The next time you are in or around downtown Rochester you may want to consider stopping by to look at a few pictures. The art work is small (hence the name), so it should not take too long

The next show – titled “Abstract” – will open on July 26th and is running through September 11th. I submitted three of my images, so I’ll be at the opening. Do you want to join me?

Have you ever thought about why the Adobe Reader is called “Reader”? The answer is pretty obvious, it’s because it is only reading and displaying (and printing) PDF files – that is, it is not writing them. That also includes that it will not save a modified document. You would need the “Adobe Writer” – or “Adobe Acrobat” as it is called for that.

But regardless of the name, we can “trick” the Reader into writing a filled form to the disk. OK, it’s not really a trick, Adobe did implement this feature, so it’s official, and we are not hacking or cracking anything.

Adobe has a server based solution that does allow you to create PDF files that are “reader enabled”: Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions ES
That technology allows you to “Fill in, sign, comment on, or save Adobe PDF files using only Adobe Reader”. Sounds like the perfect solution. Let me tell you a little secret: Whenever you hear the terms “Adobe” and “Server” in the same sentence, it usually means expensive…

Here is another secret – not really, it’s documented in a lot of places, but Acrobat users often don’t know about it: You can use Adobe Acrobat to “reader enable” PDF files as well. However, when you agreed to the EULA during the installation of Acrobat, you also agreed to using this technology only for a form with a maximum of 500 copies. The reason for that is of course, that Adobe still wants to sell the server based solution for document workflows that involve more copies.

So, let’s take a look at the EULA and find out exactly what we agreed to:

“15.12.3 For any unique Extended Document, you may only either (a) Deploy such Extended Document to an unlimited number of unique recipients but shall not extract information from more than five hundred (500) unique instances of such Extended Document or any hardcopy representation of such Extended Document containing filled form fields; or (b) Deploy such Extended Document to no more than five hundred (500) unique recipients without limits on the number of times you may extract information from such Extended Document returned to you filled-in by such Recipients. Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, obtaining additional licenses to use Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Pro Extended shall not increase the foregoing limits (that is, the foregoing limits are the aggregate total limits regardless of how many additional licenses to use Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Pro Extended you may have obtained). “

You may want to review that with your lawyer, I’m just an engineer, and in no position to give legal advice. I’ll however let you know what my interpretation of that section is: We have two options, we can either distribute our enabled form to an unlimited number of users, but we can only process a maximum of 500 unique responses. So, if we distribute our form to 1000 recipients, and we get 500 copies back, we are good. If we receive 501 replies, we can process the first 500, but the last one we cannot even look at. It also does not matter if we receive the filled out forms via a printed sheet of paper, or electronically. The second option is a bit more complicated, and you really should talk to your lawyer about that. To me it seems that you can distribute 500 copies of your form to 500 unique recipients, and they can then submit that form as often as they want. This could e.g. be a form that needs to be submitted once a week. Every one of your (up to 500) users/customers/clients has a copy of that form, and then once a week they fill in new data and submit the form.

Now we know what we can do with these forms, but we still don’t know how to use Acrobat for that. Let me show you a few screen shots.

Let’s assume you have a PDF form that you want to distribute, open that file in Acrobat and select “Forms>Distribute Form”:

This will bring up the dialog that we need to work with for the next few steps:

As you can see, I’ve selected to manually collect the responses in my email. That’s the most straight forward option and does not require any other configuration. The information presented below the selection does give you a pretty good idea about what it is. For now, let’s stick with the email option, but please, play around with the other options and let me know if you run into problems.

In the next step we specify the target location on our local hard disk for the protected (and now reader-enabled) copy of our file:

Now we need to add some information about us, the author:

We get one more chance to revise our decision about the delivery method, so if you want to take a different approach, and use Acrobat.com to collect the returned forms, here is your last chance. I will stick with the email option:

Once we click on the “Finish” button, the form will be prepared and saved, and Acrobat will display the Tracker interface. That dialog can also be opened via the “Forms>Track Forms” menu item (see the menu screen shot from above). I will talk more about that in a future post.

All you have to do now is to distribute your form. In a future post I will talk about how to process the returned data.

If allowing your users to locally save a form, you are done. They now can partially fill a form, save it, open it at a later time and continue with the form.

A while ago I switched from TweetDeck to Nambu (via a few other stops in between). At fist I loved it, then I got used to it’s quirks, and now I’d like to move to something that actually works most of the time… Why is it so hard to write a good Twitter client?!?

Sorry, that rant wasn’t planned, it just happened… Let’s get back on track: As you may remember, a few days ago I posted instructions about how to extract group information from TweetDeck. Now that I’m considering ditching Nambu, I need a way to do the same with that application.

