It seems that although everyone makes their forms downloadable online as a PDF, almost no one formats the files as editable forms that can be filled out within acrobat reader. This means I have to download the form, print it out, fill it out by hand, and then either walk it over to whoever needs it or scan it, save it, and attach it to an email. Sounds like it would be easier to just stop by the registration table and fill it out on the spot.  Formulate Pro fixes that problem.

I should say, that if you have Acrobat Pro, there is a typewriter and annotation tool that works relatively well, but at $449 from Adobe’s site, or $378 from Amazon, it is a little pricey just for filling out forms. That is where Formulate Pro comes in. This tool does one thing, and does it well. It allows you to type, draw and make check marks on top of the PDF.  Then, you can save it with those edits as a PDF of print it out. And, it’s free!

After downloading and installing the app it is as simple as opening the PDF, clicking the “T” (text tool) for typing, the squiggle tool for drawing, or the checkmark to check a box, then save or print. Right now, it’s only for mac, but the source [...]

Continue Reading “Fill Out PDFs Free with Formulate Pro”

I will be honest.  Today I took a longer than normal lunch so that I could watch live coverage of the Apple event on TWiT.  As a self-proclaimed fanboi, I was excited and intrigued by the latest thing I didn’t know I needed until Steve Jobs told me I did.

All joking aside, this is an interesting device.  Apple is positioning it as a media player, content creator, book reader, and TV.  It’s a lot to fit into something .5″ thick, but they seem to have done a pretty good job.  You can go to Apple’s iPad site for all the gory details and places like Engadget and TUAW for even more.  But here’s a brief overview:

1. It has a pretty 9.5 x 7.5″ LCD screen with an iPhone-style capacitive touch interface (there is a pretty wide bezel, but the people who have played with it say that it makes sense because you have to have some place to hold it without touching the multi-touch screen).
2. The screen is 1024 x 768 pixels which mean that HD movies are going to look pretty good on your lap.
3. It will have a full browser, email app, photo app, notes app, etc (think iphone standard apps).
4. They have totally revamped iWork’s UI to make it intuitive on a touch screen. Even keynote’s graphics-intensive [...]

   Continue Reading “Apple’s iPad: What We Know, What We Don’t, and Whether to Buy, Wait, or Pine”

If you’re interested in watching Apple reveal it’s latest creation at it’s event this morning, there are lots of places on the web to watch it unfold today at 10 AM PST (1 PM EST).

Bloggers love to Live blog these events and it’s almost live being there.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

• Live.GDGT.com
• Engadet Live
• TUAW

And if you are really obsessive, one of my favorite podcasters, Leo Leporte and his Twit network, plan on covering the event all day with follow-up after the announcements. You can watch them here:

• Live.Twit.TV

Will it be the mythical tablet?  Also rumored are iLife 2010, and iPhone 4.0 software.

I can’t wait.

I’ve seen many little utilities/preference panes I could install that would show me extra details on memory usage, cpu temeprature, hard disk availability, and everything else under the sun. iStatMenus puts it all into one nice package and displays all of them in your menubar. Though it has far more that would be interesting to get into here, here’s a list of what I like best about it:

1. You can view multiple CPU cores as one item or multiple graphs.
2. The memory usage meter will display your top five processes.
3. HD USage will monitor your mobile me space as well.
4. Network drop down shows peak as well as current bandwidth.
5. Every sensor from temperature to exhaust fans is available for monitoring.
6. The best date and time display.  It drops down a full month calendar with user defined alternate times as well.
7. Every item is configured via one preference pane in system preferences.

The best part?  It’s free!!  So, if you need to monitor your stats or just change your date and time display to a more helpful configuration, go to iSlayer.com and download iStatMenus.  Available for Macs only.

We’ve all heard about the devastation in Haiti following the earthquakes there, and it’s exciting to see so many people rushing to help.  Here’s a way you can help, but it’s for today (Jan 20, 2010) only.  Visit Indie+Relief and buy any of the software from their partners and the proceeds will all go to help those in Haiti.

It’s a great line-up of programs, both Mac and iPhone / iPod Touch titles.  Some that I use on the list are Acorn, Things, Instapaper, Rowmote, Tweetie, and there a couple I’m going to pick-up today.

