Mark Dalton

I have been using PDFPen from Smile on my mac as part of my workflow for a while now and it’s a fantastic product. I use it mainly when I scan in documents either to simply carry out OCR before filing in DevonThink or to make amendments to PDF documents I have been sent.

However for a while now I have been wanting to do a little more advanced work with PDF’s, including creating PDF forms. The standard version of PDFPen doesn’t support this but Smile on my mac also offers a Pro version of the software aptly named PDFPenPro. At $99.95 I found PDFPenPro a little expensive for the extra’s it offered over PDFPen which retails for a not inexpensive $49.95, but it is still a lot cheaper than the Adobe offerings. Smile on my mac also offers an upgrade route from the standard version to the Pro version but there isn’t any saving to be had by following this route, other than deferring the cost, and gambling on the exchange rate in my case.

However this weekend I needed to create a customer form and couldn’t stand the thought of trying to do it using any of the standard Microsoft tools so I upgraded to PDFPenPro. It was very simple to get going and within a short period of time I had the basics of the form laid out, and for what I needed to achieve this weekend that was sufficient, but I do have a few issues. Now I understand I am still on a bit of a learning curve so I have emailed the support team to seek confirmation.

I will let you know how I get on!

November 22, 2009 @ 7:52 PM – : Well the team at Smile on my mac have responded, multiple times, with suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong. I did try what they suggested prior to emailing them however but at their request have sent them the file in question for them to take a look at. In my book this is great service. I am probably missing a very simple step, but how many companies to you know respond within a few hours to a request. I am impressed.

November 23, 2009 @ 9:24 PM – : So this evening I received a response from the team at Smile on my mac advising that they had found what appears to be a bug and have raised the issue with the development team, but in the meantime provide a work around. They also had found a number of issues with the way that Preview handles PDF Form fields and in particular form text box borders and the “Required” property. I do however now have a finished product and all in all it was a simple process. I have a few idea’s on how the product could be further improved but will feed them back once I have done a little more with the product.

So back in October I embarked on a project to simplify how I handle my personal paperwork (Digital Filing Cabinet Part One). Well since then I have made great progress and found the solution to be a lot less complicated than I originally thought.

At the end of my last post I was stuck with figuring out what storage options I needed for the three types of data I had.

Type 1: Insensitive Data – This is data that is to all intense and purpose no use to anybody else but me, and includes items such as manuals and instructions, for example the Boiler manual, and the instructions for the hot water and control system.

Type 2: Sensitive Data – This is data that could be used by others and could compromise my personal security or be used to impersonate my identity, such as education and health records and official correspondence such as voting data and official correspondence.

Type 3: Confidential Data – This is data that could severely impact my personal security, financial well being, and could certainly be used to impersonate me or secure financial benefits in my name, such as bank and credit card statements.

Well, after a lot of thought I arrived at the decision that as long as the data was encrypted and transmitted over a secure connection then I couldn’t see a major problem, and settled on two cloud computing solutions. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand fully the risks of storing data “in the cloud”, but have reasoned this is no less secure that storing it on a hard disk at home.

So what have I used? Well, for “Type 1″ type data I have selected Evernote and for “Type 2″ and “Type 3″ Data I have gone with DropBox. Evernote is ideal for this type of data as it indexes everything that is stored which means everything is searchable, even images. I have gone for the Premium service that allows you to upload 500 MB per month as I am loading quite a chunk of information at present. I have also using Evernote as a research tool for compiling list’s and research notes including Web Links, Emails, and Scanned pictures. DropBox on the other hand is cloud storage and I suppose a basic CMS / Document Management System. At present I am still working on scanning and copying the data to my DropBox account so am still using the free service, which provides 2 GB of storage. DropBox copies the data over SSL and encrypts all items using AES 256 before storing it on the back end, so I am relatively happy that it’s safe but am still taking a cautious approach at this stage. A great addition to DropBox is that it also provides version tracking so if you do amend a document you can easily revert should you need to. DropBox is also available from any computer either via a desktop client or their web interface. Unlike MobileMe and iDisk DropBox is super fast very reliable.

So that’s the storage sorted out, so I could scan a document in as a PDF and then move it to either Evernote or DropBox. There were a couple of other pieces of software I found made the process a whole lot smoother, however. The first was PDFPen from Smile On My Mac, which allows you to work with PDF documents, and the second was Hazel from Noodlesoft, which allows you to set up automated actions such as document renaming, moving, etc. This really is more about house keeping for me but I as I find myself performing repetitive tasks I do find it easier to configure Hazel to perform them for me.

So that’s in essence it for now! I am sure I will refine this over time and make small adjustments an improvements, for example I am now using OmniFocus from the Omni Group. OmniFocus is a “Getting Thing’s Done (GTD)” application, think advanced task planning. I am also testing Mail Tags & Mail Act-On from indev Software to help me integrate how I use email with the workflow, but for now I am not quite sure how I am going to do that as I don’t really work (at least from home) from my inbox.