Minding Your Own Business
It must be a sign that things are going well with a new company when you're too busy to get round to creating a website for it. It's another to-do along with all the others on my list. Another is to get some letter-heads and cards printed. Looking back I should have had the cards done pre-Lotusphere!
In the absence of any letter-heads I've been e-mailing invoices to clients as PDF files. Seeing as how 9/10 of my clients so far are based overseas this has also made things quite a bit quicker. What it took me a while to find out is how to create these PDFs for free. I'll share it with you guys in case you ever need to do the same.
Until recently I had a full licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat 4 and could create PDFs quite easily. Then it started getting a little out-dated, so I started using the trial version of Create Adobe PDF Online. This was a bit hit-and-miss though and you only get three conversions before you have to create a new account with a new email address. Then I noticed that OpenOffice.org's Word equivalent application has a File menu item called "Export as PDF..." that works well, for free!
For a while I was creating files from a template in Word, opening it in OpenOffice.org and then exporting as PDF. Now I have converted all templates and documents over to OOO file format. Not only does this mean free PDFs but I am now free of any MS Office licensing issues. Although, I am already the owner of all this MS software thanks to the Action Pack offer. The idea being that I use it as a small business to learn about MS technologies, which I can then pass on to customers. I have no idea if the way I am using the software follows the T&Cs or not!
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You can subscribe to an individual
This is also a nice example of free software
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It installs a freeware printerdriver on your machine which will create PDF's
I've been using pdf995 for a while. It works well for me and is FREE.
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Keep up the good work. This site rocks.
What does your new company provide... ??? Do you have a product or is it just your coding skills.
Coding skills for the time-being Stu. One day, hopefully, a product. That's where the real money's at...
Near as I can tell, Jake, as long as you don't actually sell (or let) the CDs in the kit, and offer one or more solutions that at least connect to a Microsoft product (the "view as .xls" from "Keeping the Boss Happy" should qualify), and remain small enough to fly below the "enterprise" threshold, you're in line with the T&C. (By the way, that Action Pack offer has to be one of the few real bargains available in the UK. Your £200+VAT buys what $650+GST gets me here. The Canadian dollar isn't exactly top dog on the currency list, but we're running better than a third of a pound these days.)
That's what I'd assumed Stan. But you know what assume did! Made an ass of u and me!! Sorry. Couldn't resist...
When both my servers ran on Win2000 this Action Pack was the only way I could run as a company within the law. Now they are Linux and I can safely remove Office it's only a Windows XP licence I need. Probably better to pay over the odds for the Action Pack just to get all the stuff that comes with it.
That Action Pack is a cracking bargain. I've very nearly bought it several times.
Wish Lotus would do something similar tho to help out contractors who can't really get hold of new software. If they want to push their super new products they have to let us play with them!
You have to know that if you scuttled the pack in favour of XP alone, your next client would be in great and immediate need of a COM-integrated, multi-client solution involving Domino, MS-SQL and Office, would need it day-after-tomorrow, and would be willing to pay a HUGE premium for it. Keeping the pack prevents that sort of thing from happening. It's one of the more obscure Laws of Economics, but it is inviolable.
A very good point Ben. One I've tempted to make in blog-form once or twice.
How the hell do IBM expect to make WorkPlace developers of us Domino guys if we can't get our hand on it!? I have no idea how to get myself a copy...
Jake, Ben -- I think that's what the DeveloperWorks subscriptions are supposed to be about. They're price-comparable with MSDN subscriptions, FWIW.
Hi Jake,
I'm using python and reportlab for printing NotesDocument in to PDF file.
This tool's very free and intuitive fo notes designer's.
Good luck!
Hey!
Good move about OOO. But, don't forget about the iBook. In Panther, choose Print | Save as PDF. Don't remember where the option is in Jaguar though.
Yet another quite easy to use Adobe Acrobat replacement is PDFCreator from SourceForge projects. It is completely free and works like charm.
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Jake,
Here's a link for the Action Pack for any country...
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Nice deal.
Scott
IBM has the Software Access Option for its Business Partners. The program costs USD 795/year and lets you download most IBM software for development, testing purposes. You CANNOT use it for internal production use though. It would be great if IBM would give media for the most commonly used Lotus products, just like the MS Action Pack. Here is a link to SAO:
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IBM also offer a "Run Your Own Business" Value Package to Business Partners at c■1,300 per annum - your BP level determines how many instances of the software you can run.
Great tip. Thanks. Came in handy.