PDFVUE is a FREE online document annotation and editing platform

How does it work?
Your uploaded document will be converted to a PDF, which can then be edited, annotated, saved, downloaded, securely sent or published.

What is the catch?
Downloaded documents will have a DocQ branded watermark

Unlike other offerings, DocQ allows you to share DocQ functionality with your customers so they can perform the needed tasks on the documents you send them at no additional cost! Whether you want your customers to fill a form, sign a document, or simply read a document they pay nothing!

Available at this site.

One of the goals in designing DocQ was to provide a single place where customers could manage, archive, and send their important documents. The approach was not to partner with other companies to fill the missing functionality (with potentially fewer security standards than DocQ), but to intelligently architect a comprehensive solution. By design, DocQ is built to support not only secure business transactions but to provide the supporting facilities needed to archive, collaborate, and publish business documents and contracts.

pdfpirate.net: Web site that removes document restrictions from PDF files

Site: http://pdfpirate.net/
Free, online and no limits pdf restrictions remover
A site that aims to remove restrictions such as No Printing, No copy and paste that have been put on a PDF document. Useful for students and others who want to copy from PDF files.
To remove all restrictions, simply upload the document to PDFPirate and it will automatically remove the restrictions. You can then download the unlocked PDF document and start working on it. No option to do batch upload, need to do it one by one.

OCR Terminal - free online Optical Character Recognition service

What is OCR Terminal?

OCR Terminal is a free online Optical Character Recognition service that allows you to convert scanned images and PDFs into editable and text searchable documents. It accurately preserves formatting and layout of documents.

PDF to Word Conversion
Convert PDF files into editable Microsoft Word documents without installing any software. OCR Terminal allows you to easily upload .pdf files, convert them to .doc files and download them without need for any lengthy software installation, and does it all for free.

Image to Text ( jpeg to word)
Convert scanned images in a number of formats to editable text format. OCR Terminal supports multi-page TIFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP formats. The formatting of all text in the images is accurately preserved and download is available in .doc, .txt, .rtf, .xml formats.

Read more at the site (link)

Foxit Software for PDF

Foxit Reader is a small PDF reader for you to view, search and print PDFs. With this software, you are able to design interactive PDF forms, measure distances, insert images, add links, create annotations on PDFs, highlight PDF text, email PDFs, etc.
Foxit Reader is free software while advanced add-ons have a reasonable cost. Actually you are still able to evaluate these functions. However when you save the edited document, it will be stamped with an evaluation mark on the top-right corner of the edited pages. If you purchase the corresponding add-ons, then there will be no evaluation marks.

Foxit PDF Creator is a virtual printer that is used to convert any type of printable documents to PDF files. It is a small, fast, and easy-to-use PDF creation tool.
Foxit PDF Creator is an application without User Interface(UI). It does not work like ordinary software but acts like a real printer. To convert a file to a PDF, just open it and print it with Foxit PDF Printer (Creator).

Details available at this link.

PrimoPDF - Free PDF converter

Convert to PDF from any application by simply 'printing' to the PrimoPDF printer - it couldn't be easier! Within minutes, you can create high-quality PDFs by converting from Word, Excel, and virtually any other printable file type.

* Completely FREE PDF Converter - not just a trial version.
* Print to PDF from virtually any Windows application.
* Create PDF output optmized for print, screen, ebook, or prepress.
* No annoying pop-up ads, no registration requirement - no catch!
* High-quality, easy to use PDF creator for all users.
* New! Ability to merge PDF files upon conversion.
* New! Now supports Windows Vista.

Available from this link.

Also available, A free online service that enables you to upload files for free, instant conversion to PDF, PrimoOnline is effortless. Simply browse to the file to be converted on your machine and upload it for immediate conversion to PDF. Once converted, the resultant PDF file is made available via a convenient web link.

iText Sharp

PDF is the file format of choice whenever a document must preserve its structure and layout. A leading tool for programmatic creation and manipulation of PDF documents, iText is an open source Java library developed and maintained by Bruno Lowagie, the author of this book, with the help of many contributors.
iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. iText# is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly. It is implemented as an assembly.
More details about iTextSharp are available at this link.

If you want information about iText, refer to this link.
iText is an ideal library for developers looking to enhance web- and other applications with dynamic PDF document generation and/or manipulation. iText is not an end-user tool. Typically you won't use it on your Desktop as you would use Acrobat or any other PDF application. Rather, you'll build iText into your own applications so that you can automate the PDF creation and manipulation process. For instance in one or more of the following situations:

* Due to time or size, the PDF documents can't be produced manually.
* The content of the document must be calculated or based on user input.
* The content needs to be customized or personalized.
* The PDF content needs to be served in a web environment.
* Documents are to be created in "batch process" mode.

