Q:

Is there software available to allow one to run Apple-compatible apps on Android tablets?

A:

None of which I’m aware. However, bear in mind many of the most popular apps for the iPhone are now available in versions for Android phones. My guess is that, over time, if Android tablets start selling in large numbers, the same phenomenon is likely to occur, with at least the top apps for the iPad being issued in versions for Android tablets.

Q:

I subscribe to 10 magazines. When I want to save an article I tear it out and file it away. I was wondering if there is another way to save articles by faxing/photocopying them and sending them as an attachment to a remote site accessible anywhere in the world. I would be willing to pay for the site but it has be easy to use.

A:

If you use access Gmail in Google Chrome on your computer, you can now view PDF attachments using Chrome's built-in viewer. The Chrome PDF plug-in is faster than the Google Docs previewer, its rendering accuracy is better, and you don't have to change settings anywhere for this to take effect. Just use Gmail in Google Chrome and the 'view' link will automatically open your file in the Chrome PDF viewer.

The change is also nice because Chrome's PDF plug-in actually lets you print, unlike the previewer which can only manage recursion printing (it generates a PDF of your PDF).

I don't often need to open a PDF file, and when I do it's typically something I'm looking at in my Web browser. Since I'm using Google Chrome, the built-in PDF viewer is what I use 90% of the time. I do, however, get the odd email at my day job (where we don't use webmail) with a PDF attachment I need to read.

So I thought, "why not open those in Chrome, too?" It's easy enough to set up. Here's how to do it.

First, locate your Google Chrome executable. The easiest way to do this is to right-click your Chrome shortcut and choose properties from the menu. In the box labeled target, you'll see the complete path to Chrome.exe. Highlight that text and copy it to your clipboard.

Google Chrome comes with an inbuilt PDF viewer that allows you to view PDF files right in the browser. Some people will love it and some don’t. If you belong to the latter camp and wish to turn off the PDF feature for good. Here’s how you can do it.

Open your Google Chrome and type “about:plugins” in the URL bar.

Scroll down the list until you see the option “Chrome PDF Viewer”.

Click the “disable” link beneath it.

That’s it. From now on, whenever you click on a PDF link, it will prompt you to download the file instead of displaying it in the browser.

To restore the PDF Viewer feature, just follow the same steps and click the “Enable” link.

Yesterday, Google delivered a major update to Chrome Beta users, bumping the version to 8.0.552.28. The changelog for this release is a doozy, and runs down loads of security updates, UI tweaks, and plumbing for features which are still coming soon (like Cloud Print and password sync).

You'll also find plenty of new experimental features on the Chrome Beta about:flags page. The big addition, however, is the arrival of the built-in PDF viewer. Chrome's viewer currently offers a major advantage over Adobe Reader when it comes to security -- sandboxing -- which helps prevent malicious PDFs from successfully attacking your computer.

Chrome's internal Flash plug-in has also been updated, as has the V8 JavaScript engine, and a ton of sync-related code has been added (doing a ctrl+f on the SVN log for sync will turn just about your whole scrollbar yellow). Beta users can now set an encryption passphrase to secure their data and apps are now included by default. Maybe that means we'll be able to download some from the Chrome Web Store soon...

Dev channel users should also have an update ready this morning -- which brings a new version of the internal Flash plug-in.

I am not sure about you, but every time I came across a great tutorial on the Web, I will convert the content to a pdf file and keep it for future reference. Some of you might be pondering why I am wasting my time converting it to pdf since I can just bookmark the site. There are several reasons for this: firstly, I am not always connected to the Web, so if I need the information immediately, I won’t be able to access it. Secondly, there is no guarantee that the site will forever be there for me. It could be available today and disappear the next day (we’ve seen too much of this, don’t we?)

If you are like me, and are also using Google Chrome, you are in luck, here are several PDF extensions that you can use to make the whole conversion process much easier and faster.

1. Save As PDF

This is my favorite extension for pdf conversion. In my experience with several other extensions, this is the best, in terms of the speed and quality of conversion.

After installing the extension, you will see an icon at the toolbar. When you come across any webpage that you want to convert to pdf, simply click on the button and it will start the conversion immediately. The conversion is fast (typically less than 5 seconds) and it runs in the background without disrupting you from your work.

