How do you get a Euro symbol on a PC?
If your PC is fairly new and running Euro-enabled fonts, the Euro symbol can be generated by holding down the Alt key while typing 0128 on the numeric keypad (usually), or by using the keyboard combination AltGr+4 in the UK and Ireland, or AltGr+e in most other countries, or by using Insert Symbol (for those fonts generated as Symbol or Pi fonts). AltGr can be accessed by holding Ctrl + Alt together. Whether this will work will depend on your operating system, the application software and the font – try it and see.
In HTML, AltGr+4 also seems to work, although “&EURO” is supposed to be the correct code. I notice that most sites write out “EURO” to be on the safe side. If you are filing copy it is best to follow the old newshound practice of spelling it out. That is, type “EUROS320”. That way, the sub can amend your copy manually and avoid confusion.
Better desk top scanning
More and more of us are doing our own scanning, but the finished results will depend very much on your technique and understanding of how a scanner works. The following tips have been compiled as a result of “getting it wrong” over the years.
1. Calibrate your monitor using the supplied Adobe Gamma or set-up software Doing this will mean that what you see on screen is roughly what you will get in print or on the net.
2. Clean the scanner bed with glass cleaner. Every single scratch or piece of dust will need to be retouched out, so clean the scanner first.
3. Don’t use cheap scanners for images being used bigger than same size. Know your scanner’s limitations. If you are going to use an image a lot bigger, say more than 120% bigger than the original, have it scanned professionally.
4. Don’t use your scanner’s automatic settings. Experiment, but start out using a Gamma setting of 1.8 for print and 2.2 for web use. A scanner will try to average tones, so a contrasty image will be flattened and a flat one boosted. It is better to try to reproduce the image as it is supposed to be by setting the gamma manually.
5. Always use Unsharp Masking (USM). “Unsharp masking” is the trade term for a standard technique that printers use to sharpen images by accentuating the differences between adjoining areas of significantly different hue or tone. You can apply this same sharpening technique to your images with the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop. Suitable starting settings are Radius: 1.5, Amount: 50-100%, Threshold: 5-7. Highly detailed images such as line art, require a Threshold setting of 3, whereas portraits look best with a setting between 5 to 9.
Improve your digital photography in five seconds!
I remember one course I ran where no matter how hard he tried a delegate couldn’t get a decent photograph out of a digital camera.
The images were misty, fuzzy, out of focus and generally washed out. It was only when I saw one of them that it clicked. The image was heavily backlit and there was a tremendously fuzzy halo around the subject. Within seconds I sorted out the problem and handed the camera back to the bemused owner. What had I done?
Easy, I had just cleaned the lens of the numerous fingerprints that had accumulated over the years - yes really. The trouble is with most digital cameras is that the lens element is extremely small, sometimes only a few millimetres across.
One single fingerprint can wreak havoc on the quality of the image that the lens can capture. Before you take any photographs just glance down and check that the lens is clean. If it isn’t then use a lens cleaning cloth and give it a quick polish.
In an emergency you can use a clean handkerchief, but these can eventually scratch the lens so a proper cleaning cloth is the way to go.
The problem with many small cameras is that they are so small it is inevitable that you end up touching the lens. It is catching the damage before you start shooting that is important.
If you have a larger SLR-type digital camera don’t think you are immune either. In fact, with these types of cameras you have an added problem - dust on the sensor.
You may be amazed to find out that the sensor that captures the image in a digital cameras might be smaller than your finger nail. In the 35mm-type SLR cameras it is a bit bigger, but in most cases it is still smaller than the equivalent 35mm film frame.
The sensor in an SLR can’t normally be seen, unless you lock the mirror up, and it should certainly never be touched.
What does happen over tiem is that small particles of dust can fall on the sensor which is not good news. Once you have a piece of dust on the sensor it will appear in every shot you take.
I advise that every now and again you should take a photograph of a piece of grey or white card.
