Announcing Cogniviews Excel-to-PDF-Converter (and a bribe)

I am very proud to announce that we have released the beta version of Cogniview’s Excel to PDF converter.

The ‘Excel to PDF Converter’ is the first out of several open source projects we will be releasing in the coming months and it is the only free Excel-to-PDF converter that supports hyper-links.

here is the official Excel to PDF Converter product page.

Plus… we need your help to make ‘Excel to PDF Converter’ better. That is why we are offering the following ‘bribe’:

We will be giving away 10 Amazon Gift-Cards, worth $15 each, to people that will download ‘Excel to PDF Converter’, play around with it and post their feedback as comments on this blog post.

The gift cards will be given to 10 most helpful commenters.

I know that you’ll find Cogniview’s Excel to PDF Converter useful and I hope our little bribe can convince you to get involved with this project.

PDF2XL is 4 Years Old!

Dear Friends,

This month Cogniview is celebrating the 4th Birthday of PDF2XL – our flagship PDF to Excel conversion product.

It’s not that we always had PDF2XL. You see, Cogniview started as an Enterprise software company that aimed to sell its Enterprise-Level software products to IT departments in large organizations.

We spent a lot of money on flamboyant marketing campaigns, well-dressed sales people and a variety of other time/money wasters.

After 4 years of struggles that resulted in a huge hole in our bank account, we woke up and realized we had to survive. So we turned to our customers who said: Make us a decent PDF to Excel converter – and that was how PDF2XL was born.

Since then, PDF2XL licenses were bought by more than 15,000 companies in a variety of industries all over the globe.

We are thankful to our customers, our employees, our partners and our blog readers who have contributed their time, energy and resources to help Cogniview achieve so many successes.

So, let the party begin!

And what’s a party without party gifts?

First a special Excel Productivity Guide that can help you save even more time when working with Excel.

Click here to Download the Excel Productivity Guide

PLUS…

We would be overjoyed if you would consider leaving PDF2XL a birthday greeting as a comment on this Blog post. The best 10 greetings will entitle their authors with a $15 Amazon Gift Card.

The best part is that the best greeting out of the top 10 will also win a Flip Mino camera!

Amazon Gift Card Camera

So, we invite you to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment on this post.

And once again – thank you!

Yoav Ezer, CEO
Cogniview Systems 2002

From Programmer to Puppet-Master: How I Didn’t Rig the Zimbabwean Elections with a PDF Converter

Here is the unbelievable story … Last Thursday (03/28/2008) a newspaper called “Zimbabwe Online” published an article accusing my company (Cogniview) of helping Robert Mugabe, The infamous Zimbabwean president, rig the Zimbabwean elections.


Link to full story

The article continues to claim that my company has secret ties to the Israeli Mossad, and that the accusations came directly from the General Secretary of the MDC, Zimbabwe’s largest opposition party.

Before I go on with the details of the story, here’s my official response … this story is NOT TRUE. In fact it could have only been more fictional if we were accused of using alien technology. Here are some more facts:

The full story up until now…

On Wednesday, a day before the article was published, I received an email from a Yahoo email address, inquiring whether my company was helping Robert Mugabe win the upcoming Zimbabwe elections. The email was so funny, I assumed it was spam and deleted it (not before being very impressed with how well it was tailored for my company).

A day later, an email from the site ZimOnline alerted me that there was an article on the site that concerned Cogniview. The article was even funnier than the email. At this point my respect for the Zimbabwean scam-artists was at an all-time high. Not only did they send me a well crafted email, they went as far as to setting up a mock newspaper and publishing an article there.

And then it became very serious very quickly …

I was contacted by a gentleman called Phil Matibe, a human rights activist from Zimbabwe currently living in the US, who wanted to get to the bottom of this story (I will be speaking with Mr. Matibe later today).

We also started getting emails from angry people telling us that we “sold the Zimbabwean people for 20 pieces of silver”

And then additional articles began to appear. Apparently we got 3 million dollars for helping Mugabe.

What I think happened

About a year ago we developed an Open-Source PDF converter called CC PDF converter. This converter (which is available for download for anyone that has an internet connection) allows one to convert anything printable into PDF. It also allows adding a Creative Commons license as the last page of the document. And at the very end of this page there is a link to Cogniview’s website.

I also learned (from the people that called to chastise us) that the voter-roles that were provided to the MDC by Zimbabwean officials were in PDF format and had a link to Cogniview’s website.

