1)
Cordless Phone With Multiple Base Stations.
Imagine
walking around your home or office and just like with a cellular
phone, you'll be handed off from station to station.
I've got a friend who developed it. It does work. I'll fill
you in. Range is no longer an issue around your company or your
home.
It hands you off from one 'cell' to the next. Pretty neat technology
Frankly I'd never thought of doing this. I didn't know it could
be done.
I'll fill you in on both the technology and the applications soon. It's in the
DAK tradition.
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2) Did You Ever
Wonder How They Get Rounded Corners On A Web Page?
Well,
maybe not. But HTML pages are all square and the programmers/artists
have developed lots of ways to trick the code.
Frankly it's easy after you know how. (Isn't it always?) I'm
putting together a whole tutorial so you'll be able to easily
create pages that look great. If you're already an expert, no
problem, but I think you'll find that this is worth a look.
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3) IP Address Breakdown.
OK,
have you wondered what all those numbers in your IP address
really mean?
Can they find you? Do they matter? Well, it's actually pretty
straight forward and simple. But there is one thing you might
want to know now.
Every time you dial up your ISP, you get a different IP number.
Interesting? If you have a DSL line like I do, you always have
the same number.
Anyway,
I'll let you know how I fooled a friend of mine when I was in
Hong Kong.
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4) ASCII &
HTML Text.
So
what do the following characters mean?
© and ™ and B. In the 70s when I was
running a typesetter instead of a computer to create the DAK
1 catalog, I had to learn all the ASCII characters.
Believe it or not, you are still receiving ASCII text over your
modem. Most of it is transparent to you and it's probably not
worth learning any more.
However, if you want to insert symbols that aren't on your keyboard,
I'm going to give you a list of ASCII and HTML character equivalents
and their meanings and their differences.
The HTML characters
above actually mean the following: © means Copyright
©, ™ means Trademark ™ and B is simply a capital
B. Insert these in your code and see.
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5) What's A Pixel
Based Program Versus A Vector Based?
OK, this is actually really important. And you'll love the power
you control once you decide which one or both of these programs
to use.
There are two ways that you can create pictures with a computer. Each has positives
and negatives.
Pixel based pictures are created by the computer creating dots
on the screen as you draw. They are the basic paint program
type of images. They can be excellent, but resizing them, distorting
them to obtain perspective and forming geometric shapes can
be challenging.
With vector graphics, you create the image as a series of points,
lines, arcs and other geometric shapes even though you might
not be aware of the process while you are drawing.
Vector
graphics can be resized, stretched and reformed very easily
without loss of quality.
For a quick understanding of a vector graphics or objects as
they're called, just increase the size of a True Type letter
in your word processor.
True Type fonts are vector graphics. You can increase their
size a hundred fold without loss of quality. If you increase
or distort a pixel-based graphic by even 50%, you'll see serious
degradation of quality.
I'll
explore the programs and combination of programs you can use
to easily create web graphics. BTW, I was one of the first to
introduce a program in the 80s called Artline. It was one of
the first Vector based programs and I loved it.
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6) Internet Explorer
5 Add-On Gives You Super Power
OK,
here's the deal. If you are using I.E. 5, you can go to the
Microsoft site and download a free utility that lets you 1)
instantly list, summarize, display and quantify all images on
a web page 2) zoom in on any picture to blow it up for better
viewing, plus 3) much more.
Remember this is a free program. It really helps you understand
how a web page is put together and I've never seen it advertised.
I hope it's still there when I actually review it.
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7) The Truth About
Equalizers
It's
amazing. In the 70s and 80s I personally sold over 250,000 stereo
equalizers.
Now
CDs, MP3 and computer sound is getting so good, yet almost nobody
has equalizers available to really make it explode with life.
I'll
publish an article (not an ad) that I wrote on how you can get
the most from your stereo, home theater and computer music by
using inexpensive equalizers, rather than expensive speakers
and amplifiers.
I don't want to get into hype, but you really won't believe
how much they will improve the enjoyment of all your musical
experiences.
Yes I'll be manufacturing and importing a new equalizer. But
the truth is that equalizers can do more with CD quality sound
than they ever could with LPs or cassettes.
If you can't wait for me, get one yourself. You won't be disappointed.
I have a white paper where I've explained exactly how they work,
but the truth is I haven't been able to find it. I will.
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8) The Problem With CDs
They're
too good. Yes, it's a problem. When you want to listen to music
softly, you've probably noticed that the quiet parts are too
soft so you miss them while the louder parts become too loud.
Here's why.
LPs
had a dynamic range of about 55 dB. Cassettes had a dynamic
range of about 45 dB. CDs have a dynamic range of 90-100 dB.
So what's dynamic range? It's the difference between the loudest
and softest notes.
And
the problem is when you listen to CDs as background music the
louds are too loud and the softs are too soft. The solution?
