Unfortunately, Adobe is very proud of their Adobe Acrobat PDF creation software. And when I say “proud”, I mean “expensive”. I’m sure their software is very good, but for those of us who just have an occasional desire to create a pdf file, it’s hard to justify.

I found a FREE software utility called CutePDF that let’s you create pdf files as easily as you can print. When installed, it acts just like a printer. You can go into Microsoft Office or any other program that allows you to choose a printer, and “print” directly to a pdf file. It’s that easy.

The software is for Windows only.

How many passwords and user ids do you have? How do you keep track of them all? You’re not using the same passwords everywhere are you?

Doing so much of my business on the web, I have accumulated hundreds of passwords. There is no way I could remember all of them. I certainly don’t want to keep written lists around for someone to find. I used to keep a spreadsheet encrypted with PGP, but that was very cumbersome.

Enter Password Safe, a FREE software utility for Windows. This program allows you to enter and organize all of your userids and passwords into a “database”. You can also enter urls and notes. Password Safe keeps all of this information safely encrypted using the Blowfish algorithm. All you have to remember is a single password which is the combination to the safe.

What happens if something goes wrong with the “database”? Of course, that could always happen. Password Safe minimizes this possiblity by creating encrypted backups before each change and keeps a configurable number of backups. I have used Password Safe for over a year, upgraded twice, and never had a single problem.

Password Safe shows catagorized groups of your passwords. It allows you to right-click and copy a userid or password to the clipboard, then right-click and browse to the url. It makes it very easy to access multiple passworded systems.

Give it a shot. I think you’ll like it.