http://www.rjslade.com/nswager/

Hardware and Software Changes

We have switched from Apple Aperture to Adobe LightRoom

Also during the intervening months and with upgrades to Sarah’s computer and camera she has been busy learning the new hardware and software. The G5 she was using was replaced by 4Gig Ram 2.5Ghz dualcore Intel MacBook Pro, and a 24 inch LCD screen for the studio.

The Canon 20D became my camera and she added a Canon 5D MK2 to her Canon 40D.

Oh and did I mention that Adobe CS4 shipped in there!

The upgrade presented an issue that ought to be talked about. I had two full Extended PShop versions of the CS3 Suite. While I use most of the programs in the suite, my wife uses PShop and PShop – LightRoom is not part of the Suite! So what do I need – One upgrade to the full Suite, one upgrade to the non extended version of PShop and one full version of LightRoom – I will put up with not being able to use LightRoom while she is using it – I only use it to try workflow issues anyhow – they are her images and she can do the tweaking. First we have the fact I am now resident in Umbria Italy, the software was bought from my VAR in Canada – I want to continue to do that – He is a good friend, and can use the pennies for the upgrade that Adobe would keep for themselves if I was able to order it at American prices via the web (which I cannot – yet another issue!) So the full suite upgrade, the PShop upgrade and the full LightRoom! The disks duly arrive and I start plugging in the serial numbers (I had already been using the 30 day demo’s). The suite went OK except that DreamWeaver has not even till now been recognised as part of the Suite and I cannot install any plug-ins into it! -

Adobe have confused copyright protection with usability and copyright protection seems to win out – please bring back the days when you can just drag the application to the Application Folder!

No go for the PhotoShop upgrade though – No way it was going to accept any of the numbers I had! Buried deep, and I mean deep, on the Adobe web site I found what appears to be the definitive list of what can upgrade which and guess what- You cannot officially go from the CS3 to a standalone version of PShop – not without a standalone number of the PShop included in CS3. At this point I blew my stack and provided it with a number and moved on.

( Given that I have owned every damned Adobe product, available on a mac over that last 20 plus years, a lot of which they discontinued after I had paid for them, and taught designers how to use them ( who also bought the ones they needed ) – I regard this as very shabby treatment. ADOBE be careful – you are getting too large and unfocussed on your user base and they will start to bite back if treated this way! )

After the previous explanation of why Aperture vs LightRoom, have we switched? I want to state that Aperture is a great program and remains in some ways better than LightRoom! But the user is using only in conjunction with Photoshop and is submitting her images to sites which we do not totally create so that the ability to modify the web templates is no longer as big a feature. In our opinion, LightRoom better at keywording and its relationship with PhotoShop is better.

Combined with those previously mentioned Adobe upgrades came some very good web based training from Lynda.com. We have used the Chris Orwig series on LightRoom2 for Photographers and PhotoShop for Photographers and found them to be very helpful.

So where are these new images?

For the latest work by PHOTOempt go to www.photoempt.smugmug.com

or use the following links for:

images of London
images of Durham County, North England
images of Mull
images of the High Sierra
images of Catalina Island, California
images of San Francisco
images of Umbria

With luck, I will return later this week as there are some 87 items resting in my folder of ‘blog stuff’ to comment on. All for now – R

My morning scan of the news site sure can be depressing but the web, thankfully is full of a lot of other details. Below are some that caught my attention – not major items but interesting to me as a designer.

But first I want to mention an artist who I met this summer here in MCdV. Sangram Majumdar, Professor of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD. He was one of the lecturers at the International School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture (http://www.giotto.org/ ) here, this his first time, as a member of the faculty. Amusingly enough, my first encounter with him was to find him in the main piazza doing a charcoal sketch of the newer section of town, a wonderful architectual drawing. I commented that he ought to be a teacher – his other half who was standing next to him laughed – “well actually, he is”.

The school page for him is at:
 http://www.giotto.org/cimabue/majumdar/index.html And his personal site is: 
http://www.sangrammajumdar.com/

As those of you who have read my background, I have met a few artists in my day – This is one to follow. I think his work is wonderful!

As an aside, he was accompanied by a wonderful violinist this summer, and we had a wonderful time with the couple.

Annelies Mast 2nd Violins, National Symphony Orchestra, Washington DC

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I am alway interested in software that provides interesting methods of showing images. I have previously mentioned JAlbum that will create sites of images, which can then be modified or included inones site. This is another solution

Smooth Javascript Image Zooming For Your Web Pages This much-requested chunk of Javascript to zoom images inline, originally written for this blog but later rolled out to the Panic website and used for screenshots, is now polished up, bug-fixed, available for you to use on your website! More information and details are available at: http://www.cabel.name/2008/02/fancyzoom-10.html

Another approach to image presentation is CoolIris, http://www.cooliris.com which used to be known as Piclens. This works as a plugin to most current browsers

Transform your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for online photos and videos. *************

For a wonderful reference site on colour, or is that color ?, I suggest you look at -

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIALS – http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/

Learn how to take and edit digital photographs using visual tutorials that emphasize concept over procedure, independent of specific digital camera or lens. Topics range from basic camera tips to advanced techniques

From their site:

Cambridge in Colour was started in 2005, and has since grown substantially both in content and in the number of visitors it attracts. On any given day this site has well over 10,000 different people learning about photography, viewing the gallery and contributing to the forums. Thank you to all those who have helped share this site with others

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If you are having trouble with your downloads speed, but it is not consistent, it might be a case of your ISP throttling some of your bandwidth. When BitTorrent files started they were used for ‘grey’ content so it was simple for the service provider to intervene in this method, for the client to complain would necessitate admitting to downloading quasi-legal content. But the world has moved on, and the format has been adopted by legal content.

The site below may be able to help you pinpoint a throttling issue : http://www.mpi-sws.mpg.de/index_flash.php which will lead you to http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency/bttest.php?

Certain ISPs have been shown to rate limit or block BitTorrent traffic sent by their customers. While there are multiple reports of this on the web, only a few ISPs have admitted that they manipulate BitTorrent traffic. And, to date, it is hard for users without networking expertise to gain evidence about the behavior of their ISP.This test suite creates a BitTorrent-like transfer between your machine and our server, and determines whether or not your ISP is limiting such traffic. This is a first step towards making traffic manipulation by ISPs more transparent to their customers

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I love visualisations of information. Here is another interesting example I came across.