You can use iText to:

* Serve PDF to a browser
* Generate dynamic documents from XML files or databases
* Use PDF's many interactive features
* Add bookmarks, page numbers, watermarks, etc.
* Split, concatenate, and manipulate PDF pages
* Automate filling out of PDF forms
* Add digital signatures to a PDF file
* And much more...

Free software: Google Pack

Say you need office software such as Word and Excel, you need an image editing software such as Photoshop, or you need a good messenger tool, and you either have to spend a lot of money, or go looking in different places for the best such free software that you can download, it would be far easier to download the Google Office Pack. It is a free collection of software that provides you a large number of functionalities and is easy to download, setup and install.
The various softwares that are part of the free Google Pack are listed below. They are free, and you can select the ones you need and the ones you don't need.
1. StarOffice - Word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and more
* Includes Java™ Runtime Environment
2. Skype - Make free voice and video calls to anyone else on Skype
* Call landlines and mobile phones at pretty low rates
3. RealPlayer - Play popular media formats, organize music and videos
* Transfer music to iPod and other portable media players
4. Google Talk - Connect with your friends via IM or free voice calls
* Send and receive files and voice messages easily and quickly
5. Adobe Reader - View, print, and search PDF files via a redesigned interface
* Secure your documents and collaborate via online, real-time meetings
6. Google Photos Screensaver - Display photos from your PC and photo sharing sites
* Watch cinematic slideshows
7. Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar - Browse the web quickly and securely
* Switch between pages quickly with tabbed browsing
8. PicasaFind, edit, and share your photos in seconds
* Easily remove red eye and fix photos
9. Google Desktop - Find all your email, files, web history, and more
* Get all your personalized info in one place with Sidebar
10. Spyware Doctor Starter EditionDetects and removes spyware, adware, trojans and keyloggers
* Includes Smart Updates and scheduling to protect your PC
11. Norton Security ScanDetects and eliminates viruses and internet worms
* Free detection updates and scheduled scanning
12. Google EarthZoom from space to street level — tour the world
* Find maps, driving directions, hotels, restaurants, and more


And where can you get Google Pack ? There is a button in the Free Software section to the right, that should help you.

Fast PDF Viewer for Windows

The Adobe Reader is the most prevalent way to open PDF's, it is free, and can be easily downloaded. However, there are a number of users who crib about its slow speed, the large size of the download, and so on. As a result, there are a number of PDF viewers that are now available for free. One of the ones reputed to be the fastest is called Sumatra PDF.
It is available at this page, and can be downloaded from this link.
It has a neat advantage, it's designed for portable use: it's just one file with no external dependencies so you can easily run it from an external USB drive.

Convert documents to PDF through the internet

Now, most means of converting a document (Word / Powerpoint, etc) are through a utility installed on the system. This utility will mostly rest as a printer, so that when the user wants to convert a document to a PDF, he/she will print to PDF. But there are other ways of doing this as well. One way is to utilize a service that will allow you to upload a document, ask you for an email ID, and then will actually send you the PDF to that email ID for free. And this is done for a fair number of different formats as well.
One site that does this is called PDFOnline, and is available at this link
These are the formats that can be converted to PDF through this service.

-MS Word (DOC)
-MS Publisher (PUB)
-MS Word (RTF)
-MS Excel (XLS)
-MS PowerPoint (PPT)
-MS PowerPoint (PPS)
-JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, WMF, EMF
-HTML (MHT)
-Text (TXT)

Some great things you can do with PDF

Most people do plain vanilla things with PDF; they create a document in Word / Powerpoint or Excel and then convert it into PDF so that the receiving party cannot modify it, and then send it off. But there is actually a lot more that you can do with PDF, and the website Lifehacker has a post on 10 things you can actually do with PDF, so if you wanted to learn more, then you read the summary here and go onto the actual post:
1. Save any document as PDF, in the sense that if you have a document that can be printed, then it can be converted to PDF
2. Convert a whiteboard to PDF
3. Manage the PDF library in iTunes (bet you couldn't have thought of that)
4. Speed up your PDF Reader (this was something you really wanted, right?)
5. Edit PDF's
6. Merge PDF files
7. Protect PDF's with password
8. Annotate PDF's with skim
9. Convert files to PDF Online
10. Make custom PDF notepaper

CutePDF - Free PDF Writer

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a pretty important for people who want to release information, but want to ensure that it cannot be tampered with. The writer is free on the Mac and Linux platforms, but on Windows, there are several options, both free and paid. Paid options include the Office suite from Windows having this capability, as well as the Acrobat product from Adobe. There are plenty of free options, so here's one, called CutePDF (link).
CutePDF Writer (formerly CutePDF Printer) is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a "printer subsystem". This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button!