Save As PDF also comes with plenty of configuration options (in fact, it is the only pdf extension that comes with configuration option). Things you can configure including the page size, page format, page margin and whether it should convert javascript, images and background. The best of all, it allows you to set a password for your converted pdf file.

2. PDFmyURL

Instead of an icon in the toolbar, the PDFmyURL icon appears in the URL bar. Similarly, on a page that you want to be converted to pdf, just click on the icon and it will do all the work in the background.

The speed of conversion is rather fast, but it is not able to convert images properly for sites that are using lazy loading. In addition, it seems to add an extra margin to the four sides of the page, which make the file size bigger.

3. Web2PDFConverter

Web2PDFConverter is yet another pdf converter extension for Google Chrome. One of its unique feature is the ability to view your converted PDF files in Google Docs. You can then choose to save the pdf file in your Google Docs and free up storage space on your computer.

One annoyance with Web2PDF is that during conversion, it takes control of the browser and prevents you from doing any other things. You won’t be able to switch to other tabs, or even other applications. Doing so will terminate the conversion process. In term of user-friendliness, this is definitely the worst in my opinion.

Wrapping up

If you are looking for a pdf conversion tool for your Google Chrome, I would strongly recommend SaveAsPdf. What other tools do you use to convert your stuff to PDF?

We have previously covered how to convert PDF file to Word document, but if you are looking to convert your PDF into images, spreadsheet, HTML or even SWF files, then you got to give PDFTiger a try. The best of all, it’s free for now.

PDFTiger is having a time-limited giveaway promotion for… well, you already guess it, PDFTiger. PDFTiger is both a PDF conversion tool as well as a PDF creator. From existing PDFs, you can convert them to DOC, RTF, TXT, BMP, JPG, GIF, TIF, HTML or SWF files with only 3 mouse clicks. You can also create PDF file from Word, Excel, Powerpoint, text, Images and all printable files. /> id="more-22905">

Features of PDFTiger

• convert a PDF document into Word with only 3 mouse clicks.
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To enjoy this free giveaway:

Ahh, the thrill of running bleeding-edge software! It's not for the feint of heart, to be sure. Heck, it's not even for someone who has a perfectly strong heart but doesn't do well with watching features appear and disappear on a regular basis.

Take Chrome's nifty internal PDF plug-in. Just a few days ago, Google dropped the need for a command line switch to activate it, enabling it by default for users of the dev channel build. Today, however, another update was pushed and the plug-in has once again been switched off.

You can still enable the plug-in if you wish -- just visit chrome://plugins and click enable underneath the Chrome PDF Viewer.

It's likely that the Chrome team is just ironing out a few kinks prior to pushing the plug-in to the beta channel. With Chrome's accelerated release schedule, it probably won't be long before the PDF viewer joins the internal Flash plug-in on Chrome installs everywhere.

• enter chrome:plugins in your Omnibar
• scroll down to the entry for Chrome PDF Viewer
• click the enable link, and you're good to go.

As the official blog post mentions, it's a bit limited in terms of functionality at this point. No zoom options or navigation controls are presented yet, so you'll have to page down or scroll down to read. You can, however, search the text using control + F as you would on a web page.

My advice: give it a try, but stick to using the Google Docs Viewer for now.

Do you hate the way that Google Chrome handles PDFs? Are you tired of downloading them? Well, now there's an official Chrome extension from Google that lets you view all PDFs and PowerPoint files in Google Docs by default. Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer seems to work well for the most part, but the ability to save a PDF to your Google Docs account would be a useful addition.

It worked fine for me on the latest stable version of Chrome Mac, but some commenters have reported problems with the extension on their Macs. Also, it seems to have trouble with PDFs from password-protected sites -- even when you're logged in -- but that's a minor quibble.

If you're not running Chrome, I previously covered a userscript that does basically the same thing, so you can plug that into Greasemonkey in Firefox or GreaseKit in Safari.

Chrome: Google Docs' open 1 GB storage space can be a handy, centralized space for stuff you find on the web. The Send to Google Docs Chrome extension makes web capturing very fast with instant page-to-PDF and file uploading.

Send to Google Docs doesn't work quite like the Firefox extension that shares its name. If you click its familiar-looking button while looking at a standard page, the page is converted to a PDF (through PDFMyURL) and uploaded to a Captures folder in your Docs space. If you've opened a PDF, image file, or SWF (Flash) file in a new tab, hit the Send to Google Docs button with that tab focused, and that file will arrive whole at Google Docs.