Webware

There are a variety of online tools available to teachers. And though they all focus on something slightly different, they can help make classroom instruction more effective.

Most online tools for teachers provide the option to both create and keep a grade book. Teachers can upload assignments and keep track of their students' attendance. The tools also let teachers share grades with parents. And since the syllabus and assignments are online, students will have access to the class resources no matter where they are. The classroom is truly anywhere the teacher (or student) wants it to be.

The majority of online teaching utilities are designed well. They guide teachers through the process of creating a grade book, uploading content, and making that information available to parents and students. The learning curve isn't steep.

If it's instruction help they're looking for, teachers can join social networks to find best practices or video sites to get class instruction ideas.

Here are five teachers' aids that stand out from the rest.

There are several well-regarded, free ways to take advantage of the Print function to transform just about any file to a PDF. PrimoPDF and doPDF sit at the top of the list, but what about reverse engineering that conversion? Converting in the other direction, from a PDF to a Microsoft Word-compatible format like DOC or RTF is trickier.

For one thing, there's a lot of crap out there. Many PDF-to-DOC converters have similar or even identical names, differentiated sometimes by nothing more than a cunning tap of the space bar. Many offer features that are hamstrung in various ways unless you pay for an upgrade, and just about all of them offer imperfect conversions. Even with these problems, though, you can get a reasonable conversion from the four programs and three Web-based services listed below.

Sometimes right: Some PDF to Word Converter 1.5

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Some PDF to Word Converter 1.5: A basic but uncluttered interface introduces all of the program's conversion options in a sidebar on the right. Some handles batch conversions, converts outer fonts into text and embedded fonts into images, and supports both All Pages and page-range specific conversions. It can remove graphics on demand from the output document, which is always in the RTF format, and supports encryption.

The program suffers from two big drawbacks: the conversions aren't always the cleanest, with occasional image and text overlaps, and there's noticeable image deterioration. In place of drag-and-drop to add PDFs, you can add an entire folder via the folder icon. Some of the interface's option descriptions could be better phrased, too: "delete all graphics" with an option of "false" or "true" really could be posed better as "remove all graphics" and "yes" or "no."

Free PDF to Word Doc Converter 1.1 makes you jump through hoops for a great end result.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Free PDF to Word Doc Converter 1.1 also gets a few things wrong, but eventually lands you the DOC output you want. Impressively, it offers one of the cleanest and most accurate free PDF-to-DOC conversions of the programs tested. You can change the output path and name, convert an entire document or just specific pages, and ditch images in the source PDF if need be. The final output will give you a pitch-perfect conversion.

From there, it goes a bit downhill. The option to open the output DOC in WordPad didn't function when we tested it, nor did the All Pages button. You can work around this by choosing Page Number instead of All Pages (Page Number defaults to the full page count), but it's still irritating. The other big frustration is that while the program is free, after five conversions you're asked to answer a math question a bit harder than the average Captcha. Batch conversion and encryption support are missing, too. If Free PDF to Word Doc Converter's bumpy ride didn't result in such a smooth landing, it wouldn't be worth touching.

Free PDF to Word Converter 1.3: common name, common problems.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Free PDF to Word Converter 1.3 shares many things in common with its competitors besides a similar name: there's an imperfect balance of useful features and a perfect output. What's wrong: there's no drag-and-drop support, and you should be prepared for some minor yet annoying formatting errors, with occasional and minor word and image overlap.

What's right: The program can batch convert PDFs without being restricted to specific folders, can change your output destination, and put out either RTF or DOC. There's support for high levels of security, with space to provide passwords from the PDF owner and the PDF user. You can remove graphics on conversion and micro-manage the spaces between words and text boxes. It's fine for image-free PDFs, but somewhat less than exact with others.

Advanced PDF to Word Converter Free 5.0: nearly-perfect output.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Advanced PDF to Word Converter Free 5.0 nearly crashes and burns on takeoff, but surprisingly leaves you with a nearly-perfect document. It will ask you to reboot on installation, which makes sense for programs that have deep hooks in your operating system but is a clarion warning for such a simple converter. However, as with all these converters, it's the final output that counts the most, and this program's final DOC output looks pretty good.

There's no support for encrypted PDFs, and when you convert or close the program, there's a nag screen to get you upgrade. Batch conversion, RTF and TXT output, and image deletion are restricted to the paid upgrade. The program does offer drag-and-drop additions, adding an entire folder, and user-selected output folders and output renaming. OpenOffice.org users will appreciate that this converter puts out a DOC that OpenOffice Writer can cleanly read images from--unlike many of the others. The biggest problem, of course, is that there is still some image quality degradation and minor text alignment problems.