Background

After a little poking around the filesystem, I discovered that Nambu is also using the SQLite database system, even though it’s not an Adobe AIR application. The reason my be that it’s just using the database system comes with Mac OS X…

So, I dumped the database, and tried to find where the users and groups are stored in that database, and came up with a SQL command to extract that data the same way as with TweetDeck. Because Nambu is a Mac-only application, that makes these instructions Mac-only too. If you’ve already read my TweetDeck instructions, you will find a few things that I’m duplicating here for the benefit of new readers.

Extracting the Data

The process requires a little bit of post procesing (e.g. in a spread sheet application like Numbers, OpenOffice.org or Excel), but once you are done, you will have access to the group and user data.

On the Mac, the sqlite3 application actually comes with the operating system, and you can start it’s interface in a terminal window by typing the following command:

sqlite3

You get out of the application by using the .quit command (the dot is important).

The Nambu database file is stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Nambu and the file is called Nambu.db

Now start the Termainal application and change to the directory that contains the Nambu.db file. In that directory create a new text file named sql.txt with the following content (if you followed my TweetDeck instructions, you will notice that the structure is the same, just the table and field names are different):

We are almost there…

Now go back to the command tool and run the following command

cat sql.txt | sqlite3 Nambu.db

This will print all the users who are in groups – you probably want that in a file so that you can import it into Excel:

cat sql.txt | sqlite3 Nambu.db > group_data.txt

That’s it. Import it into a spread sheet program (make sure that you select “|” as field delimiter character) and do whatever you want to do with your group data.

Update: When you upgrade to Nambu 1.2, the database gets updated too, and some of the tables and fields now have new names. For Nambu 1.2, you need to use the following SQL sequence instead:

SELECT ZTWITTERGROUP.ZNAME, ZTWITTERUSER.ZNAME, ZTWITTERUSER.ZSCREENNAME
FROM ZTWITTERUSER
JOIN Z_24USERS ON ZTWITTERUSER.Z_PK = Z_24USERS.Z_26USERS
JOIN ZTWITTERGROUP ON ZTWITTERGROUP.Z_PK = Z_24USERS.Z_24GROUP
GROUP BY ZTWITTERUSER.ZSCREENNAME
ORDER BY ZTWITTERGROUP.ZNAME;

Google Docs to the rescue! Did you know that Google Docs can import a number of standard file formats into it’s word processor, spread sheet and presentation applications? Once you have imported your document, you just select to print… That’s it. Oh, I probably should explain that Google converts your document to PDF for printing purposes and then downloads that PDF to your computer. So just open that PDF file, and there is your document, now converted to a portable, easy to open file.

I guess the chances that you will find a compatible date on Twitter are pretty slim, at least if you are using Radaroo.

The idea is pretty straight forward: You post a short description of yourself, including what you are looking for and ideas for the first date. Remember, we are on Twitter, so this all has to happen within 140 characters. What a relief for people who struggle to fill out a Match.com profile. And then you wait… Or, you look for singles in your geographic area. Again, we have 144 singles world wide, so if you don’t live in a large city, your odds of finding somebody are pretty low – and we are not even talking about finding somebody who’s ideas of a first date are compatible with yours.

But what if you already have somebody in mind, and you need to find out if that person is single? You no longer have to hide in the trees in front of your target’s living room to find out if they are in a relationship, Radaroo can help there too: You can ask Radaroo to send an anonymous inquiry to the Twitter account in question. They use @kevinrose as an example on their “stalk this user” page. I wonder how many of these requests Kevin receives on an average day…

Amazingly, people actually reply to these requests, as shown in this screenshot:

So, we still don’t know if it works… I guess I have to put my investigative journalism hat on and post:

I’ll keep you updated…

I was not very successful. I could not figure out how to make sure that the UI only gets triggered when the stamp gets applied, and not when the stamp file gets loaded by Acrobat.

Then I came across an article by Rick Borstein titled “Add Dynamic Exhibit Stamps in Acrobat using a free stamp set” on the Acrobat for Legal Professionals blog. It had all the parts that are required, ot even came with a couple of sample stamps. It also gave credit to the original source for that information: Acrobat JavaScript Guru Thom Parker

Thom provides all the theory behind why this works – very interesting to read if you are into that kind of stuff. It’s however not required to understand all that if you just want to use these stamps. You can just download Rick’s sample files and modify them until they fit your needs.

However if you want a dynamic stamp that shows more than just one line of interactively provided information, the examples do not work. They only provide one one-line input field and then put that one line on the PDF document. I wanted a stamp that could actually take several lines of user input and use that in a stamp. I had some work to do…

Acrobat’s JavaScript does allow to create custom user interfaces by creating a data structure and then calling executeDialog() with that data as parameter. Instead of a simple call to app.response() like in Thom’s and Rick’s examples, I needed to create a more complicated UI structure and embed that in the examples.

