The current Mac Pro update disappoints actual pro users. Image: Apple Computer

Apple recently released, after over a year in waiting, an update to their Mac Pro line of tower configuration computers. They introduced the Westmere line of the Xeon workstation processors and now a version with 12 computing cores is available. But for many Apple watchers, the update was a bit of a disappointment.

For openers, while Apple has been determinedly cutting edge on their new flagship mobile products, iPhones, iPads… were notably conservative on this update. New tech such as USB 3, Firewire 1600, Litghtbridge, or even established desirable standards as eSATA were skipped. Few expected Blu-Ray support, since Steve doesn’t like Blu-Ray. The video cards options offered by Apple are decent, but somewhat mediocre by contemporary standards. But all in all, commentary in the tech blogs has negative commentary edging out positive reviews. The general consensus seemed “meh,” with a lot of dissatisfaction centering on performance versus price issues compared to alternatives on the Windows and Linux side.

The machines are pricey.

“The upgraded desktop is available in three standard options: a quad-core 2.8GHz Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor with 3GB of RAM for $2,499; an 8-core machine with two 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors and 6GB of RAM for $3,499; or a 12-core system with two 2.66GHz 6-core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors and 6GB of RAM for $4,999.” – Apple Insider

The pricing here is without display, so add anywhere from $799 to $1800 for Apple display. The upcoming 27” LCD display will be priced at $900 and replace both the existing 24” and 30” displays and will be glossy-only.

Much of the following is taken from my  grumpy comment at Engadget. I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up some of the unpolished language and clarifying some remarks in this version.

First off, the disclaimers, I am a Design Pro, not an IT person, gamer or semi-pro geek tinkerer. So most if this is OPINION, not hyper scrutinized lists of facts. Bear with it. I am also not going to dis down anybody’s personal choice of hardware or OS preferences. Or debate fanboyism at any level. It’s been done already. To death. Seriously.

That said, as a Graphic and Web Designer, I’ve been a Mac user for many years. I’ll say that in the day, the Mac OS offered clear advantages over window and all non-graphical OSs. And also in the day Apple hardware also offered some unique qualities unavailable in the WinTel world. But that day is PASSED. The only reason anyone should chose Mac hardware or the Mac OS is personal preference.

When Apple was releasing G4 and G5 Towers, they were cutting edge machines at the absolute top end, and provided performance that was just not available at the desktop level elsewhere. But that is clearly no longer the case. Now that Macs and PCs are essentially the same guts under the hood, there are far less differentiating qualities. For the Mac Pro, while they may be shiny, spiffy, and fairly stout machines, they are NOT the ultimate computing machines Apple would have us believe. There are comparable workstation class machines available from HP, Levono, Acer, and even *gasp* … Dell at better price points. Yes, I looked. The current lineup just manages essential parity with Windows workstation-class machines out there, and offers downright mediocre graphics cards, which have become much more important components in modern computing.

It’s been pointed out by my geekier colleagues that more powerful configurations can of course be assembled from off the shelf components for leaner budgets if that’s your thing. Some of us do like to tinker in the garage. Some of us just want to say, “give me the keys, I’d rather drive.” It should go without saying, your mileage may vary.

Are the Mac Pros overpriced for the tech level offered? I may be a bit of an Apple loyalist and I still have to say, OH HELL YES. I will offer that the overall reliability, build quality and case design is superior, even if the internal components are decent but fairly standard. And yes, while Apple has evolved the case internals to a very refined level, it’s still a seven year old overall case design. It could absolutely use a refresh.

The galling point for us Design Pros, and I am talking about Publishing, Photography, Graphics and Web Design, is that Apple has tossed us to the curb YEARS ago to the tender mercies of Adobe. Go into an Apple store and good luck finding any serious pro gear, such as an tabloid size (11″ x 17″) printer or press quality scanner. Not for the likes of us. And we’ve been crying for a mid-range Mac for frakkin’ ages. The majority of us would probably be quite comfortable with the performance range of the 27″ i7 iMac in an expandable tower configuration. The price gap between the i7 iMac nicely appointed and the Base Mac Pro and Display is enough to buy a decent laptop and the Adobe CS5 upgrade. Which I might mention is a non-trivial sum. Adobe enjoys a near monopoly in the must-have graphics applications that design pros use such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash and Actobat, and charge us accordingly. The further fact that Apple has done away with all non-glossy screens except for the BTO MacBookPro, shows their disdain for Design pros over “oooohhh shiny,” which does look spiffier in the Apple Store lighting.

