Daily Archives: February 20, 2007

Escaping from Adobe’s clutches

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Here’s something useful:

PDFescape is a new way to open PDF files. It allows you to open your PDF files right here on the web without downloading or installing any software.

With PDFescape, you can fill in PDF forms, add text and graphics, add links, and even add new form fields to a PDF file. Best of all, it’s Free!

Have just one PDF form to fill out, but don’t want to buy $299 Adobe Acrobat? PDFescape is for you!

Have a PDF form you want customers to fill out and email back to you? PDFescape is for you!

Another useful web service. Thanks to Tony Hirst for the link. Of course, users of Mac OS X don’t really need it, because the operating system does pdf out of the box. But we’re only — what is it? — 5% of the personal computer world!

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Batman’s gizmo

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From Technology Review…

It takes about six minutes for a firefighter with a full load of gear to reach the top of a 30-story building by running up the stairs–and when he gets there, he’s tired. A group of MIT students have designed a rope-climbing device that can carry 250 pounds at a top speed of 10 feet per second. They have a contract to make the climbing device for the U.S. Army for use in urban combat zones, and they hope to make it available to rescue workers.

The students founded a company, Atlas Devices, based in Cambridge, MA, to commercialize the device, which is about the size of a power drill.

It’s amazing: see the video on the Atlas site.

EU has plans for your privacy

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From today’s New York Times…

PARIS, Feb. 19 — European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people’s Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive.

In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.

A draft law in the Netherlands would likewise go further than the European Union requires, in this case by requiring phone companies to save records of a caller’s precise location during an entire mobile phone conversation….

Apart from anything else, it’s an idiotic concept because it wouldn’t apply to services based in the US. So people will continue to use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail etc. Unless, of course, the EU proposes to make it a crime for European citizens to have a Gmail account.