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PDFs are everywhere, and there seems to be no end of tools out there to read PDF files (Adobe Reader and a wealth of free and open source apps) or even to create them. There do seem to be a somewhat smaller number of tools to manipulate those PDF files. Say you've got a great big PDF that you need to break up into more easily digested chunks. Or maybe you've got a pile of smaller documents that it would make sense to combine. Scissors and tape may be a solution for real-world documents, but they don't work so well for electronic files.

I Love PDF is a free service that lets you merge and split PDF files. Choose to break a PDF up into smaller pieces, or to grab just selected pages and extract them. Or take up to 10 individual PDFs and combine them into one. In either case, this service supports PDF files up to 8 MB in size (split one 8 meg file or combine several 8 meg files), so you've got a fair amount of room to work with.

All you need to use I Love PDF is a web browser with Flash installed and JavaScript turned on. And a pile of PDFs you want to work with.

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There sure seem to be a lot of home improvement shows on the television machine lately. They cover everything from redecorating a room to adding a second story, and more. Unless you're a contractor yourself, you'd probably be advised to retain the services of professionals in the various building trades before you attempt anything too complicated. But what about the early stages, where you try to decide if this is something you really want to look into more deeply? You don't want to go out and hire some high-powered architect to just play "what if" games on a pad of paper.

Roomle is an online service that lets you design a room, flat, or palatial estate in the privacy of your own home. With its easy-to-use interface, in no time you'll draw your space (or upload an existing drawing), add furniture, and more. It's got plenty of prefab do-dads so you can add windows, doors, and furniture with little pain. Examine your handiwork in good-old 2-D, or render it all in glorious 3-D (funny glasses not required), to get an idea of whether your idea is a candidate for reality, or if it might be better to relegate it to the "it seemed good at the time" pile.

While you can create your designs without signing up, you won't be able to save your handiwork without creating a free account. All you'll need to use Roomle is a web browser and an idea.

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The sticky note is a tried and true method of keeping track of things. You can stick them on a report. You can hang them on your computer. But one thing you can't very well do is look at one that's at home when you're at work, or vice versa. Unless you've got this teleportation thing down.

Listhings is an online sticky note tool. Go to their site, and you'll see a virtual corkboard—which looks like real cork—that you can add your own notes to. Pick a color, resize them, drag 'em around the screen, go nuts. But now when you stick a note up there, you'll be able to access it from anywhere, which could be pretty handy.

You'll need to sign up for a free account to be able to keep track of your notes. And of course, you'll need a web browser and an Internet connection. And maybe something worth jotting down?

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How many different fonts do you suppose there are out there? Your system comes with a bunch. Many of your applications add more to the mix. You can find third-party after-market fonts all over the place, some even for free. But what if, even with all these choices, you still don't find the font you're really looking for? Maybe it's time to make your own.

FontStruct is a website with a purpose: they let you design and build your own fonts. It's not really as complicated as you might think. Their online tool is easy to use, and they've got a demo to show you how it's done. Once you're finished you can download your handiwork, or share it with the world if you like. You can also browse the creations of others.

You need to create an account and log in to use this free service. And of course, you'll need a web browser to access the site.

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Ah, meetings. What can rival the excitement of traveling halfway across the country to sit in a too-hot room with a cup of too-bad coffee and a too-stale doughnut listening to a too-boring presentation? Hey, if you're lucky, there may even be some useful information there too.

If that's just too much excitement for you, maybe you should check out Dabbleboard. This free online service lets you and your meeting's participants work with a virtual whiteboard without leaving the comfort and convenience of your office. While there's a paid version, a free account lets you share that all-important whiteboard with an unlimited number of participants. With everybody reading off the same page—whiteboard—it will be easy to make sure everybody understands what the next step is in your quest to conquer the world—or at least corner the market on widgets.

Dabbleboard is a free online service. You need a web browser with Flash support to use it.

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Names are tricky things. Since many of them aren't of Anglo Saxon derivation, they don't necessarily follow the pronunciation rules we've learned for English words. When that's the case, we often stumble over them and struggle to pronounce them correctly. Now if you work at the UN, you probably have access to several translators who could give you a hand with that. For the rest of us, HearNames might just be the answer.

