Tips

Nook vs. Kindle

February 18, 2011 By CDT 2 Comments

I recently decided it was time to get an eReader and did some pretty extensive research before making a purchase. In the end I got both a Nook and a Kindle. Here is the comparison. This is the side by side comparison of the Nook and Kindle black and white Wi-Fi models.

Kindle

A Kindle should have been the natural choice for someone who has been using Amazon.com for many years. Kindle uses proprietary DRM and Kindle-specific file type. Amazon does provide free Kindle apps for Mac, PC, Android, iPad, iPod and iPhone. You can easily sync across all devices.

Kindle

Positives for the Kindle:

Lightweight.
Comfortable to hold, pages are easy to flip.
Fast page flip.
Goes from out of the box to reading a freshly downloaded book in literally five minutes.
Connects to Amazon.com.
It has a keyboard. This is really great for the search and find features which are also great.
Two click font size adjustment.
Plays audio books and connects directly to Audible.com. Purchased audio books show up on your archive list.
Download thousands of free eBooks.
Battery lasts for 20 days on a one hour charge.
Emailing files to your Kindle email address will convert them to the Kindle format so you can download them. Some charges may apply.

Negatives for the Kindle:

You can’t sell, trade or give away your eBooks.
Can’t check out library books.
Kindle displays Locations instead of page numbers, and as far as I can tell, they seem to be random nonsense. The percentage will give you an idea of where you are in the book. You can see how many pages are in the book before downloading it.

Nook

The Nook was not a first choice until it was recommended by others who had done their research. The Nook Color screen is similar to a big cell phone and has a bright, reflective reading screen. The black and white Nook and the Kindle are both ePaper and very easy to read. The Nook also has free reading apps available. To upload your PDFs, you do a separate converter like Caliber to convert books to the Nook format.

Nook

Positives for the Nook:

Download millions of free eBooks.
Convert and upload all of your PDF eBooks to be read on the Nook.
Check out library books.
Loan books to friends.
Plays audio books.
Preview the book covers in color.
Clock in upper right of the display.
Can read selected books for an hour at a time in the store at no charge.
Connect to the Internet and view web pages in black and white with a small section in color.
Page numbers are clearly displayed at the bottom of the screen.
You can deactivate your account and sell your Nook. It’s actually easy to do.

Negatives for the Nook:

It’s connected to Barnes and Noble’s website.
Difficult to search for and download books.
You need a credit card (not debit card) to download eBooks. Even free eBooks.
Some downloads take half a day. *The last download took three weeks.
If a download doesn’t work, it can take several hours for the error message to show up.
Must register on BN.com and download software before downloading books to the Nook.
Battery lasts only two or three days.
Page turn is slow.
Support is necessary by design.
When the Nook goes online it displays advertising for Starbucks.
There is no easy way to delete the sample chapters.

After all the research, I purchased the Nook.

Disappointment started the same day.

Setup time took way too long. The first day with the Nook I spent hours setting up the account, searching books, downloading software and trying to download books. It took several hours for one book to download. The first book I downloaded had a tiny, nearly unreadable font that couldn’t be changed. Further research showed this is the case with about half of the Nook books. There are no refunds on downloads, so make sure you download a sample chapter first.

The eight day battery only lasts two or three days and takes three hours to charge fully.

Downloads stopped working then it gave me an 800 number to call. After waiting on hold for 20 minutes, the operator explained that it was a debit card, not credit card and that is why it doesn’t work. I asked why it worked at first since it has been a debit card all along, and she laughed. Yes, laughed. She said read the terms on the website for an explanation. Customer service anyone? Three weeks after the initial “debit card” transaction wouldn’t go through, the book I was trying to order suddenly downloaded and my debit card was charged. Something to be aware of: the last credit card on file at BarnesandNoble.com cannot be removed.

After three weeks with the Nook, I purchased a Kindle.

