PDF..." from the drop down menu rather hit the "Preview" button, which opens the PDF in the Preview application. You can now "Save as..." and when you do the Quartz filter drop-down menu will appear, including the "Reduce File Size" filter. Give it a name and save it and you'll have your smaller PDF.In my own testing using the "Reduce File Size" filter did noticeably degrade the quality of images in the PDF, but the file size savings were significant as well. It would actually be nice if there were more granularity so you could have some control over the compromise between file size and image quality. Nonetheless, if you have to shrink a graphics intensive PDF for emailing, etc. this can be a handy tip.
Helio outs File Viewer for Ocean, reads most of the important stuff
Helio's Ocean certainly has the hardware credentials to see some duty as a business device, but with Helio's consumer focus, the software necessary to turn the phone into a productivity powerhouse hasn't really materialized. That changes a bit today though with the introduction of File Viewer, a free application that allows Ocean users to read a variety of popular file formats, among them Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents, PDF, plain text, HTML, and several image types in both landscape and portrait modes. Helio's commemorating the event by also upgrading its Mail for Exchange platform to version 1.2, offering a handful of improvements and providing direct integration to the File Viewer. Both are available today; follow the break for the full press release.
Leap
Leap is a new Finder replacement from Ironic Software that eschews traditional directory structures in favor of search and tagging. The software is pretty smart, and groups together common file types so you can find what you're looking for in a hurry. It also allows you to add your own tags to files, and creates a 'tag cloud' that outlines what kind of files you're looking at, what folders those files are in, and what user created tags they possess. The larger the label, the more files are tagged with that (as you can see in the screenshot above I have lots of image files on my Desktop).The iPhoto-like UI is easy to use, and really shines when the Loupe is used. The Loupe is a tool that lets you peek at the contents of supported file types without launching any additional apps. Leap is in Beta, and the Loupe's performance makes that clear. It was a little slow, and sometimes lagged when I pointed my mouse from file to file.In addition to all its Finder abilities, you can use Leap as a replacement for Apple's built in Spotlight interface, and yes the tag cloud is right there with your Spotlight results.Take a look at this demo movie to get a better idea of what Leap can do for you.Leap is currently in beta, and pricing has not been announced. You will get a free license, though, if you buy Yep, a PDF organizer that Ironic sells for $34, now.[via factoryjoe]
Skim 0.7 update
Since we last mentioned the Skim PDF reader and annotating application it has grown considerably and the newly released version 0.7 adds bevy of new features. Since that early release back in April they've added considerably to the markup and searching tools (including live search of the document with context in addition to searching just the annotations). There's also greatly expanded AppleScript support and a presentation mode. The crazy keyboard shortcut system we complained about before has also been simplified and improved. In short, Skim is getting better by leaps and bounds and is definitely worth another look if you regularly need to read and markup PDFs. While you can still only highlight PDFs with selectable text (i.e. PDFs that are not just scans), the anchored note and box features make marking up even image PDFs easier. Skim remains open source and thus a free download from SourceForge.[via MacUser]
iPhone screenshot utility
Earlier today, I learned about this iPhone screen shot snippet meant to be used inside an application. It produces PDF results. After playing with the code and realizing it probably couldn't be expanded to a general purpose screenshot utility, I decided to write one from scratch by taking advantage of UIApplication's _dumpScreenContents: protocol. My screenshot utility, which you can download here runs from the command line and produces a PNG output of your screen. I look forward to using this tool. It's certainly going to be a lot easier than trying to light the iPhone correctly and avoid reflections while snapping pictures with a digital camera. Update: My daughter figured out that if you set the iPhone to never sleep and put it into camera mode, you can script it to take screen shots every minute (or five minutes or however long) to take time lapse series of images. We are so going to try this out. Update 2: Tried it out. Only gets about 4 pictures per minute when in a loop so video is a no-go.
iPhone can read Word, Excel, PDF documents
The title explains it all: Revealed in Apple's new iPhone Guided Tour video is the swanky handset's previously-unknown ability to read Word, Excel, and PDF document e-mail attachments. This alleviates fears to the contrary, and will sure be useful for those business-types On The Go eager for their quarterly profit reports and sweet pie charts and whatnot. But without actual editing capabilities, those business-y people still have something to complain about.Then again, does anybody actually edit Word/Excel documents on their BlackBerry? (Serious question.)
Hi! PlayStation magazine launches
Oh, another online magazine? Haven't we had enough? Maybe. But, you should still pay attention to this one. Sony has launched a new PlayStation magazine, and it's pretty good. The first issue features some crisp direct-feed images of the upcoming PSP Final Fantasy games, including Dissidia and Crisis Core. It's not anything we haven't seen before, but it's nice to see these pictures with newfound clarity. While our inability to decipher Japanese certainly hampers some of the experience, the pretty pictures are more than worth the (nonexistent) entrance fee. Besides, magazines are always about the pictures, right? Download the issue here.
