Simplicity is the Essence of "User Value"

Sometimes some gadgets are built so complex that it's hopeless. Take my microwave for example, with 20 buttons and a number pad.

All I need is TWO buttons and a number pad to enter the amount of minutes and seconds I need to heat up my food.

Here is what the manufacturer gave me:


And here is what I really would love to have:

What the Heck is an “Effective Megapixel”?

There are a number of digital cameras marketed this year according to their “effective megapixels.”

So what the heck is an “Effective Megapixel”?

If you think it’s a marketing gimmick, it is, but not in the negative sense that one would expect.

Actually it’s a positive thing for which all digital camera manufacturers and marketers should be congratulated.

An “effective megapixel” is the actual number of pixels which make up the viewable image captured by a digital camera.

If for example a camera has 4.5 megapixels with 4.1 effective megapixels you can safely ignore the 4.5 part. 4.1 megapixels is what you’ll actually see in a photograph.

The difference between these two concepts is expressed beautifully by this food analogy published by digicamguides.com:

Total Megapixels: This is like the full plate of food.

Effective Megapixels: This is the amount that you eat.

And did you know that the number pixels is important only with relation to the ultimate PRINT SIZE?

That is, a 2.0 megapixel camera produces pictures as sharp as an 8.0 megapixel camera if you never print anything larger than 4” x 6”, which is the standard print size in the USA.

So, if you’ll never print anything larger than 8” x 10”, you’ll never need a camera with more than 4.0 megapixels.

But the camera manufacturers of course will never tell you that in order to keep selling more expensive cameras with even more megapixels. I don’t believe the human eye can even tell the difference beyond 4.0 megapixels.

Here is a Print Chart to help you decide what kind of a camera you might need:

Megapixels -- Print Size (inches)

2.0 -- 4 x 6 [standard]

3.0 -- 5 x 7

4.0 -- 8 x 10

5.0 -- 9 x 12

6.0 -- 11 x 14

8.0 -- 12 x 16

(Source: digicamguides.com)

Wealth of Indexing Options in OpenOffice

OpenOffice offers such a wealth of indexing options.

Select Insert > Indexes and Tables from the main menu to display the sub-menu.



Select Indexes and Tables once again to display the main screen where you decide what goes into your TOC or Index, and how the finished product should look:



By using this screen, you can create a regular Table of Contents, Alphabetical Index, Illustration Index, Index of Tables, User Defined Index, Table of Objects, and a Bibliography.

You can select up to 10 levels of indentation but in my experience anything over 3 levels becomes confusing and distracting.

Again, from my own technical writing experience, an Index of Illustrations/Figures and an Index of Tables come in very handy when your document includes dozens and even hundreds of tables and figures. Readers really appreciate that.

You can create an index for the entire document/book or just for one chapter:



I created many documents in the past with chapters running upwards of a hundred pages. For chapters like that it's always very useful to have a mini TOC just for that chapter alone. With OO, you can accomplish that easily.

Indexes are always created form markers. OO allows you to select from the following marker types in creating your index:



(P.S. OpenOffice is a FREE open-source application.)

Even Howie Could Not Help this Search Engine...

I like Howie Mandel a lot. I think he's a very hard-working and interesting guy (like he never touches anybody for fear of catching germs).

So when I saw this HM commercial on TV for Buy.Com I enjoyed the clip because Howie is such a sweet character.

And a day later, when I was shopping around for a bottle of perfume for my wife, I decided to check out Buy.Com. That's how commercials supposed to work, right?

But what a search engine Buy.Com has! Never seen anything like it.

Usually, when a search engine cannot find what you're looking for, it 'fesses up and flashes a message like "No search results were found -- please try again" etc. And then you try again.

No. Instead, Buy.Com flashed this really sophisticated-looking feedback:



Hmmm... that's interesting...

So I start clicking on these searches to "remove one or more words" from my search and ended up... with nothing.

Here are the pages I got after clicking the first, second and the third search results:







Obviously none of these results has anything to do with the perfume I was looking for.

So why did Buy.Com waste my time by having me click this and that only to send me to totally unrelated search pages? Why is need for the wild goose chase?

Here are some Rumsfeldian questions and self-provided answers:

Is this the last time I'll visit Buy.Com? -- Probably.