The usability of the Kindle is impressive right out of the box. It was literally five minutes after the Kindle was delivered that I was downloading and reading books. No doubt it helped that I already had an Amazon account and ordered the Kindle through it. The battery was fully charged in an hour. After a week of reading, using the light and listening to audio books, the battery had only run half down.

The only down side is Kindle’s one-click purchasing through Amazon. To change the debit or credit card on file, just go online and change the one-click default card. It would be nice to have the option to download book through a business or personal account each time.

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: comparison, eBook, eReader, Kindle, Nook, PDF

Writing web design proposals that get signed

January 10, 2011 By CDT 2 Comments

signature Writing web design proposals is time consuming and non-billable unless you land the job. I had a salesperson tell me it’s a numbers game, the more proposals you get out there, the more jobs you land. Not true. It’s a combination of weeding out the weak and solidifying the strong potential clients. You are going to spend hours or days researching and writing a solid proposal, so make sure it is worth it.

Weed out the weak

This is done by asking questions. There is no such thing as too many questions. By the time you leave the first meeting, you should be able to understand the problem at hand and have a good idea of how to solve it.

A web design questionnaire is absolutely crucial. If you don’t have one, write one. If you need help with the questions, Web ReDesign | Workflow that Works by Kelly Goto & Emily Cotler is a good place to start. The book has a sample questionnaire to base yours on.

The answers to the questions are almost as important as how the questions are answered. For example, “What is the budget?” actually means, “how much research has been done?”

“What technology would you like to see used?” means “how many bids have you gotten?”

“Do you have a sitemap or website structure?” means “how serious are you?”

Know when to walk away.

If a potential client is just in research mode, keep the meeting short and don’t waste time on a proposal. Point them in the right direction to help with their research, like your blog and eNewsletter, leave a card and add them to your mailing list.

Sometimes they are serious but not clients you want to take on. Watch for anything outside of the scope of your business plan. If you are just starting out and willing to take on most types of projects, beware of PITA (Pain In The rear) clients. If you are up to the challenge of a PITA client, make sure your bid reflects the extra headache. What is it worth for you to do the job?

Sometimes they are just trying to get a better deal from someone else. They are working with another web design firm and they just want your quote as a baseline to try to get them to lower their price. You can usually find out by asking the right questions.

Solidify the strong.

Listen, don’t sell.

Talk about the website at hand, not past websites or clients. You are there for one reason – to help them. Offer suggestions and solutions. Show them you understand the challenges they are facing and you can help them to meet their goals head on. Of course, you have to be able to do this. If you realize at any point during the meeting the goals and requirements for the website outside the scope of your business plan, gracefully bow out. Refer a more fitting web designer if you can.

Be trustworthy.

As a web designer, you will have access to passwords, email accounts and other sensitive information. Your potential customer has to trust that you will do a good job. They have to feel at ease trusting you with this, and that isn’t something that can be faked.

Be honest.

Business owners can smell BS a mile away. If they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be in business very long. If you don’t know an answer, don’t give an answer. Look into it and get back to them.

Set clear expectations.

Before you leave the meeting, prepare them to receive the proposal. Let them know what your standard contract terms are. Give an estimated price range if you can. State the up-front costs. Handle any objections immediately. No surprises allowed. The potential client should be in agreement in all but signature before you put any time into writing a proposal.

The proposal

Research everything.

Know what kind of research to do and do it. Keep notes of all apps, themes, fonts, graphics, programmers, writers and anything else you might need. If you have to get an outside quote, get it now. If you have more questions, call the client. If you will be using new applications, download them, install them, and try them out. You have to know the potential pitfalls before setting a time line and price. Assume the proposal will be accepted when it is presented and get all of the information you need to begin working right away.

The proposal.

The size of the proposal should be proportionate to the size of the job. For a small website that will have few changes, a one or two page proposal can outline the job and include the terms. If the job is a two year long project that needs to be approved by many levels of management, it will be several bound pages and might include charts and graphs. You don’t need to include every detail, just enough to establish boundaries of the job, payment schedule and a time line.

