Steve Nichols' TechNotes

Taking control of your e-mail

2008-05-04T09:16:00.001Z

How did we live before we had e-mail? As a communicator it is the ideal medium for swapping copy, pictures, page proofs, PDFs and just about everything else.

But what do you do when that vital e-mail you want is on another machine, 2,000 miles away? Or what if you use multiple machines?

Web-based e-mail accounts are one answer, but I prefer to keep all my e-mail offline on my own machine.

Most of us who have been using e-mail for a few years might be familiar with so-called POP (Post Office Protocol) e-mail. It is simple to set up and means that when you connect to your mail server you download the mail to your computer and automatically delete it from the server.

You also have the option of leaving your mail on the server, but that gets messy – the server just fills up month by month with all kinds of electronic detritus.

Luckily, there is a solution to the problem and it’s called IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol.

IMAP is better alternative to POP and allows the mail on your web-based e-mail account to mirror the mail on your laptops or desktops.

When you connect to your mail server the two talk to each other – deleting mail from the server if you have deleted it from your laptop, moving it from folder to folder just like you did on your desktop and keeping a copy of every e-mail you have sent. Magic!

And it gets better than that. If you buy a new machine or have multiple computers, as soon as you connect to the net the systems will automatically synchronise themselves, downloading and moving mail as they need.

I have found this to be a real boon. I use a number of different machines, both Mac and PC, and used to struggle to move mail around so that they were all the same. Not any more.

Before I leave my office I fire up the Apple or Windows laptop I want to take and five minutes later the e-mail is synchronised.

So what is the downside? First, you need to have an IMAP-compatible e-mail account. Even if your supplier doesn’t support IMAP it is not the end of the world. Sign up for an IMAP account from another supplier – Google Mail is one – and use that to collect the mail from your other accounts. Then set up your machine to talk to Google Mail – it is quite easy.

A bonus is that you also now have access to your e-mail via any computer in the world using the Google Mail web access facility.

Another problem is that you could end up with your laptop only holding the headers for your mail – it might only download the main bulk of the message when you click on the message.

If you are away from a net connection this could be very frustrating, so be careful. You can set up Outlook Express, for example, to fully synchronise some folders and not others - make sure you set this up correctly.

IMAP also works best on a broadband connection. If you are using a mobile phone or dial-up I would leave well alone.

If you only ever use one machine stick to POP e-mail – it works fine. But if you have multiple machines and struggle to keep them all synchronised IMAP might be for you.

Thanks for the memory stick

2008-05-04T09:15:00.000Z

USB memory sticks (flash drives) are becoming a very common corporate give away. Perhaps you have a spare one tucked away in a drawer. If you have, get it out now.

They have come on leaps and bounds over the past year or two and are now available in larger sizes, including 1 and 2 Gb capacity. This makes them far more useful than the older, smaller 128Mb sticks.

But have you ever wished you could do something useful with them? Now you can. It is possible to run portable applications straight off the stick instead of installing them on a PC.

A portable application is a computer program that you can carry around with you. When your USB flash drive or other portable device is plugged in you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind. And if you haven’t got a memory stick how about using your iPod instead?

For example, if you visit a client’s office you can carry your own word processing software with you. Out and about? Find an internet café and use your memory stick to call up your own web browser or bookmarks. Need to edit some photographs while on holiday? No problem, just use your own image editing program. This makes memory sticks a very useful emergency back-up.

If you are a PC user hop over to www.portableapps.com and download a full (free) suite.

To give you a flavour of what you can run off a memory stick how about:

AbiWord Portable
This program will create, open, edit or save documents in Microsoft Word format. It will also handle Word Perfect, Open Document, RTF, HTML, Palm and other formats. AbiWord includes both grammar and spelling checkers as well as an array of other handy features.

OpenOffice Portable
OpenOffice.org Portable is a full-featured office suite that's compatible with Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, Lotus and other office applications. So now you can handle Excel files while on the move too.

GimpPortable
The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a photo retouching, image composition and image authoring program as well as an image format converter.

Nvu Portable or KompoZer
These are both HTML editing programs in case you need to edit any web pages while off site.

If you are a Mac user I wouldn’t want you to feel left out. If you go to http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/ you’ll find a similar list of downloadable portable applications written for OSX.

Many of these, including OpenOffice and AbiWord are copies of the PC versions and are very usable.

You can also download web browsers and e-mail programs like FireFox, Safari, Thunderbird and Mail for both Mac and PC.

So how far can you push a memory stick? As an exercise I installed a full Apache web server on one, along with a Mambo content management system (CMS).

With this running it was possible to add content to a “web site” in real time and develop the CMS and site design even though the computer wasn’t connected to the net.

Memory sticks have a lot of potential. For the sake of a few minutes work a memory stick with some portable apps could be a Godsend.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard spotted

2008-02-18T22:10:00.001Z

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, to give it its full name, has now been available for a couple of months, long enough for users to decide if it is a hit or a miss.

But it seems that Apple has done a good job with Leopard and, apart from a few minor niggles mainly surrounding the transparency of the menu bar, the new reflective dock and some compatibility issues, it seems like a popular upgrade. To be honest, Microsoft should take a leaf out of Apple’s OS book when it comes to new products as Windows Vista has turned out to be a major pain for the company.

Leopard has more than 300 new features and as there isn’t enough space to go into them all in this feature, I thought I would concentrate on a few that I think might be of the most use to readers.

The first “feature” is a hike in computer performance over OS X 10.4 Tiger. It definitely feels snappier thanks to the revised code. To be honest, when I bought my MacBook running OS X 10.4 I thought it was a tad sluggish compared with an equivalent XP-powered PC.

A memory upgrade made little difference and I got used to seeing the little spinning beach ball on occasions when the machine thought about what I had just asked it to do.

Installing Leopard has made a big difference and it now feels much faster.

The second feature I like is called Spaces. This allows you to create multiple virtual “monitors”, so that you can have different applications running in different windows.

