Category: Services

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Create presentations and spreadsheets online

 Acrobat.com has added two new services. Actually these services are up for testing at labs.acrobat.com. The first one is "Presentations". Presentations allows you to create slide presentations online right from within your web browser. The cool part of this is that you get to collaborate with others if you need to. So instead of passing the Powerpoint file back and forth. You and your colleagues can log on and work on the presentation whenever you want.

acrobatpresentations

You get to do things like change themes, work with images and movies as well as  objects. Once your presentation is built you can present it online cross platform or export a PDF to your desktop. The services at Acrobat.com are Flash based which means that the average internet user already has everything they need to participate.

 

Tables

Tables offers users basic spreadsheet functionality online. Like Presentations you can share your table documents with others as well as collaborate. Let’s say you made a presentation for your non-profit organization. Then you needed to share the budget details during a conference call. You could do it all with Presentations and Table online and the best part is that both of these services are FREE!

table

 

The Bottom Line

Acrobat.com already offers quite a bit for free. You can collaborate with others via Buzzword (word processing). You can do online presentations with ConnectNow. You can share large files with Acrobat Share. Now you’ll be able to round out these great services with Presentations and Table (spreadsheets). If you have an Adobe ID already you can just login and get started. If you don’t have an Adobe ID, no problem because you can create one on the fly. Check out Acrobat.com and the two new services Presentations and Table at labs.acrobat.com today!

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Do you still use a Fax Machine?

Do you still need to send or receive faxes? My guess is probably not. Or certainly not every day. However, as soon as you get rid of your Fax machine or Fax line, that will be the day you either need to send or receive a Fax. Although I have an Epson Workforce 600 that can send and receive faxes, I almost never use it for that. I receive my Faxes via email and now I send them via the web for FREE! Often when I want to send a Fax, I’m looking at it right there on my computer display. So why should I have to print it out just to stick it in a fax machine and then either shred it or recycle it 2 minutes later?

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Receiving Faxes via email for FREE

efax

I’ve used a eFax for years to receive Faxes via email. After you sign up for a free account, you get a randomly assigned fax number that is yours. You have no control over what area code the number will be in. After all it is FREE! Any faxes sent to that number will automatically be sent to you as an email attachment. The email attachments come in as multi-page TIFF files and they give you a free viewer app. Now keep in mind that if you want more like the ability to choose your area code and the ability also send faxes via email attachments. However, their lowest package is $16.95/month and at that point you might as well look at getting your own dedicated fax line. Here are the features in case you are interested in their paid service.

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Sending Faxes over the internet for Free

faxzero

Like I said, I’ve used the Free (hidden) version of eFax for years to receive faxes via email, but they’ve never offered a free way to send faxes. In order to send faxes you have to use one their paid services. I send so few faxes that I just couldn’t see paying for a service. Also I do have the ability to send from my Workforce 600. However, I figured there had to be a way to send the occasional Fax over the internet for Free. After doing a little searching I found just such a service. FaxZero is a website that allows you to send up to two faxes per day with a maximum of 3 pages each for free. This has worked out perfectly for me! I can go months without needing to send a fax and when I do it’s usually on a couple of pages. If I did need to send more than 3 pages or more than 2 faxes then I could use my own fax machine or pay their low price of $1.99 (for up to 15 pages). You can upload either a PDF or Word doc (.doc or .docx). The cover page for the free fax will have an ad on it. If you use the paid version your cover page will be ad free.

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The Bottom Line

I find that I’m doing less faxing each year as more and more businesses move to email and web services for communicating with their customers. So it doesn’t make sense to maintain fax equipment and fax lines anymore. There are both free and paid services out there to both send and receive faxes electronically over the internet. If your fax needs are low, you may want to look into these services.