Design Well

DesignWell has permanently moved

2008-06-23T18:18:00.003-05:00

I was double/cross posting here for the the year or so with a WordPress plug-in that emailed all my posts to this Blogger account.

You can find my latest posts at the new home of DesignWell :: Interactive media tutorials and tips.

--Stephen M. James

Our agency profiled in local business journal

2008-01-07T12:21:00.001-06:00

The advertising agency that I work for was profiled in the Indianapolis Business Journal this month. Miles Brinson Brown: Small agency still thinks big, size gives ad firm advantage when it comes to being flexible

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/our-agency-profiled-in-local-business-journal/

Upgrading a blog to Wordpress 2.3 and Changing your tags

2007-12-05T15:28:00.001-06:00

I upgraded the poetry knook today from WordPress 2.1.3 to 2.3. Including backing up the database and user files, the process took about an hour. Be sure to follow the upgrade steps (in order!). I have heard that logging into administration during an upgrade an cause problems.

WordPress 2.3, which was released back in September, includes among other things: a native tag system, plug-in and platform upgrade notification, post management interface improvements, roll your own dashboard, and roll your own RSS libraries. Many of these items have been addressed by plug-ins. Tagging especially comes to mind. I love Ultimate Tag Warrior and use it on all my blogs.

But I have to say goodbye to Ultimate Tag Warrior (well, not really, I hear there’s a UTW hack compatible with WordPress 2.3), because, as in all platforms, the best third party features eventually get implemented by the parent company. I recommending reading, How to Switch from Ultimate Tag Warrior to WordPress 2.3 Tagging, if you currently use Ultimate Tag Warrior and are upgrading to 2.3. I still had errors and installed UTW Theme Compatibility Thing but it did not work for me in listed related posts. For my related posts, I installed WordPress 2.3 Related Posts Plugin, since I couldn’t get UTW’s related posts tag to work.

I think it took about as long to install WP 2.3 as it did to write this post, so check your plug-ins’ compatibility and then upgrade!

CUSTOM THEME NOTES:

Sounds easy doesn’t it? Well, not exactly if you use a customized blog and do not just download an upgrade ready-to-wear theme. You will need to change out all your UTW tags to WordPress tags (at the time of posting, this wiki is incomplete). Below are specific items I had issues with when upgrading:

Be sure to update your tags.php with the native WP tags instead of the UTW tags–although with the UTW Theme Compatibility Thing plug-in, you should be able get away with not changing these tags. There are no where near as many options with the native tags, so you may have to change the format of the tags in your blog.
I have had problems with the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plug-in since the category database schema has changes. Update to the latest version to fix this.
Unlike UTW’s use of the tag.php for listing posts filed under a tag. The native tagging system of WordPress 2.3 uses the archive.php (just like viewing a category). Takes a glance at the code of /wp-content/themes/default/archive.php in order to customize your “Posts Tagged with ????” pages. It took me a while to figure this out in my customized themes.

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/upgrading-a-blog-to-wordpress-23-ultimate-tag-warrior-tagging-tags/

Upgrading a blog to Wordpress 2.3

2007-12-05T13:15:00.001-06:00

But I have to say goodbye to Ultimate Tag Warrior (well, not really, I hear there’s a UTW hack compatible with WordPress 2.3), because, as in all platforms, the best third party features eventually get implemented by the parent company. I recommending reading, How to Switch from Ultimate Tag Warrior to WordPress 2.3 Tagging, if you currently use Ultimate Tag Warrior and are upgrading to 2.3. I still had errors and installed UTW Theme Compatibility Thing but it did not work for me. For my related posts, I installed WordPress 2.3 Related Posts Plugin, since I couldn’t get UTW’s related posts tag to work.

I think it took about as long to install WP 2.3 as it did to write this post, so check your plug-ins’ compatibility and then upgrade!

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/upgrading-a-blog-to-wordpress-23/

HTML standards in email clients: Oh, the horror!

2007-12-02T17:35:00.001-06:00

A new HTML standards for email clients advocacy site has sprung up. It’s called Email Standards Project. I sincerely hope that it is able to make a difference. I’ve personally had issues with the major discrepancies in email clients at my job. I’ve heard that Microsoft Outlook 2007 is unfortunately using the Word HTML engine instead of the Internet Explorer Engine. The full list of clients that are on the Average or Poor list are:

This is based on their acid test. If you are involved in developing internet applications or sites and aren’t familiar with acid tests (and you should be!), visit WebStandards.org for the web browser acid test.

So what’s a person to due in the mean time–structural tables and inline CSS, of course! That’s what! So barbaric and so 1999! Here is a tutorial on what HTML/CSS you can use across multiple email clients.

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/html-standards-email-clients-outlook-2007-gmail/

How to link to your Facebook profile: public profile link and NOT public profile link

2007-11-17T10:44:00.000-06:00

Slowly Facebook has disabled direct links to profiles. Originally you could link to

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=000000000.

All you had to do was copy and paste the URL from your address bar while you were logged into Facebook and you were good to go!

But the Facebookers disabled that.

If you want to keep all your information private, but want to post a link to add you as a friend, now you can do a search and limit it by id number:

http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=100000080&id=000000000

To view the above link, you still have to login. If you don’t want users to have to log in and don’t mind submitting your profile to search engines, now you can create a public profile and link to it

http://www.facebook.com/p/First_Middle_LastName/000000000

I could not find anywhere that would list how to make this URL. I looked around and had to try the schema by example. It is as listed above with your profile id attached to the end instead of the “000000000″

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/how-to-link-to-your-facebook-profile-public-profile-link-and-not-public-profile-link/

Thirteen Ways To Add SEO To Gallery2

2007-11-05T17:04:00.001-06:00

Overview of Search Engine Optimization for Gallery2

I hope this is a starting point for those that want to make Gallery2 more SEO. Please remember that the SEO doesn’t make you show up higher in search listings, but makes it easier for this to happen. Having other people link to your pages is always the best thing you can do (at least for Google). Any additions to this list would be helpful. If you have questions or would like clarification, please ask.

Technical Background on Gallery2

Some of the suggestions on this list involve editing template and class files, do this at your own risk. Gallery2 administrators recommend copying the file you are editing to the subdirectory called “local” and editing the file there. Gallery2 will then use that file instead of the original. This also means that upgrades will not overwrite your edited file. In the examples below, I am using Gallery 2.2.3.

1. Activate URL Rewrite plugin

Read through the URL Rewrite Administration page and familiarize yourself with the structure of Gallery2, you’ll notice that the permalink of a photo is based on the filename.

2. Make items in keyword and other dynamic albums point to item’s permalink

ll links that can, should point to an item’s permalink–after all that is the valuable content–all else is for the user’s convenience and experience. This will eliminate some duplicate content and use the keyword album’s PageRank to point to the item’s permalink.

On the Site Admin page, go to Keyword Album (and/or Dynamic Albums)
Change Thumbnail links in dynamic albums to Jump to original album, and click Global checkbox if possible.

3. Use keywords in filenames

ince the permalink of an item is based on the filename, the filename of the item affect the keywords contained within the URL. Do not use the file name that a camera gives each photograph, but name your photos using keywords. You can do this manually, or you can use a bulk file renaming tool.

I recommend you use a bulk file renaming tool. On Windows, I use the free Bulk Rename Utility. It allows all sorts of file naming options including regular expressions, recursive file renaming of files in subdirectories, add suffixes, add prefixes and many, many more. It’s a little overwhelming when you first load the program. Thankfully, you can see the actual before/after of the file names, so you don’t have to guess at what you are doing. If anyone know of an OS-X bulk renaming tool, please contact me.

My naming convention for a file name is photo_set-photo_subset-people_or_objects. For a photo of my parents, my bride and myself at my wedding, I used wedding-party-rachel-stephen-richard-mary-james.jpg

4. Create keyword-dense titles and keywords for each item

aving tags or keywords link similar items not only provides users of your site to easily visit similar items, but it also links the keywords with your content for SEO.

Upon wanting to post over five hundred photographs of my honeymoon in Ireland to my Gallery2, I decided to write an automated PHP script that goes through the database and does the following:

Reads in the file name
Replaces the hyphens and/or underscores with spaces
Removes Windows and OS-X renaming suffixes/prefixes such as numerals, parenthesizes and the word “copy.”
Then, places this text in the item title field

After creating the title, I re-run the php script that then adds keywords. It does the following:

Reads in the file name
Replaces the hyphens and/or underscores with a comma and a space
Removes Windows and OS-X renaming suffixes/prefixes such as numerals, parenthesizes and the word “copy.”
Removes common words such as the, of, to , with, on, through, in and single letters (A-Z)
Then, places this text in the item keyword field

Now you can do all this manually and probably get better results by fine-tuning each item’s keywords and title, but in this instance, I did not want to enter thousands of keywords and possibly misspell them.

If you would like a copy of this script, I can email it to you. Please contact me. You will need to directly edit a PHP file, but I believe it is straight forward enough. It has no warranty for anything it does to your system. Before using it, backup your database. After the script has run, the database cache will need to deleted at Site Admin >> Maintenance >> Delete database cache

5. Optimize robots.txt

Some say to disallow search engines from listing keyword or tag pages by using disallow within one’s robots.txt. The theory behind this is that search engines do not actually stop looking at the pages listed after a disallow command. Disallow is there to prevent good search engines from listing disallowed pages in their search results. They DO read and evaluate disallowed pages for content. So the theory is that when a user searches for a keyword, the keyword page will not show up in the search results, but the actual content pages that the keyword pages link to will show up. This only works with search engines that value linking over keyword density. Since there is usually not much text on an item page, disallowing keyword filled dynamic albums might have negative effects. I suggest you research optimizing your robots.txt more, before disallowing hundreds of pages from search engine results.

6. Remove slideshows

I would say that this is the least important item on this list, but you want to be sure to remove as much duplicate content as possible, then to remove the slideshow:

Goto Plugins on the Site Admin page.
Deactivate Slideshow and Slideshow Applet

7. Remove multiple sizes

I’ve never had multiple sizes setup in my Gallery, if someone has the directions on how to deactivate this. It would be helpful.

