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Free business software isn't quite the same thing as free money, unless you're in business--especially by yourself or in a start-up, mom-and-pop, or other small enterprise that lives or dies by the bottom line. That's when tools like Nevitium Invoice Manager look more and more like money growing on trees. It's a top-quality invoice and quotes management utility that is free to use and distribute. It can manage customer and vendor relations, and it even includes a simple yet effective inventory manager.

Installing and setting up Nevitium involves two specific steps. First, we followed a multitabbed … Read more

PDFs can be useful but they can also be a pain; at one time or another, most of us have encountered a PDF that we wished were in an editable format. ByteScout PDF Viewer is a basic program that lets you not only view PDFs but also export them in editable formats. It's nothing fancy, but it does work.

The program's interface is plain, with a few buttons across the top for its features. You can open and view PDFs, print them, and export them as HTML, text, or Word files. That's the extent of what ByteScout … Read more

Adobe Systems, creator of the Portable Document Format standard used for digital documents, has acquired EchoSign, a company specializing in electronic signature technology.

The move means Adobe will get new abilities for its document-handling software. Electronic signatures have held the promise for years of letting people sign documents without having to resort to the paper-based hassles of scanning, faxing, and mailing, but haven't made major inroads.

EchoSign and Adobe hope to change this, naturally. Adobe has been working hard to embed its products as deeply into business computing as Microsoft Office, and EchoSign is part of that effort.

"… Read more

Mozilla programmers have achieved a goal to build a PDF reader out of Web programming technology, the "pixel-perfect" rendering of a particular file.

The file, a research paper on fast execution of JavaScript (PDF), contains formatted text, graphics, tables, and graphical diagrams. With the high-quality rendering, programmers Andreas Gal and Chris Jones declared the pdf.js mature enough to warrant the 0.2 version number yesterday.

The pdf.js project, introduced to the world in June, uses JavaScript and HTML5's Canvas For to process and display the file. Version 0.2 adds a better user interface, support … Read more

Google Chrome's built-in PDF viewer can make opening PDFs super quick. Unfortunately, you don't have access to all of the same tools you can use in apps like Adobe Reader. So how can you choose to download or open PDFs in standalone apps rather than the browser window? It's a quick fix if you follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Chrome and type "about:plugins" into the omnibox at the top.

Step 2: Scroll down and find Chrome PDF Viewer.

Step 3: Click the "Disable" link to prevent PDFs from loading within Chrome.… Read more

PDF files have long been an awkward fit with the Web, but a new project from the developers of Firefox shows how online PDFs are changing for the better.

For years, the only way to view them was with viewer software from Adobe Systems, which created the Portable Document Format in the 1990s. Clicking a link to a PDF often meant a wait as the software loaded, followed by an alien interface, framed within the browser window, that meant actions like searching and printing were different. It's faster today, but PDFs still don't feel like native Web documents. … Read more

Nitro PDF Reader, recipient of a 2010 CNET Editors' Choice Award, has officially jumped to version 2.0. After spending 12 months in beta, Nitro PDF Reader 2.0 comes to us with a host of big-time features, several bug fixes, and other minor enhancements. Some of the most important additions to 2.0 include:

Web browser integration Now you can preview PDF files from within Firefox, Chrome, and IE.

Nitro PDF Creator 2 As if the original built-in PDF creator wasn't enough, now you can pump out PDFs at four times the speed and with a 50 percent … Read more

Google has begun work on the first step of rebuilding Chrome from the inside out on a more secure foundation called Native Client, CNET has learned.

That first step is the built-in Chrome module used to let Google's browser read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Linus Upson, vice president of engineering for the Chrome team, revealed the plan in May at the Google I/O conference, and now evidence is emerging that the first step is under way.

References to the Native Client version of the PDF extension have begun cropping up on the Native Client's bug-tracking database. … Read more

Apple's Preview application initially was just a quick viewer for displaying image and PDF files in OS X, but over the years it has acquired a number of features that have turned it into a useful utility, especially since it is much simpler than tools like Photoshop and iPhoto while offering similar basic manipulation options. We recently covered how to use Preview for editing and organizing multipage PDFs, but in addition it can be used to import images from various sources, including locally attached or shared scanners that use Apple's Bonjour print services. Unfortunately, even when scanning relatively … Read more