Adobe PDF is perhaps one of the most ubiquitous file formats on the Internet today. It allows users with the Adobe Reader (or other PDF compliant reader software) to view and print (if allowed) PDF documents. The beauty of the PDF format is that it can be created from any originating file format, be it Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, vector images, PowerPoint slideshows, Websites. Anything at all that can be printed out by your computer, can be converted into a PDF document. The best part of the conversion is that the layout of the original document, along with its fonts is retained so your readers get to see your content exactly the way you created it, without having to have the originating software.

While viewing PDF documents is free with the Adobe Reader, Adobe charges big money for its Adobe Acrobat software which is their solution to creating PDF documents. But we don’t want to have to pay to create PDF documents, do we? So I scoured the web and discovered that there are in fact a few free PDF creation tools available for FREE!

BullZip is perhaps the best of the lot, and is downloadable free of charge from here : http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php. It works just like Adobe Acrobat, since installs as a printer driver. The generated PDFs do not contain any kind of advertising or popups which is a major plus point for this program. The only limitation is that its FREE for personal and commercial use for up to 10 users. In most cases, this is not a limitation anyway.

BullZip’s features include :

• Print to PDF from almost any Windows program
• Runs on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/XP x64/2003/2003 x64/Vista/Vista x64/2008
• Supports 64-bit operating systems
• Direct output to the same file each time or prompt for destination
• Control if the printer should ask if you want to see the resulting PDF document
• Control output and prompts programmatically
• Setup can run unattended
• Graphical user interface
• Password protect PDF documents
• 128/40 bit encryption
• Quality settings (screen, printer, ebook, prepress)
• Set document properties, Watermark text, size, rotation, and transparency.
• Superimpose/background documents.
• Appending/prepending documents.
• User interface control.
• Command line interface to all settings.
• COM/ActiveX interface for programmatic control.
• Support for Citrix MetaFrame
• Support for Windows Terminal Server
• Multiple output types supported: BMP, JPEG, PCX, PDF, PNG, and TIFF.

So, if you are looking for the perfect solution to being able to create PDF documents from any Windows program for FREE and without any hassle or limitations, go get BullZip. You will thank yourself you did.

We are all familiar with Tag Clouds on blogs… The more a particular topic gets written about in a blog, the larger its size is, relative to the size of other tags. Its really a clever representation of the metadata of a blog, a nice visual summary, if you like.

Wordle.net is a word cloud creation software written by Jonathan Feinberg. The basic idea behind this software is to key in a bunch of words, specify color, font and layout options and a visually appealing word cloud is generated. You are free to use the word cloud in any which way you desire. Looking at the default color and font themes, it is easy to guess that t-shirt designs was among the main uses Jonathan had in mind when creating this.

There is also a Gallery section which allows people to showcase their beautiful creations on the website. Its a good idea to go through these to get ideas and to help you with your own creative process.

Interestingly, the use of this software has gone beyond the initial purpose the author had in mind. He has received numerous inquiries from teachers and those in the education field for permission to use this software as an educational tool. This naturally came with requests to have some form of censorship, as currently the content in the Gallery is not moderated. Quite unsurprisingly, this is not an easy to do task, since at the time of writing his software gets about 3 Wordle generation requests per minute.

If you do not have a bunch of text you can think of immediately, some of the things you could do is paste in an entire chapter of an ebook to see which are the words which are repeated more often (they will have a larger relative size). Or better still, Wordle supports RSS feeds, which means all you have to do is key in the path to the RSS feed your favorite blog and it will automagically generate a beautiful word cloud from the contents of that blog.

The fonts used in the system are not only pretty to look at, they also support international character sets. Therefore, its possible to use the system out of the box with other character sets such as Arabic, Devanagri and Hebrew.

So, what are you waiting for, head over to Wordle.net and unleash your creative genius!

Hey, I’m back after a long hiatus… This time I would like to share a nice fun-with-photos website aptly known as PhotoFunia! Its amazing how this has not become as ubiquitous as Facebook, but nonetheless, here is the URL : http://www.photofunia.com

Once you get there, there is little explanation needed. But in a nutshell, this website allows you to upload your own (or anyone elses) photograph and have it automagically transformed into one of many works of art, for FREE!. Its really amazing to see how breathtaking the final effect is. My personal favorite is the Pavement Drawing effect (third in the images below).

Please do note that your photo will be publicly viewable, unless you take care to place a checkmark on the ‘My photo should not be available to public’

Here are previews of a fraction of the awesome effects available for FREE!

Ok, now quick pose in front of your webcam, smile and head over to PhotoFunia to create your art masterpiece.