8. Enable Google Sitemap

Sitemaps are an XML document that lists all content pages. When your site changes, it changes. Just like it says, it is a map. It doesn’t automatically get you a higher SEO, it only give the search engine a map to browse your site with. Personally, I’m not convinced that this helps SEO. It just makes sure all your pages get listed–which if you are practicing good SEO on your site, when you should not have to worry about a page not being listed. To enable Google Sitemap:

Goto Plugins on the Site Admin page and deactivate Slideshow and Slideshow Applet
Activate Sitemap

9. Optimize permalinks

Search engines do not like variables (question marks and ampersands) at the end of URLs. Gallery is made to be sticky with its items which makes human browsing easier and pretty much eliminates the need to use the browser’s back button. If you use the breadcrumbs in the upper left to view a parent album, you are shown the album page that contains the item you were just viewing. Below are changes to make to the Gallery2 code

Comment out the urlParams call in /modules/core/classes/GalleryTheme.class
LINE 1408 - BEFORE

if (!empty($theme['parents'][$i + 1]['id'])) { $urlParams['highlightId'] = $theme['parents'][$i + 1]['id']; } else if ($itemId && ($i + 1) == count($theme['parents'])) { $urlParams['highlightId'] = $itemId; }
LINE 1408 - AFTER
/* if (!empty($theme['parents'][$i + 1]['id'])) { $urlParams['highlightId'] = $theme['parents'][$i + 1]['id']; } else if ($itemId && ($i + 1) == count($theme['parents'])) { $urlParams['highlightId'] = $itemId; } */
10. Make item titles into heading text and links

Add heading tags to item titles in /themes/matrix/templates/album.tpl (with “matrix” being your current theme)

LINE 121 - BEFORE

<p class="giTitle"> {if $child.canContainChildren && (!isset($theme.params.albumFrame) || $theme.params.albumFrame == $theme.params.itemFrame)} {* Add prefix for albums unless imageframe will differentiate *} {g->text text="Album: %s" arg1=$child.title|markup} {else} {$child.title|markup} {/if} </p>

LINE 121 - AFTER

<h2 class="giTitle"> {if $child.canContainChildren && (!isset($theme.params.albumFrame) || $theme.params.albumFrame == $theme.params.itemFrame)} {* Add prefix for albums unless imageframe will differentiate *} <a href="{g->url arg1="view=core.ShowItem" arg2="itemId=`$child.id`"}"> {g->text text="Album: %s" arg1=$child.title|markup}</a> {else} <a href="{g->url arg1="view=core.ShowItem" arg2="itemId=`$child.id`"}"> {$child.title|markup}</a> {/if} </h2>

11. Prevent duplicate base URLs for your Gallery

On Apache servers, you can change by each directory how the web server serves up your pages within a file named .htaccess. If you have implimented the URL Rewrite plugin correctly, then you should already have an .htaccess file in your Gallery2 directory. Redirects affect SEO negatively, and it has been said that two site homepages, /main.php and /, harm SEO. To prevent the 301 redirect to /main.php, add the following lines to the top of your .htaccess:
# Set the default handler. DirectoryIndex main.php

It should be said that not all hosts allow you do change the DirectoryIndex. Also, this also might need to be done to get rid of “main.php” in the breadcrumb. I’m not sure if I changed this myself or gallery set it automatically, but on line 177 of /config.php, I have:
# Set the default handler. DirectoryIndex main.php

In a related note, some search engines will differentiate www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com. This not good and could result in duplicate content. You can search Google via site:yourdomain.com and find out how your site is currently listed. You want to be listed in the same format that external links and internal links are linking to your site. To redirect pages without “www” to a page with the prefix, add the following lines to the top of your .htaccess:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

If you are hosting, your Gallery2 in a subdirectory (e.g.- photos), use this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/photos/$1 [R=301,L]

12. Add META tags to your Gallery2 pages

It has been said that META tags have lost importance since their glory days ten years ago. They have lost importance to external links, but they are not to be disregarded. To add the META tags keyword and description to your Gallery2 pages add the following lines to /themes/matrix/templates/theme.tpl (with “matrix” being your current theme).

LINE 19 - BEFORE

{* If Gallery doesn't provide a header, we use the album/photo title (or filename) *} {if empty($head.title)} <title>{$theme.item.title|markup:strip|default:$theme.item.pathComponent}</title> {/if}

LINE 19 - AFTER

{* If Gallery doesn't provide a header, we use the album/photo title (or filename) *} {if empty($head.title)} <title>{$theme.item.title|markup:strip|default:$theme.item.pathComponent}</title> {/if} <meta name="keywords" content="{$theme.item.keywords|markup:strip|default:$theme.item.pathComponent}" /> <meta name="description" content="{$theme.item.description|markup:strip|default:$theme.item.pathComponent}" />

Note: The above is only an addition of the meta tags.

13. Create SEO page numbers

This is related to number six, Optimize permalinks, but I have yet figured how to do it. I’ve read the Gallery2 forum thread, URL Rewrite for page number, but did not want to change my current item permalinks. If anyone has suggestions, I’d love to see this addressed.

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/add-seo-to-gallery2-search-engine-optimization/

Make the logo bigger!

2007-11-01T18:29:00.001-05:00

I generally don’t promote specific websites on this blog, but I enjoyed this humorous designer-centric site, MakeMyLogoBiggerCream too much not to post. Not only does it offer Make My Logo Cream, but if you act now you can get Whitespace Remover, Starburst Dust, Fluorescizer and The Emotionator for only three payments of $29.99! Act now!

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/make-the-logo-bigger/

Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 crashing on startup and close

2007-10-30T13:08:00.001-05:00

For a long time, I have had problems with Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 crashing at the close of the program. I had never had a problem with Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 crashing at startup until the other day. I surmise that Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 had closed and crashed as it usually did, but this time it wrote an invalid or corrupt Site Cache file. It took me a few hours to remove all parts of Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 from my system, but I finally found the corrupt site cache file in users/{username}/library/application support/macromedia/common/8/Sites/

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/macromedia-dreamweaver-8-crashing-on-startup-and-close/

Six plus hours uninstalling and re-installing Adobe Creative Suite 3 (OS-X)

2007-10-30T12:47:00.001-05:00

Adobe Illustrator CS3 crashed every time I tried to print to a CD on my Epson Stylus Photo R220. I decided to re-install Adobe Illustrator CS3. I did an uninstall with the uninstaller found in /Applications/Utilites/Adobe Installers. I then tried to re-install Adobe Illustrator CS3 with the installation DVD. Twenty minutes into the installation, it said
“Please insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to continue installation” I googled the error and found this Adobe support page, Message “Please insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to continue installation” when you install, reinstall or repair a CS3 Suite or CS3 application (Mac OS) I could not find a “Add or Remove Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 alias” in /Applications/Utilites/Adobe Installers, so I decided to re-install the whole suite!

One of my co-workers warned that I needed to completely remove CS3 preferences, plists, and all those other files that OS-X applications install but never remove!!! I finally found this Adobe Support page, Remove CS3 prerelease software (Creative Suite and individual applications). I figured that it would remove release software, too. I believe that it does, but be sure you know what you doing when you use it. This script runs from the terminal, so it mainly a UNIX shell script that deletes folders and files.

I am now back to Illustrator 13.0.0 instead of 13.0.2, but only after more than six hours of uninstalling and re-installing Adobe Creative Suite !

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/six-plus-hours-uninstalling-and-re-installing-adobe-creative-suite-3-os-x/

Why email isn't sending on iPhone

2007-09-19T15:19:00.001-05:00

I don’t own an Apple iPhone. I don’t have a need for a smart phone (maps, sending email on my phone, or watching YouTube videos–can you do and still call it a “smart” phone?). I also don’t want to pay for AT&T’s media plan either. And I only use my 20GB iPod in the car. Three of my co-workers own iPhones though, and one asked me to configure it to send email.

You would thin, since the only wireless carrier that the Apple iPhone works with is AT&T (albeit the new hacks that have appeared), that they would make the default SMTP server AT&T’s SMTP’s server. However, they didn’t.

In AT&T’s Support KnowledgeBase KB7276 it says:

AT&T will provide support for sending E-mail using AT&T owned and operated outgoing server addresses:

Former AT&T Wireless customers use “smtp.mymmode.com” (Standard POP/IMAP compatible via port 25 with no SSL.)
AT&T customers use “cwmx.com” (Standard POP/IMAP compatible via port 25 with no SSL.)

The configuration and use of any other outgoing server address will not be supported due to several factors including, but not limited to, the inability for the outgoing server to authenticate users (whether by IP or username/password) that are not directly connected to that Internet Service Providers network. This is mainly done to prevent unsolicited users from sending SPAM via the ISPs servers.

Problem fixed!

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/why-email-isnt-sending-on-iphone/

Compatible ink jet cartidges are a great deal

2007-09-15T14:09:00.001-05:00

Unless you use your ink jet printer for graphic design or photography, you should look into compatible ink cartridges. I have been using compatible ink cartridges for my ink jet printers for over five years now. On some models, manufacturers sell their printer slightly above cost, because they know you will buy their ink jet cartridges in the future, BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO!

As to the quality, I have found them to slightly inferior. They seem more likely to have banding which can be fixed by a cartridge cleaning. They also may not last as long–if you are archiving. The majority of items I print I do not need to save for three years. I printed all of our wedding invitations with compatible ink jet cartridges, so we will see how those hold up in a few years.

I don’t always buy my compatible ink jet cartridges from the same online stores. Since there only a few compatible ink manufactures, you will probably get the same cartridges. I just bought the following compatible ink cartridges from ABCink and SuperMediaStore:

Epson Color Photo R220: 12-pack (2 of each) $29
Epson Color Stylus 880: 6 black, 2 Color $35

Also, you should only buy from places that give you free shipping!

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/compatible-ink-jet-cartidges-inkjet-review-epson-canon-hp/

Domain and hosting problems and how to prevent them

2007-09-06T12:38:00.000-05:00

I have had a client choose to register their domain and host their website with AnywhereHost. About two weeks ago, AnywhereHost upgraded their servers and in the last week, they and GoDaddy, their registrar, have been having problems. This makes the client’s website intermittently down. It also has made the client’s email stop working entirely. As you know, email is essential to day-to-day operation at any modern company. Can you trust your email to a $7/month company with personnel that you’ve never met in person. This hosting company, AnyWhereHost has been called multiple times, but they refuse to answer their phone. We have been unable to obtain the domain from them.

The best advice to prevent this from happening to you is DO NOT allow a shared hosting service to register YOUR domain for you.

I know from experience. Many years ago, I tried to retrieve my domain from a hosting company and spent hours on the phone. It turned out that the hosting company had been bought out and split. I was talking to the part of the company that kept the old name, but had sold out. They still had my records, too, and told me I was their customer until I talked to a manager that knew the situation.

Yes, you do need to know something of what you are doing to enter information into a few fields at a third-party registrar, such as Register.com or ItsYourDomain.com. You need to know your host’s name servers and that’s all. You can request those in a simple email to your host. It will cost you $15-$20 a year more to have a third-party registrar, but what is that small amount of money for a domain that you have control of at any moment. If you’re server and/or hosting company goes down, just move it.

Also, remember to regularly back up your online site to you local computer in case you cannot contact your hosting service.

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/domain-and-hosting-problems-and-how-to-prevent-them/

Another hard drive crash--fixed in just an hour

2007-08-02T20:10:00.001-05:00

Today, I came home to see the dreaded “DISK BOOT FAILURE - INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER” notice from Windows XP. This has already happen recently–a little over a month ago. This time though I knew what I was doing.

All my personal data (photos, music, program installation files) are on a separate drive that I then backup every week to an external hard drive. This separates the data from the hard disk that contains the operating system and creates a second copy. Separating the data from the operating system also allows for an easier backup, since the whole drive and be duplicated. I use Retrospect Express that came free with my external hard drive to copy and verify the external drive.

Most likely my master boot sector (MBR) became corrupted and so I told the Windows XP installation CD to install a second copy of Windows. This fixes the master boot sector and allow me to boot into the previous version. Walla! The problem is fixed.

Now if I could only figure out why the hard drive’s master boot sector become corrupted in the first place. My first thoughts were heat, but then why would only the boot sector be corrupted. If you have any ideas, please post them!

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/another-hard-drive-crash-fixed-in-just-an-hour/

Library book lookup from your browser

2007-07-25T14:40:00.001-05:00

Have you ever seen a book on Amazon or another website and wondered whether your local library had a copy of it?

I have to admit as much as I like my library, Indianapolis Marion County Public Library. I do not care for the web interface with it’s URL session ids and timeouts and JavaScript linking! So I try to stay out of the website until I want the book. I saw LibraryLookup on 43 Folders. I tried LibraryLookup, but was annoyed with the ISBN interface. BookBurro looked promising but it only worked on 20-some library. I’m not a member of any of those libraries.

