If you’re a Wikipedia user who’s tried to save an article in the PDF format, then you know that the results aren’t too great. You simply get a snapshot of a saved HTML page in a PDF viewer, give or take a few a few re-formatting touches here and there.

Well,you can actually get better PDF quality by converting those Wikipedia articles with WikiType, an online application that creates PDFs from Wikipedia articles and WikiBooks.

Now you may be thinking that converting an HTML page into PDF is nothing new. It’s something you can do with any HTML to PDF conversion softwareout there. However, what sticks out about WikiType is that the PDF conversion is especially
made for Wikipedia articles.

This means you get a clean re-formatted PDF without the webpage formatting you get in your browser and, then in your PDF via conversion.  With WikiType, web page elements like side menus, edit links, banners and bulleted links, get neatly reformatted or eliminated to give you a document-like appearance for your PDF.  

If you need a Wikipedia article in proper PDF appearance, simply copy the URL of the wiki page, paste it into the WikiType interface and submit. The generated PDF will be set up with an official title page, a properly formatted table of contents, professional headers and footers, PDF bookmarks and page numbers.

Be warned though that included in your PDF is a 5 page GNU documentation license at the end of the article and a single GNU publication page at the beginning (after the title page). You’ll end up with a few extra pages you didn’t expect. Other than that, WikiType comes in handy for reading those Wiki documents offline in a readable format.

What Is scanR?

With the online service of US based company, scanR, you can create scanned PDFs from photos of whiteboards, business cards and paper documents taken with your cell phone camera or a digital camera.

So instead of manually recording information, copying out complex whiteboard diagrams or relying on scanning devices and desktop software, you can simply take a picture of it.

Before and after shots of a document conversion

(Images from scanr.com)

After you take the picture, all you have to do is send in your digital image to scanR via the scanR Mobile application, email, or MMS (multi media messaging), and you’ll be sent an email containing your scanned PDF file.

If you're interested, the scanR service provides support for scanning letter and A4 sized documents, colour PDF creation, 15 photos per message processing, auto-tagging and more PDF handling options (eg. online sharing) through the scanR mobile website. You can even have your documents faxed to both national and international numbers.

Getting Mobile PDF Creation On Your Phone

In order to start creating your scanned PDFs on the go, you can download the scanR mobile application onto your phone. Or you can start by signing up for an account. A simple trial plan is available in addition to the scanR Pro plan that offers monthly and annual subscription options.

For a listing of supported platforms and devices, you can check out the scanR site and blog for more downloading and application details.

If you want to get more productivity, convenience and functionality out of your mobile device, a mobile PDF creation app is definitely one handy tool to have.

If you haven’t heard the news yet, on July 2^nd, 2008, after more than 10 years on the market as a de facto standard, the Portable Document Format (PDF) was approved for ISO certification as an international standard.

PDF standardization, as everyone knows, has been long overdue. In 15 years, 9 generations of technology have come and gone (we’re at Acrobat 9 now!). The fact that the PDF has made it through the long years and has improved steadily from version to version is a testament to its capabilities and uses as a format.

Glancing Back To A Present Moment

Of course, as a standard as it will mean the significant changes PDF critics and experts have been talking about for over a year now. I remember in a February 2007 posting, I threw up a few questions that were aimed at the moment when PDF 1.7 got its certification:

“Yet, aside from the competition with the ISO approval for OOXML, Adobe is also seeing competition with itself. When the PDF 1.7 spec gets its ISO certification, changes will have to be made in software already being used for PDF files. How will pre-ISO PDF files be handled as opposed to post-ISO PDF files? This also means changes for third party vendors-- their products, their market and their projects. There’ll be a ripple to accommodate the adjustments, but just how big?”

I guess we can start fully answering those questions now . . . .

Are you looking forward to working with PDF files? Hope so. Because there’s no time like the present to be a PDF user.

Cheers!