Social Media book for absolute beginners

By Tim Priebe on July 26, 2010 at 10:13 am in Reviews,Social Networking

The Social Media Marketing BookFrom time to time, people ask me where to find a good absolute beginner’s guide to social media and social networking. As you might imagine, those aren’t books I read, so it’s somewhat difficult for me to find one I can really recommend.

Recently Jerry Pournelle, a famous sci-fi author, wrote a succinct review about The Social Media Marketing Book (affiliate link warning), by Dan Zarrella. Although Pournelle’s review here (scroll down a bit after clicking) is fairly succinct, here’s his comment on who this book is good for:

That should give you an idea of who this book is meant for: people who want to promote products by using the new social media like Facebook and Twitter, but who don’t know the game: either because they’re just getting started, or they are old fogeys who haven’t kept up with the enormous explosions on the Internet. Incidentally, you may count me in the latter group.

Sounds like it’s probably good if you haven’t used social media at all and really need a primer.

Review of LittleSnapper (as a designer)

By Dave Roach on April 27, 2009 at 6:00 am in Design,Mac,Reviews

Recently I purchased LittleSnapper through Macheist, a super amazing bundle of mac applications (plus the proceeds go to charity). Sorry PC users, this application is for Macs only =( Anyways, LittleSnapper basically takes screenshots of entire webpages…no matter how tall the page is and puts it in a library of screenshots:

LittleSnapper Gallery

This is very handy for many applications. If you have a need to display a screenshot an entire webpage for a portfolio or gallery, LittleSnapper makes this easy. Furthermore, if you are a designer, you can bookmark screenshots of a tutorial and go back to it later, and even make a colleciton of tutorials to view whenever you need them.

Another cool feature about LittleSnapper is that it allows you to snap specific elements within a site. This makes things much more accurate than trying to make a screenshot yourself:

Element screenshot

Screenshots can be taken straight from your browser  and are automatically imported into LittleSnapper, or you can use LittleSnapper’s built in browser, which is especially handy when taking images of specific elements.

What makes LittleSnapper so cool though is what you can do with your screenshots after they have been taken. You can easily annotate your screenshots and upload them to share with others! Check out my website dnroach.com in edit mode:

Annotating

As a designer, LittleSnapper is a handy little tool that I have used daily since I got it. It makes things much easier and streamlined on my part, and it’s a simple application that doesn’t get in the way either. Check out http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/ to read about more features and check it out for yourself.

LittleSnapper is on Twitter!

Update on issues regarding Adobe Fireworks CS4 Beta

By Dave Roach on September 15, 2008 at 12:03 pm in Design,General

In taking a further look at Fireworks CS4 beta, I have come across some compatibility issues between the previous version and this one. Hopefully this issue will get sorted out as development continues with Fireworks CS4.

Recently I was designing a final version of a web site, all pages and content included. Upon reopening the design in CS3, I found that all of the text had strangely changed values. The kerning, spacing and point size of the text that changed by fractions of a value, and even the type itself was altered. Any word above about 8 characters got shortened. Furthermore, I had some lines of text that had two different colors in the same text box, and they were changed to the first color. Finally, I had used Arial font in the CS4 version of the final, and upon reopening the file, CS3 thought Arial (somehow replaced by Arial MT) need to be replaced, so I replaced it with Arial (considering that I did not have the choice and never had had the choice of selecting Arial MT). So in a nutshell I was forced to replace Arial with Arial, which may have caused the problems listed above.

So obviously CS4 is not yet compatible with previous versions of Fireworks, and CS4 really should only be used for testing until the actual release.

Fireworks CS4 Beta so far…

By Dave Roach on August 29, 2008 at 6:30 am in Design,General

So I was looking around the other day on Adobe‘s website and found that there was a beta release for Fireworks CS4!!! So I downloaded and installed it and am currently using it. What’s even cooler is that as long as you own Fireworks CS3, you can use the serial number from your old Fireworks to keep the beta until a month after the actual product come out. Pretty sweet, eh?