Filed Under: Tips, Web Design Tagged With: bid, design, estimate, proposal, proposal writing, Web Design, website

YouTube video editing

December 26, 2010 By CDT Leave a Comment

Have you been trying to figure out how to get your own videos on YouTube? Well, wonder no more. Here, I introduce one of the easiest ways you can finally get a fantastic idea out of your head and onto YouTube with some really fun-to-use tools.

I’m talking about PowerPoint and Camstudio or Windows Movie Maker. This is my absolute favorite way to create videos because I like how everything I need for this strategy doesn’t require any complicated hardware. To begin, I design a nice series of slides in Microsoft’s PowerPoint complete with cool-looking backgrounds, fun graphics, and relevant text. Each slide introduces a point I want to discuss and when finished, I export the entire presentation as a group of JPG images. Then I load up Windows Movie Maker. With Movie Maker, I import each exported JPG in the order I want them to appear in the video and then export that collection as a video file. When finished, I upload the final production to YouTube. Easy!

If I’m feeling creative, I might insert a few of Movie Maker’s transitions and/or background sounds onto each image before creating the video. But if I’m feeling really creative, I won’t use Windows Movie Maker at all. I’ll use Camstudio instead.

CamStudio is different from Movie Maker in that it captures what’s happening on a computer screen rather than compile a bunch of images. That means I can have some real fun in PowerPoint and add PowerPoint’s animation features to a video. My letters can dance — my images can display when I want them too instead of all at once — it’s awesome. And I can capture it in action with Camstudio. All I have to do is run my finished publication and let Camstudio record it all. At the presentation’s end, I simply save the recording to an AVI file, which YouTube readily accepts.

Try it! Camstudio is free and you don’t need Microsoft’s PowerPoint to get started (or Movie Maker for that matter). OpenOffice provides a presentation maker that’s eerily similar to Microsoft’s PowerPoint, making it the perfect *free* alternative.

Nicole Miller writes for Argos.co.uk discount codes where you can find PC World discount vouchers.[/quote]

Filed Under: Tips

What is Work For Hire?

December 7, 2010 By CDT Leave a Comment

Put simply, a work for hire is a creative work done by an employee or independent contractor as part of a project for an employer or project owner. With most creative works, the actual creator owns the right to the piece. That is a guarantee under the US Constitution. It means an author owns their written work just as a musical composer owns their compositions. Someone has no legal right to claim another’s creative work.

Employer-Employee Relations

In order to meet the Constitutional provision, corporations and other businesses have the ability to hire employees that do the actual creation work. The entitled author of the work is the corporation. But, as part of their contract with their employer, the creating employee receives no ownership of the final product. They effectively give up all creative control of anything they make as part of their employment with the company, whether or not the work was assigned by the employer. Freelancing at work? Your employer owns it.

A computer programmer doesn’t own any programs they write for their employer. An advertising copyist doesn’t have any claim to any ad copy they create for their employer. This applies to anyone in a clear employer-employee relationship.

Independent Contractors

A grey area in copyright law is when someone hires an independent contractor instead of an employee to create something. The US Copyright Law of 1976 set out three provisions in the law that the contract must meet before the company can claim ownership of the piece.

The first is that the work must come within one of nine categories in order to qualify. Those categories are a contribution to a collective work, as part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, a translation, a supplementary work, a compilation of some work, an instructional text, a test, an answer guide to a test, or an atlas.

The second provision is that the work must be a commission or specific order. If a company representative buys a completed work of art from a gallery for display in their corporate headquarters, the artist retains complete control on the copyright to that piece. But, if a company commissions a translation of an ancient text with a work for hire provision, the company has the copyright control.

The final provision is that a written agreement must be in place that says the work is actually a commission or order in the work for hire category. An oral agreement is not enough to meet this provision.

