Friedbeef’s Tech

The world’s most famous ‘unconference‘ will be coming to Kuala Lumpur this weekend!

What is Barcamp?

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants.   BarCamp Malaysia is an ad-hoc conference and is part of the larger BarCamp movement.  It will be a social melting pot for people passionate enough about any particular topic to share their knowledge with others.  Topics range are wide ranging and will include:

• Digital Photography
• Google Android
• Monkeying around with Yahoo! Search
• The Malaysian Free Software Movement: The Way Forward
• Building data-driven applications with Drupal
• Firefox browser extension and theme development
• Monetizing Youtube
• Music 2.0: Community Building & Survival Guide
• Recruitment & Social Networking
• Blogging in Malaysia
• Interesting Web 2.0/Mobile services in China, Japan, India, Kenya and Korea

…and so much more!

Clickthru to find out more about the event, venue, and other frequently asked questions.  Entrance is free - so you can walk in on the day itself!

In the spirit of participation, I’ll be sharing a short session on Saturday 3pm on ‘How to become 25% more productive: Essential free tools for the modern office’, so do drop by and say hi…  Hope to see you there :)

UPDATE: I will be blogging the event as it unfolds so do check out www.friedbeef.com for regular updates both Saturday and Sunday!

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Universal Document Converter (UDC) is a piece of software that will allow you to convert documents of any type can be exported into Adobe PDF or graphical files in 7 popular formats: TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PCX, DCX, GIF or BMP.  Once installed, UDC will be listed alongside your printers, so within any application, just click print and select UDC and you’ll export that document to the file format of your choice.

The good:

• The fact that the application functions as a virtual printer means that you can convert files directly from any application which supports printing.  This saves an extra step of having to launch a separate conversion program every time you want to generate a file in a different output.
• Support for less popular but industry formats like Autocad & QuarkXpress.  These file types are usually forgotten by many of the other converters out there.

• High resolution. The ability to export documents with a resolution up to 2,400 DPI enables you to save all elements of design of advertising materials and the minutest details of drawings and electronic diagrams.

• Automatic margin cropping. The function of automatic cropping of empty margins makes it unnecessary to edit graphical copies of tables and diagrams before placing them in presentations or text documents.

• Scalability. The possibility to share Universal Document Converter over a network and use it from workstations allows for a significant increase in speed for the conversion of documents.

• Ease of use.  The software is pretty intuitive, and the tutorials are very straightforward in case you every get stuck.  If all else fails, there’s also software support.

What could be better:

Price.  For the most popular conversions like document to PDF, there are free alternatives which function the same way (acting as a virtual printer) and work just as well.  Even for other conversions, PDF to picture etc. there are other alternatives as well.  With prices starting at USD$69, UDC can be too steep for most people.

Tipping point:

Is it worth the price?  The key consideration in this decision is - how often you convert files.  Due to its universal nature and software support, over a long run, this will save you time (and as a result - money) if you convert files on a very regular basis.   My advice would be to try out the demo version first, and then try the free alternatives for PDF writers (they another here), and and other converters.   - then make your decision.

Links: Universal Document Converter

What do you use to convert documents?  Tell us in the comments!

Disclaimer: UDC has paid me to test and review their service - and to give an honest opinion. Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, and have not been influenced by UDC in any way.

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This is a post by one of our new contributors, Sumesh.  Flickr is undoubtedly the most popular image sharing website, and a whole community of passionate users have developed around the awesome web tool. Thousands of photographers, designers and web addicts flock to Flickr every day in the hope of finding something useful and different.  Here are a few tools to enhance your Flickr experience (they include three web applications and two desktop apps):

1. How to Get a Better Flickr Viewer With Pictobrowser

There are many popular 3rd party viewers available for Flickr - Polaroid Gallery, Tiltviewer, dFGallery etc. , but few are as sleek as Pictobrowser, furthermore - it gives you a lot of options in terms of putting up interactive Flickr galleries on your own website, so your visitors can also enjoy the same viewing experience. Visit Pictobrowser

2. How to Search Flickr Faster With Compfight

Are you still stuck to Flickr’s slow and bloated search page? Try Compfight for a change of pace. Compfight is an AJAX-powered (meaning that it searches images and displays them without any extra pageload) Flickr image search engine. It pulls the images via the Flickr API, and you can choose to search for only safe images , Creative Commons licensed images(useful for blog posts) etc. The images are displayed as thumbnails, and dimensions of the image are displayed when you hover your mouse over the image. The image usually links to the Flickr page, and opens in a new tab/window when you click on it. Visit Compfight

3. How to Get More Download Options With GetFlickr

Ever wondered why you were restricted to downloadng smaller sizes of that beautiful image on Flickr? Most likely, it was because of restricted permissions. GetFlickr is a plain and easy tool to get the URL to the full-sized version of an image. Granted, GetFlickr is in need of a redesign (if it has a design, in the first place), but it is a neat little tool. Visit GetFlickr

4. How to Upload More Efficiently With FoldrMonitr

Are you still stuck with the official Flickr Uploadr? Would you like to automate uploading? Try FoldrMonitr - it watches a folder that you designate, and immediately uploads any images that have been newly added to the folder. Very useful if you need to upload a large number of images, and are too lazy/busy to upload them manually. Visit FoldrMonitr

5. How to Find Flickr Images Without a Browser With FlickrFinder

[Mac OS X only] Named after Finder on Mac OS X, FlickrFinder is a standalone application to browse Flickr images without the aid of the browser. Visit FlickrFinder here.  There are also other great tools like FlickrStorm, which James recently mentioned in a post titled "A Faster Way to Use Flickr Images In Your Wordpress Blog".

Sumesh writes software and web reviews, design resources and solves your computer problems on TechZilo , and will be contributing ongoing to this blog.  If you’re interested in a regular paid position or guest writing, do contact me. 

What other Flickr tools do you use?  Let us know in the comments!

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