When I first read about this I couldn’t quite see the point. After all, you have always had applications effectively running in their own window. But after using Spaces for a while it makes sense. I can now have Microsoft Windows running in one space, Photoshop running in another, my WP software running in a third and Firefox running in a fourth. The desktop is no longer cluttered and a quick keystroke lets me move between the different spaces at lightning speed.

If you are using a laptop or have a small monitor it really makes sense.

The next enhancement is Time Machine. A similar feature has been available on Windows for a while, but now Macs have the ability to wind back time to a point where you had files that you have subsequently deleted or when your machine worked properly. If you have just corrupted your font library, for example, you can wind the machine back to a time when it was OK.

Time Machine also allows for sophisticated back-ups to be made while you work, although they have to be written to an external USB/Firewire drive. These cost around £80-£120, depending on the hard disk size you want. You can also tweak Time Machine so that it only backs up what you want to save space.

My final favourite features are Quick Look, which enables you to instantly view the contents of any file from the finder without opening up its application, and Spotlight, which is snappier and now works as a dictionary and calculator too.

Add in built-in Boot Camp as standard (for running other operating systems like Windows without having to buy Parallels or Fusion) and Screen Sharing (which allows you to connect to and control another machine remotely or give a presentation) and the Leopard upgrade looks like good value for money at £85.

If you are buying a new machine in the next six months I would probably advise you to hang fire. But for anyone else, I think it is a worthwhile investment. And yes, it does run on PowerPC Macs like the G4 and G5 as well as newer Intel machines. My upgrade took about an hour and a half to complete - your upgrade may take longer so don’t rush it.

Internet access on the move

2007-12-09T10:56:00.001Z

It has been four years since I first wrote about accessing the internet on the move. Interest in the subject is still running high, although from conversations I have I know that a lot of people still find the subject a bit of a black art.

I thought an update might be a good idea.

If you have wi-fi capability in your laptop or PDA being out of the office no longer means being out of touch. Wi-fi (Wireless Fidelity) “hotspots” – places where you can use your laptop or PDA to connect to the internet at broadband speeds, without a hard-wired connection - are now commonplace.

When out and about you can search for a hot spot in your vicinity. Just make sure your wi-fi is switched on and then start your internet browser – it should lock-on to the strongest signal.

You then log on using a password and surf away. But the costs can vary. BT Openzone was one of the first providers and I have been using them or the past four years with few problems.

One quick tip, if you sign up for BT’s Total Broadband package they bundle in 250 minutes of BT Openzone use a month completely free. Alternatively, you can pay for your access pay by the minute, the hour, the day or take out a monthly subscription for around £25.

But BT isn’t the only provider and many hotels and airports offer alternatives – Cloud wi-fi being one of the most prevalent – see http://www.thecloud.net/.

Some cities even have free public wi-fi – I’m proud to say that Norwich was one of the first. It is sometimes flaky, but I have used it a lot. Bristol has it too.

You can search for other hotspots in the UK at http://www.hotspot-locations.com/.

In theory you can also connect to other private wi-fi networks that are not secure. That is, that haven’t been set up with a security WEP/WPA password. I would advise that you don’t. Two people in Redditch were recently cautioned for using someone’s wi-fi broadband internet connections without their permission. This is a legal minefield.

But what if you don’t have access to a wi-fi hotspot? For many years I have been using my mobile phone to connect to the net using what is known as a GPRS connection. With GPRS speeds are slower than wi-fi and you pay for the amount of data you transfer, typically around £1.50-£2.50 per Megabyte.

First, you need a phone with a Bluetooth facility to connect to the laptop. Then you need to make the phone connect to the net. The way you do this will vary from network to network. For example, on Vodafone you make the laptop dial *99#.

GPRS is fine for the odd e-mail, but pretty useless for transferring large files. You may also need to check with your operator that GPRS has been enabled. For more details see http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html

The next step up involves using a 3G phone or plug-in card, such as the T-Mobile “Web ‘n’ Walk range. The benefits are a much faster data transfer rate. Typical costs for the T-Mobile Flext 20 (which gives you the equivalent of £34 worth of phone calls per month) with web 'n' walk, which offers unlimited web surfing and e-mails, is £27.50 per month.

A Vodafone 3G card for your laptop, either Mac or PC, offers you faster speeds than GPRS, but will fall back to GPRS if the 3G network is not available. Typical costs are £25 per month including 250Mb of data, but I suggest you shop around. Orange and O2 have similar schemes.

Alternatively, you buy one of the latest 3G phones such as the Nokia N95. These have built-in browsers and e-mail, plus the ability to connect to wi-fi networks. But they are not cheap – you are looking at about £200+ for the phone on a new contract. My favourite is the SPV-700 from Orange which is a full-blown Windows PDA and phone for about £50 on a new contract. I have used my PDA to update websites and upload features from the wilds of Cornwall and Yorkshire and my laptop and wi-fi to do the same from the Norwegian lakes. Sad, I know!

I hope this update helps. I find the ability to access the internet on the move invaluable. I think you will too.

A sound investment

2007-12-09T10:55:00.001Z

Dictaphones or pocket cassette recorders can be a real boon to professional communicators. You can use them for taking audio notes, tape interviews or even record telephone calls with a suitable adaptor.

Taping interviews is no substitute for decent notes or shorthand, but can be a useful back-up.

But in the old days it meant keeping an eye on the tape to make sure it didn’t run out, you could never find the recording you wanted and well, they were sooooo last century. But not any more.

The latest recorders are now, you guessed it, digital. Instead of tape you have a memory chip. And instead of being able to record only 45 minutes you can record hours and hours worth. But the good news doesn’t stop there. The latest generation of digital recorders can be plugged into your PC and Mac and the sound files transferred across to your hard drive.

This means that you can take your precious recordings with you or back them up to CD or DVD.