Can they improve their search engine? -- Yes. Just tell people "No search results found -- please try again" and they will.

Is there a lesson in this? -- Yes. LESS IS MORE.

OpenOfice Writer Toolbars

Did you realize how many toolbars OpenOffice Writer offers?

It offers THREE separate toolbars for designing forms alone.

Check it out (click for a larger view):



P.S. OpenOffice is a FREE open-source application.

Warning all Blog Farmers!

Some people have "Blog Farms" -- hundreds of Blogger blogs created for the specific purpose of milking AdSense dollars out of random visitors.

Usually such blogs are forgotten parked in one remote corner of the Internet since it's not activately updated and cultivated.

NEWS: Blogger has recently stepped up deleting such blogs after a grace period.

What's happening is Blogger is inviting the owners of such blogs for a CAPTCHA verification. If you neglect typing in the CAPTCHA characters and telling Blogger to stop, your blog will be deleted before you even know it.

That's a good thing to keep the Internet free of blog spamming.

But the downside is, Blogger does that to perfectly legitimate blogs as well, like it happened to me. Since I do not spam and keep this blog updated on a regular basis that was not a problem with me.



What about you? Have you updated your Blogger blog recently? Don't be surprised if after a few months down the road you try to log in to your blog and Blogger informs you that your blog has been locked or deleted since you did not respond to their call to validate and prove your identity.

WORDS OF WISDOM

"Your time is limited; so don't waste it living someone else's life."

~ Steve Jobs

TOC with Thumbnail Page Sketches

I like this innovative way of presenting a TOC with the thumbnail sketches of the Chapter title pages. Good job, SitePoint!

"Consulting" too much...

The verb "consult" is overused in technical documentation.

Why say "if you don't have a TV signal, consult with your TV company" instead of "if you don't have a TV signal, call your installer or the TV company"?

We're not really "consulting." We're just giving them a call. That's all.

It gets worse when we tell people to "consult" with inanimate objects!

"If the parts don't fit, consult the parts list in your User Guide." Ugh!

I prefer: "If the parts don't fit, check the parts list in your User Guide."

CONSULT:

• get or ask advice from; "Consult your local broker"; "They had to consult before arriving at a decision"
• seek information from; "You should consult the dictionary"; "refer to your notes"
• confer: have a conference in order to talk something over; "We conferred about a plan of action"
• advise professionally; "The professor consults for industry"

Are you using your MySpace blog?

MySpace has a built in blog for every account. That represents a potential pool of 100 million readers.

1) Click the Manage Blog link on your Home page to display your MySpace Blog page.
2) Click the Post New Blog link under My Controls to open up a new post screen:



You can follow your post with any link you like. This can be a link to any product or service you offer, or an article which both shares information and invites your readers to click a link that leads to a landing page or a marketing offer.

Visit Sports Nut

I invite you to visit a new web site launched just today by my friend Al Porter.

SportsNuts of America was developed for the purpose of providing avid sports fans the opportunity to tell the world about their love of sports - to tell everyone they know and don’t know “Hey, I’m a Sports Nut”. The clever caricature of a SportsNut includes a symbol of each of the major four team sports in America (baseball, basketball, football and hockey) but a true sports nut is a fan of almost all sports, including soccer, golf, tennis, boxing, NASCAR and others.

I'm a basketball nut (great Celtics and Lakers fan from time immemorial) and I'm sure I'll keep visiting SportsNut in the days and months ahead.

Book Covers Created in Inkscape

Front Cover

Inkscape is a free open-source vector drawing program, similar to Adobe Illustrator.

I am aware that nothing can match the vast capabilities of the Illustrator. But for my own purposes Inkscape is doing just fine.

I have for example created the following book covers for my new report on Article Marketing, executed totally in Inkscape.

Click on the images to see a larger version.

Back Cover

I kind of like it. What do you think?

Would you like me to share some Inkscape tutorials with you here about how to design book covers and other graphics ?

Two Reading Factoids from New York

1) New York Times web site recorded 1 BILLION page views in October 2008.

2) Professional book group "facilitators" in New York City charge $250 to $300 a member annually for their services, which include making book recommendations to the group and facilitating the meetings.

How to Recycle Through Open Documents in NeoOffice?