Well, it's called a compressor. You can variably reduce the
dynamic range so you can really get the most enjoyment from
your music at any volume. I'll tell you how to do it.
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9) Search Engine
Hit Tricks
So
how often do you get to a site on the web and the company doesn't
have a link to their home page? Well, it really isn't a problem.
There are lots of simple things you can do. Here's one. More
to come.
Anyway, look at the address line, the URL. It's likely to be
something like this: http://www.DAK2000.com /newproducts/vote.
All you have to do is click once anywhere in the URL
to highlight it. Then click again still IN the URL to
UN-highlight it.
Then move your cursor to a position just after the www.DAK2000.com
and delete everything to the right. Then when you hit return,
you'll be at the home page of virtually anyone's site. Many
URLs can be 100 characters long and you can eliminate any part
you want.
This is really important at universities and big companies and
you'll probably find SEVERAL places that will give you a home
page for a department or segment of the company you want to
explore before you get to the root.
And
there's more. When you first highlight the URL, you can
copy it by simply entering Ctrl-C. Then, you can copy it to
your word processor or an eMail by simply entering Ctrl-V. It's
an easy way to copy anything you've highlighted just about anywhere.
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10) Digital Camera
Checklist
OK
I mentioned earlier that I bought a digital camera with about
1,572,000 pixels but that I didn't get the 6-megabyte file I
expected.
In
fact, I only got about 500K. Well I've put together a checklist
of things to be sure you get or don't get when you are buying
a digital camera.
From
USB ports to Flash Card readers, I think I can really help you
get the most for your money and the best camera for your job.
Yes,
I'm working on a bonus digital camera, but this checklist will
help you right up to pro equipment.
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11) Fun With JavaScript
It's
almost like a game. You can create games, calculators, automated
events all by yourself.
If you loved the power of 'Basic' back in the 80s to make things happen on your
first computer, wait till you experience the power of JavaScript.
You
can make just about anything move, change or happen. What is
JavaScript? Well, it's a cross-platform scripting language developed
by Netscape that specializes in adding behavior to web pages.
And
wait till you see the 'behaviors' you can add. And you write
it yourself so there's no expensive program to buy.
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12) So, What's A
GIF Or A JPEG Or A PNG?
And Which Shall I Use?
I
couldn't leave this out. If you're using drawings with flat
color as opposed to shading, GIFs are your best bet.
They can contain up to 256 colors and they compress the file
size by simply looking at the next pixel(s) in line and if they're
the same, storing that information instead of storing the pixel
information individually.
So if you have flat color, where 10 adjacent pixels are the
same, this is your best choice.
If you have a photograph with shading like the sky, the sea
or people's faces, then JPEG is your choice because it preserves
the shading.
It does this by throwing away pixels that it doesn't think you'll
see. And the truth is, it can often throw away 60-80% without
dramatically degrading your pictures.
PNG files are a new replacement for GIF. They are better but
they don't work on many Level 4 Browsers. Too bad. I use them
within Fireworks, but I can't use them on the web, yet.
Anyway we'll cover this and much more in detail as we go along
with hands on 'get-your-feet-wet' tutorials.
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13) So What's Slicing
And How Can You Use It?
No,
we aren't baking a cake. If you just read about GIFs and JPEGs
you saw that you use GIFs for flat, line art type pictures and
JPEGs for gradient continuous tone pictures.
Well, what do you do if you have a picture or a group of pictures that has both
requirements?
Well
these programmers think of everything. You simply mark up your picture (in a program)
telling parts of it to be GIFs and parts of it to be JPEGs and in seconds, the
program creates a table with slicing up the pictures for you.
I
have seen people scan their catalog pages as JPEG images and have a 450K file.
I scanned my pages and made the pictures JPEG and the text Gifs and ended up with
about 110K files.
So you can get both smaller files (so people can view your site without taking
all day) and better quality for each part because you've optimized your pictures.
We live at a great time.
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14)
500 Years Down The Tubes
You
know, I find that on many sites it's hard to read on the web.
I've spent 30 years printing catalogs and I don't want to lose 500 years of reading
studies JUST because we're on the web.
The advantage of the web is being able to drill down and get what you want. It
isn't forgetting ways that we read and human eye movement and comfort. I simply
think that people put up web pages and say it's a whole new arena.
Well,
it well may be, but we still have eyes and we still have the same reading needs
that we have in books. It's time to pay attention to making the information comfortable
for you.
I can't help screen flicker but I can sure make my columns narrow and give your
eyes a rest between paragraphs and lines.
I'm trying to harness the power of the web without losing 500 years of reading
study to make this a good experience for US.
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15-100) Well I Promised You That
I Had Over 100 Ideas.
This
is just a sample. I hope you've gotten a lot of valuable information. The great
thing about the web is that you can scan all these informative articles and eliminate
what you're not interested in from the headline.
Or,
you can learn what you need to know from the story, or finally check back later.
See which article is running at DAK this month.
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