If any one of these provisions are not met, the creative work remains the copyright of the actual creator instead of the entity hiring the creation.

How Long Does Copyrights Last in Work for Hire Situations

Another question that often comes up about work for hire situations is how long does the copyright last. The standard provision for copyrights is 70 years after the death of the author or creator. However, corporations can theoretically exist forever, never “dying.” So for this situation, the copyright lasts for 120 years after its creation, or 95 years after its first publication.

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: creative, legal, work for hire

4 WordPress Tips to Optimize Performance

June 2, 2009 By CDT Leave a Comment

WordPress comes ready to use as soon as it installs. However in order to properly leverage the power of WordPress you need to customize WordPress so that it works and performs at its peak. Here are a few WordPress tips that should help you get off to a flying start.

Remove the version number

By default WordPress adds the version number to the header of your blog. The information in your header might prove to be a goldmine for a hacker who are trying to take down or take over your blog since you are using an older version of WordPress which is not as secure as the latest version. All you need to do to remove this is to add this line: <?php remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’); ?> to the functions.php file which is located in your themes folder.

Prevent snooping in your WordPress files:

With the default options people can easily browse through your WordPress folder and files using explorer view within their web browsers. In order to prevent this you just need to add the following line of code: Options All –Indexes to your .htaccess file that can be found the main worpress directory.

Filter out spammers:

Spammers love to include .html code in their comments so that they can some how attract people to their comments. Even if you aren’t targeted by spammers it’s always a good idea to reduce the load on your blog especially as a result of spam comments. The best way to disable html code in the comments box is to add the following line of code in your functions.php file: add_filter( ‘pre_comment_content’, ‘wp_specialchars’ );.

Speed up sitemap creation:

This tip is for those who use the XML sitemaps plug-in. usually its set to “rebuild sitemap if you change the content of your blog”, you need to change that to “enable manual sitemap building via GET request. The reason you should do this is because in auto mode every time you make a post its going to take a very long time for your post to process because your entire sitemap is going to be redone from the very beginning. For very large blogs it can even take up to half an hour.

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: performance, speed, Tips, WordPress

Should You Design in RGB or CMYK?

January 3, 2009 By CDT 7 Comments

The familiar color picker from Photoshop.

This is not the be-all end-all guide for color modes, just best practices from my experience designing for the printing industry.

The only thing that matters is the output.

The simple rule is: web=RGB, print=CMYK.
If you are designing for print, what will the final output be? What kind of press will this be printed on?

Offset: CMYK
Offset presses print from plates. Process printing uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black, or CMYK. It is an offset press that will print spot colors or varnish. Offset presses are for large print runs of single sheet printing like letterhead, cards or fliers.

Web press: CMYK
Newspapers and magazines are printed on a web press.

Ink jet: RGB
Desktop ink jets utilize the RGB data for printing. If you send a CMYK document, it will actually convert it to RGB so it can process it. Converting the color twice in this case will likely print unexpected color.

Digital: CMYK or RGB, not both.
Digital presses have a RIP that can process color data and make it printable. It can process RGB data and make it printable and it can process CMYK. If you have RGB and CMYK data on the same document, the RIP gets confused as to how it should handle the data and something will not look right. Pick a color mode and stick to it. Digital presses are similar to a color copier in function. They have a set number of colors, no spot inks and they print on very limited paper stocks. Formats larger than 12×18 inches are rare and costly. Digital presses are cost effective on runs up to about 500 before you are better off printing offset. If you are printing variable data, like addresses or names, this is what a digital press was made for.

Large format: RGB
Large format printers are ink jets. They usually have seven or more inks which allow a very wide color gamut. If you narrow your document down to only CMYK, you will not be using those seven inks to your best advantage.

Why use CMYK?

CMYK

You know what your color breakdowns are and you know what the end result will be. You are able to monitor your ink mixes exactly throughout the design process and there are no surprises.

