Sometimes, a survey result comes along to shock those who deal with advanced technology on a daily basis into a more grounded answer to this question. Take a poll recently commissioned by software firm Nitro in conjunction with the release of the latest version of their Pro PDF reader. It found that nearly half (45.7 percent) of a representative sample of Americans are either only somewhat familiar with modest and ubiquitous PDFs or not at all familiar with them.

It’s a number that may surprise many tech pros and also shocked Gina O’Reilly, the COO of Nitro. Though when we spoke with her, she did offer a possible explanation for people’s ignorance of PDFs:

It was really surprising for us here at Nitro. Although it’s not that surprising when you think about how most people actually consume those PDF files.  Anyone who’s browsing the web these days has to have encountered a PDF file, and everyone has a free PDF viewer. Most people have Adobe reader. But what we think is that most people probably just see a PDF viewer as a web browser.

Besides being one of those head scratching, believe-it-or-not facts for the tech savvy, this general ignorance of PDFs might actually offer a wider lesson for managers and IT pros. Namely, don’t assume your team has the basics down. Quickly and accurately manipulating a PDF may seem like a no-brainer to you, but if your employees are creating low-tech work-arounds involving scanners, email or even, gasp!, fax machines for processes you took it for granted they understand, this lack of knowledge could be a real time waster for your team.

“We’ve done some very basic internal trials where we have literally timed people either printing out, signing, faxing, printing out, signing, scanning. The whole thing can take anywhere from 15 minutes to a few days depending on the process,” says O’Reilly.

So what’s the concrete takeaway, according to Nitro? Don’t assume; train. The best collaboration tech in the world won’t help your company in the slightest if people aren’t using it properly, so O’Reilly offers three tips for more effective training:

• Relevant. Training “needs to be very relevant,” according to O’Reilly. “For example, a product like Nitro Pro does a multitude of things, if I’m in the legal department of a company, [then] maybe I’m only interested in redaction and base numbering or whatever, [ao] training should be specific to those areas.”
• Compelling. She also stressed that, “users really need to see the value.”
• Internal certifications.  “Something we do internally here that works very well is we introduced sort of phony internal certifications,” says O’Reilly. “We recognize those publicly among all employees, so that also drives some peer pressure. If your colleague has achieved a certain certification and you haven’t, then you might want to do the same.”

Do you think the tech savvy often underestimate the average user’s understanding of even basic products and devices?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Ben+Sam.

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The ability to send audio and video files using the tool is available immediately. It’s surprising it wasn’t available previously, given many of Adobe’s customers are creatives who likely want to send large audio and video files to colleagues and clients, although perhaps Adobe was concerned the service would be abused, and used to send copyrighted materials.

The custom branding option is coming in June, and will be available to customers on the paid Basic and Professional plans. I think it’s the most interesting update to SendNow, as it will provide freelancers and small businesses with an inexpensive yet professional-looking way to send large files to clients with their own branding.Users will be able to upload their own logos and imagery to the service, then check a box to add that branding on their file download pages, as shown in the screenshot below.

The desktop client will, unsurprisingly, be an Adobe AIR app. It will be released in the third quarter, and should enable users to send files without having to open a browser. From the look of the early screenshots, it will simply replicate the website without providing any additional functionality.

There are three SendNow plans: Free allows for transfer of files up to 100MB in size and includes 500MB of storage; Basic allows for transfer of files up to a whopping 2 GB in size and includes 5 GB of storage, will include the branding option and costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year; Professional allows for 2 GB file transfers, custom branding and includes 20 GB of storage for $19.99 per month or $190 per year. SendNow isn’t the only cloud-based file transfer solution available, of course. Like YouSendIt, Minus and many other similar apps, SendNow facilitates simple transfer of larger files that are too big to send via email without having to mess about with tricky FTP clients. Adobe will hope that its integration with other Adobe products (it’s available via a menu option in Acrobat 10 and Reader 10, for example) and these new features will help give its service an edge.

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Once installed, Adobe Connect meeting hosts can access chat rooms (“text conferences”) hosted on an XMPP server by launching the extension in the “Share” pod during the meeting, then connecting to the server and choosing a  conference room to join.

It means Connect hosts can now meet with users of many other XMPP-compatible chat clients, such as Jabber, iChat, Miranda-IM and Adium. Once a chat room is joined, the meeting participants can simply view the chat as guests without logging in (guest viewing can be disabled by the host), or participants can each log into the XMPP server with their own credentials to participate. Chat can continue seamlessly with other meeting activities such as video, audio and screen sharing.

Being able to access chat rooms with users of other software may sound like it’s no big deal  — after all, most Connect users will already have an XMPP chat client installed on their machines, or could always download one — but this extension should enhance Connect’s potential as a collaborative tool, as it can now integrate with a much wider ecosystem of apps. Additionally, meetings can now start out as simple chats rather than full-blown web conferences, and can then quickly be escalated to a full conference, if required.