As an example of what you can do I recently tested an Olympus WS-200S digital voice recorder. This has an integrated stereo microphone for high quality recording, four recording modes - SHQ and HQ mode for superior quality and SP and LP for extended recording

Its recording time is 4 hr. 20 mins in Stereo High Quality (SHQ) mode and up to 54 hr. 50 min. in LP mode. But the remarkable thing is its size, or lack of it. Measuring about the size of a small chocolate bar (94 x 40 x 15.1 mm) and weighing 54 g it really is pocketable.

Powered by a single AAA battery, that lasts for about 13 hours, I can’t think of an easier way to take notes. You can even plug an external microphone in too, which does give noticeable better quality.

You can change the speed by pressing the PLAY button while the recorder is playing back. If you press the button once it will play 25% faster if you press it again it will play 50% faster. But this isn’t like the old days. It doesn’t sound like Mickey Mouse, the person you recorded just seems to talk a lot faster.

You can also vary the microphone sensitivity – the highest position works well for lectures and presentations while the lower setting is better suited to one-on-one interviews.

But the great thing is that once you have finished recording you just pull off the end cover and plug it into your computer’s USB port. This mounts it like a memory stick and you can now drag and drop all your sound files across to your hard drive.

You don’t need any other software or cables, which is great when you are on the move.

The files are stored in Window .wma format that plays with no problems using Windows Media Player. If your machine can’t handle .wma files there are plenty of utilities that can convert them to other file formats.

I used a PC program called WinFF to convert them to wav files, although it could quite as easily convert to MP3.

But this got me thinking – in HQ stereo mode just how good are the sound files? Could this little recorder be used to produce quality recordings for podcasts?

My normal recorder for these is a Sony MiniDisk, which offers Hi-Fi/CD quality, but you then need to stream them back to the PC in real time to digitise them. You can get solid-state recorders now, such as those made by Edirol, but they start at about £300.

Tests shows that with an external microphone and the highest quality settings the sound files were in fact pretty good with only the slightest signs of compression/clipping. In other words, as long as you accept the slight decrease in audio quality the Olympus WS200S can be used to record audio interviews for podcasts.

If you want to hear for yourself listen to the podcast I recorded at the 2007 CiB Conference on the CiB website at www.cib.uk.com.

At just £75 that makes it a bargain, but even if you don’t want to stretch to podcasting it still makes an excellent little recorder.

Video killed the in-house newspaper

2007-12-09T10:54:00.000Z

If you are not using online video as part of your internal communications mix then you are probably missing out. It has become so much easier to stream video on corporate intranets and it needn’t cost the earth to produce either.

But start to look at streaming video and the myriad of different formats and jargon can bamboozle you. So what do they all mean and what should you choose? And do your end users have the right Codec?

Codec stands for coder/decoder and is the software that enables your media player to understand the various formats used for streaming video.

If you try to view a video and don’t have the required Codec the video will either not play or you will be prompted to download it. This is why it is important to run compatibility tests with your IT department before releasing your streaming video masterpiece on the world – only to find that no one can view it.

Let’s start by taking a look at the most popular formats available and their pros and cons.

Windows Media
This is probably the most common format for people using PCs. You can virtually guarantee that most PC users will have a copy of the requisite Windows Media Player installed on their machine. But unfortunately it isn’t that easy. There are various versions of Windows Media files (.WMV) and they are not all compatible.

Corporate intranets are notorious for not keeping their software up to date so the chances of your employees having the latest version are slim. If you are counting by the way the latest version is nine. WM9 gives an approximately 20 to 50 per cent improvement in quality compared with Windows Media Video 8.

QuickTime
Generally found on Apple Macintosh machines QuickTime is a good format, but the QuickTime player isn’t usually found by default on PCs. This makes it a difficult choice for corporate environments. But don’t despair, the Macintosh and OS X are an excellent environment for creating and editing videos, thanks to the bundled iMovie in the iLife suite of software. Upgrade your copy of QuickTime to QuickTime Pro (it only costs £20 to upgrade) and you can convert your QuickTime videos to many other formats including MP 4 and Windows Media.

MP4/MPEG- 4
You may be familiar with the ubiquitous MP3, as used for compressed music files, but MP4 or MPEG 4 is fast becoming one of the video standards that you can’t afford to ignore. Technically, MP4 is a “container”. That is, it is a standard format that can contain videos that have been encoded in a number of different ways using different Codecs such as H.264, XviD, Div X and others.

I like MP4 and not without good reason. The quality is superb and the file sizes are quite small. H.264 offers fantastic quality with none of the awful squiggly artefacts you used to get with low bit-rate Windows Media files.

Now this is where it gets confusing. H.264 is a video format, but it can be contained within an MP4 file. QuickTime also uses the H.264 standard, so when you talk about wanting your videos in the H.264 standard you also have to say what format you want it in – Quicktime, MP4 or Flash. Which leads me to….

Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash has come a long way since it was first introduced by Macromedia. It certainly offers a great way to view video as you can build the Flash player right into the web page, complete with fast forward, rewind and stop buttons. You can also include a volume control.

But once again it can get sticky. The latest version of Flash is version 9 and if you encode your videos to the Flash 9 standard people using Flash 8 or earlier won’t be able to view them properly. This means it is important to find out what version of the Flash plug-in people actually have.

Flash is rather like MP4 in that it is a “container” – you can embed videos encoded to the H.264, MPEG 4 or Windows media or other formats.

Flash is probably the most end-user friendly of all the formats and is the one you see most often on the net. You can always tell if a video is Flash-based – when it is playing just right-click over the image and it will tell you if it is a Flash file.

Conclusion
There are other video formats out there, including Real Media as beloved by the BBC, but for corporate use I think Windows Media and Flash are the way to go. As always, talk to your corporate techies before deciding on anything.

If the Facebook fits

2007-12-09T10:53:00.000Z

There is a new social networking phenomenon taking the internet by storm. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you soon will. It’s called Facebook and you have to see it in action for yourself to see what all the fuss is about.

Facebook (www.facebook.co.uk) was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 and was initially restricted to students of Harvard College in the USA. It was subsequently expanded to other Boston area schools, but since September 2006 it has been available to anyone.

