I had great trouble trying to find a solution to access my Google Bookmarks with FireFox without having to use the web based page. I finally found an add on which works well. It’s called Google Bookmarks for FireFox and creates a drop down menu in the top of the browser to access your bookmarks easily. The only thing I found a pain was it only used a slash / to seperate folders from sub folders and I had previously used a colon : so it meant heading into Google Bookmarks through the browser to update all my subfolder titles. Still, it works well and a handy alternative now that Google kindly stopped allowing the Google Toolbar to be used with FireFox 5.0 or higher.

To install from FireFox go to Tools > Add-ons > Get Add-ons > Google Bookmarks for FireFox (by Suchi Software Solutions) or visit the developers website.

So you bought an eBook and now have this .acsm file but what the heck do you do with it? I had the same problem and here is the solution.

When you start to download a protected Adobe PDF or ePUB a small file with the extension .acsm is first downloaded. This is used by Adobe Digital Editions to send the activation ID to the delivery server which will use that ID to generate an encrypted PDF or ePUB eBook, which is then downloaded to your computer.

Therefore, the .acsm file isn’t the book – it a purchase ticket that allows you to download the book. After you’ve saved it somewhere on your computer, if you haven’t got it already you’ll need a copy of Adobe Digital Editions which is free. Download from http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/. After you’ve installed the program, sign up for an account. That way you verify your ‘ticket’ with your username and password to download it.

Open the .acsm file and the book will appear in Digital Editions. In the Library menu your book will appear either as a list or thumbnail view. There will be a small arrow next to the book title, in the dropdown menu select Item Info, this will show you the path to the book on your computer. You can also bring up the Item Info dialog by pressing Ctrl+I on Windows or Cmd+I on the Mac.

Once you have the path you can then locate the eBook file on your computer. So now you need to get it on to your portable device.

The best program I have found for this is ‘txtr. On your iPhone, iPad or Android download the ‘txtr application. Go to the website http://txtr.com/ and sign up for an account. This will allow you upload your eBook and view it on your device for free. Upload your eBook.

Open the ‘txtr application on your mobile device. Sign in with your ‘txtr username and password. Then sign in with your Adobe Digital Editions username and password. Once you’ve signed in your eBooks from your library will download onto your device and you’ll be able to read protected or unprotected eBooks or PDFs anytime you like and on multiple devices.

Hope this article helps!

I had a heap of trouble updating from an older version of FireFox to the latest one 6.0 with the Google Toolbar not compatable (Thanks Google, yet another great thing you dumped). I originally had installed Chrome thinking I’d be able to have similar options like the Google Toolbar, easy access to Google Bookmarks, Picasa Web Albums, Google Mail etc but oh no… Google wouldn’t want to make it easy to access their other stuff would they? So I updated FireFox and the toolbar wouldn’t work. Anyway – I found a workaround; just install the Compatibility Reporter extension found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ – I then told it GTB was OK in the Addon settings and restarted. My previous install of Google Toolbar magically appeared with all my previous settings. *happy dance*

So you want to create a form using Adobe LiveCycle and want to distribute it to people and allow them to fill in the form and be able to save it locally to send back to you. Sadly using LiveCycle alone you won’t be able to do this. You could purchase Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions which allows anyone with Adobe Reader to save the form and the form data, but this costs an unknown amount of money and is aimed at larger corporates. Apparently there are also a few services which will allow you to do this for a pay per PDF fee.

After much digging I *finally* found the answer which won’t be of benefit to anyone other than those who also own a copy of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional or higher (including Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard).

Here’s what you need to do.

1. Create your form in LiveCycle and save
2. Open in Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional or higher
3. Click on ‘Advanced’ in the toolbar
4. Select ‘Enable Usage Rights in Adobe Reader’ or ‘Extend Features in Adobe Reader’ (whichever of these your version displays)

It will then allow you to save your PDF with the ability for end users with only Acrobat Reader to save the form locally using Save As.