Anyways, I really like Fireworks CS4. Honestly, I think it’s far, far better than CS3. The first thing I noticed when loading CS4 for the first time is that its layout is much more like Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash CS3. Instead of having all of your pallets open at once and crowding your screen, you can keep them into their own sections, and show them as needed.

You can even collapse them into single buttons, if you’re that good, or keep it the old way if you’d rather.

Also, Fireworks CS4 now allows the tabbing of different documents, so if you’re working on multiple documents they can be tabbed into one window, instead of have like 5 bajillion windows open at the same time… IE6 anyone??

Both of these features are excellent organizational tools, that will give you more room to design without the clutter of open panels.

There seems to be more options throughout CS4 as well. For instance you can space objects evenly by a certain percentage or pixel amount. There are a ton more path editing tools available, so that will make working with vector objects much easier.

Fireworks CS4 also has a ton more styles! Styles are organized into different categories on a dropdown menu, and there or tons of them! My favorite is the diagonal styles, which will make my job a lot easier if I want to make diagonals quickly.

I’m sure there is a ton more new features the CS4 has that I have yet to discover as well.

I have been using the beta for about a week and am convinced that the final of Fireworks CS4 will be superior to CS3.  I have found a few bugs here and there that I’m sure they will iron out (after all, it is a beta). Sometimes selecting things can be a pain, for some reason it takes two or three clicks to select objects most of the time.

The more I use Fireworks, the more powerful I realize it is, and with this update Fireworks will become an even greater tool for designing sweet websites.

The Logitech V200 Cordless Mouse

By Tim Priebe on August 27, 2008 at 6:30 am in Hardware,Reviews

Since Dave reviewed his mouse he’s only had for a week or two, I thought I’d go ahead and comment on my no-frills red Logitech V200 cordless mouse I’ve had for about six months now.

This is my third mouse in about two years, and it’s finally the one I think I’ll be sticking with. It’s simple and usable, and goes fantastic with my other red desk accessories. I use it on my desktop, and it’s only a hair smaller than some of the desktop mice I’ve used.

As you can see, the USB receiver isn’t nearly as small as Dave, but if you’re using it on a desktop instead of a laptop, it’s not a big deal at all. And if you do use it on a laptop, the receiver snaps on the bottom with no problem.

Unlike some of the other mice I have, this one will go a couple months before I have to swap out the batteries. I’ve literally had zero problems in the six months I’ve owned it.

The Logitech VX Nano

By Dave Roach on August 20, 2008 at 6:30 am in Hardware,Reviews

Recently I decided to buy myself a new mouse, since my old one was getting, well, old. After some research, I found that the Logitech VX Nano got really good reviews, so I ordered one. I eneded up getting it in the mail about two weeks ago, and I have to say that this mouse is awesome!

The features of this mouse are awesome, a scroll wheel that you can change between hyper fast scrolling and precise scrolling, side scrolling, forward and back buttons (programmable), another button for switching programs (also programmable), low battery indicator, side grips, and best of all, the nano receiver. You know that usb receiver you use to get signal for your wireless mouse? If you’re lucky, then it might be the size of a thumb drive. How about the size of a nickel? The nano reciever is so small, you can stick it in your laptop and never take it out, since it can fit in the bag just as well with it in as with it out.

It can also be stored inside of the mouse and can be ejected with a little button which I thought was cool.

When I first got it, I tried scrolling it noticed how the scroll wheel spun all by itself which is awesome. I didn’t realize until later that it could be changed to the standard clicky scroll wheel until I pushed it down and it changed. At first I though I broke it! Pretty cool feature. It also came with Duracell batteries (always good), a USB extender dock thing for easy access to a desktop usb port and a nice mesh protective case. The only very small issue I have with this mouse is its size. While it’s not a tiny mouse, it still is not a full size mouse either. For someone with smaller hands it would be perfect, but I prefer larger mice. When I ordered it I knew that it was going to be smaller, so I don’t want to say that this mouse isn’t good because it’s small, it’s meant to be that way. If I want a bigger mouse for my desktop I would probably go with a Logitech MX or Logitech G5. Anyways, that’s my two cents. If you are considering getting a portable mouse, I would definitely recommend this mouse first.