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By Lonnie Brown Ledger correspondent

You might have noticed that my email address appears each week at the end of this computer column. I have been an AOL user even before there was an America Online: I was a subscriber of Quantum Link, an Internet provider formed in 1985 specifically for Commodore 64 computers. Thirty years ago, Commodore was the top-selling computer in America, and it's what I used to write the computer column back in those days.

Quantum Link grew, and in 1991 changed its name to America Online and gave the Quantum Link users a lifetime membership in the newly named company.

I stuck with AOL all those years. It was easy to use then, and still is. At one point, that free membership was worth $20 a month, when computer users who wanted to get online had to "dial up" a phone number and connect with AOL.

Today, there are still dial-up customers left in mostly remote areas of the country, but the majority use their telephone or cable company to get online. If that's the method you use, AOL has a free "bring your own Internet connection" that allows non-AOL members to use AOL services, including reading their AOL emails.

Once again, AOL is about to change its business model. If you use AOL software to access your email, or use its chat rooms or other features, that software will cease to work on April 7.

To use AOL after that date, you'll need to download the new AOL Desktop Gold and subscribe to the service for $4 a month.

What about email? Desktop Gold will have it, of course. But even if you don't subscribe to the new service, emails will still be available from the AOL website: http://www.aol.com. Just click on "Mail" and use your screen name and password to sign in. You will not lose your AOL screen name if you don't advance to Desktop Gold.

Speaking of screen names: Each primary account user can have six other screen names under his or her primary account. With AOL Desktop Gold, "Each account can have seven screen names," said Natalie Azzoli, AOL's communications director. "Nothing has changed."

If those users want to continue under a primary account, they will need to download Desktop Gold and also obtain the primary user's confirmation email to activate the Desktop Gold connection.

So what does the less-than-$1-a-week fee get you?

"What we will provide as a value service is that if you ever have questions or need support with AOL Desktop Gold, live AOL experts are available to help by phone or chat messages 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Azzoli. "You can get assistance with anything from installation to toolbar customization, desktop connectivity and more, right when you need it. We believe this will be helpful to our users."

I know there are readers out there whose parents use AOL. And those readers are thinking: "Oh thank goodness. If they sign up, they can call AOL instead of calling me." As one offspring wrote on a message board recently: "I would like to have them stop using AOL but they're in their 80s, they have used the service for 25 years, and it's not going to happen."

So when those parents call up, keep the AOL help-line number handy.

Desktop Gold users won't get it immediately, but Azzoli said that "anti-phishing and anti-keylogging are currently on the roadmap to be part of Desktop Gold in the near future." And the current chat rooms on AOL's older desktop versions won't be immediately available, but will be added to Desktop Gold within the next several weeks.

AOL Desktop Gold will automatically update itself with new versions, and updates will be installed faster. It will keep the look and feel of current AOL desktop versions.

Also new is a two-step verification feature that should make accounts much harder to hack. "Plus, added encryption makes the personal information youve stored in AOL Desktop unreadable to anyone attempting to steal it," Azzoli noted.

There is a 30-day free trial for the software, but you'll have to notify AOL when the end of the trial date approaches or you will continue to be billed for it. The new desktop will automatically transfer usernames, passwords, icons, mail, contacts and mailing lists from the old desktop.

To learn more, visit this AOL website for questions and answers: http://www.tinyurl.com/AOLDesktopGold.

Contact Lonnie Brown at ledgerdatabase@aol.com.

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Gadget Daddy: If you use AOL, free software is going away - News ... - News Chief

Short Bytes: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has just announced that Microsoft has become a completely open source company. It means that you can now grab all software like Windows and Microsoft Office for free and get your hands on their source code as well.Nadella added that the company is looking to expand its cloud business and planning to try out new things very soon.

While many people were worried about Microsofts hidden intentions, the Linux Foundation director, Jim Zemlin, said that Microsoft is a changed company. But nobody thought that Microsoft could ever become a completely open source companynot until today.

In an announcement made earlier today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that all Microsoft software are open sourced and the users can freely download them. Just in case youre wondering, this open source list of softwarewhich already had Powershell and .Net Core 1.0now also includes Windows 10 operating system and Microsoft Office productivity suite.