The free XMPP Multi-User Chat extension can be downloaded here; documentation is included.

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• Automate routine, multi-step tasks with new guided Actions that can be shared with coworkers.
• Change how users interact with content and its context with PDF Portfolios using new layouts, visual themes and color palettes.
• Microsoft SharePoint integration. Check-in, check-out PDF files for reviewing and editing shared documents.
• A streamlined process for large organizations to deploy, configure and manage updates and conform to ISO standards, including support for Microsoft SCCM and SCUP.
• Updated user interface: Display the most commonly used tools all in one pane.

Reader X will introduce support for PDF documents that contain a much wider range of content types, including drawings, email messages, spreadsheets, videos and other multimedia elements. It also has new collaboration features: Users can make notes and share feedback by marking up PDF documents using the Sticky Notes and Highlighter tools. Other new features in Reader will include:

• Choose reading mode to fit more content on the screen, or two-up mode to view page spreads.
• Directly access online services at Acrobat.com from within Reader X. Perform common tasks such as creating PDF files, securely sharing and storing documents and screen sharing.
• Availability on additional mobile platforms, with support added for Android, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry Tablet OS.

Acrobat X is available to pre-order now; Reader X will be made available for download next month.

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PDF Viewers

The free Adobe Reader has been the de facto standard for viewing PDF files ever since it was introduced in 1993, but it has become bloated and vulnerable to malware attacks over the years. There are some free alternatives for viewing PDF files that are more streamlined and faster.

• Foxit PDF Reader is a lightweight PDF viewer for that is popular. (Windows)
• CoolPDF Reader is freeware that claims to be the smallest PDF reader available, at only 650kb. It can also convert PDF files to many different formats such as TXT, GIF, JPG and more. (Windows)
• PDF-XChange Viewer reads and edits PDF files for free. (Windows)
• Skim is an open-source PDF reader. (Mac)

Tools for Creating, Editing & Converting PDF Files

The good news is that just about every popular office application — including Microsoft Office 2007/2010, OpenOffice, Google Docs — now include built-in ways to save documents as PDF files. This means that many people no longer needs that expensive Adobe Acrobat license if all they need to do is create basic PDF files from documents. That said, there are also some useful standalone free tools for creating and editing PDF files:

• CutePDF Writer is my favorite free tool for creating PDF files outside of using the built-in PDF features of tools like Office and Google Docs. It installs a PDF printer that you send documents to in order to create them as PDF files. (Windows)
• PDF Creator creates PDF files for free, as well as converting them to other usable formats. (Windows)
• PrimoPDF is another free PDF writer for personal and commercial use. (Windows)
• HelloPDF converts PDF files to Microsoft Word document format, for free. (Windows)
• PDFill PDF Editor is the most robust free solution in this bunch, so don’t let its rather unimpressive website give you the wrong impression. It is chock full of features normally only found in premium PDF editors, such as the ability to merge files, convert files to multiple image formats, e-book options and more. (Windows)
• Skim, the open-source PDF reader I listed above, also includes some editing tools. (Mac)

e-Book Creation Tools

If you want to distribute your PDFs as e-books, you can use one of the free eBook publishing platforms.

• Stanza has a powerful e-book publishing solution for Windows and Mac.
• Calibre provides a publishing platform for Windows, Mac and even Linux.

Online PDF Tools

There are some free online tools that do the same things as the desktop tools listed above. Some let you edit PDF files, some convert them and others merge them. Here are some of the most popular solutions.

• PDFescape lets you create PDF files online; you don’t even need to register without even registering. However, if you do register (for free) then you can do other things such as save the PDF files online in your own secure account. There’s also a free PDF reader. You can create PDF files with up to 50 pages and up to 2 MB in size for free. Commercial use is acceptable, and there is no watermarked logo on any of the PDF pages. You can also password protect your PDF files.
• PDF to Word Convert PDF files to Word format with Nitro PDF’s online tool. The only catch is that it might take a little while to get the converted file.
• Nitro PDFHammer allows you to edit PDF files online and convert them to other formats.
• PDF2Word Online is another tool for converting PDF files to Word documents.
• Free OCR is a useful online service for extracting the text from PDF and image files. The one caveat is that it will only scan one-page PDF files or the first page of a multi-page PDF for free (although, of course, you could convert multiple page PDF files to images first, before uploading them to Free OCR).

Let us know your favorite free PDF tools in the comments.

Photo credit: cohdra

You can purchase and download CS5 directly from the Adobe website. These are professional-grade tools, however, which means they come at a professional price. The top-of-the-range Master Collection, which includes all of the tools in the CS5 family, retails for a hefty $2,599, while the cheapest edition, Design Standard, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat, costs $1,299. You can also purchase the tools separately — Photoshop CS5, for example, retails for $699. Tiered upgrade pricing from previous versions of the software is available — Adobe provides a tool to show upgrade paths and prices.

Are you upgrading to CS5?