I decided to roll my own Firefox Search Plugin–which is very simple to do. You just have to know the query keywords for your library (such as isbn, keyword, title). The IMCPL is an IPAC system and uses “UTL” for its title keyword. Just drop the finished file in your Firefox/Profile/searchPlugins folder with a “.src” extension, and restart Firefox. That’s all there is to it.
Here is the code for the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library for title searching:

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/library-book-lookup-from-your-browser/

DVD Studio Pro stops DVD burn / format

2007-07-24T09:07:00.001-05:00

Over fifty-percent of the DVDs I burn in DVD Studio Pro 4 (DSP) fail and become coasters, and every fifth or sixth DVD I burn forces me to restart my Dual G5 Mac Pro! The problem is that I have to Force Quit DVD Studio Pro when it is burns or formats the DVD. I wait about five minutes after the status bar has stopped moving. I then force quit DVD Studio Pro with the DVD unable to eject without restarting OS-X. There are ways of ejecting the DVD through holes with paper clips, but I might as well restart my computer than do that. I hate it when Apple thinks they know best by not allowing for an eject button that is on the front of the computer and not software supported via the keyboard. I have the same drive (Pioneer DVR-109) on my PC at home, and do not have this many problems!

To burn video DVDs, I’ve switched to the open source burning software, Burn. I’m sure many other programs will work that support the video DVD file system.

Since I have switched, I have a 20% coaster rate, and this program verifies the data, too (which as far as I know DSP doesn’t do). Most importantly, I have not had to restart my computer yet! I must mention that I am burning at 4x. I going to guess that the DSP default (and only setting) is to burn at the maximum rate of the drive which is 8X.

As a side note, we buy hub-printable white Taiyo-Yuden 8x DVD-Rs from AllMediaOutlet for all our DVD burning. We also buy silver non-hub-printable Ritek CD-Rs for out CD burning. As far as I know, no one makes hub-printable silver CD-R or DVDs.

Are there better consumer DVD-Rs out there?

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/dvd-studio-pro-stops-dvd-burn-format/

Project managment and timesheet accounting

2007-05-04T11:04:00.000-05:00

I have used a few project management software packages ArtLogik, AceProject, and dotProject (open source) at my current job and a former job. At my current job, online project management did not last long. Since we are small company of under 10 employees that do not pass projects back and forth often, there is not a great need for the overhead of project management software.

Personal Timesheet

We use job folders that an archive copy of the project on DVD and time sheets go into. Before tallying the final time sheet that is printed from Excel, I use a personal time sheet that I write on. It is a seven column time sheet with the date, start and end times, a short description, the hours of the task, the comp number (only used for print projects), and a column to check if I have transferred the time to the final time sheet that goes into the job folder.

Final Time Sheet

The final time sheet that is archived with the digital copy of the project files is an Excel template. It has a place for the job number client and project in the heading. The way these three spreadsheet cells are set up that increases productivity is that one can complete the information for all three cells, copy them to the clipboard, and then paste them into the file name of the Excel file. Thus the filename will be .xls and Spotlighting (from OS-X) the correct files in the future will be easy.

After the heading, is a list of the tasks with their date, description and total time. Below the task hours that are billed are additional fees that can be charged such comp approvals, ftp approvals, pdf approvals, and DVD approvals. This is all where material costs would be listed. These section has five columns: the date, a description of there service, who the material was sent to, how it was sent, and who said to send it. This level of description allows for a paper trail of who did what and when.

I hope that these thoughts and files help you in your project management. How do you do project management in your business? Do you use a paper trail? Track it all online?

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://smjdesign.com/designwell/2007/05/04/project-managment-and-timesheet-accounting/

Make coding easier: CSS, HTML, Javascript

2007-05-01T09:24:00.001-05:00

I have not tested Dreamweaver CS3, but prior versions of the program do a mediocre job of displaying CSS correctly. For instance, div tags do not always display correctly without inline style tags–which we all know is such a coding faux pas. This has led to a departure from using a WYSIWYG editor and to using the browser to construct webpages. Below are the best aids I have found in debugging and editing webpages in the browser Mozilla FireFox.

Suggested extensions for making coding easier

Web Developer

The Web Developer FireFox extension was the first FireFox extension I ever installed. It was mid-2004, and I was frustrated with Cascading Style Sheets. I was using CSS, not for the first time, but I was using CSS for margins and padding and widths– all those things we used spacer gifs and tables for back in the web's infancy–for the first time. The sole reason that I would have even paid for this extension was the Outline tab and it's "Outline Block Level Elements." The fact that I could actually know where one element ended and another begin was a godsend. There are many more uses for the plug-in. Almost too many to name here. The highlights that I use (or used to use) regularly are:

Outline and highlight block level elements, deprecated elements, frames, links, and other tag and CSS elements
Disable images
View the CSS for a particular element by clicking on that element
Disable cache and cookies
Display various page and screen sizes for testing (what does this site look like on an 800×600?)
Disable background images (ever browsed though MySpace, which reminds GeoCities circa 1997)
View the CSS for a web page while browsing
Edit the CSS style sheet of web page without reloading
Validate HTML, CSS, feeds, and links

Firebug

I have only mentioned Web Developer first because it was my gateway drug of FireFox extensions. I use Firebug more often now that CSS is even more prevalent then it was in 2004, thus simplifying the HTML and making hand-coding HTML much easier. Firebug focuses solely on the content of a page and doesn't have the browser related features such as disabling the cache or resizing the browser window. It shines when you want to tweak HTML, CSS and JavaScript contained in a page, all on the fly.

The way Firebug works is by clicking the "Inspect" button and selecting an element on the page. The HTML and CSS associated with that element is then displayed. The inheritance and overriding of CSS attributes can be seen (hence the cascading in cascading style sheets) and any CSS attributes can be edited or disabled.

Firebug helped make my CSS leaner. Before I discovered it, I often ignored the inheritance features of CSS and repeated the same attributes numerous times, since inheritance is an abstraction that is hard to remember without either modeling (which Firebug does) or precise documentation. Firebug shows this inheritance, thus making the relationships between.

Firebug will measure and illustrate all the offsets, margins, padding, and sizes for you–similar to what you would have in a WYSIWYG editor. Since offsets, margins, and padding can often overlap, there is a "Layout" tab that allow editing of these qualities and shows their relationships.

Link Checker

If you've ever clicked through a large site in order to test all the hyperlinks, you'll find this simple add-on convenient and productive. It will highlight valid and invalid links of a page. Once Link Checker is installed, you'll have to add the toolbar button yourself.

Measure It

You could use the guides in Firebug, but most times, one just wants to quickly estimate the correct margin or padding. This add-on gives the height and width in pixels of a rectangle that can be drawn atop the webpage.

ColorZilla

ColorZilla adds an eyedropper tool to the status bar that allows color sampling and copies RGB values (in five different ways) to the clipboard. This means you don't have to go back to Illustrator or PhotoShop to grab RGB values for your CSS.

A note about Internet Explorer

Unfortunately, the majority of web users browse with Microsoft Internet Explorer and thus testing a site with IE is necessary. At work, I create my websites on an Apple Macintosh and have an old Dell laptop with IE 6 installed to test websites with Internet Explorer. A tool that I have not used extensively, but does help sometimes in debugging under IE is Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://smjdesign.com/designwell/2007/05/01/make-coding-easier-css-html-javascript/

Multiple CSS increases productivity of hiding and showing with display attribute

2007-04-30T11:09:00.000-05:00

With the prevalence of DHTML, much less AJAX, I have begun to use separate Cascading Style Sheets for development and publishing. Since styles override each other, the easiest way to accomplish this is to add a second style sheet link after the publishing CSS link and comment it out when one wants to test the page.

The following is a copy of the comments located in the first frame of "test.fla. Click here to view the comments.

Layer: checkPage Script
The script in this frame should go in the first frame of your movie.

Layer: page Script / labels
This is the ActionScript that changes the page variable and the HTML page
(1.html, 2.html, etc) that is loaded into the hidden frame, "historyframe" of
"index.html." The "page" labels (page1, page 2, etc) correspond to HTML pages named 1.html, 2.html, etc.

Layers: Current State/Label, variableDisplays, and FormLabels
These layers are for debugging/development purposes, so that you can see when the page variables change.

Layer: button Script
This square is present to click to go to and play the next secrion ("page") of the Flash movie.

Layer: onClipEventEnterFrameMovie
This rectangle is present to constantly check to see if the page variable has
changed. The rectangle has a movieclip script instead of a timeline frame script. It calls the function checkPage() which is on the checkPage Script layer. That function will constantly check to see if you are on the right page
(according to the JavaScript inside the HTML pages).

--Stephen M. James
http://www.smjdesign.com/

The stupidest Apple OS X feature

2006-03-22T13:34:00.000-06:00

I finally found the stupidiest Apple OS X bug. I was copying mp3s to a small USB drive (thumbdrive/jumpdrive) and OS X copied 8 out of the 10 files. It stopped at 8 because the drive was full.

BUT THEN, Apple's OS deleted the first 8 files that would fit on the drive. I then had to remember that it was eight files that would fit on the drive and copy only those.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Type from one boss vs layout of another

2006-03-22T10:44:00.000-06:00

When you are involved in the final production of a print or electronic piece, trying to walk the line of using the copy/text of one supervisor and the graphic design/layout of a different supervisor is difficult, because they both can't win without using less than a 80% horizontal type shift. :-)

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Flash Tip - Don't stop() at the end of a Tween

2006-03-09T10:16:00.000-06:00

Don't stop() at the end of a Tween. Insert the stop() frame a few frames after the ending frame of a Tween. If you do not, rollOver and rollOut Actionscript calls might animate incorrectly or get stuck on the wrong frame.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Managing Generation Y/Millennials

2006-02-14T21:44:00.000-06:00

This is a Fast Company article about managing Generation Y/Millennials. I thought it was humorous, but only because much of it is true.

FC: Scenes from the Culture Clash

Excerpt:
"They are the traumatized bosses, as well as the 47-year-old woman from HR who has been hassled time and again by her youngest workers and their parents."

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Epson R220 CD label printing in Illustrator/Photoshop in OS X

2006-02-06T19:18:00.000-06:00

Over the past 2 weeks, the Epson R220 my company bought has worked intermittently. I called Epson and their technical support said that they would only support the printing of CD labels from their vastly limited and color distorting printing program, Epson Print CD.

Sample File
This PDF has the correct offsets on a US Letter page setup to print directly to the CDs.
The actual offsets are 0.661 in (X) and 0.3621 in (Y) from the left top of the page. That's negative Y axis in Illustrator, by the way.

Instructions
The secret to making the printer work everytime from Illustrator is to reset the paper size in the Print dialog. To do this (and you'll need to do this everytime you print), deselect Size: "Defined by Driver" in the print dialog (File>>Print...) to another setting like "US Letter." Then, close the print dialog. Re-open it and select Printer...>>Printer Settings>>Media Type: CD/DVD from the drop down menu. I recommend saving the Media Type as an OS X printing preset (Printer...>>Presets>>Save).

One one other necessary piece of information. The front CD tray must be open before the file is sent to the printer. Otherwise, the file will just be printed from the regular paper tray on letter size paper.

Color Settings
The color printed will not match those on the screen either (at least in CMYK). The closest Color Setting (Edit>>Color Setting...) that I have seen to the monitor's color is "North American General Purpose 2." I believe this is the default for Illustrator CS2 on install.

