His appointment coincides with Starfish Ventures’ recent $3.5m investment in Nitro.

Anthony (Tony) brings 14 years’ experience in building, growing, and investing in growth-oriented technology companies, and we’re positively chuffed to have him on the team.

Welcome, Tony!

Related posts:

1. Introducing…Nitro Pro 7, and a new face on the Nitro team!
2. Welcoming the newest member of the Nitro team: Paul Kim, Chief Marketing Officer

You can download it here, or scroll down to view it in its glorious entirety.

The news

Back to the news — the big news: We just closed our first round of major institutional financing. 

We’re now what those in this part of the world would call “venture-backed”. Our good friends and fellow Aussies at Starfish Ventures have supported our plans for 2012 and beyond to the tune of $3.5m.

This is big news for us, because we’ve basically been bootstrapped and profitable since day one – so it’s not a decision we took lightly. It’s big news for you guys, because it means more people, more quickly, to build more kickass products. Our values remain the same, and they will not change. 

I'm Milo, and that's how I roll (now).

The plan

What are these plans we speak of?

Well, you might have to wait — at least a little, until mid-year or thereabouts — but we’ll tell you this: they involve the cloud, a logical extension of what we’re already doing on the desktop, and fixing a bunch of rather frustrating document problems just about everyone experiences (a lot).

They involve putting the seventy-odd, ass-kicking Nitronauts we already have (and plenty more to come!) to task on the stuff that happens to documents after they disappear into that series of tubes we call the Internet.

Stay tuned, and expect awesome.

This many people used Nitro Reader last month.

The important stuff

Thank you. Thanks to all of our customers, who backed us with their own money from day one. Thanks to each and every one of the free product users for getting behind and supporting what a few people suggested was, “not a smart idea.” (Turns out three-plus million monthly users of Nitro Reader think otherwise.)

And finally, thanks to the Nitro team – past, present, and future. You earned it. 

~ Milo.

A short, illustrated history of all things Nitro.

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It’d be counter-intuitive to set about explaining all this in a written blog post — after all, the purpose of an infographic is to visualize copious quantities of complex data — but here are a few of our favorite take-outs…

• Only 48.5% of Americans consider themselves ‘familiar’ or ‘very familiar’ with PDF — that’s (obviously) less than half!
• There seems to be a correlation between income and familiarity. We’re not suggesting that boning up on your PDF knowledge is going to make you rich, but it’ll certainly come in handy for all those bank statements you’ll be looking at.
• One in four Americans claim they need to sign or return documents (like forms, contracts, or agreements) ‘often’ or ‘very often.’ Someone should tell these folk about QuickSign, stat!
• Geography seems to be a factor: West Coast folk are, on average, more familiar with PDF than their counterparts in the Southern states.

Interesting stuff, no doubt!

To view it in full, simply click on the image below, download it for yourself here, or head on over to the always awesome Lifehacker Australia.

–

Thanks again to the guys at Column Five Media for bringing a little extra design horsepower to the table, and to TNS, for conducting the survey.

Survey Methodology (AKA, required legal stuff)

This survey was conducted online, within the United States by TNS via its Express Online omnibus product on behalf of Nitro. The survey took place from September 29-October 2, 2011, among 1,000 adults ages 18 and older, using individual methodology. 

Related posts:

1. The Paperless Office: Why It Hasn’t Happened (And Why It’s Going To)
2. The future for PDF document reviewing with Nitro Pro

This post is written by Campbell King, founder of mi-fi, an Australian-based SaaS startup, offering live accounting support and services for small to medium sized businesses.

–

No matter what sort of service in life you are looking for, you should always strive to find an expert. This is no different when looking for an accountant for your business.

You need to ask what makes someone an expert and when it comes to accounting, this means establishing their education level and determining the broad set of experiences they have picked up along the way. Professional accountants can bring solid, dependable skills to operating and improving businesses.

By opening doors to powerful new perspectives and keeping financials running smoothly, good accounting serves not only to propel a business forward, but to ensure strong functioning at a basic level. Does your advisor understand the fundamentals as well as the big picture?

