We are working on updating the PDF section of the website and creating a daily feature on the homepage. Part of the design process is to have a thumbnail snapshot of the PDF on the homepage. The idea is to show a small image of the PDF to catch the attention of visitors to the site. It's a pretty cool design and we are looking forward to launching the PDF control.

There are very few tools to batch process PDF files to images on Mac OS X. There is a built in functionally in Apple's Automator tool, but the problem is that it converts all PDF pages into an image format, which isn't what we wanted to do. We only wanted the first page to be a PDF format.

While we could have used the Automator functionality or just open each file and just saved the first page, this seemed to be a lot of unnecessary work. As Steve Jobs would say, "There has to be a better way to do this."

So we searched various Macintosh shareware/freeware sites and came up empty handed., It looks like there was a tool called Kunvert, by Kualo software, that might have done the trick, but the website no longer exists. The reviews were pretty good, but I think that Automator's free functionality might have overstepped this commercial application.

We decided to look at some of the tools we had on our own computers. The only tool that we found to perform the task was Picturesque 1.0 by Acqualia. Note: this doesn't work in Picturesque 2.0 which was release in May, 2008. For some reason they took out the functionality to manipulate PDF images in version 2.0.

Picturesque is a great tool to manipulate images to have a cool Web 2.0 type effect. The application makes it easy to add drop shadows, round corners, 3D perspectives and refection effect. The application takes great use of Apple's Quartz Composer technology. It's a very cool application and it's no surprise that it won Apple's Design Award in 2007. I highly recommend buying the application; it's the best $34.95 you'll spend today.

Using Picturesque 1.0 we were able to run a batch job on all 150 PDF files in a very short amount of time. We were even applied a drop shadow and round corners to each thumbnail. We also used iWatermark to add a PDF watermark. We were happy with the resulting images.

Our lesson learned - always backup applications when upgrading! You never know when a developer may remove functionality that you may find useful. We we happy that we had a solution to meet the needs to cover 150 PDF files to thumbnail format.

This week the Concord-Carlise 1988 Graduation Class will meet for the 20th reunion. Wow, where has all the time gone??

Just image what the world was like back in the late 80's; Ronald Reagan was President, the war in Afghanistan was control by the Russians, Apple was selling Macintosh Plus, Michael Dukakis was to be the Democratic Nominee.

Download the Graduation Exercises from June 4th, 1988 and see how many people you may recognize.

I have been to Disneyland so many times. Its a fun place to go and just get away from it all. Despite how many time I have gone, I aways see something new.

On one of my trips I decided to have a little fun and put together a Treasure Hunt. I have seen a few online, but thought I get creative and walk around the park looking for little things that people may not notice.

Download the Disneyland Treasure Hunt. Oh, if you want the solution, you'll have to email me your answers.

One of the most famous highways in New Hampshire is the Kancamagus Highway. This is a great highway that goes in the valleys of some mountains and has spectacular views. The wild life views are great too, as Bears and Moose are usually seen along the river that parallels the highway.

Download the official Kancamagus Highway map.

While doing some testing earlier this year I needed a list of addresses to test a map functionality. I wanted a good sample of addresses so that I could test if the map would be working for customers.

I put together a list of 20 companies from different areas of the country to use as testing. I had this list on my cubical for a couple of months during testing so that I could easily find an address when I needed it. If your doing any testing, you might find this list in handy.

Download the list of Business Addresses for testing.