As of July 2007, the website had 34 million active members worldwide with networks set up for geographical regions, interests and much more.

But what exactly is Facebook and how does it work?

Once you have registered you have your own page, listing as much or as little about you as possible.

Now the fun starts. You can then search for friends and acquaintances, join special interest groups, post photographs and generally have fun. You may have read last month that CG Business Communications was the first CiB member company to have its own corporate cartoon character on Facebook. Called “Chandler Gooding”, he lists his interests as: “Coming up with great ideas, bike riding, watching Star Wars, social networking and computing the molecular mass of various minerals and metal oxides.”

Nick Andrews of CG says: “Internal communicators have traditionally been seen as controlling the information that employees receive, but the advent of social networking sites has changed things - and we have to recognise and embrace the concept.

“Harnessed correctly, social networking media can mark a sea change in business communication. We can learn from sites like Facebook in terms of the way we share best practice and encourage thought leadership.

“On a different level, CG recognises the marketing potential of Facebook, and also, its actually fun to communicate!”

A quick search around Facebook revealed a whole lot more CiB members use the system too, including Paul Brasington, Alan Peaford, Geoff Thomas and Amelia Clark.

Each of them lists their interests and who their “friends” are. And this is where the real point of social networking starts to come into play.

Within five minutes of playing with Facebook I had rediscovered people I had lost contact with years ago. They were listed as “friends” of people I know and a few quick clicks and there they were, with all their contact details on the screen.

This may sound trivial, but Facebook will let you find people that you hadn’t even realised you had missed!

So what else can it do? You can post videos and photographs, have virtual foodfights, play poker, nominate bumper stickers for people, dare people to do things and generally play silly devils all day long.

According to some users they are now using Facebook to e-mail their contacts rather than use conventional e-mail software. One user even reports that his company’s competitors are using the system to try and poach staff – it’s a brave new world out there.

And it gets worse. According to the BBC, workers who spend time on such sites could be costing firms over £130m a day. According to employment law firm Peninsula, 233 million hours are lost every month as a result of employees "wasting time" on social networking.

The study - based on a survey of 3,500 UK companies - concluded that businesses need to take firm action on the use of social networks at work. One, Kent County Council (KCC), has banned its employees from using the site.

Paul Brasington thinks: “I can see that in its original incarnation as a way for students to mess around in an online gang it could be fun, posting pictures and comments. But that has limited appeal at our age I think.

“Having said all that, thinking about it in the light of CiB, I see you can create administrator-controlled groups and I think that would be a much more potent way of operating because people could share pictures, and functionality like the Facebook “Walls” gives more flexibility than posting emails.”

So is Facebook and social networking a communications boon or a recipe for lost productivity? The answer is I don’t really know – and neither will you until you try it.

An alternative look at alt tags

2007-07-18T12:20:00.001Z

Alt tags are perhaps one of the simplest elements of a web page to understand – and perhaps one of the most misused as well.

In simple terms, an alt tag is used with any image on a web page as “alternative text”. They were originally set up for people who switched off their “display images” facility in their browser to download the page more quickly. The alt tag meant that you could see what you were missing.

But things have moved on. With the advent of broadband and fast corporate networks nobody switches off their images nowadays. But that doesn't mean that alt tags are not important - modern browsers have made sure of that.

If you don't believe me call up any web page – news.bbc.co.uk is a good example - and move your mouse over an image. You'll see that a small pop-up appears with what looks like a caption. This is the alt tag.

Now, I know what you are thinking – great; we don't need to caption our images any more. We just need to put the caption in the alt tag.

Well, from a usability point of view that would be a disaster. The problem is that you have to mouse over the image to read the alt tag. If you don't you will never know it is there. So I suggest you keep the captions too.

I can hear someone else now suggesting that you could use the alt tag to give more information about the photograph. Not a bad idea – give a basic caption and then put more information, perhaps just putting the copyright details in the alt tag.

While that sounds like a good idea you probably just fell foul of the Disability Discrimination Act, which is where alt tags come into their own. Imagine you are sight-impaired and can't see the image. A screen reading program will “read” the page for you and a speech synthesiser will “speak” to tell you what it says. When it comes to the images all it can do is read the alt tag.

A CiB awards judge will probably not be impressed by an online publication that has no alt tags. It will lose you marks - you have been warned!

So, as a first step, having your caption embedded in the alt tag is very important. This can be accomplished in a number of ways. If you use a content management system (CMS) that asks you to input a caption it can be programmed to copy the text into the alt tag – this is what I do with the CiB website. It is quick, easy and seamless, but not really optimum, as I will show later.

If you have a CMS that converts MS Word documents to HTML you can usually “double click” on the image in Word, go to “web” and add the alt tag.

If you are doing it all by hand then most HTML editing programs have the ability to add alt tags. Beware though as some versions of MS FrontPage set the alt tag as the image filename by default– that's as good as useless!

There is no need to preface the alt tag with "Image:" as the reader will already know that it is an image.

But if you have got this far, can tick all the boxes mentioned above and are feeling smug I'm afraid I'm about to shake you up.

The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) says: "All images need alt text that is clear and conveys the equivalent information as the image."

That is, if you had to describe your image to a sight-impaired person does the caption actually do the job? I would argue that in many cases it doesn't.

Sometimes, the caption we use supports the image, but does not describe it. In this case our alt tag should be different to the caption. For example, on the BBC News website was an image with the caption "Expectations have been building ahead of the talks" but the alt tag is "Japanese chief negotiator Kenichiro Sasae, Beijing 8/2/07".

If the image is contextual we must fully describe the context. For example "Man reading an insurance policy and looking confused" is better than "Man reading insurance policy".

If the caption describes the image properly, including the names of everyone in the image, you could argue that there is no need to name them in the alt tag. However, from an accessibility point of view I believe that it is better to duplicate the information, as the caption is actually divorced from the image. We only know it is a caption as we can see that it is physically underneath the image - a screen reader may not be so accommodating!