No matter where you decide to seek your business consulting and assistance, make sure you assess them on these critical attributes:

1. Qualifications - How knowledgeable are they? Are they qualified to provide advice? True professionals should be forthcoming with their credentials. Be sure to look not only for depth of education and academics but breadth as well, because a well-rounded professional can bring unexpected assets to your operation. If they say that they are a member of a professional body, be sure to check the credibility of that organization.
2. Experience – Can they show you experience in delivering results for other? Have they been in business themselves and how successful have they been? You’ll also want to determine if they’re able to adapt their experience to your particular needs.
3. Accessibility - Can you get hold of them when you need them? Advisors vary greatly in terms of when, where, and how they can be reached. A great consultant may not be especially helpful if they’re nowhere to be found when needed.
4. Resources - An advisor with a good team behind them is also important. There will certainly be times when an answer will initially elude them but with the right people behind them, it won’t be far away.
5. Engagement - Do they offer suggestions and ideas and genuinely show an interest in your business? You’re purchasing a service – make sure you’re being served well.
6. Relationship - Finally can you get along with them? You need to be able to trust your advisor and a big part of this is the ability for you to have a good working relationship with them. Are you able to take direction from them and do you feel free to provide feedback and disagree where you need to?

Looking at these six areas will help you identify the best professionals for your business so you can expect results every time.

Who are your business advisers and how do they rank?

Campbell King

Campbell holds a Bachelor of Business (Entrepreneurship), a Masters of Professional Accounting and is currently completing his Graduate Diploma of Chartered Accounting (CA). Campbell has three years experience in corporate recovery and turnarounds at tier one insolvency firm, KordaMentha. Campbell has a record of strategic business plan development and concept realization winning the 2006 RMIT Business Plan Competition. Campbell also founded, grew and successfully sold his own business and brings experience and insight as a previous small business owner.

mi-fi

www.mifi.com.au

www.facebook.com/mifiaccounting

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2. Mi-Fi Customer Profile

We contracted TNS, a global, independent market research firm to go out and quiz 1,000 adult Americans on our behalf, in a survey all about PDF files, digital documents, and paperless practices.

Needless to say, the results were shocking — both in the conventional (literal) context as well as in the “passing out from the sheer quantity of data sense.”

So, we brought in the awesomely talented guys at Column Five to distill all that data into one easily digested and conveniently shared infographic. Major props. It’s the first of a series we’re working on with them, and we’re pretty stoked with how it came out  – watch this space…

Click on the image below to view it in all its glory. After some bedtime reading? Click here to download your very own hi-resolution PDF.

Survey Methodology (AKA, required legal stuff)

This survey was conducted online, within the United States by TNS via its Express Online omnibus product on behalf of Nitro. The survey took place from September 29-October 2, 2011, among 1,000 adults ages 18 and older, using individual methodology. 

Related posts:

1. PDF: Welcome to the paperless office

The Keyboard: Your new best friend

Take a (Keyboard) Shortcut

Regular users of any application tend to rely on a handful of keyboard shortcuts, and most of us are familiar with at least a couple. They’re are a great way to shave time off the tasks you perform most frequently—sidestepping the mouse, menu, and anything else that gets in the way.

Today, we’re listing five of our favorite keyboard shortcuts in Nitro Pro 7 and Nitro Reader 2 for those of you with nimble fingers that never leave the keyboard…

1.  Quick-launch Nitro 

Bypass the Start Menu or Desktop and launch Nitro Pro or Nitro Reader in nanoseconds using the Windows ‘Run’ command prompt.

