Google Docs Viewer just got a lot more useful. It now lets you view archive file types, ZIP and RAR contents online.

The Google Docs Viewer is an online service by Google which allows you to quickly view many file types. Using it, you can view PDFs, Microsoft Office files, and many image file types online and without leaving your browser. According to the official Google Docs Blog, now, if someone sends you a ZIP or RAR file in your Gmail, you’ll be able to view its contents from within your browser by clicking on View. This works for archives inside archive files too. Like, if you have a ZIP file inside a RAR file (or vice versa) you can simply click on that file to get access to the contents of the embedded archive.

Google Docs viewer already supports 15 different file formats. These includes:

• Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX)
• Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX)
• Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF)
• Apple Pages (.PAGES)
• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
• Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF)
• Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
• PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
• TrueType (.TTF)
• XML Paper Specification (.XPS).

The support for viewing archive file types ZIP and RAR has just made Google Docs Viewer much more useful than ever. The best thing is this feature is available in Google Docs for mobile, too. You can check out the feature yourself by viewing a ZIP file.

Do keep in mind that you can’t create archive files in these formats using Google Docs – you’ll still need the original applications to do that.

With these features, Google has added a welcome usability to Google Docs and Gmail. Now, I don’t have to download those large archive files from my Gmail, just to preview them. What other file types would you like to be supported in the Google Docs viewer?

SpringPublisher is a freeware desktop publishing application for Windows. The application lets you easily create business cards, flyers, postcards, letterheads and other artworks within a few minutes.

Quality free software for creating business cards, flyers, postcards and letterheads are very sparse. Professional desktop publishing applications are normally very costly. But SpringPublisher comes here to fill in the void. With its powerful multilayered editor and lots of templates, your desktop publishing task becomes easier.

Spring Publisher desktop publishing software is small in download size (2.13 MB to be exact) and requires less system resource. When installed, it lets you easily create various artworks fast. You can use it to create professional looking business cards, letterheads, flyers, postcards, etc. You can start from scratch and use your imagination to design or use templates that came with it. Insert or edit shapes, text, logos, and vectors in your artworks to get them completed quickly.

You can simultaneously work on different artworks using its tabbed interface. It lets you save your work as a project to later edit it. You can save your artworks as image if you want to send it to professional print shops. You can also directly print using your own printer. SpringPublisher Free do have a limitation of 96/180 dpi output quality. It is more than enough for normal usage. If you are looking for high quality 350 dpi output quality, you have to go for SpringPublisher Pro. One more limitation is that using the free version you will not be able to download templates from the publisher’s website.

• Enables you to add images, texts, vector shapes, logos and arrange them as you like;
• Provides various image effect: shadows, opacity, rotation, etc.
• Makes it easy for you to print your artworks either with your own printer or in professional print shops.
• Generates high-resolution artwork with a maximum output of 180 dpi.

You can download SpringPublisher Freeware version from the official website.

Last year in August, we reviewed a powerful flash animation software titled “Vectorian Giotto.” Back then it was a premium software worth $89.95. Vectorian Inc., the developers of Vectorian Giotto has announced a great news for all. They have released the new and redesigned version of Vectorian Giotto 3.0 and made it completely free. The developers also said that the new version is exactly 4 and a half times easier to work with the earlier version.

Vectorian Giotto helps create professional quality Flash animations without coding and experience. The application features more than 50 customizable effects that can be applied to both shapes and text. With over a 100 effect presets in store, it can display your flash content in different ways which you can adjust easily. The developer’s website hosts a very handy help manual with many tutorials to guide you through. Although it features full ActionScript 2.0 support, designers won’t need to think about this as the animation is created without any coding required.

If you are wondering what is the difference between Giotto and Adobe Flash Professional? Here’s what the developers are saying:

Vectorian Giotto is simpler, easier to use and much cheaper alternative software to Adobe Flash. Both applications use similar approach (with Giotto being easier to use) to produce SWF (“Small Web Format” or “Shockwave Flash”) files that can be embedded into websites to enrich them with animation and/or interactivity.

Using the free flash creator software you can create from simplest to complex vector illustrations, apply effects to them (blur, shadow, glow) and then animate them. You can create Movie Clips and Buttons, store them in the library and use them later. You can easily work with text elements and adjust things such as kerning and alignment. The animation can be executed using motion, shape tweens. Sounds can be included in your creations to make more advanced animations.

The built-in editor of the application’s color palettes is very intuitive. The editor uses special algorithms build upon human perception of colors instead of the old school mathematical models.

To conclude, Vectorian Giotto 3.0 is certainly a very remarkable tool for designers who don’t want to code but instead concentrate on their designing, plus the application is completely freeware for all. You can download Vectorian Giotto 3.0 freeware from the official webpage.