So, what would Microsoft do to make money? Well, the answer lies in cloud. Yes, Microsoft is raking tons of money with its Cloud business and giving Amazon and Google Cloud a run for its money. Nadella, who has been an advocate of cloud computing, said that Microsoft is also looking to explore new and exciting forays, which will be disclosed in near future.

Having said that, you can go ahead and visit this link to grab the source code of Windows and Office. Read Microsofts blog for more information.

It was an April Fools Day prank, obviously.No matter Microsoft expresses tons of open source love, its not going to be a completely open source company in near future. But, we can surely hope that this fake news turns out to be true someday.

Meanwhile, dont forget to share this post with your friends and family and give them shock of a lifetime.

Continued here:
Microsoft Goes Completely Open Source Grab All Its Software And Source Code For Free - Fossbytes

Your guide to the best PDF editors of 2017. Check out our latest reviews and buyer's guide to the top PDF editors of this year.

We test and rate the best PDF editors you can get, including packages from Adobe, Foxit, Nuance, Nitro and more. Most of the packages here cost money but it is possible toedit PDFs for free.

PDF (Portable Document Format) is one of the most popular types of document for sharing as most devices and computers can open a PDF for the recipient to read. It doesn't matter whether you're using a laptop or a smartphone, nor which software was used to create it.

But while some PDF reader software allows you to annotate or add comments, such as the free Foxit Reader, sometimes you need to edit the actual PDF itself. This is possible with the tools below, even if a different program was used to make the file in the first place. Such programs allow to to do things like convert a PDF to Wordformat.

All software below lets you create PDFs from other files - including .doc - but they also allow you to edit PDF files so that you don't need to track down the original source file in its native format. In addition, most of them also provide advanced features such as form creation, digital signature and ID certification, and collaborative review and commenting, that you generally dont get with free PDF packages. We also take a look at one free package - AbleWord PDF editor - to see just how much you can get without spending a penny.

If you don't want to install any software, you can edit up to three PDFs online using PDF Pro for free, and there's also FormSwift PDF editor online.

Overall, we found Nuance Power PDF 2 to be intuitive and easy to use, especially if you're familiar with Microsoft Office. We have little doubt that most users will be able to quickly get up and running with it. We found the reviewing features particularly comprehensive, proving means of annotating, marking text in various ways and drawing attention to parts of a document, and it's great that there's now support for touchscreens. Given that it's so much cheaper than Acrobat, it makes a lot of sense for small business use.

Read our full Power PDF 2 review.

This is a fully featured PDF editor that's very easy to use and represents good value for money.Like other editors, itprovides facilities for PDF creation and editing, form creation, digital signatures and commenting, plus integrated optical character recognition (OCR) so that scanned paper documents can be turned into truly editable PDFs.

Version 11 adds various improvements including more performance enhancements compared toversion 10. it also adopts an Office 2016-style interface and it's possible to customise the Home tab at the top so it contains your most used options and tools. For those new to Nitro, there's a new Product Tour which walks you through the main features.

We like the integration with Box, Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox which makes it very easy to open and save files directly to those cloud storage services.

When it comes to editing PDFs, Nitro makes it a breeze to change text, rearrange images, add forms and more. You can change the order of pages in a document simply by dragging and dropping. And it's also easy to sign a PDF using the QuickSign shortcut.

At133.99 for the Personal version it's not the cheapest, but you do get a lot of features.

Wondershare's PDFelement takes a lot of inspiration (as do other PDF editors) from Microsoft Office, so if you're used to Office 2007 or later, you'll instantly feel at home with PDFelement.

The interface is clean and intuitive and the tools are easy to use and do what you'd expect. You can create a PDF from scratch, but can also import a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document.

We found this worked well, except for large Excel sheets since there's no option to select just a portion of the sheet you want to import: it's all or nothing.

On unprotected documents you can click the 'Edit text'button and do exactly that. Unlike some PDF editors, which force you to 'Tippex' over text and then type over the top, PDFelement allows you to select and modify text just as you can in Word. Plus, you can select and move images around at will, delete elements and import new images.

As you'd expect from a paid-for product, it allows you to protect documents, create forms and sign documents.