I hope this helps. It took over five hours to narrow this down. Thanks a lot, Epson. . .

NOTE: The above might work with the Epson R330, but since I do not own a R330, I cannot test this.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Increase your Flash productivity (Tips and shortcuts)

2006-02-01T22:09:00.000-06:00

I've probably spent more than five hundred hours in the Flash authoring environment in the past year. The two hundred though have been the most productive. Below are many of the authoring productivity tricks I've learned. Most will only shave a second or two off each time you use them, but a few might save minutes by themselves.

I recommend linking most of these commands to shortcut keys for optimal efficiency. To do this, edit Flash's keyboard shortcuts via Edit>>Keyboard Shortcuts (Flash Professional>>Keyboard Shortcuts on a Mac). You will need to create a new set of shortcuts, since you can't edit the default set. Then, go to Drawing Menu Commands>>Commands and select the command you would like to make a shortcut key for. I hope that these help you.

Instance Alpha Toggle (0 to 100)
Most of the time I toggle movie clips between "0%" alpha and "100%" alpha. You'd think that Macromedia (and now Adobe) would have a way to do this action included into the Flash authoring environment, but that's what JSFL is for after all. This JSFL command toggles between "0%" alpha and "100%" alpha of all the selected movie clips. If the previous value was not "100%" or "0%," then no change occurs. The greatest advantage to having this command is that you can select multiple movie clips in multiple layers and change them all to "0%" alpha in one keystroke. I recommend re-assigning "CTRL+0" to this command.

Creating a Motion Tween
The command, "Insert > Timeline > Create Motion Tween" should have a keyboard shortcut. Since next to creating key frames this is the command I use the most often, I deactivated keyboard shortcut for "Transform" which is "CTRL+T" and made it "Create Motion Tween." You can also download a command I wrote that toggles the motion tweening. Yes, you can right click and select "Create Motion Tween" and "Remove Motion Tween," but that requires using the mouse again.

Setting an instance's name
So you've created a fade out tween with two keyframes for the mouse on, a fade out tween with two keyframes for the mouse off, and pulsing movie clip with two key frames for the mouse over. Then, you realize you forgot to set the instance name of the movie clip in each frame. If this has ever happen, download and install this JSFL command created by a Japanese web designer. This simple command copies the selected movie clip's name from the library and makes that name the instance's name. You select the six keyframes and with one shortcut key stroke, you're back in the game.

Frame/Layer Distributor
If you have ever frame by frame (stop) animated a movie clip and then were asked to move the entire animation. You could take all the frames out of the main timeline by creating a movie clip--which is a great benefit of Flash. You can move objects across multiple layers (space), but not across multiple frames (time). This command, by Luar Productions, copies all the selected frames to their own layer. Once there, you will have what looks something like Flash's "onion skinning," but it will be the actual animation, not just guides of the animation. You can then move all the "former" frames that are now layers on the stage all at once since they are in the frame column on the timeline. Once they are moved use the Frame/Layer Distributor to convert the layers back to frames.

Removing Frames
If you have been using the frame context menu (right clicking) in order to remove frames, there's a faster way. You can use the predefined "Insert > Timeline > Remove Frames" (Shift+F5) to delete them. I recommend changing this shortcut command to "CTRL+E" or "CTRL+R." This is so it will be close to "CTRL+T" which in the previous paragraph I mentioned that you could set to "Create Motion Tween."

Copying Frames with ALT
If you have been copying frames via the context menu or "CTRL+ALT+V," you can also duplicate frames by holding down ALT and dragging. This will not insert frames and slide the current frames down the timeline though. It will replace the frames under it--which more often then not what I wanted to do in the first place.

Duplicating a Layer
While we are on the topic of copying frames, I discovered a Duplicate Layer JSFL command that replicates an entire layer--frames and all. It's from FlashGuru.com. Now you don't have to create a layer and copy the frames to that layer in order to duplicate it. This is a great for duplicating similar buttons in the user interface. I suggest making the shortcut key to this command Ctrl+D.

Locking Layers
Like Adobe products, you can use the "ALT+click" on the padlock icon to lock all but the selected layer. This causes all the currently locked layers to unlock when you are done though. To get around this, create folders (even if the groups objects aren't topically similar) and lock the entire folder and thus it's layers.

Stop frames
There is no doubt that the most used Flash commands are "stop()" and "gotoAndPlay()". You can type the "ESC" key, then type "st" to write "stop()" in an actionscript window, but there are also Flash Commands you can download that you can assign a shortcut key to add "stop()" This means that you never have to open the actionscript editor.

Returning to the first frame
I frequently place my actionscript in the first frame of a movie in it's only layer (called "as") (that's until I place a pre-loader). As the movie lengthens and the playhead moves down the timeline that frame is no longer visible, and I have to scroll back to the beginning of the movie to edit the actionscript. To prevent this, you can download this JFSL command that moves the playhead to frame 1. I recommend assigning it the keyboard shortcut "CTRL+1."

Moving frame by frame
You can move one frame at a time with the "<" and ">" keys in their respective directions. This is great for frame by frame (stop) animation.

Output Window
If you use Flash 8 and you usually downgrade your SWFs to version 7, you are probably now use to the Output window popping up and spouting out errors about embedded strokes. To stop this from happening, place the output window in a panel group with other panels on the far right.

Macromedia Exchange extentions mentioned in this post:
Alpha0to100Toggle
GoToFirstFrame
LayerFrameDistrib
LibFolderCreator
MotionTweenToggle
duplicateLayer
instanceNameSet

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Graphic Designers: Consider animating logos

2006-01-30T08:56:00.000-06:00

My Creative Director sent me this post from UnderConsideration. It's about animationed logos. Now with so many sites incorporating flash and video, it's something that can't be ignored.

And… Logo Action!

As the author opens, he says he had no cable for a year. I can relate. Whenever I am around a television at a friend's house I have to watch the commercials. I analyze the editing the video and the effects, especially any graphical compositing.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Advice to media graduates

2006-01-29T21:02:00.000-06:00

As the last semester for the next batch of job hopefuls gets into full swing, I wanted to offer my advice. (Much of this is aimed at the college junior though). We were introducing ourselves at church the other day (in a small group). Everyone mentions their job--even if it's under their breath. I introduced myself as saying that I worked at an ad agency and do exactly what I did college--except that it's better quality--and I get paid for it. As we went around the room, I was surprised at the number of people that this is not true for.

Decide what you actually want to do
Actually do it (intern, get hired, etc.) before you leave college
Preferably before your senior year
And preferably under someone who is good at it. It was raises your standards bar. All your previous work will begin to have an awful stinch--but hey isn't that good? You will also see that a 50 hour project is small and that great work is often collaborative. You will also learn that collaboration saves time, too. Hopefully, you can throw a Fortune 500 company on your resume.
Drop names, drop a few critical names. You need to gain the trust of your future employee. You need to project that you can do the job.
Put your three best projects on the web, so that your future employer can view them. (Okay, put more than that if you've been in the business a while--but don't put stuff in your portfolio just to make it big). They are looking for quality. Let me repeat. They are looking for quality. Can you do the job? As a recent college graduate, you won't get the job no way/no how if they wanted experience or busines acumen in the first place.
Prove your versatility. Can you do graphic design? Video? Flash? Audio? Hey, don't present it if it's awful. It only takes one project to impress your future boss. Impress him (or her) in a multimedia presentation and storm the castle from multiple sides, Mr. Swiss Army Knife. They wouldn't be hiring a recent college graduate unless they wanted new blood. What can you provide that someone who's been in the industry 20 years can't provide?
Read What Color Is Your Parachute? It covers job seeking, interviewing, and salary negotiation as well as identifying your true passion and learning more about the type of jobs you would really want to do.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Movie Queue RSS/Data Mining, Google TVoIP, Apple Motion

2006-01-28T20:39:00.000-06:00

This Saturday, I realized that sometimes I'd rather data mine about my favorite movies. You'd think that NetFlix and Blockbuster would enable movie blogging--similar to Rhapsody's send to blog. I know that feature films aren't constantly playing in the background, nor are they 2:46 min long, but blockbuster doesn't even do RSS--which is why NetFlix is so much cooler.

I'm still not sure why people STILL go to movie rental stores and pay $4 per movie. Maybe it's because they are impulsive. Maybe it's because they've only bought books online from Amazon.

If you are listening, NetFlix make one's RSS of their Queue public--optionally, of course. Why? Because I ONLY watch cool movies. :-)

Tonight's readings/watching:

Security Now! 24: Questions and Answers

I, Cringely - Google's Grand Plan to Take Over TV Advertising

I, Cringely - How Pay-Per-Click Is Killing the Traditional Publishing Industry (death to magazines by mail!)

I, Cringely - The Falafel Connection (NSA wiretaps explained--it's based on data mining)

After Words: Ambassador L. Paul Bremer interviewed by James Hoagland

Afternote: I had to reinstall Apple Motion 2.0 last week in order to get it to work. Readers, if you are keeping track, that's the third time in two months.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

DVD Studio Pro cannot create buttons, apply templates, halts at "Loading Menus"

2006-01-08T07:58:00.000-06:00

If you cannot create ANY buttons (yes, that's correct, no buttons can be created), DVD Studio Pro halts at "Loading Menus" when opening any project files, not can apply templates (Status bar halts when apply any templates).

The problem is exactly like the following posts:
http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=155&postid=559211&archive=T
http://www.wwug.com/cgi-bin/displaywwugpost.fcgi?forum=astarte_dvd&post=050427195617.htm

Guess what? All these problems are connected. It is a font conflict. I orginally removed all my fonts with FontBook that had a black dot to the right of it. It seemed to fix the problem--UNTIL I restarted OS-X. The problem was back again! I called Apple to see how to re-install the fonts. If this was Windows, I'd use the cab extractor (extract.exe) from the XP disk, but Apple doesn't have a package viewer app. Their Tech Support told me to do an archival re-install of OS-X. (Thanks a lot, Apple!!!) Kind of over-kill for just a few fonts, don't you think? So I re-installed my whole OS (well, the archival re-install) a few days ago. This meant re-downloading 150MB+ of updates I have previously downloaded via Software Update. (I'm sure they were probably in some temp folder, but being new to OS-X I wasn't sure where.)

The Solution

What I really and only needed to do was re-active the Helvetica.dfont file from FontBook. It is not located in the normal font folder, but in the System/Library/Fonts folder. Now DVD Studio Pro 4 works fine. Yes, it even creates buttons and actually opens files now!

Lesson learned: Software should not be dependent on fonts--even if it is a system font.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

The difference between Replay Music and DVD Decrypter

2005-12-25T14:29:00.000-06:00

We've all used a VCR to record a movie on TV, and now TiVO's Digital Video Recorder does the same--just automatically. This is legal right?

From Replay Music's website:

Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA)

Section 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

Section 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems

(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that —

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

(3) As used in this subsection —

(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

(B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

So as long as you are not circumventing copyright protection and are not publically distributing (file copying?) a work, then you are legal?

This means that services like Replay Music are legal and programs that crack CSS like DVD Decrypter are not?

Either way, using Replay Music does violate Rhapsody's and Yahoo's Terms of Service. But does it make it illegal? Can the RIAA sue you and win?

So what about AnyDVD from Slysoft? It hides the CSS from your PC, but somehow doesn't circumvent it?

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

FireWire/DV problems, blank screen, gray squares from Final Cut Pro or Motion Updates

2005-12-25T13:11:00.000-06:00

Using OS-X's Software Update to update Fin Cut Pro Studio (FCP 5 or Motion) ?