Here is the original code from the example:

var cAsk = "Enter Exhibit Number" ;
var cTitle = "Exhibit Number:  ";
if(event.source.forReal && (event.source.stampName == "#UdzyXagRctZoS5p43TZ43C"))
{
  var cMsg = app.response(cAsk, cTitle);
  event.value = cMsg;
  event.source.source.info.exhibit = cMsg;
}

var dialog = {
  retString: "",

  commit:function (dialog) { // called when OK pressed
    var results = dialog.store();
    this.retString = results["stxt"];
  },

  description:
  {
    name: "Stamp Information",    // Dialog box title
    elements:
    [
      {
        type: "view",
        elements:
        [
          {
            name: "Enter Multi-line Information: ",
            type: "static_text",
          },
          {
            item_id: "stxt",
            type: "edit_text",
            multiline: true,
            width: 300,
            height: 80
          },
          {
            type: "ok_cancel",
            ok_name: "Ok",
            cancel_name: "Cancel"
          },
        ]
      },
    ]
  }
}; 

if(event.source.forReal && (event.source.stampName == "#UdzyXagRctZoS5p43TZ43C"))
{
  if ("ok" == app.execDialog(dialog))
  {
    var cMsg = dialog.retString;
    event.value = cMsg;
    event.source.source.info.exhibit = cMsg;
  }
}

1. Open the “Exhibit+Stamp.pdf” document in Adobe Acrobat Pro
2. Go to the second page in this document – that’s the first stamp
3. Select the TouchUp Object Tool (e.g. via Tools>Advanced Editing>TouchUp Object Tool)
4. Right-click on the lower part of the stamp (where the UserData1 field) and select Properties… from the menu
5. Select the Options tab and check the “Multi-line” checkbox
6. Select the Calclate tab and click on the Edit button next to the custom calculation script and replace the old script with the one from above
7. Save the script with the OK button, then close the properties dialog

That’s it – just install the stamp file as described in Rick’s document. Done.

Of will of course be hard to see two or more lines in the relatively small stamp, so you may have to change the layout of the stamp to actually make use of the additional lines.f

You may want to do that just so that you have a backup outside of TweetDeck, or to configure another Twitter client with the same groups, or just because you can

Background

Fortunately we already have a theory of how TweetDeck stores data: It’s an Adobe AIR application, and any AIR application can store data in a SQLite database. So the assumption is that all configuration data (users, groups, searches) is stored in such a SQLite DB. We can easily verify that by looking (I’m using a Mac for that, if you are on a Windows system, I’ll get to that soon) in the TweetDeck preferences directory – on a Mac that is “Library/Preferences/TweetDeckFast.[random letter and numbers]/Local Store”. In that directory we find a file named td_26_[username].db – Bingo! That’s our database file, and a quick check with the “file” command actually confirms that:

file td_26_user.db
td_26_user.db: SQLite database (Version 3)

The following command will dump the complete content of the database (in form of SQL statements) to the terminal:

echo .dump | sqlite3 ./td_26_user.db

Extracting the Data

Because most of my audience probably is not trying to do this on a Mac, I will now switch my instructions to Windows. If you need more information about how to do this on a Mac, please let me know in the comments.

The process requires a little bit of post procesing (e.g. in Excel), but once you are done, you will have access to the data.

On the Mac, the sqlite3 application actually comes with the operating system, for a Windows environment however, you need to download this file:

http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-3_6_14_1.zip

Unzip the file and put the sqlite3.exe executable somewhere you can easily access it (e.g. I have a c:\temp directory, the path is short, easy to remember and easy to type. If you want to use this tool more often, you may want to store in in a directory where the operating system looks for executables.

Now you have to find out where the TweetDeck config files are stored. On my Windows system (I’m still running XP) it’s “C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\TweetDeckFast.[random string]\Local Store”

You should find a file that starts with td_26 in that directory – that’s the TweetDeck database.

Now start a command tool and change to the directory that contains the td_26… file. In that directory create a new text file named sql.txt with the following content:

We are almost there…

Now go back to the command tool and run the following command

type sql.txt | c:tempsqlite3.exe td_26*.db

cat sql.txt | sqlite3 td26*.db

type sql.txt | c:tempsqlite3.exe td_26*.db > group_data.txt

Update (06/06/2009): Kathy Gill over at WiredPen.com has collected some information about where and how to get access to the TweetDeck database file on different systems. On Windows, you have to do a few more things to find the file:
How To: Back Up TweetDeck Groups and Preferences

They will do that anyways before they invite you to an interview, and chances are that at that point you don’t have much control over what they find. That process has to start much earlier. And yes, do do have some control over these results. Try to google my name (just like on the cards above, search for Karl Heinz Kremer). What you will find is the result of many years of work. Last time I checked, on the first three pages of search results there was only one link that was not about me.

