Open .pages file for Printing from Windows

August 29th, 2010

A little while ago someone asked me for help in viewing and printing a .pages file that they had received by email.  In this case, there was no intention of editing the document, she really just needed to print it.

Here’s the deal:

- A .pages file is produced by one of the applications in Apple’s iWorks office productivity suite.
- A .pages file is actually a zip file with a few files in it.
- If you rename the file from .pages to .zip, then open the zip you will see some files and folders.
- Inside one of the folders you will find a PDF file preview (and JPEG)
- View and print this PDF.

And you’re done!

Sure, sometimes you need to edit the file, the right way to do this would be to get the sender to export the file from Apple iWorks to a format that a Windows user would be able to use, such as Rich Text Format (.rtf) or Microsoft Word (.doc).

Get used to receiving these files, Apple computers are everywhere…

Bingo for School

August 16th, 2010

It’s easy for us at Perceptus to know when school is back in session in North America. Traffic doubles from the lazy lull of summer at print-bingo.com!

So, here’s our annual suggestion for teachers around America and everywhere else, try our back to school bingo template – it’s our word list of school related terms. Or, you might want to try our Ice Breaker bingo template – it’s a great way for your students to meet each other.

Basic use of print-bingo.com is free. A cheap upgrade of $10 will get you a bunch more features!

Whoops. The Perceptus Forums needed some fixing.

August 8th, 2010

Whoops. The login pages to the Perceptus Forums, has been broken, probably for a while – it’s a quiet forum, it was easy to miss.

Anyway, it has been fixed. It’s too bad we don’t get frequent posts, or else we would have noticed earlier.

Dell Inspiron 1525 – problems getting Bluetooth stereo (A2DP) working

July 30th, 2010

I pulled out my old Bluetooth A2DP headphones and tried to get them to work with my Dell Inspiron 1525 today. As usual, getting everything working wasn’t as easy as it was supposed to be.

I could get the headset to pair correctly. It also worked fine in “handset” mode – i.e. to make phone calls. But I wanted to listen to music and my device wouldn’t “connect” to “Bluetooth Stero Audio”. Annoying.

I’m not 100% sure that the problem was generic to my laptop model, or specific to my computer due to some software incompatibility. After some web searching, I decided to try downloading and installing the Bluetooth drivers from a more current Dell model, the Vostro 1401. This uses uses the same Bluetooth module, the Dell 355. Things seem to be working so far.

Print-Bingo.com Updates

July 26th, 2010

It’s time for some updates to print-bingo.com, the best web based bingo card generator on the internet! Heh, we’ve grown quite proud of this side project.

It’s off-peak times for the site, since school is out and the sun is shining. So, this is about the best time that we can find for updates to the site. Expect little bugs to pop up here and there.

Please feel free to let us know if you spot something that’s not quite right.