Or if you would just like to donate money click on the Compassion banner in the sidebar.

Check out Indie+Relief.

In honor of Martin Luther King:

Well 2009 is officially over, and I was thinking about some of the tech that made it’s way into my world during the year. Here’s some of my favorites:

Software:
Mozy – I committed to online backup this year having deciding that my time machine wasn’t enough.  Mostly because if something happened at my house the chances of losing both were pretty high.  I went with Mozy, and after having a harddrive crash while on a trip and I was still able to access my data, I’m sold.  It’s definitely worth the $5 a month it costs.

Dropbox – This has become a tool I use daily.  Great for online storage and sharing.  And it’s FREE!

Teleport – This little bit of software allows you to share one keyboard and mouse between 2 macs without any extra hardware.  It’s really cleaned up my desk and I love the way it works.  Price: FREE

Hardware:
iPhone 3gs – This is so much more than a phone to me. It allows me to be away from the office but still take care of quite a bit of my daily tasks.  I love it.

MacBook Pro Uni-body – My old Macbook Pro was great for almost 3 years, but my recent upgrade to one of the new Uni-body models has been a great one.  The power is awesome.  To compare, my old [...]

Continue Reading “My Favorites from 2009″

There is an interesting article over at churchrelevance.com about the most popular words searched by teens.  This is good insight for youth workers.

Here’s what they deemed as “bad” in the top 100:

BAD SEARCHES FROM THE TOP 100
by boys and girls (ages 18 & under)

#4 – Sex (#4 for boys & #5 for girls)
#5 – Porn (#5 for boys & #24 for girls)
#32 – Boobs (#17 for boys)
#82 – Pussy

Here’s a little of what they found:

You can learn a lot about someone by what they search for online. These top search results paint a pretty clear psychographic picture of the priorities, preferences, and habits of online youth.

Kids and teens are obviously learning and experimenting with adult content much sooner than many parents, kids’ ministries, and youth ministries realize. As Time magazine reported early this month, 40% of adolescents have intercourse before ever talking to their parents about safe sex, birth control, or sexually transmitted diseases. Parents often dread giving their kids the sex talk(s), but studies show that kids want to learn from their parents. Instead, many kids learn about sex through friends, the Internet, and experimentation.

I find it really ironic that in the top 100 is a search on how to disable one of the more popular internet filters that many parents use thinking they [...]

Continue Reading “Top 100 Kids’ Online Search Words for 2009″

I have had an idea/problem that I have been percolating on for a while now.  The basic idea was that I wanted to have copies of several specific folders on specific, different external storage solutions so that I could have them with me when I needed them.  Complicating this problem is the fact that I am lazy.

Of course, I could copy my documents folder the the thumb drive every couple of days, my video clips to my external HDD every time I added a new clip, and my seminary files to the small thumb drive each night before I went to bed, but that would take both time and discipline. The only thing I have less of right now than time is backup discipline.

That is how I ran across what is hands down the best Mac sync utility I have found: ChronoSync.  It does the standard things like let you schedule a sync or backup with a drive every X number of hours/days/weeks/etc.  But it has one incredible function that sealed the deal for me.  I can schedule a sync to happen whenever the target drive is mounted.  Now, whenever I plug in one of the aforementioned devices, the specific files on my computer I want synced with that device automatically get updated and update the external storage.  This, of course, reinforces my confidence in the idea that if I wait long enough, I will find a [...]

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Here’s an update to the post about the iPhone Band.  Josh posted an update listing out the apps used (all links open iTunes):

Guitars: (Electric and Bass)
Pocket Guitar ($.99)

Piano #1:
Virtuoso Piano Lite (Free)

or
Virtuoso Piano

Piano #2:
Pianist ($3.99)

Drums:
DigiDrummer Lite (Free)

or
Digidrummer ($1.99)

A few other things to keep in mind:

1. If your students are using an iPhone have them put it on Airplane mode, so they can still get to apps without having to receive phone calls.
2. Also turn off all notifications in the settings app on itouches.
3. If you do the bit with the phone call, make sure the one person getting the phone call has their phone set to receive calls. Also, the person calling has to be in another room because the sound [...]

   Continue Reading “How To: iPhone Band”