Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Nitro PDF: Saves me money and time

For the past few weeks, I've been using a product called Nitro PDF Professional to create and manipulate PDF's. I was considering Adobe's Acrobat Professional but didn't relish the idea of paying almost $400 for it, particularly since a lot of the PDF manipulation I do is simple stuff.

Nitro has been very easy to use, was a breeze to install, and has been well worth its purchase price (I had a special offer to get it for $49 - the normal price via Amazon is $79). Here are some of the things I use it for:

  • Outboxpile_1I print articles from the web to archive and share. This lets me send articles without fear the links will quit working (some articles roll off after some period of time).

  • I combine PDF's. Sometimes I want to combine information from multiple sources into one document (such as part of a Word doc, some Excel data, and some PowerPoint data, perhaps intermingled with things off of our internal Wiki collaboration tool). I simply print them to the Nitro PDF "printer" and use Nitro to combine them.

  • In an earlier post, I mentioned that I do a lot with Microsoft Project - Nitro makes it easy for me to print project plans, resource plans, etc. to PDF and combine them with other documents and data sources to provide a "one stop" project summary.

  • I download bank statements and credit card statements, then use Ntro's "highlight" capability to highlight and annotate items for documentation for expense reporting. Since I travel a lot, I do this all electronically and send the statement via email as a PDF.

  • Nitro allows me to convert PDF's to Word documents, which is handy when I want to incorporate product descriptions, etc. into summary documents I often create.

  • I print presentations to PDF so I can distribute them. Where necessary, this keeps people from reusing copyrighted material (I can "lock" the PDF to prevent cutting and pasting from the document), but a big thing if you are presenting financial data is that this prevents people from drilling into the "hidden" data behind graphs in PowerPoint.
    • You see, if you create a graph in Excel and paste it into PowerPoint, anyone with the PowerPoint file can open the underlying data sheet and see any data in the spreadsheet - including things on other tabs that you don't want them to see. This approach prevents that.

If all you want to do is read PDF's then use the Acrobat Reader available for free from Adobe. If, however, you want to do more manipulation of PDF's I recommend you check out Nitro PDF Professional as a cost-effective option.

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Comment Conversation Done Better: Never Work Alone

Well, it's the end of day one for our Never Work Alone project, and I've just posted the first summary post on our blog. The scenario we discussed was this one:

A customer comes into a business and asks to buy a product and bill them in a certain way. The person at the counter didn't know how to bill the customer for the product in that way. The customer got frustrated and took their business elsewhere.

The first post is a good example of the kind of discussion you can expect from Never Work Alone, and we would love to have more people involved. So, come on over, discover our insights and get involved in this new endeavour of ours.

And why not do us a favor and pass it along to others if you like what you see?

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Comment Conversation Done Better: Never Work Alone

If you work in a corporate environment, you may find yourself in situations where you really wish you had a sounding board so you could either ask for advice or float ideas and get feedback.

Well, wish no longer. Bren of Slacker Manager, Skip of Random Thoughts from a CTO, and I are happy to announce that we've established a resource to provide community based assistance to all of us in corporate environments, particularly those of us in management and leadership roles. This new resource is called Never Work Alone. Watercooler

What’s Never Work Alone all about?
We’ve all been through “trial by fire” management situations, and have faced difficult management and leadership dilemmas at various points in our careers. As active participants in the brain trust on the internet, we also understand the tremendous power of Community.

The goal of Never Work Alone is to provide a community for managers and leaders to share their experiences and challenges, help each other grapple with issues, learn from each other, and advance the state of the art in enlightened leadership.

How Does It Work?
We’re launching a blog and a Google group. The Google group is at http://groups.google.com/group/neverworkalone. Initially, the blog (http://neverworkalone.typepad.com) will be a weekly summary of a situation that’s reflected upon in the Google group.

We’ll solicit situation ideas via this email address: neverworkalone@gmail.com.

Each week we’ll select a situation and post it to the Google group. Group members can offer suggestions for how to handle the situation. Each week we’ll summarize the situation and responses on the blog, crediting the appropriate respondents and including links to their blogs/websites.

Of course, we fully expect that the Google group won’t be used exclusively for going over the situations. We encourage folks to go ahead and post what they’ve got and see what comes back. We’re doing the structured approach so that people with limited time, but who’d like to participate, will know where to focus their energy.

So come on in, check it out, participate, and let us know how we can make this better!

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Lifehack Reloaded: An ounce of prevention

As we move into the "cold and flu" season, I am re-running a "lifehack" post that I believe has done wonders in keeping me healthy. If you haven't done something like this already, please consider it - I see these sanitizer gadgets all the time at stores like Target for about $2 US for the holder and two bottles of sanitizer.

From June 2005:

As a very frequent flyer, I wanted to share a best practice I picked up from a friend of mine, John Palazza. After noticing that John always had a bottle of hand sanitizer with him, I realized this small idea would be handy to get rid of traveler germs as I made my way through airports and other places where the unwashed masses may gather.

I have seen the following things on planes and in airports:

  • very grungy airline tray tables that haven't been wiped in who-knows-how-long

  • people leaving public restrooms without washing their hands (not me, I assure you)

  • people of all ages coughing and sneezing all over the place

  • other things I'd rather not mention

I then see people eat off those airline tray tables.

I believe this is why I have always had at least one good bout of flu or something more exotic every year. For example, I caught German measles (aka Rubella) after a flight full of coughers about 3 years ago - apparently my childhood vaccine didn't work the way it should've.

But that didn't happen this year! I've been using John's little trick since last summer, and I've now officially made it through a season of heavy winter travel without getting the flu, or even a cold. I attribute it to the wondrous anti-germ powers of my travel-size Purell hand sanitizer, complete with its own handy little rubber harness that allows me to attach it to my briefcase.

I then sanitize my hands before and after meal and beverage service on the flight, and when I get off the plane.

If you travel a lot, why not give it a try? John puts the "Pal" in Palazza.

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Burned out minds yield burned out results

In one of my periodic sweeps to catch up on my Bloglines subscriptions, I stopped by Phil Gerbyshak’s “Make it Great!” blog today, and found a very insightful article on recharging your batteries.  As I’ve written in the past, I’m one of those who really needs my “recharge time.”

Phil breaks this down into a formul of the “4 R’s.”  They are:  Rest, Reflect, Read, and Relax.  These certainly resonate with me, and I realized that I’ve not taken enough time to Rest and Relax lately.  I’ve been doing plenty of Reflecting and Reading, but just haven’t been making as many “a-ha” connections I usually do.

In other words, I’ve been working hard this week, but haven’t been getting the full benefit of that work because my batteries were a bit run down.  This evening I feel more energized and creative.

Skates_1After reading Phil’s post, I realize I'm reaping the benefits of spending all afternoon ice skating with two of my kids (the third went to Build-A-Bear with my wife).

So, check out what Phil has to say.  And don’t forget to use all 4 of the R’s.

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