Oracle’s decision to give OpenOffice.org (OOo) assets to the Apache Software Foundation and not The Document Foundation (TDF) has not stopped TDF to roll out a major release of LibreOffice (LO), a fork of OpenOffice. LibreOffice is widely adopted now and is becoming very popular. Major Linux distros including Ubuntu, Fedora and Linux Mint has dropped OOo for LO.

LibreOffice 3.4.0 is the second major release of the suite since the announcement of TDF in September 2010. LO 3.4.0 is a major release of the open-source free office suite now incorporates the contributions of more than 120 developers (six times as many as the first beta released on the launch date).

LibreOffice was created as a fork of the OpenOffice.org productivity suite back in September, of course, due to uncertainty over the future of OOo after Oracle acquired the project.

“We care for our developers, and it shows,” noted Italo Vignoli, a steering committee member and The Document Foundation official. “Our core developers have invented the mechanism of the easy hacks, which makes it simple and enjoyable for volunteer contributors to get to know LibreOffice code, challenging their development skills with basic or elementary tasks.”

“Once they have completed the first easy hacks, contributors are ready to scale to more difficult tasks”, says Michael Meeks, a senior developer working for SuSE. “We spend quite a lot of time mentoring new contributors, in order to increase the number of people working on bug fixing, patches and features. This is soon going to be reflected in the quality of the software and the number of new features of future releases”.

Improved Features of LibreOffice

1. Updates to Calc
   Calc spreadsheet now boasts faster performance and an improved compatibility with Excel spreadsheets. Pivot Table — the new name of DataPilot — now offers support for unlimited numbers of fields and named ranges as data source.

2. UI Improvements
   The user interface of Writer, Impress and Draw has been improved with many new features, and several cosmetic changes have been applied to the Linux version, with a better text rendering engine and an improved GTK+ theme integration.

3. Support for Unity
   LibreOffice’s latest release adds initial support for Unity, the new user interface of Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal).

4. Linux Performance
   LibreOffice 3.4.0 now offers smoother startup on Linux with a splash screen before starting to read all the application’s data, giving a faster time to splash and cleaner code.

5. A Smaller Windows Installer
   Shrink LibreOffice Windows installer download by more than 30 Mb using better compression schemes.

6. Parallel Installations on Linux
   LibreOffice 3.4.0 can be installed in parallel with LibreOffice 3.3 on Linux. Note that the user configuration is shared and both versions cannot be started at the same time.

7. Better Code
   Code wise, several thousand lines of German comments have been translated into English, and over 5.000 lines of dead code have been removed from Writer, Calc and Impress.

Interested users can view a complete list of new features and fixes on the LibreOffice Website.

LibreOffice Version Naming Clarification

The first release of the 3.4 series, LibreOffice 3.4.0, is targeted to community members and power users, and should not be implemented in a corporate environment. The Document Foundation has explained that following its time based release schedule – the best strategy for a distributed and cooperative development environment – the best releases for such deployments start from x.x.1. Because of this, LibreOffice 3.3.x is going to be maintained for several months to come, until the end of calendar year 2011, for the most conservative users.

LibreOffice 3.4 can be downloaded from http://www.libreoffice.org/download.

LibreOffice is a fork of the popular open-source office suite, OpenOffice. LibreOffice is a free power-packed Open Source personal office productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It provides six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. LibreOffice is a free software office suite developed by The Document Foundation. The Document Foundation maintains LibreOffice release schedule thanks to a growing and vibrant community of developers. Its developers’ goal is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support and without any copyright assignment requirements. The name is a hybrid word with the first part Libre, which means free (as in freedom) in both Spanish and French, and the English word Office.

The Document Foundation has recently announced the release of LibreOffice 3.3.2, the second micro release of the free office suite for personal productivity. The latest update improves the stability of the software and sets the platform for the next release 3.4, due in mid May. The community of developers has been able to maintain the tight schedule thanks to the increase in the number of contributors, and to the fact that those that have started with easy hacks in September 2010 are now working at substantial features. In addition, they have almost completed the code cleaning process, getting rid of German comments and obsolete functionalities.

“I have started hacking LibreOffice code on September 28, 2010, just a few hours after the announcement of the project, and I found a very welcoming community, where senior developers went out of their way to help newbies like me to become productive. After a few hours I submitted a small patch removing 5 or 6 lines of dead code… enough to get my feet wet and learn the workflow“, says Norbert, a French developer living in the United States. “In a short time, I ended up removing the VOS library – deprecated for a decade – from LibreOffice, and finding and fixing various threading issues in the process“.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 Final release notes:

• This release is bit-for-bit identical to the 3.3.2 Release Candidate 2, so you don’t need to download or reinstall if you have that version already.
• The distribution for Windows is an international build, so you can choose the user interface language that you prefer. Help content is available via an online service, or alternatively as a separate install.
• For Windows users that have OpenOffice.org installed, we advise uninstalling that beforehand, because it registers the same file type associations.
• If you run Windows 2000, you may require this update before being able to install LibreOffice.
• If you run Linux, the GCJ Java variant has known issues with LibreOffice, we advise to e.g. use OpenJDK instead.
• LibreOffice contains all the security fixes from OpenOffice.org in 3.3.0, and perhaps more as a side-effect of the code clean-ups.