View the image at about 200x magnification on your computer screen and you should be able to see if you have any dust.
If you have then follow the cleaning instructions that come with your camera. I have successfully removed dust from my Canon’s sensor by careful use of a can of compressed air that is made for the job.
Nikon SLRs seem to suffer more than most and the problem is so annoying that Olympus have now devised an ultrasonic cleaning system for its E series cameras that literally shakes any dust off! Make a golden rule that you never leave the camera without a lens attached and change the lens as little as possible.
You can read about my digital photography courses at:
http://www.infotechcomms.co.uk/courses.htm
How do I get my site on a search engine?
It’s fine having an internet presence, but if your site doesn’t appear on search engines no-one will ever know you exist. A few years ago the whole process of making sure you appeared in search results was easy. You created your web site, added a few Meta Tags, uploaded the files, registered it with a few engines and bingo – instant visitors.
Unfortunately, the glory days of search engine placement are long gone and it is getting harder by the day to get a good position.
If you want to be found nowadays you are going to have to be far more canny – and probably lucky too.
The first step is to make sure that your site works correctly, with no missing links, images or other nasties. Then you need to make sure that all your pages have “Title” tags. These generate the wording that appears in the blue bar at the top of Internet Explorer and also appear in the returned listings when you run a search.
A title tag like “Welcome to Mish Mash Communications” is all well and good, but it doesn’t really contain any real search terms. That is, if someone is searching for “Mish Mash Communications” you will probably be found, but a title like “Mish Mash Communications – experts in corporate communications strategy” is better and richer in keywords.
In fact, “keyword rich” copy is the secret to a good search engine placement. Make a list of 20-30 search terms that you think people might use to find your site and then make sure those terms appear towards the top of the copy on your pages. You can spread them across a number of pages, but as long as the keywords appear in the title tag and towards the top of the page you will stand a better chance of being found.
The jury is out on the importance of Meta Tags nowadays. These are invisible keywords and descriptions that have to be added to your pages. They used to be used by search engines to index your pages, but are no longer seen as relevant. Apart from, that is, the Meta Description tag - this is what Google displays in its search listings, so make sure it is set.
Once your pages are ready the fun starts. The first search engine worth registering with that is still free is Google. First, check that your site isn’t already registered by putting the full URL into Google’s search box. If it isn’t you can submit the URL at
http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Google says that you only need to add the index page as its spiders crawl the rest of the site automatically. In my experience this doesn’t always work, so it is best to add each relevant page.
Once you have submitted to Google expect a delay of up to 12 weeks before your site appears – in fact it may not appear at all as there are no guarantees.
Then nip over to
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/ukie/express/splash.html and either cough up £199 for guaranteed submission or risk the free submission route. Commercial sites are supposed to be paid for, but I have successfully had commercial web sites indexed by Yahoo using the free route. Yahoo takes a bit more time as you have to navigate to the appropriate section before you submit.
Next stop is
http://dmoz.org/ - the Open Directory. This powers Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, and hundreds of others and is still open to free submissions. Beyond this, submission is going to cost you money. For a more comprehensive guide to search engines see www.searchenginewatch.com .
What is RSS?
RSS is a new way of delivering news to the computer desktop has hit the web and it promises to turbo-charge the way we gather information.
Called RSS (Really Simple Syndication), it is a format designed for sharing web content such as news and features. An RSS service (also known as an RSS channel or feed) consists of a list of items, each of which contains a headline, description, and a link to a web page. RSS can also include links to multimedia files, such as MP3 “radio” programmes.
To use RSS, you need a special RSS news reader or “aggregator” that will allow you to collect and display RSS services. The news reader allows you to view the services you want, all together in the same place. By automatically retrieving updates it makes sure your content is always up to date.
For example, using the Awasu newsreader program on your PC you could subscribe to feeds from Reuters, the BBC, CNN, the FT and many others – including this blog! Then, instead of surfing from one site to another you just click on the service within the newsreader to get the latest headlines. The sites can be scanned in seconds rather than having to be laboriously loaded individually, saving you having to surf around.