History flow: from – http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/index.htm

Visualising the editing history of Wikipedia pages – History flow is a tool for visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and the interactions of multiple collaborating authors. In its current implementation, history flow is being used to visualize the evolutionary history of wiki* pages on Wikipedia

Below another example of the visualisations of information, this time all in Spanish, I think, but a great graphic of money flowing in and flowing out, and how it has been divided up – from: http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb154/chiquiesteban/Presupuestos-dia-1-2.jpg



And here a website of an individual that takes diverse data types and presents them in visually interesting forms – data as ART. Here the mapping of location and intensity of WiFi points during a journey – From : http://yesyesnono.co.uk/ and http://yesyesnono.co.uk/article/30/invisible-journeys

Invisible Journeys May 2, 10:39 AM – Invisible Journeys is my first try at data visualisation. I have seen a few wifi geographical mapping, but they looked a bit too technical to my taste. Here, i aimed at a semi abstract visualisation while keeping the ability to extract sense out of the graphics.

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Those of interested in the history of computing have all heard of the code breaking machines of the war but and article in the NYTimes led me to this gem

The Web Time Forgot : http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

PAPER TRAIL The telegraph room at the original Mundaneum in Brussels. (image source – Mundaneum)

The place actually has a site at: http://www.mundaneum.be/

Which is well worth a look if yourlanguage skills are up to the excerpt I have included here:

UN PEU D’HISTOIRE(S)

Le projet du Mundaneum, son histoire:
L’origine du Mundaneum remonte à la fin du XIXème siècle. Créé à l’initiative de deux juristes belges, Paul Otlet et Henri La Fontaine, le projet visait à rassembler l’ensemble des connaissances du monde et à les classer selon le système de Classification Décimale Universelle (CDU) qu’ils avaient mis au point.

Outil de connaissance pour la paix, le Mundaneum était conçu à la base comme un centre de documentation à caractère universel. Il fut durant la première moitié du XXème siècle le berceau d’institutions internationales humanistes dédiées au Savoir et à la Fraternité universelle. A partir de 1920, il occupa une aile du Cinquantenaire à Bruxelles. Ses collections y étaient exposées dans l’esprit des expositions universelles.

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A wonderful set of sites, revolving around one designers ideas and thoughts on Logo Design - http://www.davidairey.com/ and http://www.logosdesigners.com/

And then some specific Logo’s that were done for this years 2008 Summer Olympics in China - http://en.beijing2008.cn/63/32/column212033263.shtml

The pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games integrate pictographic charm of inscriptions on bones and bronze objects in ancient China with simplified embodiment of modern graphics.

Not ‘Logos’ but ‘Posters’ – not quite so concise a presentation of information but usually so. Here a site that has gathered some great classics: http://www.bobstaake.com/posters/

‘Totally Amzing Posters
 – Throughout my life I’ve been mesmerized by posters — particularly those created by the Europeans of the mid-20th Century. These bold, graphic and inventive posters continue to captivate contemporary illustrators, and while many of us have liberally taken inspiration from iconic poster graphics, they pale in comparison to those created from 1930-1960 in France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and virtually every country on the European continent’

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Google SketchUp is a program that you must try. I have mentioned it in a previous blog and have played with it from just after its inception, many many years ago, when I bought it as a product from Alias. Now free, at least for the general version, a number of other companies are making rendering plugins that work with it and produce stunning results. They may not be fast and the free versions do not create large output, but they can take a fairly simple to create SketchUp model and produce wonderful results.

I found Renditioner Express first but at the moment it is PC only ( I have not tried Google SketchUp with Parallels on my Intel iMac – maybe I should!) and then I found SU Podium

IDX Renditoner Express (Free) 
http://www.idx-design.com/IDX/IDXRenditioner/FreeVersionofIDXRenditionerExpress/tabid/1011/Default.aspx

The free version of IDX Renditoner Express includes all the same features as IDX Renditioner but differs in render size and possibly speed. IDX Renditioner Express (Free) supports a maximum render size of 640 x 480 pixels. (IDX Renditioner supports a maximum render size of 4096 x 4096 pixels, a full 16 megapixels. It also supports multithreading for higher performance necessary on the large images.)

IDX Renditioner Express (Free) includes a smaller number of light components, but more will be available on the forums at http://forums.idx-design.com. Lights are easy to create and we encourage you to share.

At this time the PC version is available, but a free Mac version is expected soon.

SU Podium – http://www.suplugins.com/

The simplest rendering plug-in for Google SketchUp now runs on Windows or the Mac.

You can make TRUE photo-realistic rendering of your SketchUp model without the pain and frustration of learning a complex program. Podium runs completely inside Google SketchUp from start to finish. It uses SketchUp features such as textures, background colors, groups and shadows to achieve impressive results. Podium is intuitive to SketchUp users. Plus, its simple interface cuts the learning curve to minutes instead of days. Make an impression without the pain. SU Podium works with Google SketchUp 6 or 5, Pro or Free, Windows or Mac.

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I am not a big fan of gaming software. BUT that said, every so often something catches my interest. The following fall into this category, and appears to have a support community.

Welcome to Celestia : http://www.shatters.net/celestia/The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn’t confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.

Additional material for this program is available at : http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/

The one Gaming title I have paid for is XPlane. http://www.x-plane.com/ This is a flight simulator that is simply amazing. Currently in version 9, I quote from the web site

‘X-Plane is the world’s most comprehensive, powerful flight simulator, and has the most realistic flight model available for personal computers. Welcome to the world of props, jets, single- and multi-engine airplanes, as well as gliders, helicopters and VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier…”

At the moment it is 39$US, a bargain, but they are soon to return to their former higher pricing. Like the above mentioned software this is also a product with a community – didicated to making an already realistic product even better. This one is so good it is actually used by flights schools.

And to sweeten things they have an iPhone and iPod Touch version. This is software that will sell the hardware – really! Go look for yourself at : http://www.x-plane.com/iPhone/X-Plane/iPhone_X-Plane.html For just under $10, the experience of flying this in your hand is, to me, unbelievable…

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I like music, but my tastes are eclectic (my wife says they are warped) That said, we are blessed with internet service, courtesy of ARIA DSL here in Umbria that lets me listen through iTunes to streamed CBC Classics via the internet. I just have to remember to switchoff the remote speakers – iTunes and Airport Express – before I put on any folk or rock music.

So it was with interested I looked at this site below : Relational Music Discovery – http://www.maxkiesler.com/Relational Music Discovery

‘I spend most of my days and nights in front of the computer screen. Needless to say I listen to countless hours of music. I’m always looking for new music to listen to, and face it, iTunes can only get you so far with it’s rather limited discovery features. Recently, I’ve turned to relational, and visual music discovery engines to find more tunes that related to my current musical tastes.’