With each update patch (5.0.4 is the current one) my FireWire/DV deck/player (like a Sony DSR-11) stops outputing audio and video. There have been four patches so far. Try reinstalling QuickTime 7 (needed for Final Cut Pro Studio 5).

To do this, delete the Quicktime receipts at "/Library/Receipts/" (get it? if you install an application package. . . you get a receipt?). Then, Download Quicktime and re-install. Also, you must re-install Quicktime in a subsequent boot than during the update--so that means updating, rebooting, un-installing, re-installing, and then re-booting.

(Yeah, thanks a lot Apple. . .)

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Faster Logging (DV Start/Stop Detect in Final Cut Pro )

2005-12-25T12:59:00.000-06:00

Final Cut Pro (FCP) will detect breaks in your DV recordings. You will have to log the whole tape and then use Final Cut Pro (FCP) to detect the segments. So if you have a lot of takes that they know they won't use, you may not want to use this method. This sounds like a great idea if you are including a lot of B-Roll and have plenty of Capture space on your drives.

More at Final Cut Pro Quick Tip #34 - DV Start/Stop Detect

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Article on Web 2.0

2005-12-25T12:56:00.000-06:00

Core attributes of Web 2.0

Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
Trusting users as co-developers
Harnessing collective intelligence
Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
Software above the level of a single device
Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

More on this by Tim O'Reilly.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

800-CEO-READ Podcasts Blog

2005-12-07T22:24:00.000-06:00

Why read when you can listen? Here are some mp3s of authors discussing their business books. Each month 800-CEO-READ interviews an author.

800-CEO-READ Podcasts Blog

Some of this year's books:

10 Rules for Strategic Innovators, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble
Starting from Scratch, Wes Moss
The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford
True to Our Roots, Paul Dolan
Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate, Roger Fisher, Daniel Shapiro
Grapevine: The New Art of Word of Mouth Marketing, Dave Balter
Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes
The Rules of the Red Rubber Ball
Brand Autopsy
Escher Cycle, Finn Jackson

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Apple Motion crashes with AJA Kona LH board

2005-12-05T13:27:00.000-06:00

Today, I found out that Apple Motion 2 crashes when applying filters and behaviors if you have Final Cut Pro outputing to a AJA KONA LH with the desktop preview option enabled.

To change the option (which is the default, by the way), run AJA KONA LH Control Panel and click the Control tab in the middle and change Default Kona Output to something else (like Test Pattern or Black).

I have read a similar problem happens with BlackMagic DeckLink.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Decorating is suite

2005-11-22T22:40:00.000-06:00

So I've got my Stolen Moments movie poster and my Athna 2004 poster up above the Cinema display. They are just taped right now, but my employer said we'd get them framed once the egg-crate foam came in. We talked about making the back of the A/V suite like a lounge with a sofa and a coffee table for clients. Right now, we are considering a Beta deck purchase. It's either that or send a tape away twice for the DV/Beta conversion.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Settling in is suite

2005-11-17T10:37:00.000-06:00

Last week, I put the Kona/AJA card (digital to analog converter) and the RAID card in the Dual G5 in before the IT consultant my agency hired to install it showed up, so he just sat around and answered questions while we installed FCP Studio.

I’m not a big Mac fan. I know I’ll never figure out how creative directors can stand putting 500 files in one folder or on their desktop. Can you say subfolder? I hate not having a subfolder for everything. I don’t believe that Spotlight is going to help this habit, not to knock it--I guess it's the artistic thing to do.

We ordered the A/V equipment from ProMax and the computer products from MacMall. (We had problems with MacMall. It took over 3 week to get the G5 here.) I called up ProMax yesterday and the tech guy tried to troubleshoot why the Trinitron monitor wasn't working. He helped me get a picture, but it was luminance (black and white). Well, the tech guy was stumped once we got that far. He asked if the cables were all connected. It’s not a good sign if technical support asks that. I had planned on buying an S-Video cable to test the monitor with the DVCAM deck, but this morning just looking around the AJA board control panel application I switched the Component Y/C/VBS to a Composite Y +C and it worked. So much for technical support. . .

Also, for some reason my agency’s D-Link wireless router won't let my G5 on. It won't assign me an IP address via DCHP. So what's a geek to do? Bring his wireless router from home, of course. So it's been "National Bring Your Router to Work Day" for a week. The downside of course is then there is now no hurry to get the problem solved if an employee can just bring his from home everyday.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Banking and utility sign-up on the Internet

2005-11-04T08:54:00.000-06:00

While setting up DSL through SBC, I read the fine print (like the $90 termination fee and asked about free packages that the operator had no idea about). They waived the installation cost of $47 also--just for me complaining about it, so that's $17/month for DSL. You can't beat that. I also accidently called the swicher a router and the sales lady became confused.

I am looking into a checking account at the First Internet Bank of Indiana. Yes, they have no storefront, it is only on the Internet, but they have nice rates. They have four times (1.25% and 2%, respectively) what my current rates are on my checking and savings accounts at my current bank. My brother-in-law has been a client of theirs for many years now.

Which leads me to my final thought, why are bank employees so happy? Yes, it's their job to be hospitable, but they seem to be a little happier than other customer service people at other businesses.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Sony DRM could crash XP or hide CDROM

2005-11-03T21:30:00.000-06:00

In an effort to deter music piracy, Sony has asked users to install programs that cannot be uninstalled without serious technical knowledge. A matter of fact, there are only a few ways to detect the rootkit program. Users are asked to install a media player for one of the thousands of "content-protected" CDs. This media player then installs what I would classify as spyware. Erasing the program's files will disable one's CD-ROM drive (yes, I hear that it will just disapear!).

Read more info on this at the Washington Post or listen to this podcast from GRC.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Before And After: Type, Logo, Calendars, and Color

2005-11-03T21:20:00.000-06:00

Every so often it's good to review the basics. The magazine, Before & After, is great at pointing out the obvious--not that it's useless. Far from it, here are a few simple PDFs to get a sense of their bi-monthly issues.

What's the right type face?
Design a logo of letters
How to design small calendars
How to Find the Perfect Color
Design a Mini-Book

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Wireless: you aren't as safe as you think

2005-10-30T21:24:00.000-06:00

Anyone that has a wireless network needs to listen to this podcast or read this transcript. It's from the people that brought us the port sniffer, Shields Up. It discusses the weaknesses of first generation encryption (WEP), MAC address filtering, and not broadcasting your network's SSID. The conclusion? It's all pretty useless to the average hacker with a sniffer program.

If you are an open (non-encrypted) hotspot like a Starbucks, then you should only browse as if someone was looking over your shoulder the whole time. Never buy something while at an open hotspot. The lock (SSL) in the address bar won't mean much over insecure wireless. Also, if you share your wireless network with everyone (oh, you are so nice!) and a user (a complete stranger) uses it to break the law, you might be accountable.

If you do need security at a hotspot, subscribe to something like a VPN from HotSptVPN ($10-$15) or Anonymizer ($30) for less than a dollar a day.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

InterBrand Papers

2005-10-29T12:14:00.000-05:00

I have yet to read any of them, but I found some free more literature on branding. The company Interbrand has some posts on the topic. They sound manifesto-like.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Paint Selection: Behr's Explore Color

2005-10-27T14:12:00.000-05:00

One of the best interactive programs I've ever seen on the net is Behr's Explore Color. I was browsing Home Depot and their site linked to it. It's a paint selection program that will coordinate swatches for you! I might even be able to adapt it to websites and Pantones for print.

Be sure to look at the Inspiration section, too.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Household Budget Spreadsheet

2005-10-25T10:49:00.000-05:00

This post doesn’t have anything to do with “issues surrounding media creation and marketing,” but I wanted to post this for anyone that might be interested in making a household budget. There are four columns on the budget worksheet: Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Monthly, and Six Months. The items in black are all the numbers derived from the numbers in red; so only change numbers in red. Behind the “Budget” worksheet is the “Salary” worksheet that computes taxes and net pay. The Net Bi-Weekly salary is then put into the Budget worksheet to compute income.

Download budgetAndSalary.xls (Excel 2000)

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Saving large Photoshop documents (PSD)

2005-10-25T10:15:00.000-05:00

Most other applications and older versions of Photoshop cannot support documents with file sizes larger than 2 GB. There is new Large Document Format (PSB) that is supported in Photoshop CS and CS2. All Photoshop features, such as layers, effects, and filters, are supported by the PSB format. Other applications and older versions of Photoshop cannot open documents saved in PSB format.

There are three steps that Photoshop takes in saving a file: Generating Full Resolution Composite, Preparing to Save, and Writing Photoshop Format. When dealing with files approaching the 2GB limit, you can quicken the “Generating Full Resolution Composite” and the “Preparing to Save” step by hiding all the layers (Alt+click one layer’s visibility icon will hide all other layers on the PC). The documents will still take a few minutes to save, but some time will be shaved off the beginning of the save.

If there is one layer or more (adjustment, bitmap, vector, or text) and the "Maximize Compatibility" feature is turned on, Photoshop saves two copies of the same image. One is flattened (Full Resolution Composite) and the other is in layers. If you deselect the “Maximize Compatibility” feature, this might even reduce your file size by half, and eliminates the reason to hide all the layers for “Full Resolution Composite.”

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

4 petabytes just for FREE storage?

2005-10-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

I just read this great article at I, Cringley that hypothesized the collateral problems that come with the network being the computer.

Excerpts:

"My point here is that we're entering another period of Internet exuberance. Yes, a lot has changed since 1999, but it's amazing how many of the ideas being pushed are the SAME ideas, just empowered now by dark fiber, cheap broadband, and six years of Moore's Law. And this time I think it will actually work and the Internet will change even more than it has the ways we live and work. But it isn't going to come easy and it isn't going to come cheap."

"NOW we know why Google bought those 30 acres on the Columbia River in Oregon right next to a generating station from the Bonneville Power Administration."

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Design Audit

2005-10-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

Does your company need a Design Audit?

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Technorati: Keep track of you on everyone's blog

2005-10-16T13:42:00.000-05:00

Scouring blogs for "your brand" is like watching people giving feedback without them knowing. Explicitly sent email or reply cards are much more like focus groups. The people want you to know directly and who it was from.

Technorati is a blog search engine with a few more benefits. It can keep track of certain words for you, for instance your name or your company, by adding these to your watchlist. When someone mentions a well-known person on his or her blog, that person can find out what he or she had to say about the famous person (or organization).

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Book Review: The Brand Gap

2005-10-14T13:47:00.000-05:00

Brand Gap, The: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design
by Marty Neumeier (AIGA Press)

I recommend this book. I wouldn't buy it though due to how short it is, especially with the PDF that you can get that covers the major themes. It's more like caffeine than vitamins.

The fact that the first page spread is of the Nike Swoosh with the caption “This is not a brand” in Latin, should illuminate what type of book this is. It’s more bullets than in-depth reading, but the author explicitly states that this book was purposely written as an hour or less read.

Neumeier defines a brand as "A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company." Thus a brand is not something that a company can actually create. It can influence it, but it can’t hand it to the consumer on a platter intact. He states that customers don’t want a logical, rational feature-based sales pitch and that they want a brand that they trust. He discusses the ills of focus groups and the pros of quick prototyping. This leans into the area of thin slicing that Malcolm Gladwell discusses in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. After all that this what this whole book is thin-slicing.