It costs $69.99, which works out at exactly the same in Great British Pounds once VAT is added on. And at that price, it's good value.If you need OCR - the ability to convert scanned text documents into editable text - that version costs an extra20.

Foxit PhantomPDF Business 7 provides the level of functionality that the professional user has come to expect at a keen price. The user interface is modern and easy to use (mainly because it borrows heavily from Microsoft Office) and Foxit provides no shortage of tutorial videos and easy access to support options to get you up to speed in record time.

Plus, if you only need very basic editing options such as annotation, highlighting and signing PDFs, then Foxit Reader is totally free.

Read our full Foxit PhantomPDF review

Adobe invented the PDF, and so you'd be right to expect that it has the best - or at least very good - PDF editing software. These days, of course, Adobe wants you to pay a subscription to access the latest version of Acrobat Pro. The DC stands for Document Cloud, and hints at the fact that you can store your PDFs in the cloud and collaborate on them with others.

If you don't need many editing features, you can just use Acrobat DC, which is the standard version. However, while this works out at 11.42 per month ($15), the Pro version ishardly any more expensive at 13.33 per month.You can find out more at Adobe's website

However,unless you really need its features (or you can get it for education prices) then it's hard to justify the expense when other PDF editors do a lot of what Acrobat can do for a considerably smaller outlay.

Although primarily a word processor, the fact that the free AbleWord can read and write PDF files means that its more than capable of acting as a PDF editor, thereby suggesting comparison with some seriously expensive competition. While the professional aspects of professional PDF editors are missing, for simply editing PDF documents, AbleWord is perfectly capable.

Here's our full AbleWord review.

Costing significantly less than virtually all other business-oriented PDF editors, yet providing the functionality youd expect, Tracker PDF XChange Pro is well worth trying out (there's a trial option on the website). The down-side is that some of the functions youd expect to find in the main package are in separate utilities but this is only a minor inconvenience, given the price.

Read our full PDF XChange Pro review

Able2Extract Pro 11 may have an odd name, but this is a fully fledged PDF creator and editor.

It can also take a PDF and convert it to various formats including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. When converting to Excel, you can select only the content you want to extract (the name is relevant here) and see a preview of what it will look like before actually exporting it.

Editing functions include being able to highlight and replace text (fonts cannot always be matched of course), remove pages and annotate and redact text. And as with other paid-for packages, you can protect a PDF with a password and differing file permissions.

At $149.99 (approx 143 inc VAT), this is one of the more expensive options, so if you don't need all its features, you can save money and opt for one of the cheaper packages here.

See more here:
The best PDF editors for 2017 - PC Advisor

Eagle Technology Media Release

AUCKLAND 29th March 2017

Students in both primary and secondary education in New Zealand now have free access to Esris ArcGIS Online software through the roll-out of a multimillion dollar enablement program to schools across America, Europe and now Australia and New Zealand. ArcGIS Onlinelets students and teachers explore and analyse data using maps. Eagle Technology, distributor for Esri in New Zealand and the South Pacific launched the Esri Program for Schools with an announcement at the Auckland Regional Esri User Conference today.

Mark Allan, CEO, Eagle Technology, says the free software brings the same technology widely used in both government and the private sector to the classroom.

In 2014 Esris founder and President, Jack Dangermond, joined then-president Barack Obamas ConnectED program. The 2013 initiative sought to make American schools more technologically savvy, and encouraged private technology companies to make in-kind contributions to the programme. Esris offer to donate ArcGIS Online to every school in the United States has resulted in the uptake by more than 4000 schools, and has encouraged Dangermond to take it to other parts of the world as the Esri Program for Schools.

Students can access instructional materials for using ArcGIS online, and explore data related to topics including World Population, Tropical Storms and Interpreting the Landscape (using topographic maps of NZ National Parks). At launch, there will be twelve exercises, or geoinquiries, adapted by Eagle for the New Zealand education curriculum, in addition to global content.

Says Allan, Whereas GIS is strongly associated with geography, it has a much wider application as a system of record, engagement and insight in real world environments for business but also for how we live in our communities. It is being used to manage the environment, but also right down to tackling human problems such as poverty and crime. Esri refers to its GIS as The Science of Where. Students may be introduced to GIS through geography or history in a school, but may find it embedded in their future careers through many different channels.