Adobe Ideas is a brand new free iPhone and iPad app, one that’s intended as a general purpose creative notebook, integrating sketches, images and a pretty amazing color scheming tool that can use either photos taken from the iPhone’s camera or any images in your library as its source.

User Interface

I wanted to start off by saying that this app has one of the best UIs I’ve ever come across in an iPhone app. And, surprisingly, it manages to achieve this using an interface that doesn’t feel very “Apple.”

Flat buttons and sliding menus make everything about this app feel smooth as butter and oh-so-responsive. I found myself eager to create new ideas, organize them, and then delete them just for the pleasure of interacting with the app’s various menus and buttons. Other developers should take note; doing something original like Adobe’s done here can pay off hugely in terms of differentiating your application from thousands of copy-cats.

Usefulness

Enough crowing about how great the interface is. Just how usable is the app in actual real-world situations? Well, it’s honestly not really much more than an embellished drawing app, but it’s great at that. It has changeable brush sizes and opacity, a color picker, and the ability to add photo layers underneath your existing drawings, or to draw on top of existing photos. It doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles of some dedicated drawing apps, but you can export your work as PDF files via email, which is really all you should need on a mobile platform.

There’s also that color scheme generator, which graphic designers should go ga-ga for. It’s especially handy with the iPhone, since you can take a photo of literally anything you run across in your travels and the app will break it down to a five-color palette you can then use in print or web design. My only problem with this tool is that you can’t export the image, to be used with a color picker on your desktop, for example.

Bottom line: The Adobe Ideas app is free, it works for both iPhone and the iPad, and it’s a genuine pleasure to use. Grab it now if you do any kind of creative work.

Let us know what you think of Adobe Ideas in the comments.

The latest versions of the software have 64-bit support and some neat new productivity-boosting features. In particular, the new content-aware fill available in Photoshop CS5 looks very impressive. Check out this video showing it in action:

The Creative Suite of tools is an impressive collection of professional-grade software, but that quality does come at a price. The top-of-the-range Master Collection, which includes all of the tools in the CS5 family, retails at a hefty $2,599, while the cheapest edition, Design Standard, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat, costs $1,299. Tiered upgrade pricing from previous versions of the software is available.

Will you be upgrading to CS5?

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Printing is still an important part of every web worker’s workflow, and though it’s quite arcane, much of our communication and documentation is still conducted via a paper trail. Not only does this leave piles of paper to manage, there’s the economic cost of all of that ink and paper and, importantly, there’s also an environmental cost involved with printing that we all bear as a society.

In a recent issue of Wired UK, Thomas Counsell from the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing speculated that up to two percent of greenhouse gases are a result of paper consumption, largely driven by the production and disposal of new and used printed paper.

Counsell’s research is focused on technologies that use a combination of ultrasound and chemical solvents to remove toner from printed documents, enabling paper to reused. Though Counsell’s research is still very much in the labs and somewhat fantastical, there are alternatives, available today, that can help us make environmental and financial judgments about the paper and ink that we use.

The Paper-Less Alliance‘s web site not only provides handy advice on how to reduce paper consumption, but also provides free software, in collaboration with PaperCut, to help individuals and companies visualize their paper consumption in terms of a carbon footprint, trees, energy use and financial impact.

GreenPrint offers an inexpensive software solution that adds a new printer profile to Macs and PCs. As documents are sent to the “virtual” GreenPrint printer, they’re analyzed, and attention is drawn to wasteful or unnecessary areas, which users can then choose to remove from the final printout.

For example, many documents often have a page with just a few words or lines on the last page; GreenPrint automates the discovery of such inefficiencies.

Adobe’s Tools for Sustainable Design are yet to be released, but were previewed by Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch last Spring at ETech 2009. Lynch demonstrated some great demos, including:

• optimizing a box pattern to use less paper
• tools that show the toxicity and chemical impact of various ink colors
• embedded guidelines from organizations such as Greenpeace
• calculating the number of trees or soy plants required for a print job
• suggesting digital rather than hard copy outputs

More recently, designer Matthew Robinson conducted a somewhat unscientific project entitled “Measuring Type,” which explored how much ink commonly utilized typefaces tended to use. Robinson discovered that Garamond had the highest ink efficiency.

Though I tend not to print much anyway, preferring the flexibility of digital documents, these four initiatives have forced me to understand the true cost of printing and show that software can help us make value judgments about environmental issues.

A year ago we saw controversy and ridicule around one researcher’s carbon calculation of a Google search, yet our various applications and tools still aren’t doing a great job of reporting their environmental impact to users. As we see software emerge to help us understand the environmental impact of printing, I hope we’ll start to see other categories of software and hardware reveal their environmental impact and cost.

Coincidentally, the Daily Beast just published a great article on the advantages and disadvantages of going paper-free, entitled “My Paperless Life.”

Are you mindful of the environmental impact of your printing? Which strategies do you employ to reduce waste?

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Do you avoid AIR apps because they are so resource-hungry?

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