• Artist Network Visualization
• Audiosurf: Ride Your Music
• Liveplasma Music Discovery Engine
• Musicovery – Content Visualization
• Musiclens – Music Discovery Visualization
• Music Maps – Who is Listening to What and Where
• Podbop – Mp3 Concert Calendar
• TuneGlue – Relationship Explorer
• ScreenVader – Algorithmic Music, Images and Video
• Whitney Music Box – Visual Harmony

And while on the subject of music, what could be more so than the Minute Waltz – Right? Well not in this case but still worth a look Minute Waltz : http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/05/16/opinion/20080516_schott_2.html

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An avid reader of BrookStones (http://www.brookstone.com/) Vermont Country Store (http://www.vermontcountrystore.com/) and Hammacher Schlemmer (http://www.hammacher.com) catalogues, I like interesting gifts. So this site peaked my interest ; http://www.gnr8.biz/

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Getting good at Adobe PhotoShop takes some talent, some reading and a lot of practice. Thankfully there are a lot of sites out on the internet with free content to help you in your exploration. This is one : http://psdtuts.com/

“About – PSDTUTS is a blog/Photoshop site made to house and showcase some of the best Photoshop tutorials around. We publish tutorials that not only produce great graphics and effects, but explain in a friendly, approachable manner. Photoshop is a fantastically powerful program and there are a million ways to do anything, we hope that reading PSDTUTS will help our readers learn a few tricks, techniques and tips that they might not have seen before and help them maximize their creative potential! PSDTUTS is the sister site to VECTORTUTS, NETTUTS and AUDIOTUTS.”

If you have read this far, heaven knows how many typo’s and grammer mistakes you will have suffered through. While the content interests me greatly, trying to keep track of it, for myself and for you, is quite a task. Spelling and correct punctuation is not one of my strong points. BUT this site might help – http://www.retinart.net/miscellaneous/grammar

‘Retinart – Thoughts on graphic design, creativity and beauty. That’ll pretty much sum it up. From analytical essays on the finer points of typography (get it? You’ll laugh later, promise) to interviews with creatives with something special, the goal is to show the creativity and beauty produced by talented people and to hopefully make you think a little different and see things through a different lens.

Alex Charchar – Retinart is written by Alex Charchar. I’m a graphic designer currently living in Queensland, Australia. I graduated from Swinburne in Melbourne, started to work at USQ in the in-house studio and then wanted to develop my knowledge and love for all things creative. From one educational institutional to another.

After far too long thinking about how to do it, I finally did something with the domain I’ve owned for a number of years for more than getting email about making things bigger. I love clever ideas, elegant solutions and all those pretty things that make us smile, so my (very original) idea was to put together a site dedicted to such things.’

Wake Up Later is a website that touches on the subjects of website building, freelancing, blogging, and online entrepreneurship. We cover a variety of topics from freelance tips and programming to SEO and internet marketing. It is also the home of free stuff for freelancers, a growing repository of Flash, audio, and other stuff free for personal and commercial use. Furthermore, the website encourages the sharing of ideas and experiences through Interviews and GroupThinks.

The person behind this website is Samuel Ryan whom I will now refer to in the first person. I am a web designer and developer who currently resides with my wife in the heart of the United StatesIn Conclusion: Although it’s easy to laugh at the past designs of many of these websites while praising current designs, remember that you are a contemporary of 2008 and five years from now, you might think that even these current sites are a mess. Overall, I’m sure most would agree that design standards have been raised over the last decade, and it will be exciting to see what the next ten years hold…

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Now here is my idea of an Entertainment Site – if the conversation ever lags at a party you are at, maybe one of these gems will help ! Unnecessary Knowledge : http://www.unkno.com/

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I have a beautiful friend who used to live in Ottawa and now lives in Washington DC – A fanastic designer who I have had the opportunity to help on occasion. Every time I see an article on shoes I think of her – so this site is for her.

The Virtual Shoe Museum : http://www.virtualshoemuseum.com/vsm/index.php The Virtual Shoe Museum was initiated by Liza Snook in 2004. Once the idea was born, a long search began for designers, photographers and publishers connected to shoes. New friendships developed and our mailbox filled with loads of material on fantastic shoes, art and design on shoes.

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I have already mentioned the iPod Touch that I own. I use us to check stocks, weayher, write notes, surf when I am away from my computer and need some nugget of knowledge, I have paid for the full ‘American Heritage Dictionary’ and ‘Ultralingua, English-Italian Dictionary’. ‘AirSharing’ is a great piece of software that allows you to tranfer nonstandard content to your iPod Touch or iPhone – such as Adobe pdf’s or ‘Apple KeyNote’ slide shows.

I disagree with Apple in that I think electronic reading tablet is a great idea and without a lot of work they could create one – Sure the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Readers are nice but for that price they ought to do all the other things that Apple could allow them to do.

Another recent find has been : Stanza – http://www.lexcycle.com/

‘Featuring a clean, well-organized interface, Stanza is expressly designed for reading digital publications, including electronic books, newspapers, PDFs, and general web content. Stanza is built from the ground up to make reading on your Macintosh or Windows laptop or desktop an enjoyable and hassle-free experience. It gives special attention to details that are usually overlooked in other software readers such as hyphenation, text columnation, automatic text scrolling, and user-friendly page and chapter navigation. Lengthy content that can be tedious to read using a web browser or PDF viewer is easy and natural with Stanza.’

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And the last entry here has got to do with the Gorrila of all software suites – The Adobe Creative Suite. A month agao now we were shown what is would contain and it has now just started to ship. It is one of the reasons that I continue to do a bit of design work. PhotoShop alone is worth the price to entry but I also use, most days, DreamWeaver (yes I have had to switch from GoLive, and now that I have I can see why it wond the battle – I just wish that they had provided thoe coders of MenuMachine (http://menumachine.com/) a heads up – the loss of that wonderful plugin for Golive – is a loss all designers should feel. They are reworking it – from the ground up for Dreamweaver but it is not happening overnight (http://menumachine.com/blog/) – meanwhile I limp along with inadequate soltions…

Adobe Illustrator was my first Adobe product – I don’t use it vey often these days but it is an old friend – InDesign took the place of PageMaker and shortly after its inception left Quark struggling to catchup. A wonderful program that allows content layout for diverse platforms – including eBooks – like those used by the previously mentioned Stanza.