More about Esri Program for Schools

ENDS

About Eagle Technology Group Eagle Technology Group Ltd is a privately held New Zealand-owned systems integration and information management company established since 1969. It has approximately 90 employees with offices in Auckland and Wellington. Eagle Technology has a has a long-established and successful geospatial technology practice in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related technologies, as well as a unique understanding of on premise ICT infrastructure, communications and Field Force Management, managed services expertise and Cloud applications. Eagle Technology is the distributor for global software leader Esris ArcGIS platform in New Zealand and the South Pacific. Its traditional client base is in government, local government and enterprise class commercial organisations.

Scoop Media

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Roll-out of free GIS software for schools | Scoop News - Scoop.co.nz (press release)

While about 70 percent of taxpayers are eligible to file their returns for free online, fewer than 3 percent of them take advantage of the IRS Free File program.

IRS Free File, which began in 2003, is a partnership between the IRS and a group of private tax preparation companies that allows taxpayers to prepare and file their taxes for free online.

A lot of people get scared when you start talking IRS, said Jim Argo, an AARP tax-aide volunteer of 13 years, who helped people file taxes Thursday at Peru Public Library. Probably a lot of them would be eligible for Free File, but a lot of them are intimidated by the internet.

Judy Bence, 68, of La Salle is a match for that description.

No, I dont file alone or online. That scares me, said Bence, who filed her taxes with the assistance of AARP tax-aide volunteer Linda Reff. Im not a tax-filing person. Ive never done it on my own.

Bence has toyed with the idea before and done research, but she came away overwhelmed.

I looked at it one time, and I was like, Ahh!. Bence said throwing her hands up.

She has been getting help from AARP with her taxes for the past five years.

Filing online alone can be daunting for members of younger tech-savvy generations too even those who have used Free File before.

Ryan Wetsel, 25, of La Salle who was also getting free tax help said things are just easier with the assistance of someone who knows what theyre doing.

I have filed online before, he said. It was through one of the free websites. The last two times I tried to do it myself it kept getting returned. I just decided this was easier. I tried it, then it never worked again.

According to tax-filing statistics, most people agree with Bence and Wetsel.

Fifty-eight percent of responses to a poll on http://www.newstrib.com said they dont file their taxes alone, and things are even more lopsided across the county.

Nationally, 112 million people filed income taxes in 2014, the most recent year on record on the IRS website, and few used Free File.

Around 3 million taxpayers a year use Free File, about the same number of taxpayers who use free volunteer tax prep assistance through our 12,000 locations operated by community organizations, said Anthony Burke with the IRS.

That number is also kept low by cannibalization from Free File Alliance members.

When Free File began in 2003, it was the only free software program available, Burke said. Today, many of the brand-name software providers, who also are members of Free File, offer free software outside of the Free File umbrella.

Free file qualifications

If youre wondering if you qualify for Free File ahead of Tax Day, April 18, this is what you need to know.

Taxpayers who make $64,000 or less 70 percent of taxpayers are eligible to use Free File brand-name software products, Burke said. Taxpayers who make more than $64,000 can use Free File Fillable Forms, the electronic version of IRS paper forms.

Taxpayers can access the forms at irs.gov/uac/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free.

This year, the Free File pages are optimized for various devices, which means taxpayers can now use their mobile phones and tablets, as well as their computers, to prepare and e-file their taxes, Burke said.

Eligibility guidelines are different for each of the 12 Free File partner companies. Their criteria is generally based on income, age and state residency.

Several offer both free federal and free state return software, Burke said. Active duty military personnel who make $64,000 or less can use any of the 12 software products they want.

Free local help through the AARP

While the AARP is most often associated with seniors, Argo said tax-aide volunteers with the organization help people in any age bracket.

He said volunteers are at Peru Public Library from 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays, Mendota Area Senior Center 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays and Bridges Community Center in Ottawa 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursdays.

More AARP tax-aide site locations can be found online at https://secure.aarp.org/applications/VMISLocator/searchTaxAideLocations.action.

Ben Hohenstatt can be reached at (815) 220-6932 or perureporter@newstrib.com. Follow him on Twitter @NT_Peru.

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Free file fear keeps tax preppers busy - LaSalle News Tribune