1. Win+R to launch the ‘Run’ dialog
2. Type nitropdf (Nitro Pro) or nitropdfreader (Nitro Reader)
3. Hit Enter

2. Close Active Tab (Document)

Finished up with that PDF file? Close a single open tab without even looking at your mouse by hitting Ctrl+W

3. Enter Fullscreen View

Need to maximize your onscreen real estate and kill the clutter? Launch Fullscreen View with a single key: F11

4. Print Document

Sure, they’re digital documents—but most of us still make occasional use of the printer. Turn PDF to paper with Ctrl+P

5. View Document Properties

Want to know more about that PDF file, like where it came from? Check the author, initial view settings, security permissions, embedded fonts, and more. Just hit Ctrl+D

Related posts:

1. Getting Things Done More Efficiently in Nitro PDF Professional
2. Nitro Reader 1.4 – your favorite PDF viewer improved!
3. Nitro PDF Reader: Customize the user interface

If you’re going to do one thing, do it well

An interesting challenge presented itself when we started work on version 5 — how much can you add to an app that really only does one thing?

Well, we took the same approach we always do. We focused on making it do that one thing even better, without throwing in a bunch of stuff in there you didn’t need. We gathered feedback from our users in an attempt to improve PDF creation without changing the way we’ve always envisaged it: lightweight, free, and dead simple.  It’s why we took the plunge and added PDF creation to Nitro Reader.

Check out Primo’s drag-and-drop PDF creation below:

100,000+ people download Primo every single week. In fact, if you head to CNET’s Download.com, you’ll see more people downloaded it last week than Adobe Reader (which, on a related note, does not create PDF files).

More than just PDF creation

A lot of people use Primo, in a lot of different ways. We’ve collected a few of the most popular posts on Primo from the PDF Blog:

• A first look at PrimoPDF’s creation settings
• PrimoPDF—A closer look at a lesser known feature: Append to PDF
• Securing PDF files with PrimoPDF

Get PrimoPDF today

If you don’t have the latest version, or know somebody who could do with straightforward, free PDF creation, why not get PrimoPDF?

Download free: http://www.primopdf.com

Related posts:

1. Download PrimoPDF v5 public beta. The first free PDF creator with one-click creation
2. Free PDF creation (finally!) made easy. PrimoPDF v5 out now
3. PrimoPDF 5 now available in English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Nederlands languages

You spoke – we listened!

The great thing about the Nitro Reader community is that you can openly tell us what you would like to see in your favorite PDF reader, and among the hundreds of suggestions one seemed to resonate loudest; the ability to flatten a PDF file before saving it.

The idea behind flattening is to ‘fuse’ active elements of the file like annotations and form fields into a single element of the PDF that can no longer be edited or manipulated. Whether for security reasons, or just for the sake of finalizing the file to prevent further changes, creating a flattened PDF is a no-fuss process that has been integrated into the Save As slide-out of the File menu.

Creating a flattened version of your PDF file is simple:

1. Click on Nitro Reader’s File menu
2. Hover your mouse over Save As to view the slide-out
3. Click Flattened PDF, then name and save the new PDF file anywhere on your computer.

The new flattened PDF file will look identical to the original one, however you will not be able to click and change any form fields, annotations, or comments. This process cannot be undone, which is why the Flatten tool avoids damaging the original PDF file by creating a new flattened version.

Go on, tell us more.

Although the feedback and suggestions never fail to keep pouring in, we encourage you to join Nitro Reader’s Get Satisfaction Community to get your ideas heard. Perhaps the best aspect of the community is that your suggestions will receive instant buzz by the other members who regularly jump into the discussion to evolve ideas into great concepts.

We hope that version 1.3 of Nitro Reader is just the first of a long series of updates that will build our users’ vision into a great toolbox aimed at enhancing your daily PDF workflow. Who knows, next time you update Nitro Reader you’ll be able to point out how THAT great feature was actually your idea.

Still haven’t installed Nitro Reader? Download it for free at http://www.nitroreader.com

Related posts:

1. Shrink large PDF files: The difference between 'Save' and 'Save As'
2. Differences between Save and Save As
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For the technically inclined: if you want to skip the queue and get straight to the gritty details, check out the Release Notes.
If you use PrimoPDF and are wondering what we’re talking about, check out Nitro Reader on YouTube. It’s our newest free solution, offering PDF creation, viewing, and much, much more:

New feature: Flatten & Save As

Quite a few members of our Nitro Reader Community requested this one… We’ve added the option to flatten objects in your PDF when saving. Now you can bake those form field entries or annotations into the page, permanently.

