Category Archives: computer random()lings

What’s for Supper?

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“Wonder what’s for supper?”  This is a common question around my house, usually asked by me, to me.  If you are reading my blog, then you probably know me, and you probably know that I am the main cook in our household.  I believe I like to cook for two reasons:

1)  I’ve been cooking since I was old enough to strike a match and not get into trouble!

We grew up with an old gas stove that had to be manually lite.  As most young boys are, I was a pyromaniac,  so here was one way I could play with fire and not get in trouble!

2)  I was single for such a long time, it was learn to cook or starve! My wife loves the fact that I do most of the cooking, which is always a bonus.

I also have a part time web service company, programming, design, hosting, etc. and work closely with a very talented designer named Donnie Bell.  The last few months, I’ve been working with Donnie and his wife Sarah on a web site for a Sarah’s new business venture. The site launched this week and I would love for you to visit it and test it out!

Here is a message from Sarah:

I would like to extend a personal invitation to you, my friends and family, to check out SupperStarter.com. Today Donnie and I launched SupperStarter.com, an online menu planning service for busy parents and working professionals. We have been hard at work developing copy and designing the site for over a year now. I am excited to offer you one month’s subscription free of charge. Just click on the link below or copy and paste into your browser’s address field.

http://www.supperstarter.com/members/signup.php?e=T

In return I am asking that you forward this one time offer to anyone you think might be interested.

Let us know what you think. You will be the first to provide feedback before we launch nationwide.

So check out the site and let Sarah know what you think.

Blogs, E-mail, and BBQ

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I recently attended a user conference for a software package my office uses to run our web site. It was a really good conference so I thought I would include a couple of blog entries (I have at least one more entry “planned”) about some of the knowledge I gained while at this conference.

Blogging Tips:

  • Limit each blog post to 600-700 words. Anything longer will lose readers.
  • Update frequently. People won’t visit the blog if new entries are never posted.
  • Links to relative information.
  • Be authentic. Blogs are definable by the way they are written. In other words, they should not be written like a press release. Our English teachers always told us we have our own writing style.
  • Comments: to allow/disallow. By allowing users to comment, a dialog can develop between the blogger and the readers. It is easier to just turn comments off if the blogger doesn’t want to deal with spam, criticism, etc. A good compromise is to allow comments for a short time, then close the comments. Troublesome users can always be banned from
  • Images. I believe having some images in or throughout a blog post can break up the longer posts and keep the reader’s attention.

E-mail marketing:

  • The first 33/44 characters of the e-mail is what is included in the e-mail preview.example:
  • Friendly “From” — People instead of organizations is recommended.
  • Opt in newsletters should include links to examples of newsletters that are on-line. These examples should be current or not more than a few months or a year old.
  • Opt in newsletters should also include a link to the Privacy Policy close the submit and close to the “opt in” link in the e-mail itself.
  • The width of an e-mail should be a maximum of 600 pixels wide. Even with bigger monitors, the preview is determined by the e-mail client, and most default to around this width.
  • The first 420 vertical pixels take up the first part of the preview pain in an e-mail client, so they are the most important.
  • Absolute URL’s (including the http://www.whatever.com/images.jpg) and including text in the ALT/Title tags is very important. If the absolute path is not included, the images will not show up in the client’s e-mail. Even if the image is linked correctly, the default for many clients has the images turned off. The ALT or Title tags will display the text in place of the graphic. So a ALT tag that says, “Newsletter Header Graphic” will give the user and idea of what graphic should really be appearing in that space.
  • Message size: 40k is good size, 100k is getting too large.
  • Mobile Messages: 60% of decision makers in business use mobile e-mail
    • link above banner to on-line version
    • 18% use mobile device —  to clean out box (just something to remember)

BBQ (the important stuff):

The conference was in Kansas City, MO. — Yes I ate good BBQ the whole time I was there, including Author Bryant’s and Gates BBQ.–  This was my second trip to the KC area, so I had already eaten Author Bryant’s once and Jack Stacks once. Jack Stacks is a higher end BBQ place, and while good, it was not my favorite. I  having eaten Author Bryant’s and Gates twice, I would say,  I am leaning towards Gates as being the better BBQ along with their service.

When I got home I was not only filled up with web tips and way to many PowerPoints (which is for a different post), but also lots of BBQ.

Mac Attack

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I thought I should share…

About 2 weeks ago I received a new Mac I had purchased. Before you ask me what is wrong with me, you though I was a PC guy, let me clear up a few misconceptions about myself.

1) I’ve always liked Macs.

My art teacher in High School, Dane Penny, who was as much a good friend as a teacher, bought a Mac my senior year. This was in 1988 and it was over Christmas break. He called me at my home and told me to come over and show him how to use it. I told him I had a date and he said he didn’t care, to get my tail over there now, ha! It was about noon, so I had time to goof off with him and still make my date.

This Mac was one of the Macs that was all built into one, screen, hard drive (oh wait, no hard drive, just one floppy and an external floppy), etc, much like the iMacs of today. I thought it was an amazing, EXPENSIVE machine.

2) Price has always been the problem.

I never felt like I could justify spending the extra money for a Mac. What has changed? Intel. About 3 years ago (in June of 2005, if I remember correctly), Apple announced they were going to an Intel processor. The prices of Macs have come down over the last 3 years, making them more affordable, if you price them out compared with a PC with the same specs, they are very close

3) I already owned a Mac.