BUT the Jewel is PhotoShop! The new version is worth it, the improvements to an already astounding product adding more than enough features to keep most designers happy for a few more years… And soon to be released is Adobe Configurator a tool for creating your own palletes. John Nack on his Adobe blog explains it in more detail…

Adobe Configurator : http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/introducing_ado_1.html “By now you’ve probably heard me talk many times about our desire to better manage the complexity and power of Photoshop. The very general interface that Photoshop presents is incredibly flexible, but it can be overwhelming, and it doesn’t do much to show you just what you need when you need it. We can do better.”

There is a very good video of the features here : http://www.russellbrown.com/Transfer/Configurator.mov

And that is it for this entry

Hopefully I will again add to this blog – heavens knows I have a lot of things collected to share with you – R

Late May now, almost a month since the last post

So much has happened! Where to Start? My URL’s folder on my desktop now holds more that 60 links of things I thought interesting, and my Application folder contains a variety of new applications that having found, tried and paid for, I want to tell you about.

I think I will tackle that URL folder first and try to put some order into it. Then maybe a few entries over the next few days…

If you don’t know the Screen Capture Keystrokes that Apple has included in your system, you ought,and even better the modifier keys to make specific selections of things like entire windows. But they are not the only story out there. the people at konigi.com have a list of 6, Apples and 5 others:

http://konigi.com/notebook/6-screenshot-utilities-you-should-know-about

And of course there is the next category up for capturing moving imagery on your screen. I personally settled on iShowU now at version 1.66 from

http://www.shinywhitebox.com/index.html.

And you must not forget Screenshot Settings.app, a two trick pony that does nothing but change the format of those created screen shots and where they are saved to. Don’t like Apples choice of png – like pdf and a specific folder?

I tried to look up the source of that last mentioned little application – it is actually a small Applescript. Search Results for ‘Screenshot’ at http://www.versiontracker.com returned ‘no Result by that name’ Oh well It is a script and editable at that using Script Editor.

Font Stuff:

The I Love Typography is again the source of some wonderful web inspiration regarding fonts and their use.

15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography

PART I: SHOWCASE http://ilovetypography.com/2007/09/19/15-excellent-examples-of-web-typography

15 Great Examples of Web Typography

QUARTER 2, 2008 http://ilovetypography.com/2008/05/07/15-great-examples-of-web-typography-q2-2008/

Do you know the origins of that wonderful character, the Ampersand ? One of my found in ‘Hoefler Titling‘ At Hoefler and Frere-Jones in their News, Notes and Observations section you will find a illustrated history at:

http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?blogID=98

I have also found another site dedicted to all things Ampersand to quote:

” The Ampersand- A scribal abbreviation for and. Derived from the Latin word “et.” I like the ampersand. I think it is often the most attractive punctuation mark of them all. This blog is an attempt to give this humble character the respect it deserves.“

It is located at: http://ampersand.gosedesign.net/

The folks at Smashing magazine have assembled ‘50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe’, while no facing the limitation of type on the web, these too are great inspiration. The collection is at:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/25/breathtaking-typographic-posters/

If like me you are concerned about making your web type accurate and cross platform, knowing the correct coding for the odd characters in most fonts are needed. The ‘Designers Toolbox‘ have assembled a useful resource at:

http://www.designerstoolbox.com/designresources/html/

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web – A practical guide to web typography , is an ever increasing set of articles on the various aspect of just that. As of late May it is up to 3.2.1 Use titling figures with full caps, and text figures in all other circumstances. To date the subjects of ‘Rhythm & Proportion‘ and ‘Harmony & Counterpoint‘ have been addresed. As a work in progress it is worth returning or subscribing to its RSS feed. The site is at:

http://webtypography.net/

Have you ever needed to know what different fonts at differing sizes would look like on the web? And having then got the correct size spacing, alignment etc wanted the correct CSS description. Well it is available – one very great site called ‘typesetter – compare screen font‘. It is located at:

http://typetester.maratz.com/

Think you know your fonts? Helvetica vs Time – Easy ! But try out ‘ the rather difficult Font Game‘ and see how good you really are. It is located at:

http://fontgame.ilovetypography.com/

Yet another way of having type elements retain their visual integrity on the web – Have you heard of sIFR – to quote ” sIFR (or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is a technology that allows you to replace text elements on screen with Flash equivalent ” if you want to know more about this technology they have a site at:

http://wiki.novemberborn.net/

A beautiful font based screen saver; You can test it for awhile but it is not free.

It is called dropclock and the site is located at:

http://scr.sc/products/dropclock/

While I am still mentioning things web related I know one of the largest problems it trying your web site in assorted browsers for a client. If you are lucky the client has collected data from his existing site using some tool like Google Analytics available at:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

With it you will know what browsers, what platforms, what screen sizes, languages and plugins your viewers are using. A great starting point when doing a redesign. Use your tool of choice to develop the new site – mind you if you, like me have a preference for GoLive – you are now out of luck – Adobe have mothballed it. It has always been a better tool for the designer, Dreamweaver for the propellerhead – oh well. It still works, if you have it – it is just no longer supported or sold! Gee I bought it before it was an Adobe product – I remember it at the Boston MacWorld way back when…

Anyhow you have a site – now does it work? On the mac you throw it at Safari, FireFox and the now unsupported Explorer. If you are lucky enough to have a intell based mac, you probably have PARALLELS DESKTOP 3.0 FOR MAC from:

http://www.parallels.com

or VMware Fusion from:

http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/

so that you can run Window XP or Vista. Hopefully XP – got your Service Pack 3 download for it yet. If you are using Apples of Boot Camp,make sure you down load the SP3 upgrade from Apple before you upgrade your copy of XP. Having used both Boot Camp and PARALLELS recently I strongly suggest PARALLELS of the two – It is so seamless – I have had no experience with VMWare.

Anyhow – you try Explorer, FireFox and Safari also on the PC. But what about the other browsers. I have used and strong suggest Browsershots. To quote ” Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.” You will find it at:

http://browsershots.org/

If they don’t have the browser – don’t worry about it. You will save yourself a lot of potential embarrassment if you do use it! Don’t let the client have the opportunity to use the fact the site was created on a Mac – for the reason it doesn’t look or work as it was meant to!

Lets move onto Cars – Automobiles.

I like cars, old cars. This last week has marked this years Mille Miglia here in Italy. 3 days to drive from Brescia to Rome and back. The second day has them going through Assisi, located near me here in Umbria.

