Have you ever received an iWork file created in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote on a Mac, and not had any way to deal with it? Next time, try changing the file's extension to .zip, then unzip it with your favorite zip utility. Inside you should find a PDF preview document containing a nicely formatted version of the document in question.

It seems strange that Apple doesn't promote this fact more, as it's a real usability win for iWork users that want to share their documents with non-Mac users. Wouldn't it be nice if Word, Excel, and Powerpoint did this?

[photo by *keng]

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook can already be dangerous places. Things like short links and bogus messages from friends with compromised accounts put unsuspecting and under-prepared users at risk.

Now, AVG's security researchers have discovered a new threat on Facebook. For the first time, they've found hacked Facebook apps. According to AVG, the apps are being used to launch drive-by attacks which target vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash. AVG reports finding seven hacked apps, but they admit there could well be more.

First things first: if you're not running up to date versions of either of those, download them right now. Here's the link to Flash and here's one for Reader. Using anything but the most current version could leave you open to attack.

The attack works like this. Visit the Facebook page for any of the hacked apps and click to install. Instead of the normal process, the page will try to push a poisoned PDF document to your machine. Once open, the infected PDF infects your system with a bogus antivirus application - which are often notoriously difficult to remove.

I've mentioned fake antivirus programs like these before on Download Squad. If you've been infected, you can try the tools listed on this post to clean up your system.

To keep from getting infected in the first place, make sure you:

• have a good antivirus program installed and that it is fully updated
• update browser plugins like Java, Flash, and Adobe Reader as soon as you are prompted to do so
• install any critical Windows updates that are available
• check comments on new apps before you install - others may have already been infected and left a post on the wall!

Google Docs Viewer can display Powerpoint presentations, PDFs and TIFF images right in your browser, without adding extensions or downloading the files. The problem is that you have to manually open the Doc Viewer by pasting in a URL. There's a way around that, though, thanks to a slick userscript with an unwieldy name: "PDF/PPT/TIF viewer with Google docs."

With the script installed - you'll need Greasemonkey in Firefox or Greasekit in Safari - links to PDFs, PPTs and TIFFs will automatically open in Google Docs Viewer. If you need to download or print them, no worries: you can do that from with Docs Viewer as well.

[via Lifehacker]

PDF files have never been Google's strong suit. Anyone who's run across them in search results is familiar with the "view as HTML" option, which is convenient, but isn't always available, and ruins the formatting of the PDF. Google's fixing all that now, though, by adding Quick View for PDFs to its search results. Now you'll be able to view properly-formatted PDF files in your browser, without downloading and opening in Acrobat or a similar program.

Right now, the new PDF viewing option is only available for 50% of the PDFs in Google's index. More are being added all the time, but for now, you'll still the "View as HTML" link some of the time. If you've already installed a plugin for browser-based PDF viewing, this isn't that exciting to you. The average person running a Google search probably hasn't done that, though, so this is definitely a big step forward.

[via Mashable]

If you like following news from your favorite sites, but you don't currently have a smartphone or other mobile computing option, it can be difficult to stay on top of things. I know I tend to get more reading time away from the computer than when I'm actually sitting at it. There's an odd service from Hewlett Packard that might be able to help you, as long as you don't mind killing a few trees.

HP has a site called Tabbloid that will allow you to enter RSS feeds for sites you'd like to follow, and it will automatically format and send you PDF files on a schedule populated with the contents of the feeds you entered. The formatting is very readable, but I'm not sure they're making the best use of space; I'd rather see the pages formatted into more columns, and maybe using a landscape format to better replicate the feeling of reading a newspaper or magazine.

It seems pretty transparent that what HP is hoping for here is to encourage users to get into the habit of regularly printing off reading material. Of course, if they do that, they will quickly be finding themselves at their local computer store buying ink for their printer. Evil genius!

RSS has finally caught on to the point where even my non-geek friends have downloaded readers and subscribed to a few feeds. The thing is, you can't really hand out RSS feeds at a rally, post them on a bulletin board, or leave them on a table where someone will pick them up and read them. That's why it's nice that fivefilters.org has provided a free way to turn your favorite feeds into printable PDF newspapers.

I'm as anti-paper as the next guy - heck, I haven't owned a printer in years - but I know my mom's not going to read my blog if I don't hand it to her in paper form. I could do all the formatting myself, but Five Filters takes care of it automatically. The only major limitation is that it can only draw from one feed URL per PDF, but you can work around that by combining feeds using Yahoo! Pipes or a similar tool. It would be nice to pick and choose individual items from a feed reader to go into each newspaper, but this tool gets the basic job done, and the price is certainly right.

There's nothing as annoying as accidentally clicking on a PDF link in a list of search results and waiting a few minutes for your Adobe PDF browser plugin to load before you can view the page, go back, or do anything else with your browser. OK, there are probably plenty of things that are more annoying, but it's still kind of bad sometimes.

For ages, Google has helped users get around this by offering the option of clicking a "view as HTML" link next to PDF links in search results. But the truth is that some PDF documents lose formatting, imagery, and other elements when you convert them to HTML. Now Google is starting to roll out the ability to use the same PDF viewer that's available for Gmail and Google Docs with search results.

The simple "view" option isn't available for all PDF links yet. In fact, I had to try at least half a dozen search queries before I found one that didn't give me the "view as HTML" option. So it's likely that Google is converting and caching files rather than converting them on the fly. But the new PDF viewer option is definitely a time saver and a welcome addition to Google search.