OpenOffice users should take note that during these tests, I found that the OpenOffice Writer doesn't always play nicely with Rich Text Formatting. There are several free online conversion options as well, and they tend to have better output than the desktop programs.

You can send your PDF as an attachment to Adobe, and within a few minutes they'll send you back either a plain text TXT or HTML file. The service is basic but extremely fast. As long as you don't mind the lack of frills, you can e-mail pdf2txt@adobe.com for the plain text conversion and pdf2html@adobe.com for HTML output, although the HTML service wasn't working when I tested it. More details are here.

PDF to Word, from Nitro PDF.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Nitro PDF, the makers of PrimoPDF, offer a glossy interface for their online PDF to Word format converter. Clearly delineated instructions guide you through uploading your PDF, choosing an output format--either DOC or RTF--and entering your e-mail address. The conversion took a bit longer than Adobe's, but it's worth the wait. The conversion output is a perfect document, precisely the kind of painless process that most of the downloadable options lack. There's no support for encryption, nor for batches, but Nitro's service gets high marks for its precise and fast conversion. Apparently, there are plans to incorporate the PDF-to-Word feature in future editions of Nitro PDF.

There are two other PDF-to-Word services worth mentioning: Koolwire and Zamzar. Koolwire will convert PDFs up to 10MB, but it can also handle DOC, XLS, PPT, VSD, MPP, RTF, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and MS Office 2007 formats like DOCX. Unlike the other services, clicking on their Web site opens an e-mail to which you only need to attach your PDF and then hit Send. The PDF comes out as RTF, with very minor image degradation and no formatting problems.

Zamzar's uploading interface.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Zamzar will convert PDFs up to 100MB at a time, and in addition to converting your PDF into DOC or RTF, it can output ODT, TXT, PS, and PNG. It can handle batch conversion, as long as you don't mind uploading the files one at a time. When it finishes converting, you receive a link that stays active for 24 hours from which you can download your converted files one at a time or all at once in a ZIP. There was minor image degradation, similar to what Koolwire spit out, and one instance of a formatting error.

Overall, there is no option that can be declared 100 percent perfect. Where one service--whether it's online or desktop--fails, it also tends to offer a better interface, or more conversion options than others. The reverse also seems to hold true, where the best conversions are not always buttressed by the greatest of user experiences. Nitro PDF's PDF-to-Word Web site wins for its output and usability, but if you must go with a desktop client I'd choose Free PDF to Word Doc Converter 1.1 for the resulting document only. If you don't mind minor hiccups, but need a better user experience or more conversion options, Zamzar and Free PDF to Word Converter 1.3 are probably what you need.

Disagree with my picks? Have a better suggestion? Tell me about it in the comments.

[h/t Freeware Genius]

If you're wondering about the people who subscribe to your Twitter feed, there's a newish service out called Twittersheep that will tell you about them. It scours your list of followers and pulls together a tag cloud with various keywords to describe them.

If you remember Tweetclouds, the idea is similar, except instead of going through your posting history, it simply grabs its words from the profiles of those who are following you. This isn't an exact science, but it made me notice that a good majority of the people following me are work-related, be it PR people or staffers from companies we profile.

The site requires your Twitter log-in to do its business, so you won't be able to use the service with a friend's name. It does however have a search tool that will let you search for words that are getting buzz. In future versions, I'd love to see some additional metrics like how active your followers are with their own tweets, and things like age, location and gender.

Related: Tweetclouds, Twitstat, TweetStats

(via Digital Inspiration and BNET)

Part of my Twittersheep tag cloud shows me that most of the folks who follow me are marketing and PR people, or founders of companies.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

There's nothing worse than trying to print a two-page article from the Web and have it print out in a half-inch column across 37 sheets of paper. It happens all the time, and if the site you're on doesn't have a special printer friendly option, your only other method was to use special software, or attempt to save the page as a PDF then print it out later.

A service called PrintWhatYouLike takes all the work out of this, and does you one better by letting you select only the parts of the page you want to print, leaving things like large Flash ads, site menus, and other clutter off of your precious bathroom reading.

To do this you just plug in the page's URL. You then have the options of simply clicking the parts of the page you want, or getting rid of things like the site's background and images. There are also some handy tools to change the text size, along with a font changer in case you're printing something off a page that insists on using undersized, illegible fonts.

