RSS 2 PDF is a free service that will turn a RSS or Atom news feed into a printable PDF. This is a pretty cool tool, but honestly, I haven’t a clue into when I would need it, but maybe you guys can figure out something :). I do like how you can pull up any feed, such as a news site, and print it out right away.

The usuage is simple:

http://rss2pdf.com?url=http://www.yourdomain.com/rss/yourfeed.xml

Some examples as provided on the RSS 2 PDF website are Slashdot and Yahoo! Top Stories.

Update: Tom Churm, creator of RSS 2 PDF, has filled me in on some uses of the service in the comments. Here is what he has suggested.

“For example, yesterday I added OPML 2 RSS conversion, so you can kind of put together a PDF digest of your favorite feeds. More advancements will follow.

Instead of using an aggregator, why not Adobe Acrobat? It’s installed on most machines, it’s cross-platform, it prints well and you can save it on your harddrive and you can email it to your friends.”

Great Ideas. I’m going to give the Feed Aggregation a try with Adobe Acrobat and that OPML 2 RSS conversion is a great addition to the service. Now you can combine up to 10 Feeds with OPML!

View the RSS 2 PDF Converter.

TipMonkies have wrote an excellent article on “Podcast hosting on the cheap.” The article covers multiple hosting companies that host podcasting and includes their thoughts and opinions on each. This is a very good article to read if you want to begin podcasting or are just looking for a good provider.

Great article TipMonkies.

View TipMonkies Podcast hosting on the cheap.

Pixen 2, created by Open Sword, is an amazing application that was built specifically for Pixel Designers / Artists and is for Macintosh. I know that this application would have really helped out any of my pixel projects back when I used to pixel design because the features make everything a whole lot easier to work with. One feature that I found is very helpful is the Alignment Crosshair, seen below.

As said from the Pixen 2 website, “Many pixel artists find themselves drawing guides on the edges of their images or have difficulty lining up pixels properly, or keeping symmetry where it is necessary. Pixen’s alignment crosshair feature is simple to turn on, configurable in color, and will show one exactly where the incoming pixel is to be placed.”

Another feature that is very cool that my brother pointed out to me as we were playing with Pixen is the Right-Click Tools. Wow, is this a great idea. If you use Photoshop or any art program really, they usually feature the ability to have other features on certain tools with the right-click button, like having black on left, blue on the right. What Pixen 2 did is made this a whole lot stronger by making a whole new tool set for the left mouse button and the right mouse button. So, for instance. You can set the left click to be a green 1×1 pixel, while when you right click, it will make a black line. Or, maybe you would like the right click to be the eraser. I’m sure you can think of all the combinations. Brilliant feature.

Pixen 2 is the best Pixel Art application I have seen and is amazingly free. The performance, features, and everything are just perfect. If you want to learn pixel design, I recommend reading the tutorial, “The Complete Guide to Isometric Pixel Art,” and then download this application (for Macintosh only), and design away. My only wish is that this was available for Windows too!

View Pixen 2, Pushing Pixels to the Limit, Created by Open Sword.

Recap is a service that is currently in the making that has a lot of features that sound like it can really help your business with sending invoices. It seems to be pretty much on the same path as Blinksale. Recap is not completed, but the features that it lists sound great that will allow you to run your business how you want. Also, don’t think just the business owner has access, the clients are given their own area to leave messages, see billing information, etc. Below are some of Recap’s features:

• Capture needed information, organize your clients and projects, then send out the bills. It’s that simple. You do need to get paid, right?
• Let your clients log in and look up their own billing information, ask questions and leave important messages.
  Better employee-client relationships.
• Understand which employees work best with your clients, and delegate projects accordingly. See who needs help and get people to the right place.
• Easily search and categorize records. Build nearly any type of report you can think of. Who did what, when, where and how ling did it take? It’s all there.

More details will be given when the first Beta release of Recap comes. But, till then, keep your eyes pealed because it sounds like it will be a good service for any type of business owner.

View Recap: Create, Organize, and send Invoices.

IceRocket has a great service called, RSS Builder, that will allow you to create a listing of articles and create an RSS Feed for them. This is absolutely perfect for anyone that owns a website that does not feature RSS. When you signup (free), you make a channel for your RSS feed (to seperate multiple feeds). You then add an entry to the channel you created with the title, link (optional), summary, authors email (optional), and a link for comments that you can use to link to a service that offers a comment system for your website (optional). When you complete writing all your entries, you click on “Publish” and your RSS Feed will be updated and viewable.

This services is great and is definitely worth a look if you do not have RSS Feeds for your site and are willing to create them for your visitors. RSS Builder works great and it is free.

View IceRocket Free RSS Builder.