[via Google Operating System]

DocMazy is a novel kind of search engine exclusively dedicated to finding documents. Instead of returning websites, it digs up PDFs, DOCs, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and text files. DocMazy was designed to find information that gets buried in other search engines because documents often don't score well in search engine algorithms, or aren't indexed by search engines at all.

Once you find the doc you're looking for, you can download it or view it online. DocMazy uses iPaper, which opens a preview without making you leave the results page. All in all, it's a pretty nice tool if you're looking for the kind of longer, more detailed information that often isn't published in its entirety on a webpage.

This weekend I finished setting up a fresh triple-boot install on my MSI laptop. With my operating systems ready to go, the time had come to start reinstalling applications. While it wasn't a conscious decision, I noticed that the majority of my apps were Open Source - so I decided to keep the ball rolling.

Even if you haven't just gone through a reformat, these are great applications and well worth installing. If you have, then hopefully this list will provide you with a solid base of programs to get you started with your fresh, new Windows install!

Web Browsers: Chromium, Firefox
They excel at different things, so I install both browsers by default. Chromium is great for all-purpose surfing, while I use Firefox and my favorite extensions to tackle my daily web-based work.

Office: OpenOffice.Org, Sumatra, PDFCreator
For lightweight PDF reading and creation from any Windows app, Sumatra and PDFCreator are solid options. OpenOffice.Org, well, it's the name to beat in open source suites.

PDF files are great because you don't have to worry about the formatting of your document getting lost in translation when you send it to someone else. The only problem is that they're notoriously tough to edit. Nitro's new web-based PDF to Excel converter solves at least part of the problem. If you've got a PDF with tables, and you want to do more than view them, then this is for you.

PDF to Excel does a pretty decent job of keep the formatting of the original PDF intact. Colors, text sizes and cell formatting all carry over into Excel. Just as importantly, it reliably detects tables to keep from forcing your non-table content into the Excel document, where you'll probably just end up deleting it. The only complaint I have about PDF to Excel is that it delivers the results by email. I'd like to see a direct download option as well.

At last, Microsoft has released the much-anticipated SP2 update for Office 2007, and it's currently available from the Microsoft Download Center.

The 290Mb download includes more than 600 fixes and improvements. Two key additions include support for the Open Document formats in Word (.odt), Excel (.ods), and Powerpoint (.odp) and the option to save as PDF in all applications. In my limited testing, PDF output was very true to the Word and Excel originals.

Excel's charting mechanism has been been retooled, as has chart integration with other Office applications. Digital Inspiration notes several improvements to Outlook, including better IMAP and RSS support and faster startup, searching, and synchronization. Microsoft also touts general performance gains and better quality print output across the entire suite.

For a detailed look at what Office 2007 SP2 is all about, check the Office Sustained Engineering blog post. There's also a good roundup on Microsoft Support.

[via PC World]

Google is bringing some of the online office technology of Google Docs to Gmail. The company added the ability to view PDF documents attached to Gmail with an online document viewer a few months ago. Now Gmail also has document viewers for PowerPoint and TIFF files.

Actually, Gmail users have been able to view PowerPoint files as slideshows for a while. But now you can view presentations using a fuller featured web interface. The new viewer makes it easier to skip pages, change the image size, and change the page layout of presentations.

The TIFF viewer works much the same way, making it easier to see multi-page TIFF images sent to your Gmail address.

The Mac's built-in PDF support is pretty strong, which is nice because if there's one piece of software I have always despised for its unnecessary bloat, it would be Adobe Reader. To be honest, I've always liked the fact that when I come across a PDF online, clicking to open it results in it being downloaded and opened in the built-in Preview application. Opening PDFs in the browser was always slow and clunky using Adobe Reader, and always annoyed me.

But recently a friend convinced me to try Schubert|it PDF Browser Plugin, and I'm glad I did. PDF Browser Plugin does exactly what you'd expect, allowing you to view PDF files in the comfort of your favorite browser (provided your favorite browser is either Firefox or Safari). But what I found surprising was how fast PDF Browser Plugin is. If you happen to be viewing a small PDF, it will open almost instantly, with the only delay being how long it takes to download the actual PDF file. This speed is possible because PDF Browser Plugin is leveraging the Quartz technology built into the Mac that allows it to render PDF files in the same way the Finder or Preview does.

The plugin's other claim to fame is a distinct respect for the Mac's look-and-feel. Schubert|it PDF Browser Plugin is free for personal or educational use, but requires a $69 site license for business users.

Perfect PDF Reader is a free download and runs on both 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms. The Visual C++ 2008 runtimes are required, and can be downloaded during installation if you need them.

So you're in love with your Kindle, but you wish you had a way to view PDF or HTML files on it? A quick run through Auto Kindle, and they're painlessly converted to the reader's native .mobi format.

I haven't posted a screenshot of the app, because there's really not a lot to see. When you launch Auto Kindle, you'll be immediately asked to browse for a source file. Once you've done that, a prompt asks you to specify the location to save your newly converted file. A progress indicator appears, fills, then disappears, and your conversion is done.

Create a shortcut to the program on your desktop, and you can convert by dragging-and-dropping files onto it. Auto Kindle does a very good job of converting files, though you may notice a quirk or two.

Sure, there are online services that do this as well, and Amazon provides email conversions, but maybe you'd rather take care of things from the privacy of your own desktop.

Auto Kindle is a free download for Windows only.