When you visit this site, you can enter the name in question into a textbox, hit the Search button, and (if you're lucky) it will return a spoken version of that name. It includes both first names (e.g. John, Jane) and surnames (Smith, Johnson). You can also browse lists of names if you're just shopping around. Not every name is in there, but there are plenty, so hopefully the ones you're looking for can be found.

HearNames is a free online service. All you need is a web browser, an Internet connection, and a name you want to hear about.

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Everybody knows that movies—moving pictures—don't really move. By presenting a series of still images in rapid succession, our brain does the "tweening" to make it look to our brain like we are seeing actual movement. The same applies to TV, but without the sticky floors and stale popcorn of the movie theater. And of course, you've seen motion on your computer screen as well.

Ever since way back when, GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) image files have had the ability to display animation. Like with movies and TV, they do this by presenting a series of "frames", each one an individual static image. Run them together and it looks like you're seeing movement. Cool.

So how do you build your own animated GIF? There are lots of high-priced tools you can use for this task, or you can take advantage of the MakeAGif service. Just point your browser to their website, and you can upload your individual images—yes, you do have to draw, paint, or otherwise create those single frames—and they will automagically be transformed into a single animated GIF file, suitable for posting to your website, or for whatever other use you have in mind.

MakeAGif is a free service. You'll need a browser and a couple of pictures to use it.

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Fire. Flood. Earthquake. It's all bad, whether for the people involved, or for their stuff. While we all do our best to avoid problems—strict building codes, careful safety practices, etc.—sometimes the outcomes are not good. Hopefully your friends, family, and neighbors come through it all in one piece, but what about your stuff? If you have to evacuate and leave your furniture and possessions at home, what will be there when you return? Can you afford that loss?

We buy insurance to protect against loss, but if you want to collect, you have to demonstrate that you've suffered a loss. That means you'd better have a home inventory to show what you had. Taking an inventory can be a long, tedious process. And even once you've collected all your information, you face the possibility that your inventory will disappear, destroyed by whatever messed up your house in the first place.

Know Your Stuff is an online service that makes it easy to put together an inventory of your home and possessions. Once you set up a free account, they'll walk you through the process of adding rooms and filling them with your stuff. Track the make and model of everything you own, as well as purchase dates and replacement costs. You can even add photos and other documentation to your inventory so you've got the most information possible when you really need it. And since every thing's stored online, you don't have to worry about your paper lists or computer being destroyed and losing your records as well.

You should be able to use Know Your Stuff with any system running a recent web browser.

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Your website is a vital part of who you are, whether as an individual, or as a business. That's where you let everybody know about you: what you're up to, where you're going, what you've got to sell. You do your best to optimize your pages for the search engines, and something must be working, because you've got traffic. But is there anything else you could do? You can always tweak things to make them better, but where to start.

One place to begin could be visiting the WooRank website. These guys have a free online website analysis tool that can take a fresh look at your online presence and make some suggestions about how you might make things even better. Just type your site's URL into the box and press the magic button, and the process starts. Once they've done their thing, they'll report back what they found. You'll get traffic estimates, as well as feedback about various SEO-related aspects of your site, like unique page titles, use of headings, and even whether your site passes muster with the HTML police for validity of your underlying code. You can take a look at the generated report online, or have it emailed to you for looking over at your leisure.

All you'll need to take advantage of WooRank is a web browser and a website.

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School is hard. Whether you're teaching or learning, there's a lot to keep track of. It's enough work to keep track of all the facts—who is buried in Grant's Tomb anyway?—but when you add on top of that all the administrivia of keeping track of homework assignments, exam schedules, study group meetings and more, it's a wonder anything really gets done.

GradeMate is an online service that may give both the student and the teacher a hand. It's got a built-in calendar, so it's easy to track assignments and quizzes. You can set up reminders to that end-of-the-term paper isn't forgotten. Track your grades or the grades of your students. You can even share files, notes and more with your classmates.

GradeMate is available for free. All you need is a web browser, and you're on your way to your Ph.D.

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