My guess is that the people at the MDC wanted to get the voter data in a format they could easily handle (like Excel) and instead got it in a PDF file (that was produced by our converter). They got (justifiably) angry and concocted a story about the Israeli Mossad and my company (this part isn’t justifiable).

Here’s what we are willing to do to help sort out this mess

Every respectable party (UN, US, European) that will want to investigate this matter will get Cogniview’s full cooperation. We will give them unlimited access to our legal and financial Records. We will also allow them to interview any employee in the company. Heck, they can strap us all to lie-detectors – we have nothing to hide.

But I’m hoping it won’t come to this. This story has the potential to damage my company’s reputation as well as to seriously damage the credibility of the MDC officials who spread this lie.

One last thing: If anyone from the MDC is reading this, please check your facts and denounce these lies. They bring you no honor.

I will continue to update as the story unfolds.

Why you should publish your PDF with a Creative Commons License

Over the past two weeks I talked to over a dozen people about publishing content and PDF’s with a Creative Commons License. One question came up again and again – What are the benefits of publishing my content with a creative commons license?

Here is my answer in … PDF form.

Announcing the Creative Commons PDF Converter

The CC PDF Converter is a free (open source) application that enables you to create PDF documents from almost any application (Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and more). The CC PDF Converter also allows you to easily embed a creative commons license in your PDF file.

If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, I would really appreciate it if you leave them as comments on this post.

I can also be contacted through my email (see the About the author page).

One last thing… If you enjoy the CC PDF Converter and you also need to extract data from PDF files to Excel than I would be honored if you could take a couple of minutes to check out our commercial product. It is a professional PDF to Excel conversion utility which is used by over 10,000 companies around the world. If you decide to get PDF2XL you’ll be saving a ton of time on PDF data conversion and helping us create more open source tools for PDF users.

How typing may lead to madness (and how to avoid it)

Warning: shameless self-promotion ahead

The Psychology of Typing

Sometimes, there is no way around it. You just have to sit down and spend an hour—or two, or three—typing. It’s boring and often infuriating. Boredom, as Wikipedia tells us, leads to anxiety. And mixing anger with anxiety can lead to—madness!

Madness

And so, at Cogniview, we have decided to create a new product line that will help lessen anger and anxiety in the world. Products that dramatically reduce the amount of typing in your life. The new Typing Freeâ„¢ product line.

A typing-free world

PDF2XL is our primary and best-selling product. Several thousands of clients are already using it and IMO it’s the best PDF to Excel conversion tool in the universe (I’ll admit I am a bit biased).

So if you want to avoid typing data from PDF documents to Excel, give PDF2XL a try.

PDF2XL OCR is a new product. It combines OCR technology from IRIS Software with PDF2XL’s data extraction interface.

I am proudest of two features in PDF2XL OCR:

If you need to convert data from scanned documents to Excel, give PDF2XL OCR a try.

PDF2XL Enterprise is really a magical tool. It combines a print driver with an extraction tool. You can print whatever you want to it and then extract the data to Excel. It also includes all the functionality of PDF2XL and PDF2XL OCR.

Check it out. It’s really cool!

The secret, sure-fire way to avoid madness, hand cramps and blindness

Buy one of our products. They are good for your health!

How to win the war on spending, visually!

Recently I have been scolded for writing too much about technology and theory (i.e. stuff that only interests me). The main Scolder was Ms. Hadar Kadar, our director of customer relations. She pointed out that every once in a while we should post something that is actually useful to our customers (and was right as she usually is).

And so with this post, we are starting a new tradition. Every week, Hadar will prepare and post a new Excel Video Tutorial. This week’s tutorial is about controlling expenses. We would love to get your feedback on this. This template was prepared for Excel 2007.

Enjoy!

You can download the template here

Five blogging tools that every blogger will use in 2007

Why is it that some bloggers are 10 times more productive than others?

Like programming, blogging is an occupation in which huge variations exist between the best and the merely average. Joel Spolsky of the famed Joel on Software made a historic post on the difference between the best programmer and the average programmer. I strongly recommend that you read Joel’s post. While doing so, replace the word “programmer” with the word “blogger.”

So how do you become a master blogger?

The secret of the kung fu master

Imagine a kung fu master during his daily practice session. He moves with accuracy and grace. Every strike is perfect and flows seamlessly into the next. But the most amazing part is that the kung fu master seems to be in another world, contemplating the philosophy of martial arts while his body automatically performs the moves.

How is kung fu relevant to blogging? Like the kung fu master, you should control the tools of your trade to the point that using them is second nature. Then you can focus on the core of the blogging art–thinking!