You may already know that I have owned a Mac Mini for almost 3 years. It is an Intel Mac Mini, and I bought it with minimum ram, only 512mb. I’m about to upgrade it to 2 Gigs, (which cost me $60). You can stop laughing now, I do know that is a ridiculous amount of RAM for such a little computer. The mini is actually Jennifer’s computer, and it is an amazing little powerhouse, even with 512 mb of ram. It is our Answering machine, an intranet (web server for our home network), and she uses it for her business.

4) What about PC software

I have certain applications that ONLY run on a PC. I also don’t believe in stealing software, so I own legal copies of Adobe’s Photoshop and GoLive. Yes, they are expensive and the version I have are only for the PC. So my new Mac came with VMware’s Fusion. You may have heard of Bootcamp or Parallels, it is similar, but got better reviews on a few web sites like lifehacker.com. It is AMAZING. I can run my Windows applications seamlessly with my Mac OS, I even forget that the computer is running Windows.

I do plan to eventually upgrade to the Mac versions of Adobe’s stuff, but not any time soon.

I’ve already converted my sister, brother, and mom to the Mac fan club, they all own, or use a Mac. Will you be next? ha! ha!

What’s in a Name?

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If you know much about me, you know that I have a part time web service company (providing hosting, domain registration, design, and programming).  One common question I am often asked is “what is a good web site name.”

Here is a short list of suggestions.  If you want to search to see what domains are available, I recommend searching (but not buying) from www.enomcentral.com.  Why not buy from them? I am a reseller for them and actually sell my names a little cheaper.  If you are interested, contact me and we’ll talk. I really don’t mean for this blog post to be a sales pitch.  What do I mean by “safe?” I’ve “heard” but not ever “confirmed” that some web registration sites “snap up” good names when you search for them and don’t buy them.  One report I read of this recently was from none other that Network Solutions, one of the companies that has been the longest in this business!

Here are 4 quick suggestions:

1)  Meaningful name – The name should reflect the content that is on the site.  You wouldn’t use a name like “dogsforyou.com” if all you sold were cats.  Yes, this is the “duh, I already knew that” suggestion, but needed to be made anyway.

2)  Short – Shorter is BETTER, in my opinion.  Remember, your domain name will be part of your e-mail address, so if it is something like:  www.thisisareallylongdomainnamethatiamusing.com then your e-mail will be myname@thisisareallylongdomainnamethatiamusing.com — see what I mean?

3) Easy to spell – My business name is Innovative Bits, LLC. I learned quickly that no one can spell Innovative correctly.  Rather sad.  Why did I not use ibits.com? It was already taken and was currently being used, so I registered innovativebits.com

4) .com over .net, .biz, etc — Why?  As I mentioned, I wanted ibits.com, but it was taken.  When .biz was added as an option, I quickly snatched it up.  .biz is actually also for businesses (.com stand for “company, .biz, business).  The problem then?  Not enough people have heard about the .biz and it confuses people when they hear it… “how do you spell that?  .b-i-z?” Because of the “.com” boom in the 90’s, everyone thinks of .com first.

A bonus suggestion… it is ok to have multiple names, but I would use one as a primary and have everything else redirect or “mirror” the current site.  Example: I still have “www.innovativebits.com” but I use “ibits.biz” on everything.

Need a PDF?

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Many of my customers have a need for creating PDF documents.  Most of them don’t need anything fancy and are usually on a tight budget.  If they aren’t, I recommend purchasing Acrobat from Adobe.  That is Acrobat, not Acrobat Reader.   And of course, they have muddied the waters from there, there are three versions, Standard, Pro, and Pro Extended.

How about a FREE solution though. Those solutions are my favorite.  If you don’t need any of the extra features, then PDFCreator may be the solution for you.  It is open source, so it is spyware free, but keep reading before installing.

It can be downloaded at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

1) Go to the link, click on the bar that says “Download PDFCreator” (currently it is a green button)

2) On the next screen, click on the “Download” button on the same line as “PDFCreator” package.

3) On the next screen, click on the “PDFCreator-X_X_X_setup.exe” link; note – the x’s represent numbers, example the current version is 0.9.5 so the file name would be PDFCreator-0_9_5_setup.exe.

4) The file should be downloaded now.  Run the downloaded file

5) Normally, the next few screens will act like this (the following is for version 0.9.5):

Click Next ->
Accept the agreement, Next ->
Standard Install -> Next
Name for the printer -> Next
Folder location -> Next
PDF Creator Toolbar ->  STOP! Read the following note, then watch on the next screen

NOTE: The installation will automatically want to install a PDF toolbar.  I would opt out of this option. I don’t think extra toolbars do anything but slow down your system and web browsing.

The next screen will have you select the Components, uncheck PDF Creator Toolbar…

Click Next and continue following the directions on the screen.

It is installed, what now?

So you have it installed, how do you use it, your ask? When PDFCreator was installed, it installed itself as a printer.  Anything you can print, you can create a PDF.   Open the program where your document is, Select your File menu, then Print, then look for a PDFCreator Printer.  When you print to a PDF, the printer will pop up and ask you to save the PDF to a location.  I recommend the Desktop or My Documents.

That it is.