Installation Requirements

Supports Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP (x64)/2003 (x64)/Vista (x64). Requires PS2PDF converter such as Ghostscript (recommended). You can get the free GPL Ghostscript 8.15 here.

Another PDF to XPS converter

Well, now that PDF and XPS are becoming alternative formats, there is going to be great demand for tools to convert one format to the other. People who have selected XPS, a newer format, are going to be demanding a tool for converting PDF to XPS given the large number of PDF documents are already available.
Well, here is the promise of another tool for that purpose, called PDFTron PDF2XPS (link).

What is XPS?

"XPS" stands for "XML Paper Specification" and is a new document format as well as the native print spooler format in Microsoft's Windows Vista™. The XPS document format consists of XML markup that defines the layout of a document and the visual appearance of each page along with rendering rules for distributing, archiving, rendering, processing and printing the documents. Just like PDF, the XPS document format enables users to view, print, and archive any type of documents without the original program that created them and without loss of fidelity.

Key Features of PDF2XPS:

* Fast, high-quality conversion from PDF (Portable Document Format) to XPS (XML Paper Specification) that maintains the original document quality and layout and preserves hyperlinks, colors and fonts.
o Font support: Type1, TrueType, Type3 and Type0/CID Fonts, font subsetting on all supported PDF font types.
o Color: ICC, DeviceN, Separation, RGB, CMYK, Indexed, etc.
o Support for encrypted PDF documents (40 and 128 bit RC4, 128 bit AES, Crypt filters).
o Support for all kinds of patterns, functions, and compression schemes.
o Support for all annotation types.
o Support for soft, explicit, and color-key masks.
* The conversion preserves image and data compression resulting in small and efficient XPS documents while fully maintaining the original image quality.
* The conversion process preserves the original document's meta-data as well as other non-graphical information such as bookmark outline, logical structure, and articles to produce XPS documents that directly map to their PDF equivalents.
* Forms, annotations and other PDF structures without XPS equivalents can be optionally exported as private namespace XML elements for further manipulation and processing by XPS consumers.
* Thumbnail generation option for fast navigation through multi-page documents.
* Automatic repair of broken PDF documents.
* Support for all versions of the PDF Language Standard, including PDF 1.7 and Acrobat 8 documents.

Interested in converting PDF to XPS

There is a tussle going on between Adobe and Microsoft about their respective formats, PDF and XPS respectively for final document formats that can be published and made available to large sections of users. A bit of background on why this is needed ?

What is PDF?
PDF stands for Portable Document Format. As the name implies, it is a data format that can be used to describe documents. Adobe, the developers of PDF, market software to create, edit and visualize PDF files. Because the specifications of the file format are publicly available, a lot of other companies develop software for PDF as well. In prepress, PDF is used more and more as a format to exchange data between applications.
Adobe Systems invented PDF technology in the early 1990s to smooth the process of moving text and graphics from publishers to printing-presses. At the time, expectations were modest, but no longer. PDF turned out to be the very essence of paper, brought to life in a computer. In creating PDF, Adobe had almost unwittingly invented nothing less than a bridge between the paper and computer worlds. Adobe's business -- and yours -- will never be the same again.

XML Paper Specification (XPS)
The XML Paper Specification (XPS) makes modern documents possible for all. Simply put, XPS describes electronic paper in a way that can be read by hardware, read by software, and read by humans. With XPS, documents print better, can be shared easier, be archived with confidence, and are more secure.
Microsoft has integrated XPS-based technologies into the 2007 Microsoft Office system and the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, but XPS itself is platform independent, openly published, and available royalty-free. Microsoft is using XPS to bring additional document value to its customers, its partners, and the computing industry.

What can this particular converter, PDF to Vector Converter do (refer link) ?

PDF to XPS Converter (PDF2XPS) can be used to batch convert from Acrobat PDF files to other scalable vector graphics formats, such as EMF, WMF, SVG, Postscript (PS), EPS, SWF (Flash), XPS, HPGL, PCL etc. The software can be run using the handy interface or in batch mode to convert large volumes of PDF files in real-time. PDF to Vector Converter is available via an easily integrated COM object (or DLL Library, or Command Line), enabling developers to access the converter via any programming or scripting languages, such as Visual Basic, C/C++, Delphi, ASP, PHP, C#, .NET, etc. Using the COM object (or DLL Library, or Command Line), file conversions can be done consecutively or simultaneously.