the following comment was so helpful that I thought it would be best served as its own entry… so, without further adieu, Metik from www.metik.com writes in response to “New Look & Feel and Other Notes”:

“Actually, this is not necessarily true–more of a generalization most likely based on your experiences with a specific Photoshop version and the platform it is running on.

You are probably using a version that determines available “Save As” formats based on the current Image mode (e.g. Bitmap, Grayscale, etc.) or you have ran into some type of bug (plugins, particular libraries/DLLs installed, etc.).

On windows based platforms (both Windows XP and Vista) running Photoshop (CS2/8.0 and later), you can definitely “Save As” and choose the PNG format after opening (and even editing) a “flattened” JPG (JPEG) file. Unless you are working with Exif, JFIF, or Motion JPEG, JPEGs do not generally contain multiple layers and are, in a sense, “flattened”.

Although PNG is a great open format, it can take slightly longer to render in IE than some of the more seasoned formats.

If you do you run into a graphic format that is “unsupported” by Photoshop or any other editor for that matter, “XnView” (http://www.xnview.com/) is freely available and can be used to view and convert between several hundred formats.”

Now that I’m getting a handle on this whole WordPress blogging thing, I’ve been given the dubious task of putting together the new Dynamic Edge Consulting website…

Ok, so maybe I exaggerated a little bit. For now it’s just the written content that I’m responsible for. As it turns out, the brunt the weight is on Skyler’s shoulders — he’s the one that takes the conceptual sketches and turns them into usable web skins. Although I’m sure I’ll learn that too, someday.

Regardless, there’s so many things that I had “pointed out” this week, that I’m just going to throw together a list. It’ll be easier to read this way!

1. Where a lot of people are very linear in their organization process, I am not. So, the picture I have imagined when something is being explained to me is not often a reality in any universe… bizarro or otherwise.
2. Site maps are generally in outline form. If you make one that isn’t an outline, it doesn’t make sense.
3. [I knew this one, but forgot] It’s much harder to bowl in real life. Wii bowling is so much easier. By the way, I scored a 208 when I got home on Saturday, helping me to recover from Friday afternoon’s humiliation.
4. Using stock photography can be looked upon from 2 distinctly different perspectives.
5. It’s a lot easier to keep appointments if you schedule them in Outlook Express.
6. My laptop can play, read and write Blu-Ray Discs.
7. I figured out how to make the S-video cable output work, so that I can use my widescreen TV as a monitor if I feel like it. Sweet!

I’m going to stop there, not because its where the list ends (because I could definitely add a few more points) but because 7 is my favorite number…

ttyl,

storm

So I always knew that email addresses were case insensitive (which means that it doesn’t matter what combination of upper- and lowercase letters you type as long as you’re typing the right ones..,) but what I didn’t know was that, after the first forward slash… website addresses ARE case sensitive. Very sensitive. So, if you don’t like reading “Not Found. The requested URL was not found on this server”… you’ll want to make sure you’re using the right capitalization when entering in those web addresses.

Now, of course, I’m going to tell you why — since I looked it up for that very reason:

It takes a lot more work for a program to ignore the capitals and smalls. So, in short, your browser needs to have an exact address match to find what it’s looking for among billions of possibilities.

I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but that’s about all I could read in the Wikipedia entry.

On another note, it’s also very important to actually spell the words out correctly, because close doesn’t cut it. If you put the wrong street address on your snail mail will it get to where its supposed to? Umm… not likely. (Fortunately, misdirected web addresses don’t land you permanently in Deadletter, AZ.)

So… this week Skyler updated the look and feel of the blog so it matches everything else. So thanks, Skyler. I think it looks great! I just spent two and a half days at our home office, learning the ropes a little better and here are a few fun tips I picked up and can pass along.

First, did you know that in Photoshop, if you’re working from a flattened .jpg that you can’t save it as a .png file? I thought this was a little ridiculous and inconvenient, but soon learned that there are several downloadable resources that you can get for free that automatically convert these files for you. I’ll try to post links to these in this entry very soon (but I want to make sure I get it right this time… so you’ll probably have to wait until Monday because I’m not gonna try and make that mistake again.)

In the meantime, I figured out that you can also open these .jpg files in a program you’ll probably remember playing with when you were twelve — Microsoft Paint — and save them as .png’s there!

Okay, GTG!

storm

Just so everybody out there knows…

Our website is SO HONORED to have such powerhouse engineers like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates reading our blog. I mean, we must really be doing something right to have these major (I mean MAJOR) names in technology not just reading, but commenting on our website!

Thanks for all your help, guys. I mean it!

So… as many of you may have already noticed, the link for our Copy File Path application was wrong. Just so you know, it’s been corrected.

For those of you that were confused and irritated by this, I’m sorry :(
It wasn’t really Dynamic Edge’s fault this happened, there’s certainly only one idiot to blame. So Jeff, to you I’m especially sorry for being such an idiot. And I promise to *try not to* let it happen again… ever!