The present scene now is all about Apple’s current relentless pursuit of the “consuming” computer user… hence the iPods, iPhones, iPads and the like. I feel that Apple keeps the Mac Pro remains in the lineup merely to say that they have a high end machine for the very needful (climate modeling and 3D rendering anyone?) and quite affluent users. But the Mac Pro line is no longer the champion of the Apple universe, or does it seem to have much of Steve’s attention.

Since the current Adobe CS5 Applications requires an Intel multicore processor minimum, this will retire a LOT of still working G5 machines. As design has becomes a much more marginal profession in the current economy, I expect we’ll see a lot of “downgrade upgrades” to iMac, laptops and Windows machines as design pros look at their bottom lines and budgets.

I don’t think Steve will miss us much. We complain.

Links:
Mac Pro @ Apple
Engadget
Mac Rumors
Apple Insider
Adobe Creative Suite 5

Tweaking Bleeds in InDesign for the Tri-fold Cut Line. Yes, I'll explain...

For openers, I have been reminded that if I want to keep people’s attention with a blog, I actually have to POST, at least more regularly than I have been doing. The current occasion is the Hudson Valley Business Edge 2010 Conference, an event that I highly recommend if you’re in the region and work in a small to medium size business, especially as an Owner, Proprietor or Principal. The presenters are all very knowledgeable, and the content is presented in a very dense manner, in short, accessible sessions. Last year I presented on “When Do You Need a Design Pro?”, and hope to do so again on subjects graphic. But to the point, while I fairly recently posted back on June 7th, the one before was March 20th.

I have been busy, hence the lean posting. So this time around I’ll talk about a recent client experience.

This is a long term client that I have been working with for many years. I’ve built and rebuilt his website, will do it again soon. This time around I was updating his brochure. This is a fairly standard tri-fold brochure, a pretty common and useful staple of business marketing. This item is usually not a terrific chore if you have a focused client, and their graphic identity is already in place. Typically brochures are put together after logo design and identity projects are complete.  But what happens when your client is perhaps over focused

The short answer is: 63 design comps, seven candidate “final” versions. Three rounds of pre-press, PDFs and AAs. Hundreds of photo retouches and composites. 2.4 gigabytes of  data. And sent the press proofs back to press… twice. What on earth happened here?

I am not going to say what this project cost,  but it blew well past my initial estimate by several multiples. Suffice to say that the sum was either impressive or embarrassing, depending on which side of the checkbook you’re looking from. I accept installments. I am not railing against my client, who I actually think quite highly of, and is a stone cold expert , a top craftsman and designer in in the luxury fabrication market he makes his profession. But yes, the project was unusual in the scope, number and and detail of the multiple rounds of revisions.

I suspect some of the Design Pros out there might be wondering, when did I lose control of the Design Process? But I don’t think I did. I did keep him appraised that the meter was indeed running as the revisions mounted up, and tried to wave the yellow flag. I was working hourly, which most freelancers prefer, as it keeps us honest and clients only pay for work actually done. I do grok that most clients would rather have flat fees, to budget accurately. So I try to make my estimates and quotes reasonably accurate. But typically I expect to turn a brochure project around on 2-3 initial designs and 2-4 rounds of revisions and tweaks including proofreading. On a flat fee project, unless you detail revision charges, you can get killed here. This can become a nightmare on an open ended project like a web site were the design and production process is much more organic, and the final product can moprh a lot till the project is completed.

Of course, some say web sites are never actually finished, but that’s a separate rant.

But my client wanted, well, exactly what he wanted. After fine tuning many details of design and copy to create an extremely crisp and tight showcase for his products, it was on to the product photography.  It was critically important to him that his product photography be as close to perfect as humanly possible to image, process, color correct, clean, retouch and composite.