Imagine you have 10 documents open on your NeoOffice. How would you recycle from one to the other?

One way to do it of course is to click the Window menu and select the document you want. But this gets very tiresome if for example you've got two or three documents open and you need to toggle back and forth constantly among them.

Here is a short cut:

If you press COMMAND (Apple) + TILDE (~) your Mac will toggle from one open document to another and save you untold amounts of time.

How to link an image to an URL with Image Map in NeoOffice?

1) Select the image and right-click on it to display the pop-up menu:


2) Select the Image Map to display the Image Map Editor:



3) Select one of the 4 image map buttons on the menu bar: Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Freeform Polygon. My favorite is Polygon and I'll select that one for this exercise.

4) Draw the polygon you like around the image. The edges of the polygon will be marked with a dotted-line:



5) Finish drawing the image map by double clicking your mouse. A grayed-out area will mark your image map.



6) In the Address field, type in the web address to which you want to link:



7) You can select from the following Frame options:

Named entries: File opens in a named frame in the current HTML document.

_self: File opens in the current frame.

_blank: File opens in a new page.

_parent: File opens in the parent frame of the current frame. If there is no parent frame, the current frame is used.

_top: File opens in the topmost frame in the hierarchy.

I prefer BLANK to the others since it leaves the source window intact.

8) Click the Apply button (green circle with a check mark in it).

If you'd like to save this image with this image map you can save it by clicking the Save button (third from left -- the one that looks like a Mac hard drive).

9) Click the Close screen button (red circle with a X in it) and your Mac will prompt you if you'd like to save the changes. Click Yes and you're done.

NeoOffice Recovery Procedure

NeoOffice works pretty well on my MacBook. Actually I've finished a 30 page report on Article Marketing, complete with a full-color cover.

At some point NeoOffice just froze up. I force-quit the application. When I restart it, it presents this beautiful recovery window and recovers every document that was not properly saved when I force-quit. Great functionality. MS Word has it too but NeoOffice is free, including its frequent upgrades. Last time I checked, MS Word wasn't.

BTW -- to take the screen shot of any window, icon or image on a Mac -- press Shift + Command (Apple) + 4 and then hit the SPACE BAR and Mac will display a CAMERA icon. Place "your camera" over the visual element and click it! Presto. The screenshot is automatically saved on your Desktop. That's how I captured the screenshot you see above. You do not need to buy a screenshot software if you've got a Mac.

PRO-FORM for building rapid on-line tutorials

Here is a product that makes life a little bit easier for those of us who are trying to put together a product, service or educational tutorial without any fuss: PRO-FORM (Version 3) from the Rapid Intake company.

I went through their excellent tutorial and liked what I saw. Here are the highlights:

• Four Quiz Question Types

You can have four quiz question types. The following question types also allow you to add audio or images to any multiple choice question:

Multiple Choice Audio Question
Multiple Correct Audio Question
Multiple Choice Image Question
Multiple Correct Image Question

• Specific Feedback for Multiple Choice Questions

For any of our Multiple Choice question types (Multiple Choice, Multiple Choice Audio, Multiple Choice Image) you can add a feedback field for each specific option. That means that if a learner picks a specific answer you can control what ProForm will display. There is now an extra field for each distractor.

• Printing and Email Functionality Added to Quiz

When the learner reaches the results page they will now have an option to print or email the results. There is also an option to include the learner's name if the course is connected to an LMS. The email button allows an email to be sent to a predetermined email address, using the learner's default email application.

• Four Course Style Templates

You can choose from the following four course style templates:

Red Default Style

Glossy Soft Edges Style

Deep Black Style

Steel Style

• 6 New Page Templates

Step by Step Template. This template allows you to teach any step-by-step interaction. The steps are listed on the left-hand side. The learner can click on any step for more detailed instructions. This interaction supports up to 9 steps. If you have more steps that this, you can split it into two interactions for more effective instruction.

Video Template. A new template that uses a Flash FLV video.

Jigsaw Puzzle Template. The jigsaw puzzle template is a flash-based interactive template which allows you to change your own image into a jigsaw puzzle. Simply select the image, choose the number of pieces for the puzzle, and let ProForm do the rest! Users then drag and drop the puzzle pieces together to create the image.

