Sign A PDF Without Printing

One of these little tasks we all need to do every once in a while is signing documents. As usual, many traditional institutions don't (yet) support digital fingerprint signing, so they require a "real" handwritten signature. Filling in the form can be done online, everybody has the Acrobat plugin to make that happen, but attaching a signature?

There are a few quick and free ways to accomplish this, without printing out your document, signing it with a pen, and rescanning it. Of course you just attach an image of sufficient quality. One PDF-reader that does this is NitroPDF. It is free to try, and you can actually sign your documents with the free version by inserting a scanned (or photographed) image of your signature. The pro version offers batch processing, word integration and full control.

If you prefer just working in the cloud (because your computer is too slow for the heavy NitroPDF or you are in a cyber) and you prefer signing PDFs online, that this website is for you.

There are also plenty of free fax utilities, so that you don't need to touch a printer or fax machine to send it to whatever prehistoric institution it is that demands your paperwork...

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Wordpress vs. Drupal

Two of the most prominent tools to create websites are Wordpress and Drupal. Both of them are well developed PHP-based open source content management systems. When people start websites these days, they need to pick an appropriate framework first. I'll try to explain when Wordpress is more suitable, and when Drupal would be advisible.

The common preconception can be summarized in two prejudices:

(1) Wordpress is just for blogging

(2) Drupal is a complicated CMS with a very steep learning curve

This is not true. Wordpress can be, and has been, used for full-blown websites, and vice-versa, you can do amazing things drupal without in-depth knowledge.

Wordpress might be slightly easier to set up with its famous 1 minute install, but once you've installed the database and start creating your site, your main limitation is how well you know the respective universe. Yes, the wordpress community and the drupal community are that big.

There is a large amounts of themes to choose from, so you're likely to find what you're looking for.

Practically, what really matters is the availability of plugins, because you don't want to program every extension by yourself. Let's list a number of common tasks you want to perform using plugins that are available for both platforms. Just go to their plugin directory and download it directly from there. In most cases, there are several plugins available, free or premium, and you pick what fits your needs.

1. Facebook integration
2. Social bookmarking
3. Most popular posts
4. Google Maps integration
5. SEO
6. Form creation
7. Custom data types
8. Slideshows
9. Lightbox
10. Email newsletters
11. Chat clients
12. Translation interface
13. Picture galleries
14. custom taxonomy (here, drupal is clearly better designed)
15. Flickr, Youtube, Pinterest etc. integration
16. Database backup
17. Import of blogs / CSV
18. RSS readers
19. Powerful editors like TinyMCE
20. Performance optimization (compression of .JS / .CSS files, minify, caching)

Only when it comes to very advanced search functionality or API-integration, the drupal-community might be ahead of Wordpress. Of course, these plugins should be convertible in some ideal world, but as for now, you have to throw hours of research and coding at it if you want to add truly new functionality to any CMS.

I run several Drupal-sites as well as Wordpress-sites. For anything resembling a blog, portfolio presentation, or a simple online community, I'd recommend Wordpress / Buddypress. For larger websites with critical bandwidth usage, security issues or e-commerce applications, I'd go for a Drupal installation, and take advantage of some of the latest plugins.

Enjoy your new site!

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Dlvr.it

Most of us have used some platforms built on top of social networks like facebook and twitter. Services like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Socialoomph come to mind (they are actually the top three). I've used them for a bit, but found them too bulky, especially if you are not working in a fixed office, but often on the road, relying on the small screen of a netbook or even more portable device. What I wanted was a service that simply published my content to a selection of targets.

I recently discovered such a service: dlvr.it. This is indeed very simple to use and manageable on a portable device. I've set up several "routes", which connect sources to targets.
Sources are (reusable) collections of feeds from a blogger, wordpress or tumblr blog, a joomla or drupal or any other CMS site, or a spiced-up feedburner feed, and link these sources to "targets", which can be facebook pages or groups, twitter accounts, tumblr sites, and a number of other possibilities.

It also offers a nice widget to place on your website, a decent stats page, and the possibility to send direct messages to one of your target streams.

Their way to monetize is called "promoted stories". While I haven't tried I the service, I can imagine it might be a fair deal for a company building up audience. It promises to boost your search and social network visibility. Their pricing is on a per-story basis.

The service hasn't been down since I've started using it a few months ago, and I can recommend this to all bloggers out there.

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Scripting with autohotkey

Here's a tool that is easy to use yet extremely powerful. If you're an average computer user who just reads emails and edits an occasional word document, you can benefit from autohotkey. If you're a heavy user and it's not uncommon that you've more than 20 windows open, you can benefit even more from this scripting program.

Experts agree that Autohotkey is one of the best automation tools around. Perhaps you haven't heard of it before, because you've never seen any ads? Well, that's because it is open-source freeware! The benevolent geek who created this over the course of many years has made the source code as well as installer packages available on his site.

Functionality
Autohotkey is a powerful scripting language, really. With some patience, you can achieve everything from adjusting the volume of your computer's speakers to manipulating the registry and .INI-files. If you don't think that is very useful in daily computer chores, you're right. But here are a few things I actually do with autohotkey that save me a lot of time.

1. keyboard abbreviations. I could have written that word by just typing "abbr" and the script would have expanded the text automatically. I use such keyboard shortcodes, that are recorded by autohotkey in a straightforward way, to quickly write my greetings under an email. "bye" turns into "warm regards, {name}" and so on. There is a short and very useful script to automatically add such shortcodes by hitting any chosen key combination (a real boon of autohotkey is its flexibility in using all kind of key combinations). That script then asks which shortcode you want to assign to the text you just typed. That rule is then appended to your script (which can grow to contain thousands of words, really) and the next time you type it the script will replace your shortcode with the wanted text. Brilliant.
2. I have a few scripts laying on my desktop, waiting for me to drag a .zip file onto them. They then unzip it to a standard location, open an explorer window or some other programs depending on the contents on the zip, and show me a small message box cheering me up working on these files. You get the idea.
3. Autohotkey can be used for autocorrecting common misspellings. There's a script available that checks for the 4,700 most common mistakes in the English langauge. Wonder if they'd have gotten this one.
4. Mouseclicks and other interface actions. They can be recorded (remember the old macro-recorder for windows) or hand-written in the .ahk scripting language that really is easy to learn. I use it to perform certain mouseclicks in file dialog boxes, so that I sort my files in the right way. Of course, there are more invasive ways of doing this, such as a hack in the registry or the installation of countless windows tools. But this gentle recording of user interface actions is kinda neat.
5. Autohotkey allows you to compile your scripts to .exe programs, so that they are portable and can be used on a computer without autohotkey installed. They can also be decompiled.

In conclusion, this is one of the best freeware tools of its kind, and I recommend it to everyone.

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