laura j. rinaldi

I should have waited to upgrade my itouch

I should have waited to upgrade. I was online Friday night and saw that apps were being offered in iTunes. I didn't eve. Think about the fact that the new iPhone had also launced that day. All I could think about were those apps which I felt had taken forever to come out. So I started to pick ones that would be useful, such as type pad, then tried to load them into my itouch, but found I could not. Not without the 2.0 upgrade. I bought the upgrade, followed the instructions...and found I had a nonfintioning itouch, a $300 brick. I tried for half an hour to get it to come back, but nothing worked. I did google searches for my problem, but it was too new. So,that was it for the night. The next morning I tried again,but the only hope that mine was not an islated case was a brief article in the paper that said apple had been oberwheled with people upgrading and actbating thier phones. I called the local apple store and the person who answered basically said the same thing. He said to give apple a chance and the would fix it. Sunday morning I checked again. Nothing new. My partner said I'm sure apple is working on it, give them a chance. Why did you upgrade on the first day anyway. Finally, Sunday night I tried one last time and my brick became an itouch again. Was it worth it? I'm not sure yet. I will fool a bit more with the apps and see. So far I like the web version of typepad vs. the app but that is all I have tested. I started to write this with the app, but swiched to the web version instead So, remember , never upgrade on the day the os comes out.

Working Moms

I don't normally talk about my clients here, much less promote them by linking to them, but this is a little different, and I'm really going to write about what I noticed more than their site itself.

First, although I have a daughter, and I have a job, I have never thought of myself as a "working mom". I guess I just think of myself as someone who works, and who also has a kid. It isn't my identity. Heck, when I went back to work, after having my daughter, I was asked how the baby was and I asked who they were talking about. Now, granted, I had been on sleep deprivation since she was born, but that is another story.

So, I was surprised, when working with Laura Lowell on her redesign of her 42 Rules site, at how many places she was going to promote the newest title "42 Rules for Working Moms"  She kept telling me, while I was working on the site design, that this had to be up by a certain time, because of all the web sites and promotions she was doing. So far, she has had me put up links to Mommy Track'd and to Cool Mom Picks, and just the other day, she was putting up an ad on White Trash Mom.

Who knew? Who knew so many women were blogging about being working moms, and that other women, and I suppose men, were reading these blogs and commenting on them. What an amazing sub-genre, a sub-genre that I haven't looked at, because I never felt part of. The advice is good, however, and quite interesting to view the perspective of these women.

There are all these tight little communites out there. If, oh, if, we could all join together in one big community and do something big.

What do to with an iTouch

So, now you have an iTouch, now what?

Well, I know what I got it for. I got it so I could have a mobile device that wasn't a phone. Which is why it was invented, for those who have a cell phone, but wanted all the other cool features.

But once you've figured out a bit about the iTouch, then one.  I know I've been exploring all I can do with it, such as post to my blog from bed, and check email and read websites, and check the news. Of course, I can do all these things with a regular computer, but it not from my bed, or my yard, or wherever it is that my WiFi, or someone else's, reaches. And my daughter, when faced with not having access to the web, today, was able to connect and update her blog from my iTouch (as well as fool around in YouTube, when she was done with that.)

I know there must be some things I can only do with an iTouch, but so far, I have only found one, "FlyTunes."If you go to FlyTunes directly from your ITouch, you will go into the menu about channels. If you go there from your computer, it will show you a demo about how it works.

I fiddled with it for a while, and it is a pretty cool program, although I noticed that the podcasts from Comedy Central listed people who weren't who was performing, strange.

Now, to find other things to  do  with my iTouch.

The world of the web as viewed through an iTouch

One of the first things I have discovers from surfing with the itouch is that some sites actually behave differently when they sense you are using a handheld device. Typepad is one of them as is Google news and gmail. The other sites don't change at all the only good thing is you can enlarge or shrink the screen on the no mobile versions of sites. This is quite cool and I wish I could do that on my regular computer.

I have worked on WAP pages before, for one of my clients and so I am familiar with things having to fit a certain way. But this is different. Designing a mobile device page takes a bit more thought then trying to fit all the info you need into a small screen. You have to take into account how people will need to use it for example typepad puts all the major keys on one screen, very easy to use. And gmail has everything together as well. I wish that yahoo mail would design something like that as it is not only hard to use but uses classical Instead of their new an improved stuff.

I wonder how many sites will have two versions. I would think it would be a growing market and more sites will be set up for it.

"you're blog is boring"

What makes a blog entry interesting? I know for me that I either want to laugh or be informed. That is probably why my blog roll has that odd mix that doesn't see to be related to graphic design. But it is. Just as writers need to know what is going on in pop culture so do grphic designers. This is why I don' t hang out in strictly graphic design blogs. I do go sometimes but don't go back. The sites are boring to me.

Now, of course , I have been told my blog is boring, and it may be, but I do try to write about all the things that one needs to know as a graphic designer. And people have at least looked at my blog because of some of the topics I have written about.

My daughter has it easy. She just has to find the humor in situtions and draw a cartoon about them.

Me, I try to find the things that I need to know to do my job. And the thing I have been focusing on, of late, is the itouch because it allows me to blog remotely

I don't know if doing so is going to make my blog more interesting, but it will be easier to post.

Plus, I think I am getting better at writing these things on the itouch.