Your comments, data—anything you add to the PDF file—can be locked away for safe sending or reliable record-keeping.

All you have to do is download the latest version, and look next to Save As in the file menu, where you’ll see two options: retain all those active elements like you normally would, or flatten. Simple but handy stuff!

Improvements & additions

Nitro Reader is in beta, so we’re working constantly on ways to improve it—making it a faster, easier, and more reliable part of everything you do with PDF.

We took on board all the feedback on full-screen navigation, hopefully making it a little more intuitive.

We’ve made a few tweaks to significantly improve printing speeds – something more than a few of you noticed – and boosted support for Asian character sets.

How to get it

For those of you with Nitro Reader installed, it’s a simple matter of clicking the Check for Updates button from within the Help tab. Depending on the frequency you selected to automatically check, you may just be prompted the next time you open the application.

From all of us at Nitro; thank you. Your feedback helps us continue to make Nitro Reader even better — we appreciate it.

Download free: http://www.nitroreader.com

Related posts:

1. Introducing Nitro PDF Professional 6
2. Nitro Reader now integrated with Evernote; joins The Trunk, brings the “awesome”
3. The PDF Reader, reimagined.

For anyone undertaking Ostrich-like activities over the last few years (burying your head in the nearest sand) Evernote is the app that helps you remember everything. Send/save/store just about anything in the cloud, and access it anywhere, from just about any platform. Of course, it’s free. They do have a paid offering — the free version is more than sufficient for most of us!

The Evernote Trunk: “…a showcase of great apps and products…”

From the pages of Evernote’s Noteworthy Blog:

“Today is a big day for Evernote. Today is the day that Evernote becomes more useful, more powerful and more exciting for every user. Every partner. Everyone…

…Today, there are over 2000 developers building hardware and software application that hook into the Evernote memory platform. Products that, thanks to Evernote, become accessible from everywhere, sync between devices and have powerful search capabilities. For developers, Evernote has become a way to gain useful functionality. For users, every integration adds layers of usefulness to their Evernote experience.

Which brings us to the big announcement: Welcome to the Evernote Trunk.

The Trunk is a showcase of great apps and products that make your Evernote experience more awesome.”

As you may have worked out for yourself – Nitro Reader is one of those apps 

fig.1 – The Evernote Trunk.

So, what does this really mean for Nitro Reader users?

Nitro Reader now has integrated Evernote functionality.

First and foremost — when we said “we believe it’s everything you ever wanted in a freePDF reader — and nothing you don’t,” we meant it. Seriously.

If you’re not an Evernote user, you won’t see anything – unless you’ve installed Evernote on your machine, Nitro Reader will look the same as it always does.

However, if you’re like most of us here, and have a hard time keeping track of absolutely everything (it happens!) then you’ll be pleased to know you can now send entire PDF files, or selected portions of them, directly to your Evernote account — and it’s slick. Well, we think so! This is functionality we believe is genuinely useful — and wanted ourselves!

Send the whole PDF to Evernote

Booked a last-minute flight on the run, and want to make sure that ticket (in PDF, no less!) is accessible anywhere, from any platform — without the rigmarole of scouring your inbox? Easy.

fig.2 – Nitro reader File Menu

Just head to the File menu, and look for the Send to Evernote button. Click it… and you’re done! That pesky ticket is in the cloud — the same place you’ll be now you can find that ticket!

Send selected text/images

Just need to save that booking reference number, or a specific image — and don’t want to send that hefty 300-page PDF to your Evernote account?

Fig-3. Nitro Reader Send Selected

Grab text or images — right-click, and you’ll spot that phrase again. Click it, and… *BAM* – it’s in Evernote. We’d be saying more, but it’s that darn simple!

Where do I get it?

You can download the latest version of Nitro Reader from our site with the functionality included.

If you’d like to check Evernote out, you can find it here.  In case you were wondering (again) – yes, it’s free!

If you’d like to read more, TechCrunch covered the announcement in some detail

Stay tuned… there’s more Evernote goodness on the horizon!

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3. Nitro PDF Reader: The before and after