There are a few non-critical issues still contained in this release, which will be addressed soon with upcoming bug fix versions:

• If you install third-party extensions that bring their own help, you may only be able to view that after installing the separate help packs on Windows.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is being released just one day after the closing of the first funding round launched by The Document Foundation to collect donations towards the 50,000-euro capital needed to establish a Stiftung in Germany. In five weeks, the community has donated twice as much, i.e. around 100,000 euros. All additional funds will be used for operating expenses such as infrastructure costs and registration of domain names and trademarks, as well as for community development expenses such as travel funding for TDF representatives speaking at conferences, booth fees for trade shows, and initial financing of merchandising items, DVDs and printed material.

Italo Vignoli, a founder and a steering committee member of The Document Foundation, will be keynoting at Flourish 2011 in Chicago on Sunday, April 3, at 10:30AM, about getting independent from OpenOffice and Oracle, starting The Document Foundation, raising the capital and the first community budget, organizing developers and other work, and outlining a roadmap for future releases and features.

Recently, LibreOffice have been accepted as a Google Summer of Code 2011 organization.

You can download LibreOffice from the official website.

GoogleDocs official blog announced on Thursday that Google is releasing the final version of a new plug-in, named Cloud Connect, for Microsoft Office users that will automatically sync their documents to Google Docs. With Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office plug-in, Google brings collaborative multi-person editing to the familiar Microsoft Office experience. Functionality of this plug-in is like that of Microsoft’s Office Web Apps functionality and sync to SkyDrive.

The plug-in is available today and will work on Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010. It will allow users to automatically backup a copy of their Word documents into Google Docs. Google says its plug-in will backup documents to Google Apps each time a user saves a document in Microsoft Office.

The plug-in allows multiple users to collaborate and edit Office docs. Multiple people can edit documents and have their changes synced at each save. Despite the collaboration features, the document editing isn’t real-time. Google will prompt users to resolve sync conflicts on multi-user documents.

Google’s Cloud Connect introduces a new toolbar into the Office UI which also provides a public Google Docs link to the document you have open. This enables authors to simply share the link for an online version of their document. The toolbar also displays the sync status of the document and a sync button to save the most recent changes. Changes will also be saved when a user clicks the ‘save’ button in Microsoft Office. Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office also remembers edits if the user is offline to sync the documents once a net connection becomes available again.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is available for download.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office Featured Videos:

Overview

Collaborative editing

Revision history

Share a doc

Resolve overlapping edits

Edit offline

Syncing to the cloud

JPG to PDF Converter is a software utility for Windows that can easily and quickly convert a set of images into a PDF document. It comes with an easy to use interface and supports most of the common image file formats including JPG, GIF, BMP, TIF, PNG, TGA, PBM, and PSD (Photoshop document format). You can further edit PDF title, create date, PDF subject, and PDF keywords, etc.

JPG to PDF Converter normally cost $29.95 for purchase. The developers of JPG to PDF Converter are now giving away a full licence for their product for anyone that wants it until 22^nd March, 2011.  You can download JPG to PDF Converter along with your free giveaway product key from the giveaway page link given at the end of the article.

PDF is the most popular format for digital archiving in the world. Normally PDF files are created by virtual printer; however it is not easy to create PDF documents from multiple scanned images. JPG To PDF Converter is a windows application that quickly converts multiple images into a single PDF document without virtual printing.

JPG to PDF Converter supports the majority of modern graphic formats, including GIF, BMP, TIF, PNG, JPG, ICO and PSD. Users can control the compression ratio of PDF files for optimal quality/size balance and specify such PDF file properties as title, creation date, subject and keywords.

Giveaway promotion page: http://www.jpgtopdfconverter.com/giveaway.html

novaPDF is a PDF creator that let users convert any type of documents that is printable into standard PDF files. There are three editions of novaPDF available: Lite, Standard, and Professional. Thanks to Softland, the developers of novaPDF for sponsoring the giveaway of novaPDF Professional Desktop edition. At the end of this article you will see how to take part in the giveaway and win one of the 5 Pro licenses each worth $49.95.

