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The Acrobat 9 PDF Portfolios Contest Has Begun!

Are you the PDF Master you claim to be? Put yourself to the test and take the challenge. AcrrobatUsers.com is holding a contest to see who can make the most creative and original PDF Portfolio with Acrobat 9.

PDF Portfolios, formerly known as PDF Packages, is a feature that combines different documents into a single bundle you can then attach to your PDF. You can combine Word documents, spreadsheets, and emails while still retaining the file settings of each individual file. And now the people over at Adobe want to what you can do with this feature.

The submitted entries will be judged on the overall quality, effectiveness, and appearance. Your entry can include “images, graphics, Flash files, video, various document types and JavaScripting”—basically anything that can be made into a visually compelling PDF portfolio. So be as thematic and creative as you can be.

The prizes will be worth the effort. First prize is a copy of Acrobat 9 Pro Extended for Windows or, for Mac, Acrobat 9 Pro. Second prize is a Special Edition 8 GB iPod Nano. And third prize is an AcrobatUsers.com T-shirt. Your PDF Portfolio will also be up for display in the upcoming PDF Portfolio Gallery on the site.

To submit an entry, you’ll need to upload your PDF Portfolio along with an entry form online. AcrobatUsers.com has a ton of resources to help get you started. The deadline to enter is October 7, 2008. For more details you can check out the official announcement here.

Good Luck!

Select,Arrange.: Controlling What Goes Into Your PDF

Whether you think about it or not, most of the web content you save in a PDF is excess material you don’t ever really need. Did you really need those 7 extra paragraphs? The picture of an ugly toad in the corner? The web page ads?

If you ever wanted more precision with Web to PDF converters, Select,Arrange. is just the thing you’re looking for. With the many Web to PDF applications out there, Select,Arrange. might not sound like anything special.

But what catches the eye about this converter is that Select,Arrange. lets you select the fragments of web text or online images you want in your PDF. How?

How To Select and Arrange Your PDF Online

This online application works in conjunction with a Firefox browser extension that once downloaded, will give you the ability to select sections, paragraphs or individual images from any website.

You can then save these fragments with titles and tags in an online Select,Arrange. user account until you’re ready to start "arranging” them together in a book project that results in a printable PDF.

To create your PDF, you need to be logged into your account where you can then drag and drop and put your collected image and text fragments in order using the designated “Drag Your Fragments Here” box. You can then use the Select,Arrange. layout templates to customize the content’s appearance.

You can start surfing the web and creating your custom PDF online by signing up for an online account and downloading the extension.

A.nnotate Your PDFs Online For Free

The digital trend these days is about doing everything—even the littlest things, online. You want to do everything you do on the desktop on the Internet, charge-free, plug-in-free and software-free.

If you’re one of the many who are looking to expand your PDF work online, you might want to check out A.nnotate.

A.nnotate is a handy online service that lets you annotate your PDF files. The service is perfect if you review PDFs on a regular basis, need a backup solution for desktop PDF software or need constant access to annotation functionality.

Because the service is focused on annotating and adding notes, A.nnotate gives you power features to customize how you work with the notes you attach to your PDF. You can add tags to your notes, adjust display options, highlight text, colour categorize, and search your notes by index in either a single PDF or across all documents in your account.

Moreover, A.nnotate doubles as a collaborative tool. Your documents and the notes created for them can be shared with others. And to keep track of group reviews, PDF notes are signed, dated and, for workflow purposes, are attached with a history of changes made to a tag.

To start annotating your documents, you’ll need to create an account. A.nnotate has a free version available and a monthly subscription service if you need more document space. After that you can start uploading your PDFs for fast, on the fly reviewing.

If you want to add more online tools to your PDF toolbox, check out the site for more details.

How To Create PDFs With The Wikipedia PDF Converter

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.

Create Scanned PDFs On The Go With ScanR

Reading PDFs on your mobile device is one thing. But being able to create them is another. If you’ve got a cell phone or PDA that has a built in digital camera, then you’ve got the essential tools needed for creating a PDF file on the go.

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.