Here are the five essential tools you will have to master to become a kung fu blogging master:

Finding interesting things to blog about

Tool #1: Del.icio.us

When reading your RSS feeds and surfing the net, you often come across things you can blog about. Use del.icio.us to bookmark them and use them in your blog later. And that’s not all. By subscribing to the Del.icio.us tag RSS feeds, you can see what other people have bookmarked on the tags that interest you and use that for your blog. By doing so, you use the entire del.icio.us user group as your personal scouts!

Tool #2: Technorati

Also subscribe to the tag RSS feeds on Technorati. This is very similar to Del.icio.us, but you get to read everything blogged about the keywords that interest you.

Think everywhere

When you sit in front of your computer, you start thinking about headlines, subtitles, and all the other stuff that make your blog posts great. But don’t you hate it when you think of a great idea for a title or a joke, and by the time you get to your computer you have forgotten about it? Wouldn’t it be great if you could blog everywhere?

Tool #3: online word processors

By using Google Docs, Zoho, or one of the many other online word processors, you can write your post at work, from home, when visiting friends–wherever there is a computer connected to the internet.

Warning: Your spouse, family, and friends may not like this technique.

Get your blogging groove on

Blogging is hard work. To really be effective, you have to be in the right mood. I use a special “substance” to clear my mind.

Tool #4: ZeFrank

It’s enough to watch an episode of the ZeFrank daily show to forget all your troubles, get a good laugh, and enter that blogging state of mind.

Become a master wordsmith

Tool #5: Cogniview’s ultimate copywriting tool

During the first quarter of 2007, we will be launching a new copywriting software tool to serve you, the blogger. This tool (yet to be named) will allow you to write a brilliant post every time. This tool will be the equivalent of having Darren and Brian as your personal advisers.

How can you get this tool?

Easy, just subscribe to our RSS feed. Once the tool has been released, we will post it here and you will be able to download it, free!

This post is participating in the ProBlogger Group Writing Project – Reviews and Predictions.

Happy holidays, everyone,

Yoav

We’ve struck gold

I’m delighted to announce that Cogniview has attained the rank of Microsoft gold certified partner.

Microsoft Gold Certified partner logo

Why is being a gold certified partner important?

We used the survey method to get the additional partner points we needed for gold. This means that Microsoft sent a survey (composed of 47 questions) to a group of our customers. Here are some graphs that summarize the responses.



As you can see from the graphs, our satisfaction score was a whopping 98 percent.

Again, all we can say is, “Thank you, dear customers!”

Now that we are a gold partner we thought about working with the Microsoft office marketing group. Does anyone have any experience with that? I’ll be extremly grateful for some pointers

Purchase-order tracking system based on Excel 2007: current process and requirements

Current process

In a previous post, I said that we would be developing a new purchase-order tracking system in Excel 2007. I started by interviewing the customers. I sat down with Inbal, our “accounting department,” and this is what she said …

“Today, we have a licenses management solution [Nick named Hendrix]. Every purchase is entered into Hendrix, and the customer then receives an automated e-mail from Hendrix with his payment code and download and activation instructions.”

“When a purchase order arrives, it is entered into the system, so that a license will be issued to the customer. I also manage an Excel sheet with a list of POs to track.”

Here is a sample of the Excel sheet that Inbal uses:

Purchase Order Tracking Sheet

“Purchase orders are not paid immediately; they usually have net or net+30 payment terms. it’s my job to see that all the payment orders are eventually paid,” Inbal added.

“So, every week, I single out the POs that have not been paid, and according to how late the payment is, I either send an e-mail or mail, or I call the customer. When a purchase order is paid, I update the tracking sheet to reflect that, this way I know not to bother the customer.”

Users’ requirements

I then asked her what she would like to the tracking system to do.

“I need to be able to define contact details for both customer and end user,” Inbal said. “This is because sometimes (especially with POs), the customer’s accounting department is ordering the software for their users. So I need to send the download and activation instructions to the user and work with the accounting department on payment issues. In any case, the customer has to be notified about the delivery of the software as well as the user.

“I want to be able to define the due date for each PO (net, net+30, etc.).”

“I want to get a weekly report of all the purchase orders that should have already been paid. If possible, I want to get it by e-mail.”

“When closing an order, I need a place to enter the payment date and some sort of transaction ID (check number, bank transfer ID, etc.).”

And that was it.

If you have any ideas on how to make this system better, please, pretty please … add them as a comment to this post.

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