If you design in RBG and convert to CMYK, no matter what conversion settings you use, your colors will shift. There is no black in RGB, so anything that is meant to be black will be washed out and probably print on all four plates. If you have small type, this will be a huge problem. Press registration will have to be dead on to match up all four plates of tiny type to make it look black and that never happens. With CMYK, you can use pure 100% black for the type and avoid any problems.

RGB has a much wider color gamut than CMYK. There are millions more colors available on screen than can be mixed using four inks. Any out of gamut colors will be estimated to something that is within the printable range. If you are using bright colors on screen, specifically greens, blues and purples, you are probably going to be disappointed. This applies whether you are converting final images in Photoshop or exporting a PDF with print settings.

The only drawback I can think of to designing in CMYK is the limited filters in Photoshop.

My monitor only shows RGB.

RGB is colored light and subtractive color. The more colors you add, the lighter it gets.

RGB

RGB is colored light, CMYK is colored ink. Any screen shows RGB because it has to. There is no ink in your monitor. However, a good calibrated monitor will show simulated CMYK. Working in CMYK mode will not display electric blues or radioactive greens. The final printed result will be much closer to what you see on screen.

Filed Under: Color Theory, Tips Tagged With: CMYK, color, featured, RGB

Organizing Photoshop Files

October 29, 2008 By CDT 8 Comments

Do your Photoshop layers look like this? Take five minutes more and organize the files before archiving or handing off to a service bureau or another designer.

Organizing files in general is important. Photoshop files can become unwieldy after adding a couple dozen layers, paths and alpha channels if you don’t maintain an organization system. Files are archived for later use or handed off to another design for some reason or another. Taking over a Photoshop file, or any file from a disorganized designer can be a nightmare, so just take a few extra seconds while you are working to tidy up the file. The sanity you save may be your own.

Do your Photoshop layers look like this? Take five minutes more and organize the files before archiving or handing off to a service bureau or another designer.

Recently, a designer sent me a Photoshop document with over 130 unnamed, unorganized, scattered shape layers. It took 45 minutes to organize the layers before I could start working.

Here are some tips to keep your files neat and organized.

Name your layers.

Yes, all of them. Give them unique, meaningful names that will be easy to recognize later.

Group related layers.

If you have twelve layers of type, put them in a layer group called “type”. Not too tough. If you have a tree, branches, apples and a drop shadow on seventeen different layers, put them in a group called “apple tree”. Simple.

Collapse expanded layers or groups.

Yes, I know Photoshop defaults to expand everything all the time. Yes, it’s a pain to click that extra time. Yes, I have requested that Adobe change this. Just take the fraction of a second necessary to collapse each expanded layer as it is created. You will gain the benefit of seeing more layers in the panel at one time making it easier to edit.

Always save the original PSD.

Seems like common sense, but you would be surprised how often the original file is unavailable when revision time comes around. Save the original layered PSD and send a flattened file to clients for approval.

Delete empty layers

As you are working, you may copy text from one layer to another leaving the first layer empty. Deleting an object in Photoshop does not make the layer containing it to go away. The shape or text may be gone, but the layer is left behind.

Work in the correct color mode.

This may not seem like an organization issue, but it is a common mistake. If you designing for print, work in CMYK. Designing for web, RGB. It really doesn’t seem like a big deal when you are printing from your desktop ink jet, but when you send your file out to a commercial printer you might find this to be a costly oversight.

Happy Photoshopping.

Filed Under: Photoshop, Tips Tagged With: featured, file, organization, Photoshop, Tips

Nook vs. Kindle

Kindle

Nook

After all the research, I purchased the Nook.

After three weeks with the Nook, I purchased a Kindle.

Writing web design proposals that get signed

Weed out the weak

Know when to walk away.

Solidify the strong.

The proposal

YouTube video editing

What is Work For Hire?

Employer-Employee Relations

Independent Contractors

How Long Does Copyrights Last in Work for Hire Situations