One of my favourite cars has always been the Lotus Europa, but also up the is the BMW M1 – I doubt at six foot two I could even slip into the former, and given that used M1 are trading for 100K or better I can’t afford the latter. Still I was intrigued to see BMW’s supercar icon, the M1, which to quote: ” blew out the candles at the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este this weekend. In honor of the car’s thirtieth birthday, BMW rolled out the new BMW M1 Hommage ” See the images at:

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/27/modern-retro-bmw-m1-homage-officially-revealed/

and:

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/transportation/BMW-M1-Concept/

A Wonderful VIDEO: Volvo’s 81-year History in 9 Minutes. I found this link originally on:

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/11/video-volvos-81-year-history-in-9-minutes/

but they had linked to the source file on YouTube. Here it is, we.ll woth 9 minutes

More Video:

Over the last few days I have yet again been going through TED video. I have mentioned this site before and I do so again. They are at:

www.ted.com

the most recent ones I have watched are:

• TEDTalks : Siegfried Woldhek (2008)
• TEDTalks : Roy Gould (2008)
• TEDTalks : Johnny Lee (2008)
• TEDTalks : Jill Bolte Taylor (2008)
• TEDTalks : Craig Venter (2008)
• TEDTalks : Clifford Stoll (2006)

All of these a very thought provoking, but a tip of the depth of ideas that are covered in this conference. But once again I was most impressed by the man who was not the president – Al Gore. His 2008 speech, included below was a followup to his prior presentation ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘. If you don’t take in anything else in this posting – take the time to watch this video – PLEASE

TEDTalks : Al Gore (2008)

Photography:

I have before expressed my interest in HDR Photography. Wonderful galleries of images are located at:

• http://hdrcreme.com/photo-gallery/
• http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr

Most people who are interested in the subject have probably found the article by Colin Smith at:

http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/HDR_ps/hdr-ps.htm

Having read that and played with the HDR features in PhotoShop CS3 and the demo of Photomatix from:

http://www.hdrsoft.com/

I found a new product – HYDRA from:

http://creaceed.com/hydra/

To quote: ” Hydra is about mixing a number of under- and overexposed shots to get a natural sight of a scene. It provides human eye-like perception to your photographs by allowing you to create high dynamic range (HDR) images from a series of regular photographs, either from DSLRs or traditional point-and-shoot cameras.” As I use Apple Aperture I was also interested in the fact it worked as a plugin to Version 2.1. I downloaded the demo, I tried it and I paid for the product – Very simple to use – I like it. Here is an image I have done with it:

Now having said that, My wife is on a photoworkshop in Mull , Scotland , led by Mark Muench – http://www.muenchworkshops.com/gallery/3200186_JKGVA and I gather she has learned some new tricks – Apparently HDR is frowned on by this group of professionals and my wife says I have wasted my money – but then it was only 60$, one third of that from hdrsoft. I will report on what they had to say in another posting. They also have informed her that Aperture was not the best choice and to stick with PhotoShop and Adobe- I guess we all have our own preferences and workflows.

This week also brought a link to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/audio_video/times_online_tv/?vxSiteId=d8fa78dc-d7ad-4d5a-8886-e420d4bc4200&vxChannel=Times%20Online%20News&vxClipId=1152_timesonline0664&vxBitrate=300

and ‘Billion-pixel panoramas — from your own camera‘ on the Times Online – UK Newspaper site at:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3938717.ece

and another site related to this sort of photography.

http://gigapan.org/

It is amazing the technology spin off that is happening across the entire field of photography from the panoramas in Google Earth to the PhotoSynth and World Wide Telescope from Microsoft:

• http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
• http://research.microsoft.com/projects/wwt/

And into OUTER SPACE

From the Guardian and the UK National Archives, information has been released regarding UFO’s. Regardless of your own belief or not some interesting reading at the Guardians, Explore the X-files :

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/05/explore_the_xfiles.html

or the National Archives, newly released UFO files :

http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

On a more mundane subject regarding things whizzing around in the sky above us, from the European Space Operations Centre ” Space debris: evolution in pictures – Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.” at:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESOC/SEMN2VM5NDF_mg_1.html

The images of the debris that the astronauts and spacecraft must avoid are frightening.

NASA have a site of multimedia : Images, podcasts, video and TV of past and present events…

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/index.html

Presentation:

Be it a slide show, a series of images or a story you need to tell. We all have to order and assemble information in a presentation , either for ourselves, our friends or your clients. If you have a Mac – you get a lot of programs supplied with your machine and if you keep iLife up to date, and/or have paid extra for .Mac and iWork you probably won’t need anything else. A .Mac slide show is great! But if you want something a bit better?

Photoshop outputs images as slide shows in a variety of formats – here is one:

http://www.rjslade.com/DolceGara_RJS/index.htm

This collection of images is of a Dessert Competition that we have had every year in Monte Castello di Vibio, since I arrived – I have been lucky enough to be a judge. Note the controls in the bottom left corner of the window – play with them and see what they do.

Then from Photoshop you can use a plugin such as SimpleViewer. It is available free from here:

http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/

They also have a paid version that allows more customisation by providing the source files. Some of the navigation is obvious, some not so. You can see the larger images loading in the thumbnails and the arrow under the thumbnails obviously directs you to more thumbnails – it is obvious isn’t it. Less obvious is that as you mouse over the vertical midpoints of the larger image you will get left and/or right arrows that take you directly to the next image. The plugin is available for use with an assortment of programs. For an example see here:

http://www.rjslade.com/Torraccia/index.html

As an aside the images are of the Summer Bar just below the walls of Monte Castello di Vibio.

Of course if you have the full version of Acrobat, you can build a show in it. The people at CreativeTechs recently posted this tip on doing just that:

http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/build_an_acrobat_pdf_slideshow.html

As I advise a lot of artists, one of the advantages of this solution is ensuring that the colour profile of the files are included. Artists get quite upset when colours shift! Not all browsers on all platforms display the true colour of an image.

There are a growing number of online places that will host your presentation after assisting you in creating it. One of these that I have looked at recently was: SideRocket -

http://www.sliderocket.com

One I have paid for was BannerZest from -

http://www.aquafadas.com/

I got it as part of a MucUpdate bundle (http://www.mupromo.com/) that included

Parallels ($79.99), BannerZest (49.00), Sound Studio (79.99), DVDRemaster Pro (49.99), Typinator (29.99), StoryMill (44.95), Leap (59.00), MenuCalendarClock (19.95), Art Text (39.95), Hazel (21.95) – Total Value: $474.76 (Get it at MacUpdate for $64.99) Can’t argue with that sort of pricing, even if you only use half of the products regularly. I up graded BannerZest to the Pro version and you can see a simple set of images above, created in it , those of the cars in the Mille Miglia.