Most folk would confront the mounting hours and costs and get to a point where a project is “good enough” and sign off on it. After all, some details are so minute that most readers will not notice a lot of very tiny glitches. Obsessive revison is just not cost effective for the average small … or even moderately large business. Mind you, when Ferrari or Maseratti does a brochure, it’s a 16 page super glossy piece  with giant full bleed photos and tiny blocks of copy on stock just short of cardboard and every photo is glistening perfection. But when a single car costs more than my house, “price is no object” in selling them has a certain resonance.  A used car dealership will pour all that copy into a tri-fold with a stack of digicam photos one of their salesman took.

It’s all a matter of perceived value, versus the actual cost of the work.

So how much is enough?

Mind you, of the over 50 hours on the project, over half of it was spent in Photoshop doing photo work. This is in addition to the work the photographer did on most of the images as well. By the way, this was not Joe in the Mail Room with the boss’s pocket digicam; this is a very good pro photographer who’s work is very sharp. But every detail had to be perfect. But I did call him on cleaning up the color of a reflections on a detail no wider than four benday dots.  I also found myself nudging parallax errors picked up in a wide angle lens that I could not discern on a 20” monitor without a layer of guidelines.

To note the level of detail we persued, one tweak was both revising the cropping and placement of photos to account for the 1/16” of  additional trim (see image)  that some printers nick off the fold-in panel so that the borchure folds neatly.  (geek alert: not always the case, some printers use very slightly assymetrical folds to allow for a sightly narrower folk-in panel, depending on their machinery.) In most cases this would not a big deal, but there were details in the product photos that my client felt were critical to preserve, and worth the time and expense to address.  We also did some furher adjusting in the photos as well to allow for more bleed.

The Maserati web site. Crispy. Shiny...

A local area Used Car Dealer's web site - To the point.

To return to the car analogy. When Ferrari or Maseratti publish anything from brochures to bar napkins to their annual report, their entire brand and image rides on it, For that market, they make sure every bit of their marketing material measures up to the same lofty standards as their automobiles. For the Used Car Dealership, the owner’s image and reputation would be based on being a perceived as offering square deals and good value, especially considering he is selling products he was not involved in designing or producing. So very high end marketing materials might actually hurt, and cause the business to be perceived as overly expensive. Most Used Care Dealers want to been seen as trustworthy “regular guys”, literally “one of us.” You know, the folks who are not buying Ferraris or Maserattis.

Is all of this “apple polishing” worth it?

To my client, he expressed that it was. In fact he felt it was critical. At the level of his market and product, if the results of all this exacting refinement produce just ONE more customer for him, he will be ahead. In essence, he held me, the photographer and the printer to the same standard of demanding craftsmanship that he applies to his own work. And I’ll have to say that it’s very good work, among my very best this year.

Will that level of craftsmanship and exactitude be worth it for your project? I can only say that I approach every project with an open mind and a professional attitude, evaluating each project and then providing my best professional opinion on producing it. When a client has a clear idea of their needs and message, it makes my job a lot easier. Going high end on a job also raises my game to that higher level, and its often a pleasure to do really sharp work. Ideally, a project’s costs should match both the budget and the message. Some things might call for “fast and dirty” so long as things are neat and professional – and proofread, they’re ready to go. Other mission-critical projects might very well call for numerous and detailed review, revision, and tweaking to a high level of polish.

How far you want to go is entirely up to you.

Taking Print content to the Web

Yes, it’s been months since I’ve posted here. And haven’t been that active in my Live Journal or Facebook pages either. The Studio’s been busy, folks. And have been shoving a number of projects through the house.  And when you’re a self employed Creative Pro, paid bookable hours trumps blogging. I had been tempted to rant on about the evolving throwdown between Adobe vs Apple vs Google (sort of) vs Mircosoft, centering around the mobile market, web standards, web video, HTML5 and Flash. But the simmering war of words, with flaming fanboy camps tossing off on each side has grumped me out, and it can wait.

So I decided to talk about some of the under the hood tech that makes contemporary web sites work, with a bit of diversion about bringing print content online.  I’m going to pitch this to the web user and business reader, so my fellow web pros will probably be bored to tears. But for the rest of you, we’ll demonstrate the main idea of the marriage of HTML and CSS by taking a look “backstage” with a print and web design project called, Living in The Petri Dish.