Term and Definitions Template. This template teaches definitions to specific terms and then quizzes learners. In this two-step interaction, the first step allows learners to review. In the second step the learners drag the terms to their correct definitions with a drag and drop activity.

Image Rollover Template. This template allows you to present the learner with up to five images. When the learner mouses over each image it enlarges and provides more detailed information.

Certificate Page Template. This page allows you to provide your learners with a certificate when successfully completing a ProForm course. You can choose from two different certificate types or upload your own art. You can restrict the certificate so that it will not display until the learner has visited every page or passed a quiz. Along with other options, you can prompt the learner to provide a name or pull it from an LMS.

For more information on PRO-FORM, click here

OpenOffice Draw Functions

OpenOffice (OO) is such a powerful office suite but it's a shame most people are not even aware of its power and functionalities, which all come for FREE!

Here are some of the drawing features that are unleashed when you select File > New > Drawing from the main OO menu.

General Drawing Window:



Drop-Down List of Arrows:




Drop-Down List of 3-D Effects (you can transform any shape into 3-D object):



You can arrange the layering (front/back) of multiple objects relative to one another:



You can align the edges of multiple objects relative to one another or center them vertically and horizontally:



You can fill selected objects with photographic binary images:



You can fill your shapes with built-in gradients:



You can fill your objects with pen hatching marks:



You can connect your shapes with many different connectors:



OO Draw comes with built-in drag-and-drop graphic images and exploding stars, etc. (perfect for ads, certificates, etc.)



You can tear individual graphic tabs from the menu and use them all at once on the same drawing!



This is just a snapshot of the few capabilities of this free drawing program. Do you still think you need MS Visio?

The myths that masquerade as facts

The myth: The Width of the Space Shuttle's Fuel Tank is based on a History that Extends Back to the Roman Chariots!

Summary of the eRumor:

This story is a "We've always done it that way" tale.

It claims that the width of the Space Shuttle's fuel tank is only four-feet, eight-and-a-half inches and the NASA engineers could not make them any wider no matter how hard they tried!

Why?

Because the fuel tanks are transported by railroads and the standard distance between railroad rails in the U.S. is four-feet, eight-and-a-half inches.

Why?

Because that's what it was in England.

Why?

Because that's the gauge the tramways used before the railroads.

Why?

Because the tramways were built using the same tools as wagon-builders and that's how wide the wagon wheels were spaced.

Why?

Because the old roads in England had ruts that the wheels needed to accommodate.

Why?

Because the ruts were made by Imperial Roman chariots.

The Truth:

There is no evidence that we could find that this is true.

THE POINT: Everything you read or hear on the Internet is not true. Verify first. Believe later.

Use Google Calendar to Remember Birthdays, Anniversaries and Important Dates

I'm blessed with many family members and friends that I love and care for.

The downside is, I can't remember all their birthdays, especially when my extended family grows each year with the arrival of new beautiful babies.

So here is what I do: I enter all those dates into Google Calendar by clicking the Create Event link which displays the following dialog-box page:



In that screen I select and enter the date, hour, name, place, description etc. of the reminder.

I can also select whether this is a yearly, weekly, etc. or a one-time only event.

Google actually allows me to save as many reminders as I like.

So, the "absent-minded professor" that I am, I usually enter 3 reminders for each event: One e-mail reminder a week before the event; another e-mail reminder a day before the event; and a pop-up reminder just minutes before the event.

Google even let's me decide whether to keep the event as a private affair or make it public, in case I'd like to share it with others. You can share your reminder with others by entering their names and e-mail addresses in a field that is not shown in the above screen-shot.

Google is one smart company that makes my life easier and more productive. I'm not paid to say that but that's the truth and I don't mind saying it for free.

Google Gmail Rolls Out Skin Themes

THEMES tab in the Gmail Settings window.

Goodbye to good'old lain-vanilla blue-and-white Gmail!

Now you can select one of the 30 (and counting!) available skins for your Gmail page.



(Screenshot courtesy of Nirmal)

However, at this writing Themes are not available for every Gmail account. For example, I have it on one of my Gmail accounts but not on the other. If you cannot see the THEMES tab inside your SETTINGS window, be patient. It'll be there soon enough.