Why is it that we are so often dissappointed when we open the packaging and see the product inside. This is particularly true for food so from: Advertising vs Reality – A Product Comparison Project

http://funtasticus.com/20080324/advertising-vs-reality-a-product-comparison-project/

A German website, Pundo3000.com, has conducted a study of 100 different products by comparing the look of the products as shown by the packaging with the actual contents inside the boxes. Quoting the website, which is in German: “ All products were purchased, the packaging photographed and the contents prepared and photographed too. All products were then eaten up.” and also: “The purpose of the project is not to discredit any brands or products but to critically compare the packaging advertising with the inside contents ”.’

If you like the way more news site present tomorrows cover pages, the evening before you will love this site:

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/default.asp?p_size=611

619 front pages from 58 countries. ” The Newseum displays these daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. Some front pages may contain material that is objectionable to some visitors. Viewer discretion is advised.“

As you must know – news is not just content but also presentation. Here is a site on just that subject:

http://www.designingthenews.com/

From the site “About – Well here it is, all you ever wanted to know about DesigningTheNews.com, and all about what/why/when/how it is and does! Over the coming year (2008) this page will be updated with more information as I focus and refocus what I want the site to do, as well as maybe explain a little about the content it frames, and why I’m doing this.

The ‘elevator description’- DTN is a series of experiments which visually explore the news in various ways to encourage new ways of seeing a predominantly text based medium.

What is DTN all about?- News in general is primarily a text based format. When accompanied by an image, the image serves to reinforce the story, but what if the news was the image? DTN is about bridging the gap between traditional cartoonists and modern day generative news visualisations.“

But it is the presentation of data that is most interesting to me.

here are a few really interesting sites:

http://www.notcot.com/archives/2008/04/stefanie_posave.php

has an article on STEFANIE POSAVEC “ON THE MAP”

http://yesyesnono.co.uk/article/30/invisible-journeys

has a article ‘Invisible Journeys‘ dated May 2, 10:39 AM to quote the site:

” Invisible Journeys is my first try at data visualisation. I have seen a few wifi geographical mapping, but they looked a bit too technical to my taste. Here, i aimed at a semi abstract visualisation while keeping the ability to extract sense out of the graphics. Below is one of the visualisation showing 4 different journeys. Bigger to smaller rings : London / Vescemont / Belfort / Barcelona.”

and a third site is: http://benfry.com/

Quoted from the site: “Biography – Ben Fry received his doctoral degree from the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on combining fields such as Computer Science, Statistics, Graphic Design, and Data Visualization as a means for understanding complex data. After completing his thesis, he spent time developing tools for the visualization of genetic data as a postdoc with Eric Lander at the Eli & Edyth Broad Insitute of MIT & Harvard. During the 2006-2007 school year, Ben was the Nierenberg Chair of Design for the the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. At the end of 2007, he finished Visualizing Data for O’Reilly. He currently works as a designer in Cambridge, MA.” Really intersting stuff.

All this interesting material from so many places. Not always posted by those who originally created it, but hopefully the correct sources referenced. I have tried to note where the material has come from – credit where credit due! On the issue of copyright ‘Who’s Ripping Off Your Website Content?‘ is an article in Issue 71, 5/15/08 Written by Anne-Marie “HerGeekness” Concepcion :

http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/ .

The story she recounts is all too common I would suspect. Her story will lead you to Copyscape at:

http://www.copyscape.com/

They have both free and paid services that could help you protect your content, or at least let you know who else is using it. Of course you can also use Google Search and do it yourself.

Information Architects of Japan, have taken the old idea of the London Underground map and populated it with another type of information. Not the first time I have seen this sort of thing but the example at:

http://informationarchitects.jp/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/wallpaper1600_1024.jpg

It is good and you can buy it here!

http://informationarchitects.jp/web-trend-map-3-get-it/

I have included a small example here but other versions are available at the web address I have quoted above.

Odds and Ends;

I have to assume no one has read all of this material in one go! but I have a few other things to include this time. Maurice has supplied many links over the last month, I thank him on your behalf. A recent one is this:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/digital_image_resources_on_the_deep_web.php

to quote: ‘ Digital Image Resources on the Deep Web – Written by Sarah Perez / May 14, 2008 8:33 AM

Sometimes you stumble across something that really makes you say “wow” and reminds you that there’s so much more to this internet thing than just the latest web app. Case in point is this article describing some of the visual resources available on the web. The deep web. These images won’t show up in search engines’ image searches or on Flickr (save one exception), but instead can only be accessed via the links below.‘

Another resource is the MoOM – THE MUSEUM OF ONLINE MUSEUMS . It is located at:

http://coudal.com/moom/index.php

to quote ” Welcome to the Coudal Partners Museum of Online Museums. Here, you will find links from our archives to online collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions: Start with a review of classic art and architecture, and graduate to the study of mundane (and sometimes bizarre) objects elevated to art by their numbers, juxtaposition, or passion of the collector.”

For a colour specific source there is Follow the Rainbow: 101 Color Resources for Web Designers located at:

http://whdb.com/2008/follow-the-rainbow-101-color-resources-for-web-designers/

It is part of a larger site with lots of information presented with a bit of humour. Quote ” Hello and congratulations on reaching our humble Web site on the World Wide Web. Well, I suppose you’d like to know a little more about us, the wonderful people who have built WHDb. Well, we are two monkeys working in a cage scrambling frantically to complete this Web site so our masters will let us eat again. One of us is pictured below. This Web site features your daily dose of WWW goodness and all that encompasses, namely software, gaming, and Internet commentary.“

That list of URL’s in my URL folder that started off above sixty, it is now less than twenty. So I will close with two more things.

The first – TEN THOUSAND CENTS located at :

http://www.tenthousandcents.com/top.html

to quote ” Ten Thousand Cents is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100. The work is presented as a video piece with all 10,000 parts being drawn simultaneously. The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, “crowdsourcing,” “virtual economies,” and digital reproduction.”

A great work of participatory art!