Using novaPDF, you can able to create PDF documents and easily share them. The resulted PDF files can be viewed on any computer with a PDF reader installed. novaPDF is actually a PDF printer driver which is compatible with 32/64-bit editions of Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista, Windows 7 operating systems. It doesn’t require any third-party tools to be installed to generate the PDF file (like Adobe Acrobat Pro or GhostScript).

Installation is smooth with just a few queries in between, for choosing the name of the printer and if you want it as an add-on for Microsoft Office. No initial configuration is required to start converting any printable document to PDF. novaPDF allows you to define different private profiles, each with its own printing to PDF settings. You can change the paper size (or create new custom page sizes for large format printing), change the resolution (from 72 to 2400 dpi), change page orientation (portrait, landscape), embed fonts (support for OpenType, TrueType and Type1 fonts), merge PDF files. novaPDF installs add-ins for Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) which lets users create PDF files faster from Office applications.

You can password protect the PDF files you create and permissions can be restricted to prevent the document from being viewed, printed, modified, copied or annotated. Your PDF documents will be protected and secured with 40-bit and 128-bit encryption algorithms. Additionally, if you have a digital signature you can sign your PDF documents thus certifying the authenticity and integrity of the PDF document for the recipient.

The application is available for testing with the limitation that you can’t get rid of the developer’s watermark at the end of each page. Removing the message requires paying the $49.95 fee.

novaPDF Professional Desktop 7 Giveaway

Our terms are the same like our previous giveaways, we are pleased to announce that Softland SRL, the developers of novaPDF Professional Desktop is providing 5 Pro licenses each worth $49.95 exclusively to My Technology Guide readers.

To be eligible for the giveaway, simply follow the steps below:

Subscribe to My Technology Guide Newsletter. You can subscribe us using following link:

Subscribe to My Technology Guide Newsletter

Note: For new subscribers, don’t forget to click on the confirmation email sent to you by FeedBurner to start our email subscription. If we find that your subscription is incomplete than your entry for the giveaway will not be considered.

Share the word about the giveaway with your friends and colleagues through Social Networks like Twitter, Facebook, etc. So that they too can take part in the giveaway. You can follow us or like us for more updates in the future!

Finally, fill in the giveaway form below (click here if form is not visible) and you are in for the giveaway!

Winners will be randomly selected and each winner will receive one free license of novaPDF Professional Desktop edition worth $49.95

Giveaway is closed, results will be published soon.

Data security and backup is one of the most important activity in computing world. You can find abundant of backup applications available and they all come with different features and specifications. Novice users for instance can easily find backup applications that are very simple to use while power users and administrators will search for backup solutions that are feature rich and provides them control over the data backed up. Between these two categories of user types is where most end-users live, which is reflected in what they want for a backup tool. These users need a simple but reliable tool to back up the data they depend upon for day-to-day business while the software itself should not be overly complex to configure.

With the abundance of backup applications available, it’s nearly impossible to know which tool is best suited for the most users. But there is one backup tool that makes itself viable to almost all types of users, be it novice, power or end users. Backup4all Professional is a simple to use backup tool that will reliably have your backups safely placed where you need them and can, just as easily, restore those files to your machine.

Backup4all automates the backup process, saving you time. It also saves storage space by compressing the data (using standard zip format) and even protects your sensitive data by optionally encrypting it. Using Backup4all you can easily back up your data to any local or network drive, backup to FTP, backup to SFTP, backup to DVD or CD, backup to Blu-ray or other removable media (such as USB HDD or flash drives).

Anyone with simple or moderately complex backup needs will benefit from this application’s easy to use backup wizards and one-touch backup solution. One very nice feature that will appeal to many users is that Backup4all can also back up locked files such as .pst files. This means Backup4all can be an easy way of backing up your Outlook data (or any data that is often in a locked state). It features four backup types: full backup, differential backup, incremental backup and mirror backup.

Backup4all’s interface is well designed and easy to use for everybody. In order to back up your data, you will use the New Backup Wizard, accessible from the File menu, toolbar or using the Ctrl+N keyboard shortcut. Using the wizard you can easily set up any backup configurations you wish. You can define powerful file filters and schedule your backups any way you want. Once a backup is performed, you can see what files changed since the last backup using the explorer-like tree view or you can read the statistics about the next backup execution.

Features:

• Microsoft Outlook backup plugin
• Backup locked or open files (XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7)
• Four backup types: full backup, differential backup, incremental backup and mirror backup
• Customized Zip Names, Standard Zip Compression and zip64 support, Encryption support
• Predefined Filters and, File and Folder Filters
• Built-in Scheduler
• Handles multiple backup jobs
• Built in Email notifications
• SFTP backup software
• Snapshot support
• Disk spanning support
• Automated updates
• Logging
• Command line tool
• Easy to use restore wizard
• Once-touch backup
• Backup directly to CD, DVD, Blu-ray
• Create shortcut for backup job/group

Backup4all Professional is a great solution for users looking for regular, reliable and even encrypted backups of data. Backup4all is one of the easiest backup solutions you will find that nearly any experience-level user will feel instantly at home with. Try it yourself by downloading the 30 days trial version from the link below and share your experience with us.