The past few years, over the winter I have been designing and Art Directing an annual calendar for an Interfaith Sanctuary, and in the 2010 Edition of the Wheel of the Year Calendar, I wrote a short Editorial Article for their Earth Living/ Earth Spirit section, focusing on global environmental, sustainability and climate issues. I wrote Living in the Petri Dish under my “spiritual” name, referring my Native American (among others!) Ancestry.

The Print Version from the Institutional Calendar

PDF

In times gone by, the most direct way to get print content online was to post a PDF version of the document. This is quite straightforward in layout tools such as Adobe InDesign, with a powerful export PDF function. But many applications, including Microsoft Office now have similar capability. In Mac OS 10, any document that can be printed, can be output to a PDF file. And here is the PDF version of the article. which is the print version of the Calendar Page. Depending on your browser settings and capabilities, the file will open in a new window, or download to your local drive. While PDF files preserve the formatting and structure of the original print document, and does not require the recipient to have the creating application, graphics or fonts, it does have some limitations for the web.

Web Coding, Old and Modern.

The “Old School” method of laying out a web page involved rather intricate coding, and creating tables to arrange elements on the page, like a mosaic, which were not their intended purpose. In more contemporary coding, the HTML page contains the content, and it’s information structure. And the display and presentation information is contained in a separate CSS style sheet. CSS refers to Cascading Style Sheets, which is a powerful method for marking up how a page is displayed. The main advantage is that you can have a separate style sheet for every page in a site, or just one for ALL the pages in a site. Or individual style sheets for unique elements, such as the home page, and a general one for the site’s content. The HUGE advantage is that if you need to alter an aspect of the site’s visual design, I make the change in the style sheet, and the change will appear in the entire site, or every page that accesses that style sheet. This is a much more efficient approach than painstakingly re-coding every instance of the design element in every page individually!

I recently had occasion to demonstrate the capabilities of CSS for a user group, in this particular  case, I took the SAME page, and used three different Style Sheets to radically alter the layout and appearance of the page. So let’s build a web page version using XHTML and CSS. As the author, I have the original text of the article, and was able to quickly code it into a basic web page, and collect some relevant links.

Coding HTML and CSS

The text is organized into paragraphs and headers. And I divided the page into logical sections using “Div” tags. Otherwise there is no layout markup.

Original images for the "Petri Dish" article.

I also had the original images used for the article, so I sized them for the web at 72dpi, and we’re good to go.

Take a look at the “pure content” version of the page, without any CSS Styling.

it’s all there, but it’s sooooooo  1998, and kind of boring.  So lets build a CSS Style sheet and connect it to my HTML document.

This is where the magic happens...

The highlighted code is where the HTML page refers to the CSS style sheet file that tells the browser how to display the page.

The CSS that will style the Petri Dish article page.

A portion of the CSS file.  As you can see, I have started to define the look of the page. The overall typeface and size, background colors and the styling the headers. You can look at the full coding here, if you’re geeky and curious.

And the completed page now looks like this. Living in the Petri Dish.

As you can see, it’s much cleaner and feels more like a contemporary web page.

“Presto-Changeo”

But I am well aware that clients might want something different. So why not? I created another CSS document, and went back and changed just one line of the HTML to implement it.

<link href=”styles2.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />

I added some alternate graphics and the page takes on a radically different appearance.

Some clients might want a little more IMPACT… happy to make it “Pop”.

<link href=”styles3.css”…

I call this version “Hot Head Red”. It’s probably not the most tasteful design, but it was meant to show variation for the demo. Also for the sake of the demo, I added the navigation bar across the top to easily swap across the versions. Note that I’ve set the nav bar to pick up the link styling in the three versions.

Remember, no other code was changed in the HTML page other than the single line referring to the style sheet. Now there are a few caveats, older versions of some browsers have uneven support for CSS, most notably Internet Explorer Version 6 which handles CSS in a non-standard manner. But modern browsers support CSS very well. IN the near future, we’ll be seeing the deployment and support in browsers of HTML 5 and CSS3 which will bring additional enhanced capabilities and features.

Links

Living in the Petri Dish variations:
No Styles
BlueWhite Clean
GreenWorld
HotHeadRed
PDF of Print Version

Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary
Earth Living~Earth Spirit Complete Supplement (PDF)
Union of Concened Scientists
Rolling Stone: As the world Burns
Rolling Stone: The Climate Killlers
UCS: “It’s Cold and My Car is Buried in Snow. How Can Global Warming be Happening?”