And as so much of this posting has been about the news, and its presentation what better to close with than another video clip from flicker. The Day There Was No News from ‘Today there was no news. And here is the proof.‘ : Double click the image below to play the clip.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arbernaut/2476955162/

That is it – Really! Hope you enjoy the reading and find it helpful – R

First up a couple of links to the group at creativetechs

They have a weekly free newsletter that you can register for and it usually has something interesting in it. Last week was on ‘Adding translation links to to web site‘

Todays mail included a link to xScope, a handy utility being marketed by the people at Iconfactory. I have actually given this a try already and have a previous times paid for assorted parts if it before under different guises.. I just cannot justify the expense for what it does – not now anyhow but can understand its utility in the correct setting.

This causes me to think of the strange marketing practices of software – who has the idea, who writes the code and which part of the code, and who is the public face of the software we use. One cannot think PhotoShop without thinking Adobe, but it has not always been so. There have been some recent articles chronicling the gestation of this seminal product. If you are interested: http://photoshopnews.com/2008/02/19/most-important-date-in-digital-imaging-history/ But that story is a fairly happy one. The number of products brought under the umbrella of a company and then faded away is remarkable. Before I moved I cleared my shelves a an untold number of old products that Adobe has marketed and do so no more… (Adobe CS, GoLive, Premier, TOC, ATM/Super ATM, ATR, SiteMill/PageMill, Dimensions, Persuasion, Streamline, TextureMaker, Gallery Effects, ScreenReady, MathType, Word for Word, Fetch, After Effects) And that is only one company.

The other tip was regarding some of the added features to Leopard OS and the include Disk Utility. It is amazing to me how many small features that can make a big difference to the user experience are seemingly undocumented in a system upgrade. If you are new to the Mac, or even a long time user I strongly recommend David Pogue’s Missing Manual, and staying up to date with it. There you will find a lot of the missing detail.

Returning to creativetech, a list of all the previously supplied tips are at: http://www.creativetechs.com/tips/

The tips, like those passed on here are sometimes from these people directly but more often than not, like mine, sourced from elsewhere…

On to Font Stuff.

Last time I mentioned body text generators – that text that fills in for what the client has yet to provide. Humorously enough with the correct generator the fake text may actually be better than the real content. There is a fantastic web based generator at http://www.blindtextgenerator.com/ and while you are there don’t forget to click on ‘about dummy text’ to get some of the history and background.

The people at Extensis, the current home of Suitcase, have a fun site at: http://blog.extensis.com/typecaster/

While in the past I have both used and liked, very much, both Suitcase and Portfolio, software evolves and new solutions are explored. Apple with Aperture and Adobe with Lightroom have changed to the market for Portfolio, expanding greatly of what Extensis had originally brought to the marketplace. MasterJuggler and Suitcase for years fought for the hearts of designers trying to bring sense to the disorder of fonts and font formats. Then FontAgent got very good at sorting your library and correcting the problems that crept into it as it grew. OSX threw in a free program from Apple that has been improved dramatically but at the moment my program of choice, from who better but a font source is the free FontExplorerX. As they say, it is simple, it is smart and it is free!

Of course Apple made things a lot easier in that it will now use almost any type of font out there, Mac or PC. We no longer have the excuse for reflowed type because we don’t have the PC version of a font that the previous PC based designer used.

I may have mentioned this site before but I Love Typography is a wonderful resource with articles and links.In particular look at: http://ilovetypography.com/2008/02/28/a-guide-to-web-typography/ If you thought the mystery of font usage was large in print, the web adds a whole other dimension. I sure wish there was more work going on with embedded fonts and web usage. People rely on fonts they know are on both Mac and PC systems and set up cascading font choices to allow for fonts not being installed. Adobe through Flash and Acrobat allow exchange of documents with fonts embedded by font licensing prevents the embedding of most fonts on web sites for use on a particular web site. Yes I know there are some open source fonts and I have actually been to sites that have provided a link to a font files that a user can install, but I think this is another area of exploration that can be made.

And for the final mention in this section on fonts I have to mention a posting at IronicSans

keming. noun. The result of improper kerning.

You have to see the graphic that goes with it – I am seriously considering the T-shirt. It was especially appropriate in that I had to do a critique of a design job this week and the kerning among other things, was less than perfect.

Thanks to the Core Graphics that Apple has built into its OS, it just takes a clever designer to uncover for the end user a unified feature set that is of use to the budding artist. This is magic that used to be written from ground up by the coders of PhotoShop, ImageStudio and the like. The problem we are faced now is trying to decide which is the best tool for us. I have looked at perhaps 6 or seven of these programs. In fact at the moment ImageLobe is on my computer. It is nicely done. I already use ReelBean marketed by the same group, but that is for moving images.

For those who need some help JonWhipple and Image is Everything covers off Pixelmator, Acorn and DrawIt

I did stumble on some interesting historical material this week: The Wonderful World of Early Computing in words and images shows some of the early work that have made our desktop machines and portables what they are. If you back out from that particular Article to the parent site of Neatorama, there a links to a whole bunch of interesting articles. If you are interested in flying things, the A-12 Spy Plane was the precursor to the SR71, This pilot earned his days pay landing this aircraft and if you want to see the sort of instrumentation that you need to master on today’s A380 Jumbo Jets, another interesting link. Paul Rand was the father of a lot of graphic design that we all know, ranging from IBM to UPS. Again if you back out from that article you arrive at Logo Design Love, a interesting site on the design of logo’s. If you are working on a project and need to use an existing logo, All Free Logo is a source of good vector artwork, potentially saving you a lot of time.

And as I continue to explore what is possible with Wordpress, the software base for this blog, I came across 48 Unique ways to use Wordpress. Obviously I have not made my way through all of this article but it is making for an interesting journey

That is it for now. Have to get back to modifying our new site at www.photoempt.smugmug.com . That is a work in progress and has to be done around further uploads of imagery. And then there is the iMac with a dead or sick harddrive sitting next to me that needs to be fixed before its owner returns, and some design work as well… I want to thank Maurice Belanger, Tony Euser and Darrel Eagles for sending links that they thought interesting. I have not included all of them – have to save some for another posting. Anybody interested in an article on trying to solve the iMac harddrive issue – there is a tale of woe!

First I would like to thank those who have responded to the site so far and apologise to those who have tried to sign up and not been lucky. I have added a Login | Register link on the right hand menu as so far I have been unable to sort out the log-in link below. That was the start of my saga today.

Wordpress updated to version 2.3.2 yesterday and 2.3.3 today! In trying to update my initial site, that you may have visited last night, this new site ended up at a different address.

