Bruno Lowagie's Online Gazette

I hate to repeat myself, but Google still isn't listening:

See Reports - Export in PDF format report missing for more info.

Last month, I wrote that I expected a couple of slow months for itextpdf.com. The stats for July confirm this.

Compared to other sites however, the number of visits during the Summer vacation period didn't drop dramatically:

In spite of a lower number of visits, the ranking of last month improved when compared to the ranking of June (and May, and April,...).
We still have an average of more than 3,000 visits a day:

Looking at the stack of books I've read in July, you may have the impression that I had more time this month than I had in June:

Toen ik op kantoor binnenkwam met het boekje Met uw hightechbedrijf de grens over van Flanders Investment & Trade, was de reactie unaniem: Moet jij dat nog lezen? Je weet daar toch al alles van? Een gelijkaardige reactie kreeg ik op Google+

Today is the day I'll try to work away my backlog regarding mails from the NBN. The NBN is the Belgian standardq organization. I became a member of the NBN earlier this year, and as a result I'm receiving drafts for standards to review. A while back, I posted some comments with respect to PDF/UA, but I never had the time to follow up what happened with those suggestions. I know that PDF/UA would be one of the specs discussed in Salt Lake City in May, but I didn't have the time to read the reports up until today.

As predicted, the site statistics for July won't be as good as the statistics for June. This can be shown in a graphic comparing the first three weeks of July to three weeks in June:

You can clearly see the effect of the American National Holiday (4th of July); you can also see that nor the Flemish holiday (July 11), nor the Belgian National holiday (July 21) have any influence on the heartbeat of iText ;-)

When you register on a forum, you can sometimes add a watch on a question so that you're informed when a new message is added. I have such a watch on the Google Analytics forum, more specifically on the Reports - Export in PDF format report missing (March 22, 2011) and I'm sorry to say, but I'm still receiving plenty of mail from that topic.

Last week I received several phone calls from companies, in Belgium as well as in the US. They were all asking me: Do you know any good developers?
Of course, I know plenty of excellent developers, but usually I get a second question: We're looking to hire developers! Can you send us their coordinates?
Now that's a completely different question.

Somebody is constantly bugging us on the paid consultancy address by sending the same question over and over again. She has been informed that she's using the wrong e-mail address, but she consistently uses the priority address. To make things even worse, she has added addresses at Foxit, Adobe and Omnipage to her mail saying that there's a bug in iText without providing any proof.

She claims that she wants to help us fix this bug, however: she doesn't give us any clue about the nature of the bug, and she refuses to share any PDF that demonstrates the problem.

Yesterday, I blogged about my first experiences with Google+, and I "complained" about the poor integration with other social media sites, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook,... I used Twitter to promote my blog post. This tweet was automagically forwarded to Facebook and on Facebook, I received an answer from Diego Augusto Pinzon Carreño:

I checked the link he shared. It was in Spanish: Cómo usar Twitter desde Google Plus (How to use Twitter from Google+) and it lists four tools that help you integrate Twitter and Google+. I tried all four of them.