In a nutshell, your alt tag should always describe what you physically see as a bare minimum. If in doubt, more rather than less information is better.

Images of text should have alt text that is the same as the text on the image. If it is a logo with a strapline line then "Motorola logo – Hello Moto" is better than just "Motorola logo".

If you have a system that will only let you input the caption as the alt tag then there is little you can do about it. But if you do have the ability to put a more descriptive alt tag you will be helping sight-impaired visitors a lot.

For more information see www.rnib.org

Handling MS Word 2007 files

2007-07-18T12:18:00.000Z

As the French Resistance lady used to say in “Allo Allo”: “Leesen very carefully, I vill say zis only vonce.”

If you have to handle copy submitted by other people the information in this feature could save you a lot of grief. And if you don't think it applies to you, just wait!

This month's column looks at the recent changes to Microsoft Word; in particular to the format now used to save documents. From now on Word documents saved in Word 2007 and later have a “docx” extension. If you haven't yet had to deal with one of these you soon will as Word 2007 starts to find itself on desktop machines around the world.

So why is this a problem? Simple - earlier versions of MS Word can't open them!

Docx is a new format that saves your word-processed material in what is known as an XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) format. As Microsoft says: “This enables improved integration with external data sources and systems.”

This is all well and good, but for the time being Docx could prove to be a major headache for anyone receiving Word documents for editing.

If you receive such a file the .Docx extension is the first giveaway. The second is that clicking on it will result in your machine failing to find a program that can open it. At this stage you have a number of choices.

The first is to buy a copy of Word 2007 or Office 2007, although I would hold fire at the moment – there are cheaper alternatives.

The second is to go back to the originating author and get them to save the file in an earlier “.doc” format that you can handle. As a short-term solution this isn't a bad idea, but this pre-supposes that the original author can a) be found and b) be bothered.

The third solution involves getting your hands dirty, and if you can't handle this find someone to help you who can.

If you are using a Windows PC and have an earlier version of Word visit the Microsoft website at www.microsoft.com and search for the “ Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack”.

This is a hefty 26Mb download, but should allow you to open Microsoft Office Word 2007 .docx or .docm files with Microsoft Office Word 2003, Word 2002, or Word 2000.

As Microsoft says: “By using the Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system, you can open, edit some items, and save Office Word 2007 documents in previous versions of Word.” Take note of the word “some”. My own tests showed that my copy of Word 2000 would indeed now open docx Word documents, but it lost all the formatting, tables and designated fonts. Not a huge problem if you are only dealing with raw text, but do beware.

If you are a Mac user you could also buy a copy of Word 2007, or you could be a bit canny. I have it on good authority that the next versions of the free NeoOffice and OpenOffice packages for both Mac and PC will support docx too.

After a bit of playing around I discovered that docx is actually a zip archive – remember those? If you change the file extension from docx to .zip you can now “unzip” the file into its component parts.

You'll find that there are now a whole host of separate files that go to make up the original docx document. Navigate to the unzipped “word” folder and you will find a document called “document.xml”.

If you use Safari to open this file you will be presented with the original text. You can now copy and paste this into your older copy of Word. Unfortunately, you will have lost all the carriage returns, but hey, it’s free!

Technically, you can open this XML file in a PC browser too, but chances are that you will see all the tags that make up the file too – Safari strips these out for you.

Alternatively, search on Google for “Docx Convertor” and you will find a Mac Widget that you can install. This is a free drag-and-drop utility that is linked to a website at http://docx-converter.com. It didn't work for me, but could be worth a try.

I am sure that there will be other solutions popping up over the coming months, but these should get you going. As I said at the beginning, sooner or later this will become a problem, so file this feature away carefully – “eet will be published only vonce”.

The Apple Macintosh MacBook

2006-11-29T09:31:00.000Z

It seems funny to think that my first Apple Macintosh laptop (a PowerBook 100 if you are interested) had no CD drive, no wireless connectivity, no Bluetooth, no software, no colour screen and yet cost £300 more than the new base model MacBook on review here. And that was 15 years ago.

Wow how things have moved on. But the new MacBook has a lot in common with that original machine. It’s small, very light and very, very usable. In fact, it makes you wonder why anyone would want a desktop machine.

The all-white polycarbonate MacBook is only 12.78 inches (32.5 cm) wide by 8.92 inches (22.7 cm) deep, and is paperback thin at only 1.08 inches (2.75 cm). Weighing in at 5.2 pounds (2.36 kg) it really is a carry anywhere machine. Yes, I know that all laptops are meant to be, but my other Toshiba PC laptop feels positively lardy in comparison.

Don’t underestimate the benefits of a lightweight laptop. By the time you add a case, mouse, power adaptor, assorted CDs, diary and the other detritus we need for work a heavy laptop soon becomes a pain in the neck, and back, and shoulder.

But lightweight doesn’t mean lacking in functionality. Open up the magnetic latch on the lid and the MacBook shows you its 13.3-inch (diagonal) glossy widescreen TFT display. This supports a native resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels and millions of colours, giving you a widescreen cinema effect in a handy package.

If you want to use the Mac as a desktop you can also plug in an external keyboard, mouse and monitor, although you will need a Mini DVI to VGA adaptor (£15). Don’t let the London Apple Store palm you off with the wrong one like they did me - grrr!

Here is another revelation. Plug in a PC mouse and you instantly get right-hand button pop-ups and scrolling windows, just like a PC – nice one Apple.

A PC keyboard was also plugged in, recognised instantly and worked well – although you have to do some head scratching to find out how you access the Apple key. It is the Window's key by the way. The MacBook even has a tiny built-in iSight camera for video conferencing.

The Macbook’s Wi-Fi turned out to be very effective, allowing me to connect and download data from networks that my PC could barely detect. Back in my office and it refused to connect to my Belkin wireless router. Switch the encryption off and it was fine, put it back on and no go. After a lot of surfing to find a solution it seems that this is a known problem. All you have to do is add a “$” sign to the beginning of the WEP code – easy when you know how. From then on it worked fine.