The url for the RSS feed for this blog is:
http://infotechcomms.blogspot.com/atom.xmlIn an interview for the BBC, James Crabtree of The Work Foundation, said that there's growing belief in the technology community that e-mail is a system close to breakdown, thanks in part to spam, unread newsletters, and the sheer weight of messages.
"At the moment, not many people really know about using RSS. But if more people knew what it was, I think they would use it. It's just a really handy way of getting the information you want without having to surf around for it," he said.
There are many different newsreaders available, many for free. Most are applications that you download and install. Others are web-based services that you can sign-up for and view using your browser.
Once installed, you have to find the newsfeeds you are interested in. This can be tricky as there are literally thousands. One good source is
http://www.moreover.com/ that has industry specific feeds available. Another is
http://www.feed24.com/ that will let you search for all manner of information.
RSS is going to revolutionise the way we share corporate information too. You can issue press releases via RSS or share your corporate intranet content with the rest of the planet. Or how about providing a corporate news feed from London for your Singapore intranet?
You can even have your own MP3 radio programmes - or Podcasts – for people to download. See
http://www.infotechcomms.co.uk/audio/rss/rss.xmlAnything is possible as programmes are available to convert an RSS feed into HTML for web pages.
How can I check the readability of my writing?
Finished writing a word document? Hit F7 to spell check before saving it.
You can also set your system up to a Flesch readability test too - go to Tools>> Spelling and Grammar>> Options and ensure “Show readability statistics” is checked. The object is to get as high a Flesch score as possible with 90-100 being regarding as “Very Easy”, 80-90 “Easy”, 70-80 “Fairly Easy” and 60-70 “Standard”.
Anything between 50-60 is defined as “Fairly Difficult”. You shouldn’t really score less than this.
Attempts have also been made to equate the Flesch score with reading age, with 70 – 80 equating to about 12 Years. Don’t laugh –the average reading age for the whole of the UK is supposed to be about nine according to Bath University. Such a reading age requires a Flesch index of more than 100, while the average reading age of internet users is about 14 (Flesch 60-70).
The F7 trick works in composing email in Outlook Express too, but only as a spellcheck.
What's the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R
Q: I wanted to add a recordable DVD drive to my computer. What is the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R?
A: I know - its confusing!
As DVD recording comes of age and the prices come down, more of us will likely be adding DVD writers to our computers.
Anyone who was around twenty years ago might remember the battle between the two video tape formats: VHS (Victor Home System) and Betamax (Sony). Fast forward to 2006 and we have a similar battle of the formats with DVD.
The disks are pretty much the same, but the writing process is different. DVD+R is a bit more advanced, but the disks often cost more than the older DVD-R format.
Getting images out of MS Word documents
This one was a trick I discovered almost by accident. People are always ending me stories with photographs actually in the MS Word document. The problem is, how do you get them out?
If you try and copy and paste them you can end up with an image that only displays in 16 colours. The solution came after one of those "what if?" moments and is really simple.
If you save the Word document as an HTML file (from Word) it automatically creates a folder with all the images in it. All you have to do is then sort through them and find the one you want.
Invariably, the program saves them at the original resolution too - marvellous!
Well, here it is - the first TechNotes blog
Well, this blog has been a long time coming, but now it's here. The Technotes blog will be an extension of the monthly column I write for
Communicators magazine - the monthly member publication of the British Association of Communicators in Business.
For those who are not members of CiB (see
www.cib.uk.com) the column tries to demystify the technology used in the business of communications. This includes web technology, streaming audio and video, desk top publishing, wireless computing, internet access on the move, desk top publishing and much more.
You can read some of these features in the CiB Knowledge Bank at the above address, but what I want this blog to do is let me publicise short, snappy hints and tips as and when I think of them.
The TechNotes column won't vanish - far from it - but I hope that this blog becomes just as useful.
Cheers, Steve
