Alright, I’ve found my replacement for Google Docs (though Google Docs is still pretty cool). The site is called A.nnotate. The jist: Upload PDF’s or .docs. They are converted to PDF and available for absolutely anyone (who you invite) to annotate with notes.

This is a FREE service for those with minimal needs— or you can buy more space if your need is a little greater.

Why do I think this is so cool, and how can it help you? A few reasons:

1. I don’t use Microsoft Word nor do I care to. However, this makes file swapping with others a little difficult.
2. PDF is the best choice, in my opinion, because you can embed fonts. PDFs also ensure that whatever you have in your word processor of choice looks exactly like what the PDF looks like. This simply does not happen when moving from one word processor to another
3. Adobe Reader, which is the program most PC users think of when they here PDF, isn’t exactly user friendly— I’m not even sure you can make notes with just the Reader! This gives you a free and easy collaborative tool.

All in all, I am very happy with A.nnotate. I have my supervisor (the Birdman) set up to use it so he can comment on drafts of my thesis work. I hope others find it useful too.

Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 4:36 pm by Danny Zacharias and is filed under unicode, resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.