The MacBook’s Bluetooth functionality was also very good, allowing me to set up a GPRS connection via my Nokia mobile phone in about two minutes. I don’t think a PC would have been that easy.

Battery life was excellent – the battery gauge suggested that you could get up to 4 hours on a full charge. I very much doubt that, but 2-3 should easily be possible.

Other excellent features include a Magsafe magnetic power supply plug. This pulls way if you accidentally yank the cable, so saving your laptop from instant death as it hits the floor. I have never actually found anyone who has destroyed his or her laptop in this way, but it is the thought that counts.

The keyboard, while looking like it has migrated from a child’s toy, is actually surprisingly good, even if the keys look like they belong on an office calculator.

There seems little point in singing the praises of Mac OSX and all its toys, other than to say that you get iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, iWeb and the others as standard. What was annoying was that the updater program advised me to download the latest versions as soon as I hooked up to the net – all 400Mb of them. Still, Windows XP is little better.

As for other programs that is entirely up to you, although the MacBook will happily run all Intel-native software. You can also run MS Windows using Bootcamp or Parallels although I haven’t felt the need so far.

A free 120Mb download of NeoOffice gave me all I needed to open a PC version of most of the documents I have, including those produced in MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint - this feature was written in NeoOffice and saved as MS Word.

In all then, if you are already a Mac fan you will love the MacBook. Even if you are a PC user there is a lot to be said for a machine that is this cute. I won’t be throwing my PC away yet, but I think this one could soon be accompanying me on any trip that involves lugging a computer around for any length of time.

The base model with a 1.83MHz Intel Core Duo processor and 512Mb of Ram will set you back £749. This gets you a CD rewriter/DVD player combo drive. Increase your budget and you can get a faster processor, DVD rewriter and more memory.

See www.apple.com/uk for more details.

What the heck is Web 2.0?

2006-11-29T09:29:00.000Z

If you haven’t yet come across the buzz phrase “Web 2.0” you soon will. It’s on the lips of communications types up and down the country. But what on earth is it and why should you be bothered?

Web 2.0 sounds a bit like a computer program – the second generation if you like, and more advanced than Web 1.0. In fact, that’s pretty much what it is.

The phrase was first used by O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International for a conference they hosted. Dale Dougherty mentioned it during a brainstorming session, suggesting that the web was in a renaissance, with changing rules and evolving business models.

The dot.com crash of 2001 made a lot of people feel that the web was an over-hyped phenomenon that had no real place in our lives. Others looked at which web companies were succeeding and tried to work out why.

The term Web 2.0 as we use it now refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online.

Another definition of Web 2.0 is that it provides an "architecture of participation" or “social networking”.

Also, if Web1.0 was comprised of flat pages that just offered up information, Web 2.0 also gives users an experience closer to desktop applications. They often allow for mass publishing and collaboration and the concept includes blogs, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and wikis.

So Web 2.0 really describes the best of the web as we see it now. It isn’t written in stone and isn’t a set of rigid guidelines. Still confused? What we can say is that the following are probably all examples of Web 2.0:

· Wikipedia – if you haven’t come across Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/) yet then you are missing out. It is an online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This means that it is far reaching and can be viewed as the collective knowledge of all internet users. Ok, there may be something that is incorrect, but someone else will come along and correct it – at least that’s the theory.
· Amazon – not only can you buy goods off Amazon, but you can also rate them too – letting other people know what you think of them. Ebay is similar in that you can leave feedback on the person selling the goods.
· Digg.com – Everything on this site is submitted by the digg user community. After you submit content, other digg users read your submission and digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see.
· Google Adsense – this serves up advertisements that are targeted at your interests depending upon what you are searching for. The premise being that the targeted ads are more likely to make you want to click them.

The common thread of all the above is user interaction – if you are to bring these concepts to your own intranet or internet then your readers must be able to respond to your news stories as well as read them. Scary stuff for the average corporate communicator.

A simple solution is a “Tell us what you think” button at the bottom of every story, although true Web 2.0 would have an automatic response box and publish the comments in real time.

Another aspect of Web 2.0 is the use of online applications, such as spreadsheets, word processing, to-do lists, reminder services, and personal start pages.

A good example of this is Think Free at www.thinkfree.com. Now you can run your own version of MS Office wherever you are in the world and all online. Think Free offers Microsoft Office-compatible word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software that operates online, right in the browser. It also allows you to upload, edit, save, and download documents in their native Office formats.

This would have been unheard of in the days before broadband. In fact, the first online version of Think Free was released in 2000, but didn’t catch on due to the slow download times.

So if this is Web 2.0, what will Web 3.0 look like? The answer is that it is likely to know who you are, wherever you are, serving up just the content you want and collaborating with other systems at all times. Imagine a web that knows it is time for you to visit the dentist, can check your online calendar and book an appointment without you doing anything. Oh, and you could be served up content on how to look after your teeth better too.

Find out more at www.infotechcoms.co.uk

Being canny about spam

2006-07-17T18:25:00.000Z

Spam, or unwanted e-mail, has become a real pain in the backside. Run a mail account without some form of spam filter and you could end up with 30-40 e-mails a day trying to sell you the latest alternative to Viagra, a cheap mortgage or, ahem, help your body grow in stature – if you know what I mean!

According to the BBC, UK spammers account for less than 2% of all junk e-mails. The vast majority comes from the US. Industry expert Spamhaus estimates that by the summer of 2006 spam will account for 95% of all e-mails sent.

But just as spam has become a pain to receive it is also wreaking havoc on legitimate e-mailers who are trying to tell the world about their wares.

If you involved in sending any multiply-addressed e-mails, ezines or other electronic newsletters to the outside world it is getting harder and harder to get your message through.

But there are a number of ways that you can help yourself.

Use a dedicated mass mailing company
If you are involved in sending out ezines or electronic newsletters the first step is to make sure that you are using a dedicated mass mailing service. Pasting in 300 addresses into Outlook Express and hitting the send button could result in your mail going nowhere.