Of course, some of the information about me is not available or easily accessed by just searching for my name, but when you either search for a user name that I use on most social media sites (e.g. Flickr, Twitter, …), or my email address, you’ll find the other “stuff”. You would find these items also by searching for my name, but they would show up a lot further down in the search results.

Having that many “good” links at the top makes sure that anything you find undesirable will show up way down, and people may not have the patience to go that far down in Google’s search results (and no, there is nothing online about me that I would not be proud to share with a potential future employer).

To find out what Google knows about you, google yourself. Don’t just do that once, but setup a Google Alert so that you’ll receive an email whenever new information about you shows up. Also, setup a Google profile for yourself. That will always show up on the first page of search results when somebody searches for you name.

So, how do you get your name up to the top of the Google search results?

• Get involved in online projects (I spent quite some time working on several open source projects)
• Comment on blog posts written by others
• Make sure that you use your full name whenever you engage in anything online (e.g. on Twitter, or when writing comments on blogs)
• Link from the pages you control to other pages about yourself (e.g. from your Twitter or LinkedIn profile page)
• Consider starting to blog yourself

I have to admit that I have it fairly easy: My name is not that common, and somebody with a more common name will have a harder time getting their own information to the top of a Google search result – especially when a celebrity shares that name.

So again, would you feel comfortable when your future boss googles you? If not, do something about it and change how you get your name out…

Stonyfield Farm is running a campaign to convince people to replace (unhealthy) ingredients with low fat yogurt. To illustrate that, they include a recipe for “Strawberry Muffins that Melt in Your Mouth”. Sounds good. I had some extra strawberries that were in desperate need for a recipe.

They look and taste delicious.

I usually freeze most of a batch and then have muffins for a few weeks (more like days).

You can find the recipe on their web site too – no need to buy some yogurt (just in case you are making your own), even though their yogurt is the best I’ve found this side of the Atlantic.

Technorati Tags:
baking, cooking, muffin, yogurt, healthy, strawberry

Do you want to spare me that experience again? Then please read the following:

Let me explain my “rules” to follow somebody back.

You are following 2000 people, and have only 9 followers. Because you are following me, I can probably assume that you are not a celebrity but somebody who’s trying to get as many followers as possible by maxing out on how many people you can follow and then just waiting to see who follows back and un-follow the others. Wash, rinse, repeat… Sorry, but you don’t get Twitter, I’d rather follow somebody who actually understands what Twitter is about. When you provide good content, you will get your followers, but that takes time. There are no shortcuts.

You are following 600 people, but you have 0 updates. Sorry, but I want to see first what you will provide to the Twitter community and to me before I decide to follow you back. Let me see what you are about, then follow me, and then I might just follow you back.

You are trying to sell me snake oil – even though you call it SEO, it’s still snake oil. I don’t want snake oil, I don’t need snake oil, and I just don’t want to deal with snake ail salesmen… Oh, and if somebody is actually looking for an SEO expert, take a look at this Google document (PDF). It explains everything you need to know to optimize your search engine rating. Really. That’s it. No secrets. At least not unless you are trying to cheat the system.

Your update stream only contains links to your own blog. Get a room! I mean, get an RSS feed! Twitter is not a replacement for a good RSS feed, and I’d rather explore your new blog posts via my RSS aggregator than via Twitter. I don’t have a problem with you posting a link to your latest blog post on Twitter, but give me some other stuff too, engage with other Twitter users, post links to things that are not on your own blog. And if you don’t know what RSS is, please google it.

All your updates are ads for your products. You don’t get social media. There is no way I will follow you. Twitter is not radio or TV. You don’t blast your ads all over the place. If you want new business, help your existing customers. The new customers will then come automatically. They won’t come because of all your ads. Trust me.

You don’t have a profile picture, no bio, no link and no home town. Who are you? Unless I get a better idea about who you are, don’t expect me to become one of your followers. I want to know who I’m dealing with, just like in real life.

I may actually follow you, but then you send me a DM (I guess automatically) – trying to sell me something. That gets punished by an immediate un-follow.

You’ve been on Twitter for seven days and already have 1500 updates posted. That’s too much. I don’t have time to read all that. Get off Twitter every now and then. Get a life!

The last time you followed me, I did not follow you back. You un-followed me because of that. Now you are following me again. What makes you think that you got so much more attractive within the last two days? And, if you do that a third time, I will block you.

Your updates are protected. I cant even find out who you are. Don’t expect to hear from me anytime soon.

Your first @reply to me is spam. By now you should know that I have a problem with that.

Twitter is not a game to show that you can get the most followers in the least amount of time. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand Twitter.

There may be other reasons why I won’t follow you back, but in general, the key to win me as a follower is pretty easy:

• Provide good content
• Interact with others
• Provide something interesting about yourself in your profile

If you do that, I will follow you. I promise.