The service is completely free and worth bookmarking. Power users will want to make use of the bookmarklet, which lets you print any page you're looking at without having to jump back and forth. Just one click and it brings up the special PrintWhatYouLIke interface.

Related: Extra page killer Green Print

[via Lifehacker]

When you run a URL through PrintWhatYouLike it's simply a matter of picking what you actually want to print from the page. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Personal organizer PageOnce has a great iPhone application that I think many will find to be incredibly useful. Like its desktop sibling, PageOnce for iPhone is a feed aggregator the likes of Netvibes or MyYahoo. The only difference is that you're feeding it account information for utilities and services to get a quick overall view of your various balances and spending activity.

I've been using the application for the past few days, and have come to rely on it almost exclusively to keep track of bank accounts, mobile phone usage, and my Netflix queue. In fact, it's currently the only way to track your Netflix account short of visiting Netflix.com or another Web-based queue manager in Safari (although this is coming soon), but will do far more if you're willing to spend the time plugging in all your accounts.

PageOnce for the iPhone keeps each feed in its own container and opens it up like a nice large pop-up that can be scrolled through and dismissed with a quick touch on the screen. You can see all types of accounts that have been up through PageOnce on the Web. Missing, however, is a way to add new accounts from your phone. This will hopefully make it in later editions.

Privacy nuts should be a little wary of putting this much of their personal login information in the cloud, but the good news is the application can be set to forget your password every time you exit, keeping it safe if your phone is lost or stolen. Also, as mentioned in previous coverage, PageOnce uses bank-level security to keep accounts from being hacked.

Below is a demo of PageOnce for the iPhone and iPod Touch in action.

This blog was created to cover cool Web apps, and one of the more interesting trends to follow is that of desktop software that has transitioned to the Web. Keybr, which surfaced a couple of days ago, is a typing tester, the same kind you might have suffered through in school. The goal of these apps (Keybr included) is to give you a scored typing test that rates you on your typing speed and accuracy.

The entire time you're typing, the app will keep track of your speed and accuracy with a live chart of your efforts. Things progress from basic typing, all the way to caps lock, shift and tab controls on blocks of text. There isn't a whole lot of separation between lessons, or instructional sessions, but there are some enjoyable bits like the pink message that flashes along the screen when you score a personal best for speed.

Back in my day (I'm only 25) we had the perennial all-star of typing applications Mavis Beacon, but many folks without simply had to self-teach, or come to terms with their "hen pecking" abilities. While Keybr doesn't have some of the advanced lesson planning and "games" that come with software typing solutions, it's a good way to judge your speed and general accuracy as long as you're willing to put up with the obscure lexicon of made-up words. These days I'd tell any novice typist to use an instant messaging app to get the hang of a keyboard, but there is something to be said about the value of learning touch-typing, as it can save you some serious time and physical strain if learned correctly. Keybr is missing some of that educational goodness, but the built-in charts and slick aesthetic make it a good benchmarking tool to see how well your typing skills are doing.

[via Digg]

Keybr lets you type like your life depends on it. It'll keep track of how fast you're going and if there are any errors. You can also check out a chart of your progress over the course of your lessons to see if you're improving.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

If you're the owner of a blog, there's a chance that, come one day, you might lose some or all of your posts. In order to avoid this, there's BlogBackupOnline, a free solution that will grab everything you've ever done and make a backup of it off site.

Registering your blog (or anyone else's for that matter) is easy, just give it the URL, and if the site is on a popular blogging platform like Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress, it will start backing up posts right away. You don't actually need to give it your login or password to get things going, BlogBackupOnline will simply go through and scrape posts. Once blogs have been registered with the service, backup is automated, so you don't have to worry about it.

Users get 50MB of storage, which might not sound like a lot, but keep in mind the tool is only grabbing text and HTML formatting code, not pictures, videos, or any other related files. If you do run out of space, (for now) the service is offering users extra room for people who hit the storage ceiling.

All posts are stored in a reader that lets you see a quick preview of what they look like, along with the option to send single or multiple posts back to your blog in the event your data is lost or corrupted. BlogBackupOnline also grabs user comments, so if there's a particularly interesting discussion thread, you can recover that too.

There are a few other ways to do blog back-ups. Backupmyblog provides a similar service with a Web interface. Likewise, users of WordPress and TypePad can export their entire blog for backup up at any time, or use a handy plug-in that will send the backup to your e-mail in-box. BlogBackupOnline just takes the extra work out and does it for you.

[found on StartupSquad]

(Credit: Techrigy, Inc.)