Minor discretions
Neumeier says that “Most people like clicking--they just hate waiting.” I would say that people don’t mind clicking if they believe that you are giving them what they want. Nobody wants to get off the interstate at the wrong exit and have to try to get back on the main road.

The author states that Amazon (page 140) lost 31% of its brand value in try to extend its online book niche into an online “bookmusiccameracomputerappliancebabyfurnituretoy” niche. Maybe it’s because the book was written in 2003, but I haven’t thought of Amazon as a book-only company for many years. I see it as an everything-store--like Walmart.com, Ebay.com, Half.com, or Overstock.com. This means that he is right in stating the brand is rather meaningless in connection with the product. What’s the brand value of all those companies? These brands easily come to my mind when I consider buying something on the Internet. Amazon has become a storefront for small businesses everywhere to do business under their umbrella. I bought some really great shirts the other day from some guy in Pennsylvania--of course these are commodities, but I personally feel safer buying through Amazon.com than from a random website. I am also a left-brain shopper who reads the fine print on the generic and name brand medications to see which one has 5% and which one has 9% of the active ingredient.

The included recommended readings at the ending are an excellent addition. From the PDF at NewRiders.com, it appears that Neumeier has got onto the Godin's IdeaVirus theme.

You can download the The Brand Gap PDF from my site, smjdesign.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

SimplyHired.com: great job of looking for a job

2005-10-14T09:33:00.000-05:00

According to What Color Is Your Parachute's Richard Bolles, only 4 percent of job holders obtain a job by utilizing the Internet. The problem of course is that the employer doesn't know you from Adam. Then as Josh Cade (Indianapolis/MidWest) from Aquent.com (freelance/placement firm) told me, posts from students flood his email box. 30 out of 400 applicants might be goos enough for the creative position he is offering. Employers don't like posting to the Monster.com's and the CareerBuilder.com's because of all the email they get. It's all about the referal. That being said, I stumbled onto SimplyHired the other day and it does a good job of searching posts from a multitude of job hunting sites. Why visit one job posting site, when you can view 20 at one indexing site with a lot less advertising.

Of course, the best thing as always, is the RSS feeds. I wonder what their business model is?

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Can we track our RSS?

2005-10-14T00:43:00.000-05:00

How do we track RSS? We can track hits to our XML files with our logs and stats, but since the client views the feed in an aggregator and not a browser, can we we tell when that person leaves the site?

Many RSS feeds only sample the full article and that makes sense if you are trying to extend your site and bring people into your site. Many blog sites, of course, display there whole site in RSS and therefore the aggregator becomes a mini browser. Hey, we get to create our own little AOLs with our hand-picked content!

(Timely) Link of Interest:

Interview with Dave Winer- Creator of RSS

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

The ThyCa DrugCard: Color

2005-10-13T11:21:00.000-05:00

My newest graphic project is a fundraiser for ThyCa (thyroid cancer survivors non-profit). My client is not ThyCa though, it is a thyroid cancer survivor who wants to do a fund raiser for ThyCa and pay for all the development and printing costs of the ThyCa DrugCard. The premise is that people often forget to take their medications or forget to take them all with them when they visit their physician, especially during hypothyroidism. The card is a list of the patients prescriptions, vitamins and supplements. An accompanying card will have directions on how to perform a thyroid check on one's self that can be given to a friend.

The largest hurdle (besides HIPA rules) is the fushia/navy/cyan color scheme of their logo. I got out my swatchbook and considered the delimna. The solution takes the original colors and deviates from them enough to eliminate the 1980's motif and not scare away the males. The majority of thyroid cancer patients are women (so soft is good), but there are still plenty of men in the fold. As a male, I know that to use pink (especially neon) is scary. The new pink is a pastel on the peach side with enough yellow not to look like a baby shower present either. The cyan has become a sky blue that along with the butterfly motif (the butterfly/thyroid is a common association in ThyCa circles, the thyroid looks like a butterfly) symbolizes freedom from the disease. The navy blue has become an accent, and the "black" of the type.

Any comments?

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Mid-morning shower = creative ideas?

2005-10-12T11:33:00.000-05:00

Don't waste your showers on your half-awake morning self.

Some people have said that their "Big Idea" hit them while they were in the shower. Ideas actually hitting someone makes less sense than spontanesous mutation (although I guess I do have to leave room for divine intervention). But none the less, would it make sense for employers to harness the shower time by having employees take showers at work?

The process is that one must have time for ideas to sink in and that time alone (yes, alone!) with a menial task might lead to better, more creative ideas. Of course, the brain would need to be fed (blogs, readings, work-related socializing) before it could run wild. I'm sure a better proposal to make to the boss would be to suggest a different menial task could take a shower's place that would not require installing a shower in the workplace. Any suggestions?

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

(By the way, I did come up with this idea in the shower.)

Freelance/Employee Blog

2005-10-12T10:45:00.000-05:00

After viewing my friend, Ryan's blog at HenryWarren.com. I thought about recording my daily triumphs and struggles related to the media industry in this blog. People want a story, after all. My hesitation is how much transparency employers/clients really want? No, really? How much of your struggle do you share? We are people, we are not public traded corporations. Although you could call some employers investors, since they are paying your income and would like a nice return on their investment.

You can start a transparent brand--after all it will make you more accountable. It will make you the fast moving cheetah around the dinosaur (I heard on Tavis Smiley the other day that some dinosaurs it takes 2 min. for them to feel if their tale was cut off).

It's the same paradigm for companies/investors/customers. How transparent is your brand?

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Links of interest:
Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea describes how he capitalized on his “learning opportunities” and turned a simple idea into a multimillion dollar enterprise.

Creative Economy?

2005-10-11T22:34:00.000-05:00

Procter & Gamble Co. or General Electric Co. are hiring Design Continuum, ZIBA Design, Doblin Inc., and IDEO as consultants to design their products along with their inside R&D. Business Week article (Augest article) calls new ecomony model after the "Knowledge economy," the "Creative Economy." Does the comodization of left brain services mean that the right brain will dominate?

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Current RSS/Podcasts/Live Bookmarks

2005-10-10T22:01:00.000-05:00

Now that my Live Bookmark bar is getting full, I thought I would share my current RSS and Podcasts:

http://www.pbs.org/pov/rss/podcast.xml
http://800ceoread.com/blog/index.rdf
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChangethisNewsletter
http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=2
http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=1008
http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=3
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rss/headlines.xml
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/rss2.xml
http://www.fastcompany.com/rss.xml
http://www.c-span.org/podcast/aw_feed.xml

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Idiotic Mystery Meat Navigation

2005-10-09T22:19:00.000-05:00

I’ve been browsing the web for almost ten years (late 1996) and this has to be single most consistently annoying user interface problem I’ve seen (well, this and frames).

We all have seen it. Little dots, squares, or unrecognizable icons that go WHERE in the website? We don’t know--unless we move our mouse over it for the text to reveal the destination. The biggest irony is, of course, that these same marketing sites that evangelize customer experience as the next big thing in branding don’t care about the extra cognitive and mouse moving steps their users have to take so that they can be minimal in their visual design. This is form over function.

The saddest part is websites that use Mystery Meat Navigation win design awards as if visual design was more important than usability or information design. (My guess would that these judges have worked on print for most of their life). We can compare interactive to paper. I dare anyone to print out a web page with Mystery Meat Navigation and tell me how to get somewhere. Or what if the table of contents were little shapes that you touch with your finger to view.

I can’t believe that I taught a seminar back in high school on the snares of Mystery Meat Navigation, and the problem still exists today. Thankfully, the CSS/DIV tag duo has come to the aid of many interactive users by enabling mouseovers to reach their full potential instead of solely controlling image swaps.

Descriptive photographs are often fine for navigation, especially for portfolio entries at marketing firms--after all these are often ads (or read branding) that are touch points and should be visual appealing. Intelligible icons make sense also (email, phone, fax, the firm’s logo in order to return to the home page).

While I was writing this article, I stumbled onto Leo Burnett (a Publicis Co.) that uses Mystery Meat Navigation, but they also have a menu-based navigation, thankfully. The pencil motif is nice. It took a few seconds though to find out how to return to the last viewed screen (hint: click anywhere else except the piece you are viewing).

In closing: The Road Sign Idea

I have a marvelous idea! We should help clear all this text clutter on our road signs. The government should give little remotes (much like mice) to every driver and tell him or her that he or she should point to each sign to see if it’s the place to turn off. If that worked, we could do the same to billboards. I think our clients would be very happy if we hid their billboards and their web banners, too, until the user waved his or her mouse in its direction.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

The term "Mystery Meat Navigation" and the road sign idea come from an article written in the late 90's by Vincent Flanders.

Give FireFox to a friend

2005-10-09T16:24:00.000-05:00

Give the present of Open Source (FireFox and Thunderbird) to your friends today!

Go to Firemonger.org and download the programs in one file and burn it to a CD.

Contents include: Plugins such as Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Shockwave and Sun Java; Themes such as Whitehart, Qute, Noia Lite, Doodle Plastik, Curacao, Crossover, Nautipolis, Winstripe; Firefox Extensions such as Adblock, All-in-One Mouse Gestures, FoxyTunes, SessionSaver, ScrapBook, Tabbrowser Preferences, Bug Me Not, Context Search, Download Manager Tweak, FlashGot, ForecastFox, Focus Last Selected Tab, FirefoxView, Googlebar, Hotmail Tabs, IEView, InFormEnter, Linkification, Paste and Go, Super Drag and Go, StumbleUpon, Webmail Compose, Undo Close Tab

NOTE: Currently there is no Mac or Linux version of Firemonger, but there is of Firefox and Thunderbird.

Current Browser Statistics

87% Internet Explorer
8% FireFox
2% Safari

from TheCounter.com

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

*In response to Blake (see comment below), my post does not focus on the security issues. I enjoy FireFox because of the plethora of extensions (some of my favorites are listed above). The Adblock, EditCSS, and Web Developer extensions along with Live Bookmarks allow a user to manipulate the content of a site. I love Firefox not because it is a departure from Microsoft (although that's a very good reason), but because of the control that it gives the user. Every new software that comes from Microsoft seems to have more and more Digital Rights Management. You can even disable the JavaScript disabling of a "no right click/context menu" in Firefox.

Brewster Kahle on NerdTV

2005-10-05T21:55:00.000-05:00

Back in the mid-nineties, the original business model of AOL was royalty based. The consumer paid the ISP and the ISP paid the content creator--much like the publishing industry. AOL decided that content providers should pay them for their “eyeballs”--much like the television/cable industry. This started the advertising boom on the Internet.

It seems that if allow somebody to control one piece of it [the chain of production/distribution], then they'll strangle it and they'll work back up stream and down stream [control other parts of the chain]. . .organizations like to deal with other organizations that are their same size.”

-- Brewster Kahle, Alexa, Internet Archive founder, NerdTV

Links of Interest:
The Internet Archive
Truveo: “The Google” of web video

NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Now if only we could get view the Charlie Rose show for free.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Digital Rights Management

2005-10-05T16:02:00.000-05:00

DRMs, CIOs, CSSs, AACs--oh, the many acronyms of information protection.

As our economy becomes more information based, I often wonder whether information will ever become a commodity. Being a recent graduate that was not being paid for most of his work anyway--it's a little hard to transition to corporate confidentiality (if you would like to view the actionscript source code of my interactive portfolio, goto my website and email me). In some interviews, the employers can't even show me, the prospective employee, what they create. Your ideas are your money.

