Adding Skim to the Efficiency Toolbelt

Most writing apps can create a PDF. Dozens of apps can read a PDF. But, when you want to highlight, create bookmarks to useful sections and create annotations, things start to fall apart. Plenty of apps can handle the task, but the features and price vary wildly. Some come with basic features that aren’t much more powerful than Preview. While others come with impressive options and a price tag to match. However, there is an efficient, feature rich, and low cost alternative called Skim, and after highlighting the heck out of a project management book, it has become my tool of choice. Skim is a free tool that offers great features for reading, highlighting and annotating PDF files. When a PDF is open, you can either use thumbnails or a Table of Contents for navigation. In the center is the document itself where you can easily change the zoom and page style. Then on the right are your notes. Working […]

AirDisk Pro and Notability – Now that works nicely

I had a great time transferring files over to AirDisk Pro last night. I sent over a couple Top Gear episodes and a bunch of PDF files.The Top Gear episodes played fine and copying them over that easily was pretty cool. But once I had the PDF files in AirDisk Pro I opened them up in Notability, which is a new note taking and PDF reading/annotating app I just bought. Notability lets you write notes using the keyboard as well as through handwriting. You can jot down ideas and sketch out pictures. That part alone is pretty sweet. But you can also load up PDF files. You can highlight text, write in the margins, add your own text using the keyboard and mark it up as you see fit. I loaded up a 500+ page PDF and found reading and highlighting to be very easy. You can hide away the menus and there is a great palm rest feature that […]