Hence today’s email! I also found out that the designer of the site template suggested that we use his newer version and that works in a different way as well. Then I discovered ‘plugins’ for Wordpress and tried to use them to make layout of this text easier. In doing that I messed up the new site and had to recreate it yet again.

I need to thank Darrell for suggesting alteration to my text on the About page. Words were never my strong point and I hope you will bear with my fractured grammar as I try to impart some thoughts. The one thing that does seem to work in the post page is the spell checker!

The first comment came from Neil – You may know him as the keeper of the site for MUGOO…

It said I needed to be logged in, so I pressed the “login” button. Then it got downright unfriendly and said:

Request Entity Too LargeThe requested resource/rjsladecom/wordpress/wp-login.phpdoes not allow request data with GET requests, or the amount of data provided in the request exceeds the capacity limit.Apache/1.3.37 Server at photoempt.com Port 80

Hey .. all I did was press a button!

My comment would have been about 3-D printers or reprap robots. See:http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

I have been viewing the vodcasts at Make Magazine for quick info:http://www.makezine.com/http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/11/make_a_reprap_robot_part.html

Bre Pettis referenced a “hacker space” in Vienna which I plan to visit this Feb. It is right beside the Rathaus (townhall).http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/11/vienna_hacking.htmlhttp://metalab.at/wiki/English

The second comment was from my friend Suzanne, a fantastic graphic designer who works in Washington DC for MIGA – part of the World Bank. While Canadian, being based in DC it is hard not to get involved in US politics. Had she been able to she would have posted this:

From the New York Times:LINK BY LINK Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?By NOAM COHEN Published: February 4, 2008

The Mac may be the cooler computer, but aren’t there more PC users in the world?STYLES make fights — or so goes the boxing cliché. In 2008, they make presidential campaigns, too. This is especially true for the two remaining Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Reporters covering the candidates have already resorted to traditional analysis of style — fashion choices, manner of speaking, even the way they laugh. Yet, according to design experts, the candidates have left a clear blueprint of their personal style — perhaps even a window into their souls — through the Web sites they have created to raise money, recruit volunteers and generally meet-and-greet online… the rest of the article…

and the third comment came from Ruth

Hi Ross, What an interesting life you are leading (in retirement??). I have been enjoying your galleries of photos from Umbria, and the medieval wedding slideshow. Beautiful! You have started a new career…..do you speak Italian?Five years ago I visited Tuscany with two of my daughters, staying at a winery/olive oil farm near Florence. We had a wonderful time visiting the hilltop towns nearby, and walking their narrow streets . It was a most special experience! Bill and I always think of you as our Mac Mentor… you saw us looking at computers years ago, and directed us to the Macs… and then to the Mac Club. Since then you also helped in the decision to upgrade a scanner, an Epson 3170 Photo, which is still serving us well.I’ve been contemplating a Slideshow application called “Fotomagico” by Boinx, and wonder what you use to make your slideshows? With best regards,

The images referred to are on rjslade.com and PHOTOempt – links are provided on the right. The latter I am finalising a second overhaul in the last 3 months. From a previous 2500 images we have culled and chopped – now just 1500 or so. But a lot better! The web site and image sorting is all done using Apple Aperture, about which I will write something in the next few days…The rjslade.com site is done using Adobe GoLive (yes they still do market it!) and PhotoShop, two of my favourite tools. The web sites there are either the flash export using PhotoShop’s include web gallery or the freely available SimpleViewer plugin. Magic.

The Boinx product I have yet to look at – has anybody else out there – or seen a review? ( I found three: MacWorld, MacNN and the UK MacUser )

As far as my language skills – Italian is progressing – slowly. I understand most of it and can make myself understood. This country is wonderful and I sure do not miss the snow! For those who do not know, Umbria is between the airport and Tuscany – where most of the tourists go.

That is it for tonight. I will post this and send out an email with the revised address

Every two or three months I receive a free newsletter from the people at Trendwatching.com. To me it is very interesting, looking forward to what might be of interest in promotion of products and services, but also as a tool to educate individuals in new ways of looking at an event – changing one’s ‘point of view’. From the newsletter regarding trends in 2008, I found the following particularly interesting but a visit to Trendwatching site will provide you access to the whole article, the archive of other articles and the opportunity to sign yourself up if you want.

How many times have the young people in your life answered – ‘WHATEVER’Anything and Whatever A Singapore beverage company Out of the Box caters to consumers who respond to “What would you like to drink?” with a non-committal “anything” or “whatever”. The company has launched two complementary brands: Anything is fizzy and comes in six flavors (Cola with Lemon, Apple, Fizz Up, Cloudy Lemon and Root Beer), while Whatever is non-carbonated (Ice Lemon Tea, Peach Tea, Jasmine Green Tea, White Grape Tea, Apple Tea, Chrysanthemum Tea). The surprise part? Consumers don ‘t know which flavor they’re getting until they take a sip. Cans are simply labeled Anything and Whatever, and the list of ingredients is limited to generic wording. Judging from the buzz on Singapore forums, teens immediately got the concept and are loving it.

I knew this was now no longer science fiction but at this sort of cost it is no longer only in the realm of the well heeled corporation. Order yours now!

Desktop Factory: 3D Printers The Desktop Factory 3D printer builds durable, functional models from the bottom up, one layer at a time. The Desktop Factory 3D printer has a build speed comparable to existing 3D printing technologies, and produces robust parts that are strong enough to be thrown across a conference room table! Desktop Factory proprietary software imports STL files and other industry standard 3D printer formats, automatically slices and orients the part for optimal build performance and creates any required support structures. The Desktop Factory 3D printer measures about 25 x 20 x 20 inches and weighs less than 90 lbs. The maximum build volume of the initial product will be 5 x 5 x 5 inches. The thickness of each layer is 0.010 inch.

If you thought the transition from mayline and drafting table to the computer screen and software was a learning curve i can just imagine what the results of this transition could be…

Sketchfurniture Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space? The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialize free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined. Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialized through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.

Here is a site that will price and manufacture an object for you from a sheet material of your choice. If you have an idea they provide the infrastructure…

Ponoko is the world’s first personal 2D manufacturing platform. It’s the online space for a community of creators and consumers to use a global network of digital manufacturing hardware to co-create, make and trade individualized product ideas on demand. The Ponoko.com marketplace connects creators, consumers, digital manufacturing hardware and service providers to promote, make and trade products on Ponoko and social networking websites.

So that is it for this post. Hope you find in useful. I have a lot of other subjects to cover so will be adding to the ‘blog’ frequently in the next few days. Enjoy it and hoping to hear from you – R

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