In the media marketing industry, it seems that it's up to the client or distributor to protect content. We squabble over clients and create (illustrate, film, code, etc.) media that is easily duplicated--and often wouldn't mind our creations being duplicated (like the ads we create). This will change as the ad-agencies diversify into full-service firms. More proprietary information will be protected.

For further reading:
Wikipedia article on DRM
(maybe linking to a for-fee site, like Britannica would have been more appropriate. . .)

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Wink: screen capture to SWF and PDF for free

2005-09-29T20:34:00.000-05:00

I was browsing around the DVD compression/authoring site, DVDShrink, and stumbled upon a screen capture tool that effortlessly saves your presentation into a Flash SWF (ver. 3), standalone EXE, PDF, PostScript, or HTML. It's named Wink and it's freeware--even for businesses. It has Windows and Linux ports (sorry, iPeople). I only used Wink a few times and can vouch for it, but the other programs from DebugMode look awfully nice, too--even if they weren't for free.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

The Creative Business Guide to Running a Graphic Design Business Review

2005-09-28T00:38:00.000-05:00

I picked up this book at the library. It was recommended to me by Ryan Warren of L+R Media Group, a recent startup in Indianapolis.

The copy of this book that I read was published in 1996, but on most of the topics it still addresses today’s issues. At 400 pages and similar to a textbook in pace, I recommend browsing this book unless you are just about to start a business yourself--then memorize it or buy the book and reference it frequently.

Topics include what price to bill (billable and non-billable hours), information on partnerships and incorporation, time management, accounts billable, dealing with/attracting clients, and much of the necessaries of running a successful business that they don’t teach at arts and communication schools.

The Creative Business Guide to Running a Graphic Design Business by Cameron S. Foote

Currently watching: Q&A: Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder (CSPAN)

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

The Constant Gardner (abridged) Review

2005-09-27T23:40:00.000-05:00

I decided to listen to The Constant Gardner (abridged) by to round out all the influence of Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat, The Lexus and the Olive Tree) has had on me recently--not that journalism and fiction can balance each other out. Although it is no doubt that Upton Sinclair and Charles Dickens had some affect on child labor laws.

I have not seen the movie yet, but I can imagine some might get confused at the compression of (and all-out disregard for) time, the amount of characters, and the quick switching between the narrator, main character and main characters's wife's writing that is within this audio book. I’m a fan of chronology destroying movies such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation, but the audio by itself is difficult to follow. It requires a fair amount of concentration from the listener and the unabridged version may be much better.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Homemade Keyboard Shortcuts

2005-09-24T14:46:00.000-05:00

The previous post inspired me to share some of my favorite macros/actions/shortcuts that I've created or discovered over the years.

Adobe Photoshop CS

F5 and F6

I have set two keys to rotate left and rotate right, respectively. I have a ergonomic Microsoft Natural Keyboard (a late ‘90’s model--I hear the newer ones break easily) and it splits between the F5 and F6 keys which make pressing them a tactile function instead of a visual.

F2 (Recorded Action)

This action adds two (hence F2) adjustment layers to a document (Curves and Hue/Saturation/Brightness). Being a photographer, I color correct frequently. My default for the HSB layer are a 15+ increase in Hue. You can create these individually with Ctrl+L and Ctrl+M though.

F3 (Recorded Action)

This key changes the image resolution to 300dpi (hence the F3 key) and converts the image to CMYK mode. Every print designer should have a shortcut that performs both these, especially since you have to de-check the “Resample Image” box at the bottom of the Edit/Image Size dialog. I don’t know what Adobe was thinking when they decided to make this the process for changing an image’s resolution.

Microsoft Word

Alt+S PasteSpecial (Macro)

I use this Macro at least 20 times a day. It is great for grabbing text off the Internet, because it removes all formatting from the copied text. Who wants to keep text formatting from a web page (especially with tables)? Record a macro that uses the command Edit/Paste Special…>Unformated Unicode Text.

Alt+X Xenter (Macro)

This may seem silly to some, but I use Alt+X to press enter when copying multiple web pages into a document. Why? The Alt+S PasteSpecial Macro will paste the unformatted text and right below it on the keyboard is the “X” key. Press Alt+X a few times to separate the blocks of text. Then, Alt+Tab back to FireFox (or your internet browser) and select more text with your mouse and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C). Not having to press the enter key means you can keep your left hand closer to the Ctrl/Shift/Alt region of the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse. Although, I’m not sure what lefties should do.

*Note on Alt commands in Word (on a PC):

The Alt key highlights an application’s menu bar (Example: Alt+F selects File, Alt+E selects Edit, Alt+V selects View, etc.). This allows you to go to Print Preview by pressing Alt+F+V for example. The best though is Alt+Space, which selects the application’s drop down menu. This allows you to move an application window by pressing Alt+Space+M and using the arrow keys or Alt+Space+N to minimize a window.

With that said, when you record a macro assign it a place on the toolbar and edit the text of the button with an "&" before the letter you want to use in combination with the Alt key ("paste&Special" or "&Xenter" for example).

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Keyboard Shortcuts for SMJdesign

2005-09-23T21:10:00.000-05:00

I'm a sucker for keyboard shortcuts. They reduce hand and wrist strain and, of course, are faster. So in the spirit of keyboard shortcuts and those that love them, I added them to my Flash portfolio. If watching BookTV on CSPAN2 the night until 3am proved that I was a current events nerd, this proves I'm a Flash nerd.

The PC shortcuts are:
Ctrl+Right Arrow: Load next piece in album
Ctrl+Left Arrow: Load previous piece in album
Ctrl+Up Arrow: Scroll piece caption text up
Ctrl+Down Arrow: Scroll piece caption text down

I have yet to test this on a Mac on which I would assume would be the Command key. If anyone can confirm this, I would appreciate it.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

The Democratization of Stock Photography

2005-09-22T17:01:00.000-05:00

It's been around for a while. I first heard of iStockPhoto while interning at Cre8tive Group back in 2004 when my co-worker, Peter Cook said "Have you checked out iStock?"

Well, I have plenty of 4MP photographs to upload to iStock (especially from my work in Greece), but haven't found the time to write 10 keywords each. I have learned of other stock photo sites. Some messageboards say they pay better.

www.bigstockphoto.com
www.shutterstock.com

I've been told (from by a friend, Andy Didyk, who collects about $50+/month now) is that it's all about the keywords ("People don't search for animal when they want a lion.") and adding a photograph a day for six months.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

2 free audio books at Audible.com

2005-09-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

As of now (Sept 22nd), you can get 2 free audio books at Audible.com. You can get a full refund if you want if you cancel within a month.

They download as ".aa" files that need to be activated by Audible to listen to them (So don't think that you can cancel and still listen to the ".aa" files). There are two ways around this problem. One is burn them all to CDs or you can save the files as MP3s if you use Goldwave 5 and the Lame plug-in. It is shareware, although I have registered. The only side effect is that you do not have the chapter divisions.

Tonight, I downloaded Gladwell's older book, The Tipping Point (Unabridged), and Seth Godin's All Marketers Are Liars (Unabridged).

Currently listening/watching: In Depth: Thomas Friedman (Book TV)

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

*I've been informed that one can cancel their subscription to Audible.com and still activate their ".aa" I have to say though that converting to mp3 and having to worry about having a network connection seems like the best plan to me, especially if you are on the road.

*There is also a "NetFlix" of the audio book world called Simply Audio Books. I don't anything about them though. They are $25 per month for 2 rentals out at once.

* Added 10/27/05 :: I called customer support at Audible.com (1-888-283-5051) to cancel my subscription and recieve a full refund as the site said I could. The customer support woman had no idea was I was talking about. She said Audible.com didn't give refunds and wanted to tell me how I could save $100 off of an iPod. I told her that her website said they did give refunds and directed her to this page and asked her to explain the meaning of "Enjoy your first two audio programs with your FIRST MONTH of AudibleListener 100% RISK FREE. Within one month of joining, you may call to cancel and receive a full refund." After reading the statement she seemed befuddled and transfered me to the Sales department where I talked to Jay. Jay said that he would refund my money within 48 hours.

I guess that makes me a demon. (Angel Customers and Demon Customers by Larry Selden).

Book review: Blink

2005-09-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading the latest from Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking). It was an interesting read. He connects anecdotes across areas of medicine, medicine, murder, music, and military strategy. The connections are loose and essentially involve the premise that decision-making is often best with narrow yet prioritized key information (he calls this “thin-slicing”). He adds that this doesn’t always work though.

I felt good while reading this book, because I was already familiar with a few of the anecdotes. Besides the loose connection between possible statistical anomalies, Gladwell repeats himself especially at the end of chapters. It is an easy read because much of it is not Gladwell’s words, but those of his interviewees.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

SMJ's Actionscript Standards and Practices

2005-09-09T20:20:00.000-05:00

The debugging situation did improved with ActionScript 2.0. I have yet to use Flash 8, but I hope this continues to improve. Something tells me that the Adobe buyout of Macromedia isn't going to help with the programming interface. It will only lead to more components packaged into the box.

I've spent more than a little time trying to explain timelines and event handlers to my media friends. These are some of the practices that I try to convey. The majority of the time though, they just want to finish the project. “As long as it works. . .” they say.

Well, the following are a few practices that I use to keep my code readable and easier to update in case you do use the similar framework in a second project. This is programming after all--no one will ever know.

Naming Schemes for Movie Clips

Sample path

someTextMovie_mc.someText_mc.someClip_txt

someTextMovie_mc :: This is the container movie clip that contains the animation timeline. I started out with the suffix “Container” but decided that it was too long and now use the suffix, “Movie”.

someText_mc :: This is the movie clip that is animated. It is the movie clip that is tweened across a timeline This clip is needed, so that the text box inside of it is encapsulated. If the font of text box inside is changed, then all instances of someText_mc will change with it.

someClip_txt :: This is a TextBox inside the animated movie clip.

The above example includes object suffixes that enable the Flash editor to provide code hints.

Common code hint suffixes

Array :: _array; Button :: _btn; Color :: _color; LoadVars :: _lv; LocalConnection :: _lc; MovieClip :: _mc; MovieClipLoader :: _mcl; Sound :: _sound; String :: _str; TextField :: _txt; TextFormat :: _fmt; Video :: _video; XML :: _xml; XMLNode :: _xmlnode; XMLSocket :: _xmlsocket

Using Movieclips vs. Buttons

There is not much advantage to defining an object (Symbol) on the stage as a “Graphic” unless the symbol is animation or static. A “Button” can be used for a quick way to cause events to occur based on user interaction, but both these seem like limited “MovieClips”. I've never used a “Graphic” or a “Button” inside a Flash project. Often movie clips that function as buttons have a similar function. An example would be when the mouse is placed over this movie clip increase the brightness of the movie clip. In the following ActionScript, frame 2 is a highlighted (selected) version of the movie clip while frame 1 is the regular version.

_root.menuBar.menuFilm.menuSummary.onRollOver = function() {

gotoAndStop(2);

}

_root.menuBar.menuFilm.menuSummary.onRollOut = function() {

gotoAndStop(1);

}

If you have a series of similar movie clips that all brighten when the mouse is over them, then having the same exact code inside each and every “onRollOut” and “onRollOver” allows changes to be easily made. If it is decided that you need to animated the transition between the brightened movie clip and the original. A simple find and replace can replace ALL occurrences of “gotoAndStop(2)” with “gotoAndStop(10)”

Loading Modules from a menu

First let me state that if you are wanting to make menu, you will need to be familiar with setInterval and clearInterval to make menus appear and disappear with a short delay

The easiest paradigm to imagine is that every section that can be clicked on a menu downloads a new swf file from the server. The drawback of this method is that every click causes a pre-loader to appear. If there are a few sections (external swf files) that have subsections (specific frames in the timeline of each external swf file).