Now this blog is powered by WordPress, WP hacks can tell from the very lightly modified default Kubrick page design. But one of the things I love about WP is that there is not only an abundant supply of themes, but also a HUGE zoo of plug-in to perform all manner of digital legerdemain. Since I have been manually posting notifications on FB about my Blog Posts here, I figured, with the rising popularity of Facebook, there was probably an app or plug-in that would allow Me to post notices to the page automatically. So after a bit of research, I’ve installed the  WordBook Plug-in on the blog. This was literally it’s test flight.

Alas was not to be. WoodBook does not work on Fan or Business FB Pages. See below for comments on keeping my personal and Pro/Biz bloggage separate. So I am trying another application, a bit more involved, but we’ll see if it works. It may have the virtue of earning the blog a little more exposure.

I am also looking at adding “Share on Facebook” functionality. Yes, there’s plug-in for that too. Which is probably the next thing I’ll be testing. If a “Share on Facebook” link turns up on my posts, I got it working. Of course there are equivalent tools for Twitter, but I am seriously dragging my feet about getting into that. I do have to spend some of my time actually working on client’s projects. Imagine that, so demanding. But the ability to buy groceries is a compelling argument for discipline.

The emergence of Social Media as an important Web trend for both individuals and businesses, due to it’s particular reach and ability to connect individuals TO businesses and organizations, means that Creative pros like myself have to pay increasing attention to an ever widening array of venues, and techniques for leveraging them. What makes this interesting is becoming a net.schizo. I have this blog for the Studio, where I can wax-on, wax-off on themes relating to my profession and related tech subjects. I have a personal Live journal since about 2003 or so… If you know it, you know who you are. My personal rantage. I’m on Facebook as me, but then have a Page for FRS. The twitter account… like 4 tweets (Ha!) is me, and I should make a separate one for the Studio… Keeping my personal and professional lives separate is an interesting exercise in information management. Not withstanding that as a self-employed creative pro, with a studio in my home, my professional life is pretty darn personal! But the overall approach is that I’ll refer to my professional live from my personal side, but I’ll be keeping the personal from the professional side.

That didn’t stop a client from trying to call Me at 7PM on a Friday, looking for a project and a quote. Not that I don’t work evenings and weekends, like many creatives and self-employed, that’s a choice, not an expectation. But seriously, WTF?

He can wait… till Monday.

Fantastic Realities Studio on Facebook
WordBook Plug-in
NetworkedBlogs

No Snow Days

This is going to be a pretty random post.

Deal with it. But I’ll try to say something of interest. In the interest of learning more about using the WordPress back end, I had to apply myself to digging under the hood in the tech realm of server file permissions. Look it up if you’re curious. The issue I had was getting the image upload feature to work properly. It errored out with folder permission problems. And all the more irritating, since another installation I did for a client was functioning perfectly. So… WTF?

A trip to the WordPress Codex and Docs and I got enough info to fire up my FTP app and massage the permissions on my web server and got it working. Hmmm… guess it should test it? What to upload?

So. The image above. Even though the “Snowmageddon” storm that clobbered the DC Area and Central Atlantic states spared the NYC Region and Hudson Valley, the “Snowpocalyse” storm and the record breaking “Snowricane” did catch up with us. Big Fun Deluxe. Clogged roads, Businesses closed, Events Canceled, and Snow Days at region schools. I, for one, am glad to see a little sun.

Relevant? Right. Right. Was getting to that. As a self-employed Creative Pro, my studio is in my home. So as long as I have power, heat, food, and a high speed internet connection. I can pretty much hole up and keep working. And I did. Also you can’t beat the commute. About 45 seconds from bedroom to the Studio downstairs. Maybe five minutes if I stop in the kitchen to get coffee. In nicer weather, about 30 paces to the pool. The Studio looks out the patio door, and when It’s nice I can open it up and let the breeze air this place out. Compare that to an hour and 45 min ride into the city when I was a corporate Art Director. If I had to stay late, the ride back was often longer.

Anyway, I had snapped a few clever images and tossed together a little “No Snow Days” Promo Card (maybe I’ll post a PDF for ya’s) that  I handed out  to one of my networking groups. So, brief flash of pro coolness.  Try THAT in Word.