The reason is that mail servers will detect the fact you are sending out 300 e-mails at once, deduce that this is spam and can it.

A dedicated service, like www.mymailout.com (which we use for the CiB ezine) sends its e-mails out in small batches and is also registered with many mail servers as a legitimate mass mailer. That way, your mail is more likely to get through.

Avoid key word “triggers”
If there is one thing guaranteed to stop your mail getting through it’s using words like “special offer”, “free”, “once in a lifetime opportunity” and the like. Load your ezine or mail with marketese and it will hit the floor. Even the most innocuous e-mails can be stopped, as Scunthorpe City Council discovered - think about it! I have even seen a corporate “profanity filter” reject an e-mail that I was sending, even though there was apparently nothing that should have triggered it. Even the phrase “lap top” has been known to cause mail to go in the spam can – even if you don’t dance with it.

Use a spam checker
Although not infallible, you can use either an online or PC-based spam tester to check your content before you send it out. This will check for the above trigger words. Take a look at http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/ or http://www.lyris.com/resources/contentchecker/index.html

Include the name of your ezine in the subject line
Even if your mail does get through the spam filter the recipient could delete it on sight. Make it very obvious what it is by including the title in the subject line and the end user is less likely to hit the delete button.

Choose your timing
Think about it. If you come in on a Monday morning and find you have received 100 e-mails over the weekend what are you going to do? Delete the non-essential ones. I prefer to do my mass mailings on a Wednesday, as people are less likely to be taking a day off or have a mountainous in box. I also mail out about 10.30 or 2.30 – away from the “first thing” peak or just after lunch when people might be more accepting of mail.

Check to see if your mail includes other e-mail or web addresses that belong to known spammers
This can trip you up – go to http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and use the spam database look-up tool to see if any of the domains contained in your e-mail are listed as potential or known spammers.

Keep the bulk of content on a web site, not in the e-mail
Think about it. Your e-mail is less likely to trigger a spam filter if it only has a few, well-chosen lines. Use your email to provide a short summary of what you wish to say and put the bulk on a website that you then hyperlink to.

While these rules are not infallible they will go some way to help stop your ezines and newsletters hitting the mesh before they reach the intended recipient. You can also read more about spam at http://www.spamhaus.org/.

The GIMP - an alternative to Photoshop?

2006-04-28T14:05:00.000Z

Until the launch of Apple’s Aperture software Photoshop didn’t really have any serious competitors.

Photoshop Elements at £60.00 (Mac and PC) is great if you don’t want to prepare images for print – it can’t handle RGB to CMYK conversions There is also Paint Shop Pro (£50 PC only), but it’s amateur persona means you’re unlikely to find it in a professional designer’s office, although corporates have been known to install it

With Adobe Photoshop CS2 costing more than £400 (Mac or PC) and Aperture at nearly £300 (Mac only) a free image editing like The GIMP sounds too good to be true.

The Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free download from www.gimp.org. It is available in Window, Mac OSX and Linux versions, although the Mac variant isn’t too straightforward as it requires Apple's X11.app. If this is all sounding too complex go and buy Photoshop Elements – you won’t be disappointed.

If you using Windows you will also have to download and install the (free) GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment. This is a one-click install and the installation process for The GIMP is then quite straightforward.

Once you run the program the interface may look a little strange if you have been brought up on Adobe products. But it is quite straightforward and I soon had a 55mb TIFF file open on the PC desktop.

The GIMP uses multiple Windows – one to hold the image, another to hold the tools and a third for layers, brushes, channels and paths. This can be confusing as it possible to “lose” windows behind the main image. This third window, and its uses, gives you some idea of the capabilities of the program. It is up there with Photoshop and Aperture.

Without reading any instructions I was quickly able to pull up a Levels Palette (Tools>> Colour Tools) and adjust the tonal range of the image – a typical task if you use a digital camera.

A Saturation boost was equally easy (Colour Tools >> Hue – Saturation). Cloning to get rid of marks was also straightforward, as was “Undo-ing” my ham-fisted mistakes.

Previews to show what the effect will be for a particular action are not quite updated in real-time, although the large image size didn’t help. It certainly isn’t too slow.

The program comes full of what it calls Script-Fu menu items. These turned out to be scripting extensions and at this point I came unstuck. Applying a Spyrogimp effect (whatever that is) caused the whole thing to lock up and the need to restart the program (Mac users can start laughing now). This is actually a fairly rare occurrence on a PC nowadays.

Once back up and running I reduced the image to 300 pixels width, applied some unsharp masking and bingo – a ready to use JPEG file for web was prepared in less than a minute. The JPEG save button gives you the option of adjusting the quality to reduce the file size, just like Photoshop or Image Ready. Incidentally, The GIMP can also save in a wide range of other file formats.

But what about RGB >>> CMYK conversions? Well, The GIMP falls down as it can’t handle them out of the box. But luckily, others have stepped in to help out, although the plug-in I downloaded from http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk didn’t work and crashed.

At this point I have to say that if the world of ICC device profiles, colour management and monitor calibration is blank canvas to you, perhaps it is better to leave the final RGB >> CMYK conversion to the printer. That way, if there is a cock-up it is down to them.

In summary then, for the grand sum of absolutely nothing, the GIMP turns out to a be a pretty useful image editing tool that can quite easily tweak your digital images for intranet or internet sites. It also allows you to edit full-blown 300dpi images, but the jury is out on saving press-ready CMYK TIFF files. As a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop Elements and for home use it has a lot to commend it. Try it - you’ve nothing to lose.

A free alternative to MS Office

2006-04-05T16:16:00.000Z

Owning a new PC or Macintosh is only half the story.

You also need software - and lots of it! If you were to buy Microsoft Word (£199), Quark Xpress, (£899) Adobe Photoshop (£549) and Macromedia's Dreamweaver (£399) together you could easily spend more than the cost of the hardware.

But there are alternatives to commercial software packages and some are even free.