[ Download Backup4All Professional ]

Backup4All Professional License Giveaway (5 Licenses each worth $49.95) [Expired]

We are pleased to announce that Softland SRL, the developers of Backup4All Professional is providing 5 Pro licenses each worth $49.95 exclusively to My Technology Guide readers.

To be eligible for the giveaway, simply follow the steps below:

Subscribe to My Technology Guide Newsletter. You can subscribe us using following link:

Subscribe to My Technology Guide Newsletter

Note: For new subscribers, don’t forget to click on the confirmation email sent to you by FeedBurner to start our email subscription. If we find that your subscription is incomplete than your entry for the giveaway will not be considered.

Share the word about the giveaway with your friends and colleagues through Social Networks like Twitter, Facebook, etc. So that they too can take part in the giveaway. You can follow us or like us for more updates in the future!

Giveaway is over, winners list here.

Microsoft has made its new Office for Mac 2011 software available as 30 day trial copy for users. Even though Office for Mac 2011 does not include all the components available in the Windows version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, but it does includes the most essential ones, i.e., Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Microsoft launched Office for Mac 2011 in October. With Office for Mac 2011 Outlook on Mac will return, offering similar functionality and appearance, including a Mac inspired theme ribbon, as Outlook 2010 for Windows. It will also allow for multiple document editing. Users will now be able to edit the same document at the same time, without getting a lockout notice. It will include document sharing with other Mac and Windows Office users, through SharePoint, SkyDrive and other web apps.

Microsoft has slapped product activation on Office for Mac 2011. Now, new users of Office for Mac 2011 must enter a 25-character activation key within 15 days of installing the product otherwise the product will refuse to launch. At the end of the grace period, Office for Mac 2011 refuses to launch. Failure to enter the product key and activate Office for Mac, it displays a message on the screen that reads, “You must activate your copy of Office for Mac before you can use it,” along with a button that initiates the online activation procedure.

Both the grace period and the result of not activating Office for Mac 2011 are stricter than Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows. Microsoft Office 2010 gives users 30 days to activate and even lets them reset the grace period up to five times, giving users up to 180 days before they must activate.

Office for Mac 2011 is available in two retail editions, about which we have already discussed in our earlier post.

• Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011:
  • Includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac and Messenger for Mac.
  • Retail price starting at £89.99 ($119.99), will be available in two editions, single install for £89.99 ($119.99) and a Family Pack for £109.99 ($149.99) with three installs for families with more than one Mac in their household.
• Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011:
  • Includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac, Outlook for Mac and Messenger for Mac
  • Retail price starting at £189.99 ($199.99), will be available in two editions, single install for £189.99 ($199.99) and a Multi-Pack for £239.99 ($279.99) with two installs for a user with two machines.

Interested users can download 30 day trial copy of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 from here.

Microsoft has released a new security tool known as Attack Surface Analyzer. It is the same tool used by Microsoft’s internal product teams to catalogue changes made to the operating system by the installation of new software. It is designed to analyze changes to Windows Attack Surface. This helps highlighting changes in system state, runtime parameters and securable objects on the Windows operating system. This analysis helps developers, testers and IT professionals identify increases in the attack surface caused by installing applications on a machine.

The tool takes snapshots of an organization’s system and compares these to identify changes. The tool does not analyze a system based on signatures or known vulnerabilities; instead, it looks for classes of security weaknesses as applications are installed on the Windows operating system. It analyzes and reports about changed or newly added files, registry keys, services, ActiveX Controls, listening ports, ACL (Access Control Lists) and other parameters that affect a Windows system’s attack surface.

Attack Surface Analyzer is the same tool used by Microsoft’s internal product teams to catalogue changes made to the operating system by the installation of new software.

Attack Surface Analyzer takes a snapshot of your system state before and after the installation of product(s) and displays the changes to a number of key elements of the Windows attack surface.

Attack Surface Analyzer allows:

• Developers to view changes in the attack surface resulting from the introduction of their code on to the Windows platform
• IT Professionals to assess the aggregate Attack Surface change by the installation of an organization’s line of business applications
• IT Security Auditors evaluate the risk of a particular piece of software installed on the Windows platform during threat risk reviews
• IT Security Incident Responders to gain a better understanding of the state of a system’s security during investigations (if a baseline scan was taken of the system during the deployment phase)

Attack Surface Analyzer supports Windows 7.
Collection of Attack Surface data: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R1 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
Analysis of Attack Surface data and report generation: Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 with Microsoft .Net 3.5 SP1.