So no complaints other than as a homeowner, I do see the energy bills and the downstairs gets colder then the upper floor were we get good sun. In a heat wave, that’s great, and a cooler environment in the summer is better for my machines. But in winter, not so much. Sweaters are good.

And uploading a shot about getting through the epic weather was probably more relevant than goofy stuff like this…

Go watch Caprica to see why this is funny.

Yeah, I’m a geek. But we creative sorts are allowed our eccentric vices. And I’ll be getting back under the hood of Bloogging, Facebook… and *cringe*… even Twitter. Mostly because my clients have an interest in the stampede to social media.

That’s it for this one, I do have billable work to do! Till next time!

The Tech Media geek out over the iPad at Apple's Event - Photo c|Net

So, actually taking a moment from my labours to toss of a few thoughts about Apple’s latest foray into the world of cutting edge consumer computing. Rumors and hype over Apple’s tablet computer fried up the wires on the Intertubez for months, inflaming the hopes and opinions of technogeeks worldwide. Since I am currently the President of the local Macintosh User Group , which is more a function of not dodging fast enough than any particular sterling quality on my part, I am expected to know at least a thing or two about most things Mac. So I took in the Apple Event keynote via the live blog and later watched Steve’s keynote at our monthly SIG meeting. I am as I start to scribble this, in the waiting area of the Physical Therapy office during my wife’s PT session, a result of a dislocated shoulder in October, part of the reason for the slack in posts. Been a little busy! More on this later.

Anyway, the iPad, not the iSlate, iTablet, or iSlab or such… is actually a pretty impressive little box.  The name is a little unfortunate, but Apple leans obsessively towards the simple. As many expected, and partially leaked, the iPad is much more a large iPhone/iPod Touch as opposed to a touch enabled MacBook. Not all the tech literate are thrilled about that, but it’s consistent with Apple’s current approach to their market, audience and product strategy. As a touch powered laptop, so not happening, but as an iPhone on steroids, pretty damn spiffy. And it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun to play with.

Now let me get right up front about this thing right off. Apple didn’t make the iPad for me, or for most of the likely audience of this blog for that matter. I am a Power User by most standards, a Graphic Designer, a Creative Professional. And the iPad was not made for us. This is, to it’s last transistor, gutz to glory, a CONSUMER device, aimed squarely at the media-consuming center of the casual computing market.

The iPad is optimized to excel at the majority of the general purpose recreational and media leaning uses of regular people: surfing the web,  fetching e-mail, listening to music, watching videos, reading e-books, playing games, and running small specific purpose apps. I’d call them widgets, but some of then are really quite sophisticated. With more screen real estate for both applications and the touch interface, many of the things that make the iPhone and iPod Touch so compelling are magnified and enhanced. It makes a rather nice screen reader, video player, music player, web surfboard and email terminal. The large 9.7 inch [check screen size] screen when turned to horizontal format, provides a nearly standard size touch keyboard. I’d like to try that out. One of the most vocal and hostile criticisms of the iPhone/Touch is that the tiny touch keyboard was a very … less-than-keyboard experience. But on the other hand, being a grown up male with full size hands, the average smartphone keyboard with their tic-tac sized keys, still seems made for hamsters to my bear paws, and I am hardly Andre the Giant.

So as a media machine, the iPad shines. Apple has also made a number of initiatives into e-media, leveraging the iTunes and App Store experiences, adding an iBookstore and a number of partners in book publishing.

My thoughts are informed by my realtime experience at this very moment, typing on a MacBook Pro waiting for my wife at the Physical Therapy office. There is no public wi-fi access at this location. I honestly have no idea if there is 3G coverage at this location. But without wireless internet access, 85% of the intended functionality of the device is neutralized. Like my MacBook, I would be limited to the resources stored on my device. Also, I am of course, using a standard physical keyboard. On a touch device, there would be no tactile feedback, just a smooth surface.  So all you touch typists, take note.

But I do have some casual observations. Impressed, yes. Blown away? No, not really.