[The truth is, that I thought I was typing in the right link, but since my logged-in computer recognized me as an administrator of sorts, it decided to send me to that other page instead. Had I logged out of our system and then typed that link in... or posted that blog from my personal computer, the link would've taken you to the right place.

WHO KNEW!?! -- okay, so maybe everybody knew, except for me.

Lesson learned. Next time, I'll ask a consultant before posting a link.]

Again, sorry folks!

hasta pronto, srm

I made a new friend in the office this week (via email, since I’m not actually there). His name is Jim and, as I’ve been told, he’s the go-to guy for grammar questions. Now, usually I’ve got a pretty good handle on how you’re supposed to write things [*whether I use it all the time or not*] but here are a few helpful words Jim passed on to me, to help keep News From the Edge looking good. They’ll probably also be useful for other people, like me who need to be writing regularly about stuff that they’re not 100% sure of:

“…in techland a common set of gotchas is “backup” “back up”, as well as “setup” “set up”. “Backup” and “setup” are nouns – “Did you check the backups?” “Is this setup correct?” But in a verb-context, it should be “Back Up Your Mac!” (btw, “Up” is capitalized because it’s not a preposition here – it’s a particle completing the verbal phrase “back up”) Oh, “login” and “log in” too: “What is your login name?” “Did you log in yet?”

Wow!! This may not make a difference to anybody else, but it was pretty helpful to me. Thanks, Jim!

I’ve definitely got to figure out what all these internet slang terms mean! Otherwise, there’s no way to moderate this blog!

Okay, so this part is probably only going to be new to me… but here it goes, anyway.

I was told before I came back home (I’m living in North Carolina right now, telecommuting between here and Ann Arbor via the wonder of the internet) that if I had any problem hooking up my Virtual Private Network, that I could call the home office and they could “remote access” my PC and help me out. So why it was a surprise to me to see my cursor moving without any pursuasion on my part, I don’t know… but it was.

Here’s the thing: we need to use the VPN to do certain tasks, like accessing “applecrisp,” using Microsoft Outlook (which is SO MUCH EASIER than Webmail) and various other tasks. The VPN, as Bruce described it, creates a virtual tunnel, through which I can send and receive information without a third party watching. So, if I need to pull something off our server… say it’s a schematic for our marketing materials… I can get that from MI to NC safely without any of our competitors looking at it. Brilliant!

The best part is, I didn’t even have to call! I was able to use our custom-made Instant Messenger program [that is sometimes called "Pandion" and sometimes called "Pidgeon" ...?] to let Justin know I was in distress. He gave me some pretty simple directions, and all of the sudden, I was watching the car drive itself, so to speak.

And while its kinda creepy to watch your computer type passwords, access Websites and troubleshoot itself (well, sort of…) Its sooooo cool at the same time.

*** notice all the oooo’s above? This is apparently a big no-no with Google. I guess they don’t like excessive punctuation marks either. You may want to note this if you’re working on your SEO…

ttyl!

stormie

Up until about two weeks ago, I’d been using Mac stuff for the past… well, lets estimate ten years. I’ve been using PCs occasionally, like when I needed to find a certain book at the public library… and to log in at the DMV. So that said, I’ve got a few things to pick up on with regard to PC computing.

Here’s one example: In the past, I’ve only used screen shots to save a picture of my desktop if my fickle Apple told me that a fatal error had occurred, and that the program I was using needed to be shut down. This almost always happened when I reached the 2/3 mark in a great article I was writing (with a killer lead that took half a day to nail down…) The screen shot allowed me to take a picture of those prized words, so that I wouldn’t have to conjure up another 700 words or so. It was kismet! Screenshots saved my life more than once.

But yesterday, I got to try and figure out this awesome function on a PC… so that I had a nifty little Excel window snapshot for News From the Edge – our quarterly newsletter that I’m putting together for the first time.

Those of you who are versed in PC will already know that there’s a button on the keyboard that says “Prt Sc.” That’s all well and good, but “Prt Sc.” means nothing to me. On my familiar friend, the Mac, to do a screenshot you hold down the “shift,” “apple” and “3″ keys all at once. That takes a picture that lands on your desktop in a .jpg format! Sweet!

Using my favorite search buddy, I looked up “Screen Shots” and found out that there are lots of kind folks who want to share this info with me! But there was one problem remaining… all their diagrams were showing regular keyboards. Their keyboards have a separate area where the “Print Screen” button is located (note: the words are spelled out on a full keyboard.) And this looks nothing like the key area on my gorgeous new laptop.

I’m not going to tell you how long it took me to find “Prt Sc” because that’s just embarrassing. But now, whenever somebody searches “site:www.dynedge.com Screenshots” they’ll come here, and feel better. :)

They say you learn something new every day!