You can find instruction on how to use this tool at this page. You can freely download the security tool for free from the link below.

[ Download Attack Surface Analyzer ]

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file type designed by Adobe System for document exchange and mostly used to represent bi-dimensional docs independent of software, hardware or operating system. PDF files can encompass text, fonts, images and even 2D vector graphics. This specific kind of document is used on a large-scale, and it stands tall as one of the best-made file types.

With PDFZilla, users will be able to convert a PDF document into Word with only 3 mouse clicks. The program preserves the original quality of the PDF files and converts both text and images. Users can convert the entire PDF or selected pages only and event convert multiple files in the batch mode, which may come in very handy when working with large book or document archives.

In addition to the Word format, PDFZilla can convert PDF files to DOC, RTF, TXT, BMP, JPG, GIF, TIF, HTML and SWF files. Finally, the program has a very simple and nice-looking interface that will take a moment or two to get used to.

Now users can get free PDFZilla giveaway licenses to convert PDF documents to editable formats. The giveaway is 100% free with no functional limitation.

To get the license simply visit the giveaway promotion page and download the application. Register the application using the license code 8061822TWDV6YUK as given on the giveaway page.

NOTE: Free giveaway promotion of PDFZilla will be closed on February 5th, 2011.

[ Download PDFZilla ] [ Mirror ]

Thanks to “Dickson Woo” of PDFZilla for sharing the news. If you want to contact us with news, tips, etc, contact us here.

Microsoft Mathematics is an application that provides a set of mathematical tools which will help students get their school work done quickly and easily. With Microsoft Mathematics, students can easily learn to solve equations step-by-step while gaining a better understanding of fundamental concepts in pre-algebra, algebra, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, and calculus.

Microsoft Mathematics includes a full-featured graphing calculator that’s designed to work just like a handheld calculator. Additional math tools help you evaluate triangles, convert from one system of units to another, and solve systems of equations.

Mathematics 4.0 also comes with a friendly user interface designed with the popular ribbon interface. This differs from the Math add-in for Word and OneNote in that it has more of a learning focus than just providing equation support in documents.

You can download Microsoft Mathematics from the download link below.

[ Download Microsoft Mathematics ]

Check out this site for some software ratings and reviews.

LogViewer Pro is a simple, freeware, lightweight, portable application developed to quickly view, analyze and compare huge log files, even if the size of the log file is 4GB or more. It offers simple tabbed interface for doing comparisons of multiple log files simultaneously.

LogViewer Pro is lightweight in the sense it is very light on system resources, especially when you’ve opened simultaneously multiple large log files. It helps you to quickly analyze any log file by marking the information, errors and warnings present in it. Errors are marked as red, yellow signifies warnings and blue signifies information. You can however customize the colors according to your choice. LogViewer Pro also lets you create a new regular expression to be marked with custom color.

The search option present in the app helps you find any specific part of the log file easily. It also lets you search in forward and backward directions. You can also define filters to narrow down the search. It also lets you bookmark any place of your log file. You can get access to all the bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu.

Special “Follow tail” mode lets you change on per-tab basis. So you can enable “Follow tail” for one file, and disable it for another. The file highlighting feature now supports 20 different colors. Lines can be matched using RegEx, so you can use one color option for several different words: you should specify “word1|word2|...” for this.

LogViewer Pro Features:

• Fast scrolling, lightweight app that consumes low memory even when you are working with large log files.
• Supports any file size. (Even files of size 4 GB and larger)
• Multi-tabbed interface for easy comparison.
• Auto-reload file, “Follow tail” mode.
• Allows to highlight some lines. (“errors”, “warnings” and “info” )
• Supports multiple encodings: ANSI, OEM, UTF-8, Unicode LE/BE etc.
• Powerful log file search both in forward and backward directions.
• File printing, line wrapping, configurable tab expansion, line numbers
• Always-on-top option
• Unicode names support

The application is a boon for people like us who have to deal with large log files regularly. It runs on all 32-bit versions of Windows.

Note: This application is free for Personnel Home Use only.

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A quick heads-up for our readers. A time-limited giveaway of PDFTiger, a premium PDF creator and converter software is up and running now until 21 October, 2010. This promotional offer lets you grab a free genuine license key of PDFTiger, normally worth $40. So, hurry up and grab it before time runs out (Giveaway details are given at the end of this article).

PDFTiger is a Word To PDF Converter and PDF To Word Doc Tool. It lets you accurately create PDF documents from Word, Excel, Powerpoint, text or images. PDFTiger can also convert PDF files into editable Microsoft Word Documents, Rich Text Documents, Plain Text Files, Images, HTML Files, and Shockwave Flash SWF Files.