For openers, the hype was just INSANE, and people were expecting DAS ÜBER TABLET… that can do ANYTHING… and give you oral sex, with unlimited battery life. I also noted the things left out that were not really technical hurdles, but CHOICES by Apple. No Camera, no USB connectivity, no wired data transfer options. And still, infuriatingly, no Flash Player – which is 75% if the Video Content on the Web. But having followed other Apple product cycles, this gives them room to add goodies in further generations.

Been there. And if you’ve been following the iPhone upgrades, or perhaps own an earlier-gen model– you have, too. And apparently the frame already has the receptacle to accommodate a camera similar to those on the MacBooks and iPhone. Patience, grasshopper.

I DO have an issue with the Apple tagline for the device. “Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.” As a device, once stripped of hype. Not bad. Magical? STOP THAT. It’s SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY . I swear I could hear Authur C. Clarke whispering from the grave, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic.” To a drooling Cro-magnon emerging from his damp and dusty cave, sure. But we’re grown up adults in a technological age, damn it. I may not be able to BUILD the circuit board in my computer, but I have a pretty good general idea, both physics and mechanically, how the thing WORKS.

But this kind of glassy-eyed Apple-speak really shows up in the Apple iPad introduction video. Reality Distortion Field? Cupertino Kool-Aid? While I collected my thoughts, one of my Artistic Colleagues, Jamie Noguchi at Angry Zen Master expressed some thoughts on the matter.

“Wow, those fuckers scare me. The blank, glassy look in their eyes indicates that some people have been sucking on a very special blend of the Apple Kool-Aid (TM). There’s no wrong way to hold it. It’s the greatest thing we’ve ever seen ever. It will revolutionize the way we touch things. Creepy.” -The iMaxi and its Heavy Flow of Hype

Not too unexpectedly, the iPad is, as has been noted all over the web, kind of an  “iPod Touch Extreme” with a big, but good looking, screen. It’s more in line with the idea of an “information appliance” than a proper computer and Apple intends it to be so. This is emphasized by their choice of an expanded iPhone OS vs a compacted OS X. It also provides the media control that Steve Jobs and Apple craves. Yes, perceived if not actual shortcoming, along with their choice of non-Flash support. I am a Graphic and Web Designer… and I don’t see the Brushes app replacing Photoshop anytime soon, or the rest of Creative Suite running on the iPhone OS. I am a creative pro, so when I use a computer professionally, I need the firepower of a full fledged computer.

Sure I like to listen to music, browse the web, get my news, read webcomics, do email, watch a video (Hellooooo FLASH…), cruise blogs, sort photos, play a game, or jot a not. But I also need the rest of the computing muscles to do what I DO for a living. For me this thing in it’s present form would be a purely recreational device. But for the audience that Apple is pitching to, what it does is fine. The stuff I mentioned is what pretty much 90% of casual computer users do with 90% of their time.

Of course, the Creative Pro market, that kept Apple alive, and fell in love with the company is no longer a market Apple is actively cultivating. I won’t even set foot in an Apple store from October first through the holidays, when the place becomes iPod and iPhone Central, and there may be one lonely Mac Pro running in the corner, and not much in the way of pro gear in the shop. Jamie has more to say about that, and says it more eloquently than me…

“What does the iPad mean for us digital art professionals? Not a whole damn lot. As much of a fanboy of Apple products as I am, I still feel like the bastard child that they eventually grew to ignore. Time was you couldn’t do any digital art without using an Apple product. Macs were the ubiquitous standard for power users like digital artists. And then, nothing. We’ve been kicked to the curb. We are no longer cultivated as an elite clientele that Apple took pride in winning. They just don’t give two craps about us. Part of that probably has to do with economics. Once an artist finds a tool they like, they are likely to stick with it for decades. [Guilty. I’m a fairly working class art guy and running a used G5 in the Studio ] We don’t buy new shit just because it’s new. We run the old workhorse into the ground and then keep kicking it to get every last bit of work we can before we finally relent and upgrade. We’re horrible clients in a business that depends on people buying the new thing as soon as it drops. I get it. I understand why Apple doesn’t pay attention to us. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

Yo. Brotha’. *gangsign* Word.

Actually iPad is a ironic name. Like a sketch pad, fine to jot, scribble or sketch on. Be that as it may, as a graphic and web designer, I can say that while Brushes is a clever App, it is no Adobe Photoshop, and Pages is not InDesign. I can, and often do, sketch out ideas in my sketchbook. But I am NOT going to try to design, lay out, typeset, color separate, and prepress a 60-page annual Report on a Sketch Pad. For that I need to fire up my G5 or the MacBook Pro if I am going mobile.

