When I first got out of school it was still common to run around with your portfolio containing tear sheets and photographs. It was always a pain to collects these, the few copies in hand were precious and almost irreplaceable. I cannot count the times I lost my portfolio. More often than not, I wouldn't bother to replace the evidence of the work. Oh, the drama. I would end up losing gigs because I didn't have the tearsheet for this or that. 20 people lined up for a gig, the last thing an art … [Read more...]
Anyone Still Using Dreamweaver Is A Chump
May 20, 2008 By 5 Comments
Web rankings depend on a mysterious mix of incoming and outgoing links, the quality of said links, and content. To achieve better rankings, most people assume external links (links from other websites) are more important. The truth is internal pages actually offer more link value. Alt tags, page titles, keywords all work together to make a site search engine friendly. Even so, content is king. Search engines crave new content therefore they give more importance to sites with … [Read more...]
Already time for a new Mac
May 20, 2008 By
I've had the MacBook for just over two and a half months now. I've grown to really enjoy working on the little machine; so much so that I will use any excuse to spend time on it. All my web browsing, RSS feeds, e-mail, word processing, blogging, instant messaging, etc. happens on the MacBook now. If I have a meeting outside the office I snap the machine shut, place it in it's form fitting black neoprene Incase sleeve and take it with me wherever I go. It has become my trusty … [Read more...]
Startup 101: The importance of knowing your sales process
May 16, 2008 By
I had an interesting day a little while ago. I spoke with three different friends and all of the conversations ended up going into the sales process that they use for their individual companies. I found this interesting in that each had fundamentally different businesses: a high tech SaaS based product, a service provided to attorneys and a personalized consumer product business. Yet in each case none of them really had a sale process defined and that ended up becoming the topic of discussion. … [Read more...]
Mac: Keeping a white MacBook clean with Mr. Clean
May 15, 2008 By
I had a number of people tell me in the comments of this blog that I should check out Mr. Clean Magic Eraser when I complained about the palm rests of my MacBook becoming dirty. I mentioned this to my youngest daughter and over the weekend she went shopping with her mom and brought home a box of the Mr. Clean Magic Erasers for me. I didn't even ask her! (Have I told you I have wonderful kids?) There's nothing really magical about a sponge with a little soap inside of it, right? … [Read more...]
Do you use the same password everywhere?
May 14, 2008 By
My assumption is that if you are reading this blog it says you are someone that spends a fair amount of time on the web. Yeah, I know, brilliant observation Dave. If my assumption is correct then you have probably visited sites that require you to sign in so that you can contribute posts, download applications or in some cases even read their content. When you do that, do you use the same password on every site you sign up for? I really love simple things and I'll try to distill my … [Read more...]
Got a Mac? Let Alex proof your writing before you post it
May 14, 2008 By
I just wrote about using the text to speech capabilities with Alex yesterday and already I have found a use for "him" that is very cool and I want to share with you. Have you ever had to write a significant e-mail that you read through several times before sending out? How about a blog post, or even a comment that will be published on the web for all to see? You know the kind: you want to make sure you are sending the right message and that it reads well. What I started doing … [Read more...]
Mac: iStat pro Dashboard Widget
May 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment
One of the first applications I downloaded and installed on my Mac was iStat menus, a wonderful little add in to the menu bar. iSlayer also produces a little dashboard widget called iStat pro. If you like to use your dashboard and want a quick summary of the health of your Mac you should check it out. Takes seconds to download and install. It has the one thing I wish iStat menu would have: a battery health monitor. You can download it from the Apple Downloads area. … [Read more...]
Mac: Have you met Alex?
May 13, 2008 By
For all the advances in personal computing technology there is one area that seems to have advanced very little: Text to Speech. Since I have not had a personal need for accessibility features I have only watched this as a typical consumer. The first time I saw a Text to Speech feature was back in the 1980s and what's odd is that up until very recently the voices produced sounded pretty much the same. With the release of Leopard Apple also introduced us to Alex, a new … [Read more...]
The Computer, The Painter, The Image and His Brushes
May 12, 2008 By 1 Comment
When Dr. Michael Roach asked me if I might consider writing an article for DigitalAppleJuice, I was taken aback. I am a painter, and, one could say, a primitive, when it comes to the making of digital images. At least I used to be. Over the past five years, for a number of very practical reasons, I have become more adept at manipulating images on my Mac, … [Read more...]
Mac: Fixing the Command-Control-D Dictionary Lookup
May 12, 2008 By
As I posted earlier, I figured I'd try calling on Apple Support to see if I could get a resolution to my shortcut key problem for the Dictionary Lookup. I had tried numerous things to resolve the problem, finally culminating in calling Apple's support team, to no avail. Yesterday afternoon (2 days after I initially contacted Apple) I got a call from John at Apple's Austin Texas support group. Super nice guy, saw my support case and he wanted to see if he could solve it. He mentioned to … [Read more...]