Such as NeoOffice (http://www.planamesa.com), which is described as a fully-featured set of office applications, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs, for Mac OS X. NeoOffice is the Mac version of OpenOffice, a PC program I reviewed a few years ago. Available as a 124Mb download, you had better allow half an hour or so to install it, even with broadband.

NeoOffice takes a good 30 seconds to boot up, but is impressive from the start with the menu structure very similar to Word.

Spell checking is done in real time and it has a UK English dictionary so it knows the difference between color and colour. I couldn't find a word count tool, but the help option soon showed me that File>>Properties>>Statistics was the place to go, although you can only word count a whole document and not sections. The program also has a think ahead feature that tries to guess what you are trying to type. Just like predictive text on mobile phones, I couldn't get used to it and switched it off.

If you are beginning to think that I liked NeoOffice you are right. In the two hours or so that I played with it I was impressed. It feels like a viable alternative to MS Office and it even opened up both Excel and Powerpoint files created on a PC, the latter only needing a little tweak to the fonts to make sure they fitted the screen perfectly. It will also save files in MS Word .doc format, so clients need never know you are a cheapskate.

Measuring your readability

2006-03-09T18:20:00.000Z

How readable is your work? No, it isn’t a trick question. Readability is fast becoming a vital part of written communications and one that you may be tested on when pitching for work.

In the USA, many organisations are required to ensure that documents aimed at the public are readable. But how can this be measured?

Readers may recall the Fog index – where Fog stood for “Frequency of Gobbledygook”. This was devised by the American Robert Gunning, and indicates the effort it takes to read and make sense of any written text.

The Fog Index (FI) is calculated by taking the total number of words and dividing it by the total number of sentences. To this you then add the number of “hard words” divided by the total number of words, divided by 0.4. Hard words are those composed of three syllables or more.

This is where the FI is tricky as you ignore words with three or more syllables if they are proper nouns, compounds like thirty-two or words in which the third syllable is the sound caused by '-es', '-ing' or ' -ed'.

If you still reading this far you have probably noticed the major flaw with the Fog Index – it’s too complicated.

Enter the Flesch Reading Ease Index, which is fast becoming a standard for readability. This is defined as being equal to 206.8 - (s + 0.85w), where s equals the average number of words per sentence and w equals the number of syllables per 100 words.

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 great thing about the Flesch Index is that MS Word can work it out for you. Go to Tools>> Spelling and Grammar>> Options and ensure “Show readability statistics” is checked.

Then, when you do a complete spelling and grammar check the Flesch reading will be displayed. Oh, and this feature scored 60.7 if you are counting.

You can get too hung up on Flesch Indices. But if you are writing for the general public it is a good guide as to how effective your prose really is.

PC running slow or playing up?

2006-03-09T18:12:00.000Z

Do you a Windows PC? Is it running slow or playing up? Thought so.

The trouble is that PCs work fine when they are new, but get clogged up with age. It isn't so much that the hard drive fills, but that the registry gets full of crud, odd entries, and the system directory bloats with unwanted and old files from programs you deleted years ago.

I even had one PC that refused to run Internet Explorer, but otherwise seemed fine.

I've tried all sorts of solutions but the one that works is called Tune-Up Utilities. This has consistently fixed all sorts of problems on my PCs, often in minutes.

Even my relatively new Toshiba lap top running XP had more than 544 errors that needed correcting.

You can find out more at http://www.tune-up.com/

Steve

Printing from Quark Xpress

2006-02-01T19:42:00.000Z

If you intend to print pages from Quark Xpress you cannot guarantee that any old inkjet printer will do the job well. My results with HP printers have been the best so far, but over the years I have seen some pretty strange results from Epson, Apple and Canon printers.

There can still be problems printing EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) images. One test image (that didn’t have a preview) refused to print at all, and an EPS logo looked like it was going to print perfectly – but then lost everything that would have been in blue!

There are two ways around most of these problems. The first is to buy a dedicated PostScript RIP (raster image processor) program that will send better information to the printer. There are a number available, but you probably don’t need one unless you are looking to produce pre-press standard proofs. The second solution is to create a PDF document using Adobe Acrobat and try printing from that – this invariably works better if the document contains EPS images.

For years I always created a PDF when working with Xpress on Mac OS9 and these always printed perfectly.

Back-up or be b*ggered!

2006-02-01T19:38:00.000Z

I once booted up my PC laptop and was confronted with the message “S32UTILL expected 28.0.0.181 not found”. The screen then went fetching shade of blue (a bit like the air) and Windows refused to load.

A new piece of software installed the day before had corrupted the Windows files. It was like trying to drive a car without an engine.

It is events like this that bring computer users out in a cold sweat. Four hours of fiddling, rebooting, trying to use Norton SystemWorks and generally cursing the machine brought me to the conclusion that I was generally stuffed.

Now, before I go on, can you honestly put your hand on your heart and swear that you have back-ups of every single piece of data, every application, upgrade, email address and email message on your computer? No, neither did I!

A quick restore from the supplied CDROM would have deleted all my data, but luckily the laptop came with the Windows installation software on its hard disk. Yours might too – look in “C:\windows\options\cabs” and see. Booting into DOS mode and three hours later it was back to normal, but I wasn’t.

So what can you do to protect yourself when the above happens to you? And note it is “when” and not “if”. Firstly, make sure you have up-to-date back-ups of all your data. Secondly, make sure you can lay your hands on the install disks for every piece of applications software you use, including updater disks. If you run XP it might be worth trying System Restore if you get a problem, but if the hard drive fails, that's it.

Lastly, make sure you have an up-to-date virus checker installed and use it.

How do you get a Euro symbol on a PC?

2006-01-16T19:22:00.000Z

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

2006-01-16T19:19:00.000Z

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!

2006-01-13T14:50:00.000Z

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?

2006-01-13T14:26:00.000Z

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?

2006-01-13T14:20:00.000Z

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.xml

In 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.xml

Anything 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?

2006-01-13T14:15:00.000Z

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

2006-01-13T14:13:00.000Z

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.