PDFTiger Can Convert:

PDFTiger was able to convert a PDF file into Word document in just three mouse clicks. It preserved the original quality of the PDF files and accurately converted both text and images present in the PDF. It also doubles up as a PDF creator. It accurately creates PDF outputs of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, text, images, etc (see table above).

Features:

• All To PDF Creator — Convert Word, Excel, TXT, PowerPoint and All Printable Files into PDF Documents.
• PDF To All Converter — Convert PDF Documents into Word, TXT, JPG, HTML and Flash Files.
• Image To PDF Maker — Convert Scanned Images(BMP, JPG, TIFF, GIF etc) into PDF Document.
• Batch Mode — Batch Convert More Than 10,000,000 Files at One Time.

PDFTiger Free License Limited-Time Giveaway

Simply visit the PDFTiger giveaway page and click on the Download button to download a copy of PDFTiger. After downloading, use the registration code R8Z8682LMDUAKHW to register the software. You can also download PDFTiger from the download link here.

Microsoft Office 2010 was released back in June, 2010 and has different types of activations like Multiple Activation Key (MAK), Key Management Service (KMS) for volume licensing, and the Retail licenses. You can easily find what type of activation your Office 2010 installation is using along with the status of your activation. To find out the detailed information, simply follow the steps mentioned below.

1. Open an administrative level command prompt. (To do this, click on the Start Menu, type cmd in the Start Menu search box, right-click on the Command Prompt entry and select Run as administrator.)
2. After opening the elevated command prompt, navigate to the Office14 folder:
   • 32-bit Office on 64-bit OS, use the command: “cd \Program Files(x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14“
   • 32-bit Office on 32-bit OS and 64-bit Office on 64-bit OS, use the command: “cd \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14“
3. Now, execute the following command: “cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus“
4. After the successful execution of the command, look at “LICENSE NAME” for license type and “LICENSE STATUS” for activation status.

If Office 2010 is KMS activated you will see “KMS_Client edition” in the license name field, as shown in the screenshot below:

If Office 2010 is MAK activated you will see “MAK edition” in the license name field, as shown in the screenshot below:

If Office 2010 is activated using Retail license, you will see “Retail edition” in the license name field:

Thanks to the Office Deployment Support Team Blog for this update.

Vectorian Giotto is a Flash creator application using which you can easily create professional Flash animations even if you are not a Flash professional. Vectorian Giotto’s powerful yet very simple user interface, requires only designing your Flash animation using the tools and pre-defined controls provided by it, without even writing a single line of code. It will allow you to quickly and easily create professional Flash animations for websites and other projects.

Before using Vectorian Giotto, creating Flash animations was not my cup of tea. I had no experience whatsoever with Flash animation or graphics tools before. But, with the easy-to-use interface, powerful drawing tools, shape morphing, stunning built-in effects, sound and scripting support, a beginner like me will find it very easy to make incredible, professional-looking movies, while for any expert designer, they can do much more in less time. And if you are short of creativity, you can use any of the pre-installed templates and simply change the text and graphics in it to have a polished flash banners.

In addition, Vectorian Giotto supports many layers and gradient fills as well as intersection, union and difference operations on objects. You can also combine and manipulate text, images and shapes to create complex Flash animation movies. You can set key animation parameters such as dimensions, background color and frame rate. You can preview your animation inside Vectorian Giotto without launching a browser or external player.

Other amazing effects that you can easily apply to your animation are you can make objects translate, rotate, change size, change color or gradient fill, stretch, skew, or even do at the same time any combination of those effects. It may sound complex but you can apply all of those effects with minimal effort.

Vectorian Giotto lets you transform your creative ideas to cool banners, navigation menus, and other flash animation artworks, with an impressively short learning curve.

Vectorian Giotto Giveaway

Thanks to Ratko Bozovic of Vectorian Inc. for providing us 5 free licenses of Vectorian Giotto, each worth $89.95 for giveaway to My Technology Guide readers.

To win, simply, subscribe us and write a comment below, telling us which is your favorite portable app. (P.S. You don’t have to tell us about your favorite portable app to win this!).

Don’t forget to enter your correct e-mail address that you used to subscribe us, in the contact form so that we can send you the license key, if you are one of the winner.

You can take part in this giveaway until August 11, 2010 (12:00 pm, GMT -7). The winners will be randomly picked and announced on August 12, 2010.

Giveaway is over and the winners are announced here.

[ Download Vectorian Giotto ]

Microsoft has announced that Office for Mac 2011 will be available at the end of October, 2010. There will be mainly two different retail editions of Office 2011 for Mac available for purchase: Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 and Office for Mac Home and Business 2011. Additionally, there is a special edition for higher education students, staff and faculty: Office for Mac Academic Edition 2011.

