Monday, February 2, 2009

MergePDF Combines PDF Documents For Free

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you don’t have access to Adobe Acrobat or other PDF manipulation tools, MergePDF is a quick and hassle-free online tool for combining your documents. There are a small number of limitations on the tool, which shouldn’t be deal breakers for most people in need of a quick PDF merge. You’re limited to ten files that are 5MB or less for each merge you perform. Once you finish the merge and download the combined document, the original files are deleted. While the process wasn’t as fast as combining them on a local computer with professional software in our tests, it was fine for deadlines that aren’t in two minutes. The file merge pictured in the above screenshot took thirty seven seconds from the time the merge started until the file was downloaded to my computer. If you find yourself merging PDF files frequently, a free desktop solution might be in order. Previously reviewed PDFSam is a Java-based cross-platform tool that merges, and separates, PDF files in short order. MergePDF is a free to use, doesn’t require registration. MergePDF [via MakeUseOf] More »

Adobe And Apple Working To Put Flash On iPhone—Someday

11:10PM Kevin Purdy | Adobe’s CEO told a World Economic Forum crowd that Apple and his company are working to bring Flash to the iPhone. Unanswered is when that happens, and in what form. The Boy Genius Report blog takes a largely positive tack on Shantanu Narayen’s remarks, but wisely wonders whether Flash will arrive as a standard in-browser function for mobile Safari, or as a stand-alone app made for browsing specific sites. PCWorld offers a more downbeat take, noting the technical hurdles—processor, memory, and Apple’s needs for access rights restrictions—and a sense of “boardroom wrangling.” Most would imagine that Flash on the iPhone is a matter of when, not if—especially if Flash succeeds in pushing its Flash Lite platform onto Windows Mobile and Android phones. But let’s hear your take—do you enjoy having the web stripped of flashing, shiny doodads while you’re mobile, or does a lack of Flash cripple your browsing life? Tell us in the comments. Adobe’s Narayen Says Flash on IPhone Is a Challenge (Update2) [Bloomberg News] More »

Snap Links Plus Brings Multi-Link Selection To Firefox 3

9:00PM Kevin Purdy | Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Grab a whole cluster of links and open, bookmark, copy, or download them with Snap Links, a nifty extension recently updated for Firefox 3. There’s not a whole ton of complexity to Snap Links Plus, which was sans Plus when we first looked at it. After installing the add-on, you head to the options, choose which button—left, right, or middle—you want to activate it from, then use a familiar rectangle selection tool to select multiple links on a page. The basic option is to open each selected link in a new tab, but hold the control key when releasing your button and you’ll get a range of convenient options—the “Download All” choice, in particular. Snap Links Plus, updated recently by the official author after months of unofficial versions for Firefox 3, is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. Snap Links Plus [via gHacks] More »

What Will Online Travel Look Like In 2013?

3:30PM Angus Kidman | Four years ago, booking online was already the cheapest way to organise travel. But what will the world of online travel look like in 2013? More »

Don’t Believe The Manuals With Self-Assembly Furniture

1:30PM Angus Kidman | Everyone knows that putting together flatpack furniture can be aggravating, but assembling the Sturt desk from Officeworks presented me with a challenge I’ve not faced before: a printed guide that wasn’t just filled with poor, tiny, diagrams and incomprehensible product abbreviations, but actually skipped several crucial steps and also put others in an order that would render the desk impossible to complete. (When I posted on Twitter that I was assembling a desk, one friend replied “hope it’s not from IKEA”, but their manuals are in fact models of clarity compared to this one.) I got the job done eventually, and I was happy with the end result, but the experience emphasised the importance of not just sorting through the parts and reading through the instructions, but also thinking about whether they make sense, and modifying or ignoring them if they don’t. Have you faced similar challenges with built-it-yourself furniture? Share (and vent) in the comments. More »

DealDump Aggregates Multiple Australian Bargain Sites

11:30AM Angus Kidman | There are plenty of good sites tracking bargains and freebies for Australian consumers, but keeping track of them can be a full-time task in itself, even if an RSS feed is provided. DealDump aggregates information from several local deal hunting sites (including OzBargain, Buckscoop and RetailMeNot) , as well as a healthy selection of one-day offer sites (including Zazz, Catch Of The Day, TopBuy, OO and OzStock). The result is a single-page summary of current hot deals: handy if you’re hunting for bargains but not seeking a particular product. As the OzBargain Blog suggests, a useful enhancement would be to incorporate combined user feedback from sites that support ratings, but even without it, this is still a good bookmark for bargain hunters in a hurry. DealDump [via OzBargain Blog] More »

Online Coloring Book TheColor Sports Web 2.0 Features

10:30AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you have a kid on your hands who loves to colour, TheColor is an online coloring book archive with some novel features. You can browse colouring pages by categories covering everything from animals to seasons. Kids can rank images by popularity and add their votes to the mix (My First Digg, without the “fail” comments?). Each coloring page can be printed or coloured with a virtual palette and saved to a personal or public gallery. There’s even an option to share pages by email if your budding designer wants to show Grandma how awesome a squirrel can look with red eyes and a purple tail. If you have some great and free resources for entertaining kids, colour or monochrome, share them in the comments below. TheColor [via URLwire] More »

SBS Channel Shift Might Necessitate A Retune

9:30AM Angus Kidman | Last week, SBS upgraded its digital transmitters around the country. The practical consequence? The station can now differentiate its broadcasts for different regional areas, offers full 720p resolution on its HD channel and now has a seven-day EPG. The downside? You might need to retune your set-top box, digital TV or PVR/media centre software to match the new requirements. If your equipment gives you grief in this respect, the SBS how-to linked below has contact details for most TV manufacturers. SBS Digital Upgrade More »

Melbourne Blackout Wrecks Internet Everywhere

7:21AM Angus Kidman | Last week’s heatwave was clearly bad news for residents of Melbourne, Adelaide and everywhere in between, but it also turned out to be bad news for Internet users over a much wider area. Dan Warne at APC reports that a power outage in Primus’ Melbourne data centre affected service from several ISPS relying on the PIPE Internet exchange, with potentially hundreds of thousands of customers being affected. Did you have a heatwave net outage? Share your survival tactics in the comments. Melbourne blackout cripples Internet nationally More »

Make A Cheap Hard Saddle-Bag For Your Bike

7:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Add some storage beneath the seat of your bike with this ridiculously cheap and simple hard-backed saddle-bag. It’s made from recycled material, and you’ll always have a place to stash stuff on the go. Gerry at How to Fix Bikes, a blog about life as an avid cyclist, turned a plastic jar into saddlebag. The steps are as simple as finding an appropriately sized jar, washing it out, and punching holes that line up with the support bars under your seat to anchor it with zip ties. The whole project is dirt cheap and makes good use of old, recycling-bind-bound jars. You can see in the photo Gerry uses his to stash an emergency repair kit for his bike; the peanut butter jar he used is the perfect size for some small folding tools and inner tube. The only modification we’d suggest is hitting the container with a coat of black spray paint to make it stand out less in comparison to the dark frame of the bike, and perhaps saving a thin sheet of packing foam from your next electronics shipment to wrap around the inside of the jar to cut down on bouncing cargo. If you have a crafty bike-related tip or storage solution, sound off in the comments below. How-To Make A Real Cheap Hard Saddle Bag [via Make] More »