WIFI incription so good it almost kept me out of my own network

I didn't see a use for WIFI when I first got DSL. At the time I was just happy to not have isdn. So when Sam, my network guru asked which computers I wanted set up for WIFI I said only one. I didn't think why I would ever want to take my lap top into another room, much less outside. Sam tried to explain the joys of remote computing, but at the time it was so my partner could work in her office upstairs.

And that might have been the end of it. Sam decieded to create a password no one could break, made up of radom numbers and letters that went on for a long time. He wrote the code out for me and I put it in what I thought was a good place, but then lost it. I wasn't worried. I figured I would never need it again. But, as I said yesterday, I got an itouch and that runs on WIFI.

Sufice it to say, I did not break the code. Instead I discovered where it was written down by linking to the router and reading the settings. The hard part was typing out the string with no mistakes. I thought I had done it right several times and tried to connect with no luck. Finally I got it right and so this is the second entry I have made from my itouch. I can see how addictve mobile devices can be. If I were to do it again I would STOL have had Sam do that string, but I think I would have made extra copies of the password.

What amazes me as I wonder around with the itouch is how many people don't encropt thier WIFI.

Multi-Tasking while on a conference call

I was reminded, the other day, that there are only so many things you can do while talking on the phone. You can knit, you can move things around on a page, but you can't read email, or write the same, because it appears to take the same part of the brain.

I was helping a client set up her blog, one more in WordPress by the way, and we were going over every little thing she would need to know. I couldn't not listen, because it was over the phone, and I had to be in front of the computer too, so I could watch what she was doing, and comment. Unlike most of my other client, who had blogged before, she had never done so, so even though WordPress is mostly intuitive, it wasn't for her. She was a bit frustrated by the style sheets, which I gave up explaining how to alter, and just altered for her, as well as for tags.

So, what did I do for the two hour call? I knitted. I couldn't answer email, well not a lot, I couldn't. And I certainly couldn't work on anything else.

And now, having set her up, I wonder why I am still using TypePad, when I have been recommending WordPress over it? I guess because I have been using it for so long. I think, however, that soon I will make the switch, because with each new client blog, I realize how much more I could do with it.

Fun with PDFs or wow, they've improved Acorbat 8

I am used to getting files that I really can't used in the form they are in. This is the life of a freelancer. Often the source files can't be found, or the creative artist is out of town, or some reason that all the client can give me is a pdf. I have learned, over the years, to extract every last drop from every PDF that I have had to work with.

The good news, is that each edition of Acrobat has gotten better. One can now export to html (although the results could not be put up on a page, at least you can have the pieces. But, you can also just grab text, and reflow it (which you could do before, but it wasn't always smooth. And you can click on a graphic, and export it by copying, and pasting into Photoshop. You could always do that by opening in Illustrator, but with so many ways to get things out of PDFs, perhaps I don't need the source files anymore.

And, I have been not asking for them either. If I can, I don't want to use word, or have to wait for a version to be created in Photoshop, if I can get it from the PDF, instead of Word.

I love that a product that used to be just for showing what something looked like, can do so much more. Printers, in fact, ask for Acrobat files instead of the sources files, because they are so much easier to work with.

Wikipedia has a lot on Acrobat. a lot of which i had forgotten, such as that there were others out there trying to be what Acrobat become. After that, a whole industry grew out of ad-ons to Acrobat.

Me, I'm just glad they keep improving it.

I can think of lots of things I would rather do than work on spec

I got a call for a potential client the other day. It was an agency that wanted to know if I would like to work with them to bring in clients. I would look at Websites, and tell them what I think they should change on them, how they should be redesigned, and then they would present this to their potential clients. Oh, it would only take about an hour of my time, and just think of all the work it would bring in.

I was a little taken back. "I see, so you asking me to work on spec?" I said.

"Well, it would bring you work. You would get them to use our services, and we would use you."

"And how would I be compensated?" I asked. 'You get a salary to work on these spec creatives that you aren't charging your client. How would you compensate me?"

She said she would get back to me, and never did.

I related this story to a colleague and said, "Well, if I wasn't busy...maybe..." but she cut me off. "Spec creative? Work for free? There are lots of things I would rather do than work on spec. Even around my house, cleaning my office."

And she is right. There is enough work out there that clients will pay me for, that it doesn't make sense to work for free.  I don't mind giving advice to my own clients, that is different. It is the value added I offer, but somehow, giving advice to non-clients, that I may never get, that aren't even mine, for free?

Yes, I guess there is lots more I could be doing, such as all the work that pays the bills.

The difference between WordPress.org and .com

I had a client decide to do a new blog, recently, and she chose to put it up on WordPress.com. WorldPress.com has a free blog service. It is quite good actually. It allows you to do stats, it allows you to import your own header. It is actually quite robust for a free blog service, and that is what I used to set up my daughter's site, which I mentioned the other day.

But, I was spoiled, when I went in to format this new site, because the time before, I had been able to actually design, or modify the look and feel more, and I couldn't. We both realized, at about the same time, that the last time she had used WordPress.org through HostMySite.

And once we realized that, I was able to make all the modifications I had been able to before. WordPress's free service is fine, but wow, there is so much more with the org version. There is a vast amount of templates to choose from, and once you have installed a template, you can make modifications to the css, and to the header, and all sorts of things.

In the past, I have pointed people to typepad, because, well typepad offers all the cool features too, but WordPress has many more people working on the templates, and you can fiddle around so much. Good thing that they are made by the same company, or I would feel conflicted about suggesting one over the other.