Additionally, if you buy Office 2008 for Mac product from an authorized reseller between August 1, 2010, and November 30, 2010, you will be able to upgrade to Office 2011 for Mac, when it is available, free and at no additional cost through the Microsoft Office for Mac Technology Guarantee Program.

How much will Office for Mac 2011 cost?

The new lineup of Office for Mac has a lower price per installation for all editions. You can take a quick look below for the Office 2011 for Mac pricing structure:

1. Office for Mac Home & Student Edition 2011 (includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac and Messenger for Mac 8 )
   $119.00 US ERP (1 install)
   Family Pack: $149 US ERP (3 installs)

2. Office for Mac Home & Business Edition 2011 (includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac, Outlook for Mac and Messenger for Mac 8 )
   $199.00 US ERP (1 install)
   Multi-Pack: $279 US ERP (2 installs)

3. Office for Mac Academic Edition 2011 (Special edition for higher education students, staff and faculty and will only be available through authorized academic stores and Microsoft (http://www.officeformac.com). It includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac, Outlook for Mac and Messenger for Mac)
   $99 U.S. ERP

If you buy Home and Student edition and later need the additional functionality of a desktop e-mail client, then you can easily upgrade to Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 using the online upgrade functionality.

Microsoft Office for Mac Technology Guarantee Program

If you buy Office 2008 for Mac today, you’ll be able to upgrade to Office 2011 for free. Purchase a qualifying Office 2008 for Mac product between Aug. 1, 2010, and Nov. 30, 2010, and you will be eligible to download Office for Mac 2011 at no additional cost when it becomes available.

The following Office for Mac products are NOT eligible for the Technology Guarantee

• Trial versions of Office 2008 for Mac
• Volume licensing
• Individual Application SKU
• Office for Mac Word
• Office for Mac Excel
• Office for Mac PowerPoint
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Microsoft Office 2010
• Office for Mac 2004 or older version are also not eligible

More information about the Microsoft Office for Mac Technology Guarantee Program.

[via Mac Mojo: The Office for Mac Team Blog]

Do you want to know if you can use Microsoft Office on two computers? Yes, you can as Microsoft legally allows the installation and use of Microsoft Office on two computers (1 desktop and 1 laptop computer system).

In a twitter reply by Microsoft Australia (MSAU), offered an interesting insight that many of you might not have been aware of. You can use any version of Microsoft Office legally on both your home computer and a portable computer system like laptop. As long as both the systems belong to you and you’re the person who has bought the copy of Microsoft Office. That’s a very handy tidbit of information. The reply to a tweeted question also stated that the Home and Student edition of Microsoft Office is licensed for installation on up to three machines.

Specifically, the license terms state (Extract from the MSLT):

You can easily get the theory behind this not well-publicized license term. Today, many computer-users have both a desktop and a laptop or a notebook (or any other portable device), so if Microsoft charges these users for both machines, then it will be unjustified. After all, if you’re using your computers for commercial purposes you’re obviously not supposed to be using Microsoft Office Home and Student versions. Thanks to section c, however, you can set up your portable install on a laptop or any other portable device and still be fully compliant and legal — thus saving your hard-earned money.

This license term applies to all Microsoft Office retail products, including the Academic editions.

Neowin also updated their post saying, “other productivity suites may have similar license terms (ie. Adobe products), so be sure to always check your license terms before shelling out for extra copies.”

[via NeoWin]

Microsoft has released free resources designed to enable developers leveraging Visual Studio 2010 to improve their workflow and productivity. The free refreshed version of the Visual Studio 2010 Keybinding Posters (aka. Visual Studio 2010 Cheat Sheets) are now up for grabs from the Microsoft Download Center. The posters are set up to make it as easy as possible for developers to take advantage of the keyboard shortcuts available for common commands in Visual Studio 2010.

Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s .NET Developer Platform during the announcement about the posters said:

“Earlier this week the Visual Studio team released updated VS 2010 Keyboard Shortcut Posters. These posters are print-ready documents (that now support standard paper sizes), and provide nice “cheat sheet” tables that can help you quickly lookup (and eventually memorize) common keystroke commands within Visual Studio.

This week’s updated posters incorporate a number of improvements: letter-sized (8.5″x11″) print ready versions are now available; A4-sized (210x297mm) print ready versions are now available; the goofy people pictures on them are gone. The posters are in PDF format — enabling you to easily download and print them using whichever paper size is in your printer. Posters are available for each language. Simply look for the download that corresponds to your language preference (note: CSharp = C#, VB = VB, FSharp = F#, CPP = C++).”

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 earlier this year along with .NET Framework 4.

[ Download Visual Studio 2010 Cheat Sheets (Keyboard Shortcuts) ]