Another technique that makes entering code more efficient is using variables to refer to movie clips. If you have a series of menu items (that have the prefix “menu”) that you want to each load content into a certain movie clip so that you have a modular site. If you name the movie clips similar names like “section.subsection”, then you can use the movie clip property, “_name”, with a substring function to grab the section's name. “substr(4)” removes all the characters before the fifth letter from the name of the movie (“menuFilm”). “substr(10)” would start reading the characters at the eleventh character.

An examples is:

The user clicks the item, “menuFilm.menuSummary”. “menuFilm” is the section of the short film web site. “menuSummary” is the subsection of the web site. The onRelease() of this item calls the following line:

loadMovie(this._parent._name.substr(4)+".swf",_root.content);

This takes the name of the parent movie clip of the movie clip instance that was clicked (menuFilm) and minuses the first four characters. This loads an external movie clip with the name “Film”. The problem with this is that if you have a subsection clicked (menuFilm.menuSummary), then you need to create a function that tells “Film.swf” to go to the subsection, “Summary”. This might look like the following:

loadContent(this._parent._name.substr(4),this._name.substr(4));

The inside of loadContent might look like:

function loadContent(clickedSection,clickedSubSection){

//load the correct swf file into the movie clip “content”

loadMovie(clickedSection +".swf",_root.content);

/* go to the frame of the swf file just loaded that corresponds

to the subsection clicked on the menu)

_root.content.gotoAndPlay(_root.clickedSubSection)

}

--Stephen M. James

www.smjdesign.com

Reading anyone? 113 Voice articles

2005-09-02T00:10:00.000-05:00

Well, it took a few hours, but I feel like a veteran grokker. If you would like to read any articles posted on AIGA's journal, Voice, at www.journal.aiga.org then you can search them all on one page at: www.smjdesign.com/grok/

Then click "aigavoice"

It's over 200 pages of text. This script should work as long as the AIGA doesn't change their ColdFusion URL structure or article database ids.

I'm working on an archival grok of Fast Company Magazine. It's going to a more difficult due to where they place the ads and the hierarchy of the site.

Does anyone know of open source (or compiled and free!) programs that grab text from HTML?

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Uniqueness

2005-08-25T15:01:00.000-05:00

The idea that the solution to every project needs to be unique is entrenched in the mind of creatives--at least the passionate ones. If we are creative problems solvers and every problem is unique, would not the solution be unique by definition. If it’s the same problem, then why not use the same solution? Most problems are similar but are always different.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

OS X vs XP in my opinion

2005-08-24T15:41:00.000-05:00

FireWire vs. USB
Winner: FireWire

No contest. FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394) easily wins over USB 2.0. I’m sure we can expect the same with FireWire 800. I hear that the reason that Intel selected USB as the plug and play port of choice is Apple wanted to charge a $1 licensing fee per port. For every $100 motherboard, Apple would pocket four dollars. So what did Intel go with? USB 1.0/2.0, the inferior, but royalty-free system.

Stability
Winner: OS X

Although if you treat a WinXP well you can get days without rebooting, I would have to say that OS X would win. It makes sense when your software developers start over from scratch. If I had a web server that had to be up as if my life depended on it (and Linux/Apache wasn't an option), I would choose a Mac over a PC any day.

Freeware
Winner: WinXP

Yeah, I hear Widgets are the next coolest thing. They are the development of all the programmers that now work on Apples because Unix is now under the hood. More power to them, but in a browse of the web downloads, the list of free PC applications is vast. Most open source applications have a Win32 binary file along with the source code, but not a Mac hqx. Most businesses have the money to spend on a program, but individuals don't. If I need to make an icon for a program on time, I'm not going to buy Icongrapher or Miconangelo. I'm going to download a shareware program, use it for 30 days, and then uninstall it.

File Browsing
Winner: WinXP

Yeah, Spotlight is cool . . . and some people really do use coloring coding. This is personal preference and depends greatly on your working habits. Mine include using a mouse as little as possible. I just love the fact that I do anything with my keyboard. This includes using the keyboard to move windows, select non-contiguous multiple files (hint: use the CTRL and Shift key), and tabbing around to any selection. The fact that I can turn on my computer and run a program with my monitor turned off is very cool. Does anyone how does one select the search field with the keyboard in iTunes?

More to come. . .

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com/

Rational Egoism

2005-08-20T10:47:00.000-05:00

This post doesn't specifically relate to media.

This morning, I watched part of a lecture on abolishing anti-trust laws. The proponents were Ayn Rand objectivists stating that rational egoism is better than altruism, because it hinders innovative businessmen and aids those who are less innovative.

I take issue with objectivism's ethical stance that man is the end within himself. I have many altruistic beliefs in my worldview, but we do seem to accomplish more when we are egotists. This is in quantity though and not necessarily in quality.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Consulting vs. designing

2005-08-15T13:28:00.000-05:00

I've made some headway in getting my head wrapped around the issue of what a graphic design firm or a media marketing is. It may shed light on the goals of mid-level firms.

The larger firms often come with the total package. They do the market research and solve the problem through media. This increases overhead, because the consulting time is higher. The questions that a client might pose are closer to "I need to promote this product or service" than "I need a brochure, website, or CD designed." This takes it out of the desktop publishing realm for print and the website designer world for interactive and into the problem solving consulting realm. The problem is that consulting has a connotation with talking without action and designing has a connotation with action without talking. Does the phrase "media marketing" take in the whole package?

This begs the question also, "What is the marketing department in the corporation getting paid to do?"

My experience seems to say that the in-house marketing department handles day-to-day problem solving and the out-sourcing to the media firm is done in special cases that the inhouse department cannot handle because they are focused on other projects or don't have the expertise.

Btw, I found a webpage that had outlines the AIGA's "12-step-program" previously mentioned (in selectable text).

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Return on creative?

2005-08-13T11:52:00.000-05:00

How do creatives consultants that produce media products know that value has been added to the client? I am assuming that the client must share with the creative that revenue that has been created and associate that with the creative consultant. With this model, there has to be a tangible and quantitative goal, no? This goes against the idea of "art for art's sake." (I never bought into that, btw.) Corporate identity has been dwarfed by the surge of branding in today's industry.Then, this of course leads to the question what is the line between responsibility to your client and responsibility to the end user?

Excerpts from "Return on Creative"
http://www.agda.asn.au/dm/observations/Retur.html
When we speak of a 'return on creative,' we become aware that designers have more to add to the business process than elegant brochures and eye-catching web sites. Designers can bring a return on creative because they are trained to bring something out of nothing. They are results-oriented.

'Return on creative' emphasises that creativity can, should, and will drive business success. Designers find themselves at the centre of this epochal transformation of business practices thanks to the dual meaning of the word 'design.'

The rise of design as a social and commercial force drives us to the considerations I have engaged in here. It is becoming more and more clear that an enterprise without creative direction cannot succeed, and that creativity without a social goal flirts with frivolity. As the demand for a 'return on creative' increases, we will see, first of all, that there can be no return without the judicious application of creative resources. But we will also see something else: the breakdown of the division between business leaders and design leaders as more and more people realise that an enterprise can only succeed 'by design.'

A comment that was added to 'Return on Creative'

Creative Business Ideas
http://www.eurorscg.com/h/s/ow_cbi.asp
"Today, marketers need more than good advertising and promotion. Marketers need ideas that apply creativity to their business strategy in new ways to drive profitable growth. We call these ideas Creative Business Ideas: they transform the product, the brand, the company—and sometimes even the business itself. "

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Selectable Flash text or lack of

2005-08-13T01:34:00.000-05:00

View the following first: http://designing.aiga.org/static/why.html

At the AIGA, they posted this 12-step problem solving process, but they don’t give you a list that is selectable so that you can copy it to one’s clipboard and insert it into a text document. What kind of design is that? Maybe it's great visual design.

Maybe they want us to type out the process stage so that it’s a learning process. I doubt this though. My guess is that the creator made the text in Photoshop and didn’t want to create the text boxes and retype it in Flash. It also could be, because Flash does a decent job of kerning, but not as good as Adobe. They would have to embed the fonts in the swf, too. An XML format of the information would be nice. . . Many of the prospective employer's web sites that I've visited have their contact information as a graphic which prevents copying the phone number or address to the clipboard. Does anyone else use the clipboard this much?

So that begs the question, how much intellectual property control one should keep? If one doesn’t make the text selectable, then for a viewer to post it on their blog they would have to retype it. Is this bad? I guess it depends on whether a link to the source is given. That would increase viewers of the original site. It seems that online the less control you have over your content, the more popular you become.

I have to admit though that I have outlined text inside a Flash website to keep the text justified, since dynamic text boxes in flash can’t justify (even with CSS!). That was made possible by importing a CS AI document into Flash. For some reason text is often corrupted when using the Photoshop->Fireworks->Flash process which is the process to use for images.

Anyone else realize that there are problems with copying text from multiple textbox PDFs. The selections are guided by either the Z-index or the chromological order of textboxes' placement. That's another topic.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

2005-08-12T23:05:00.000-05:00

For the great majority of mankind is satisfied with appearance, as though they were realities, and is more often influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.

--Machiavelli

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Grokking and Composing

2005-08-12T01:14:00.000-05:00

Well, the PHP script that grabs images from AIGA members' portfolio is up and running. It's not pretty though. I am on a dial-up connection, so it has been a pain to test.

http://smjdesign.com/grok/aigaportfolios/

The irony is that I've spent more time programming than on design pursuits in the last week as I've been finalizing my portfolios to submit to employers in the Indianapolis area. Why is it that I didn't want to program? I think it had something to do with no one seeing my work and sitting in front of a computer all day working on the same type of project. It would be like being a writer and having to look at text all day.

I've been reading about design patterns recently (Head First Design Patterns from O'Reilly and Essential Actionscript 2.0 by Colin Moock, also from O-Reilly). Btw, I always research books with amazon.com and with bn.com, but buy them at half.com. It's not half off, but it's not too far off from half off.

I finally put class composition to use with a revamping of the poetry knook--that is, internally. Most readers will not be able to tell a difference. The most stubstantial changes were made in the administration section anyway.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Cover letters, resumes. . .

2005-08-08T10:27:00.000-05:00

It's temping to re-purpose all the information concerning cover letters, resumes, graphic resumes, portfolios, and interviewing skills when this is all over. There are plenty of sites out there. I believe I would just be adding to the plethora of information already out there.

Convergence has always been a primary mission of mine. Having all the information from multiple websites copied to one Word file (RTF, not doc, because doc's are binary and rtf's are open source tagged text) is easier to read and search. It is the anathema of marketing and capitalism though. Repeat users and ad viewing are good for the bottom line. Most of the websites that I have viewed in the last 24 hours I am never going to view again.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Gmail, enough said

2005-08-04T10:49:00.000-05:00

The fact that Gmail has POP3 support was a great selling point for me. It doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint though. The only revenue Gmail generates is from Google's AdSense program. Btw, Google's AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) rocks.

Now if the world's greatest search engine could search my messages for partial words. Currently, if I want to find all emails sent from a username of "smjdesign" at a any domain and I type "smj" no messages are returned.

The other problem is that a user is limited to 20 filters. That's like limiting someone to twenty rules in Outlook.

Here is a list of issues that can occur with AJAX.

--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com