But of course who knows what the clever codeheads out there building apps for the iPhone, Touch, and now the iPad will come up with. They will most certainly surprise us with some very creative and unexpected things. I am also realistic enough to know that not all of the 140,000 apps in the App Store are gems, either. Caveat emptor, folks. But I know very well that Content is King. It will be the availability of various media, publications, and the full ‘Net experience, and the creativity and usefulness of the Apps on the iPad that will determine the success of the device, despite the constrains of working through Apple’s business model and distribution method.

But talking to some people, online and in casual conversations, a couple of areas where a good, simple, intuitive tablet could make a major difference turned up. As the parent of a Special Needs child, I have been in contact with the Special Needs education community for some time. Shortly after the iPad’s introduction, it occurred to me that the device would be a marvelous education tool despite it’s price point, and real and perceived shortcomings.

Even for regular students, the idea of getting the twenty pounds plus of textbooks into a single one pound device is compelling. When I attended Pratt, I dreaded Art History, mostly for the need to haul the fifteen pound tome, Gardner’s History of Art, that laughed at the wimpiness of phone books. Janson’s Art History was even heftier.

Okay. Now some of the nits to pick. Some of this is wish list stuff. Some is “WTF, Steve?”

Like many artists, I’d like pressure sensitivity. I live by my Wacom tablets, without them I’d likely be in casts up to my frakkin’ elbows from carpal tunnel. But this is a technical issue, not a design choice from Apple.

Not a lot of noise and thunder has been made over the omission of Flash support. After all, 75% of the Web’s Video content. Not to mention games, e-commerce interfaces, most media sites, many site interfaces, and some entire sites. YouTube only works due to a custom app for the iPhone. It’s hard to imagine the “all of the internet” without Flash functionality. But it AIN’T gonna happen. But this is not entirely a technical issue, but as much a choice by Apple (read Steve). Apple (read Steve) dislikes Flash, and obviously feels that we don’t need it on the iPhone or iPad. Flash is not as swift, elegant and stable on the Mac OS as anyone would like, especially users. Flash lets stuff IN, as it can execute independent code on the browser. Apple also doesn’t CONTROL Flash, or control any of the apps that Flash support would enable. Steve also at the moment seems to be on kind of hostile terms with both Adobe and Google, which has some potentially ugly ramifications for us users.

Steve Jobs also apparently sacrifices virgins to the God of Simplicity. Check out the stuff that Apple clips, that only comes back because Pro users loudly HOWL, we ungrateful wretches. But there’s a LOT of FireWire gear out there. User demand is one reason why Apple has so grudgingly supported multi button mouse functionality, while extended keyboards and non-glossy screens seem an endangered species. As Jamie weighed in, not so kind to pro users lately. So while I love my mac, I am NOT a kneeling Steve Jobs fanboy. We’ve got a few issues. At times, Apple even takes a few plays from the MicroSoft play book, and decides that they’ll tell you how we’ll do tour computing, or what features and capabilities we should have. “Trust us, WE know what’s best.” Ballocks.

This continued passing over of Flash has spawned a conversation out there over the coming of HTML 5, which offers more robust multimedia functionality in an open standards approach. But that day is not here. And like the horrifying Internet Explorer 6, Flash is not going anywhere. and even should HTML 5’s star rise, Flash will linger for years to come. Adobe literally has people staying up late looking for ways to make Flash even more ingrained and indispensable on the Web and on mobile devices. As a creator I just wish they would make Flash a more forgiving working platform, and frakkin’ Actionscript 3 easier for us visual guys to use. WTF, Adobe? It’s a bear to work with unless you have both visual design and programming skills But hey, a guy can dream, eh?

Some last thoughts, since the thing isn’t in the Apple Stores for a while yet, I can’t offer an in-person commentary of  the hands on experience. Mind you, the last time I was in an Apple store for service, I was playing with a iTouch while in the queue. (They put the iPhone/Touch display directly adjacent to the Genius Bar line.. evil, I tell you!) I eventually asked one of the happy t-shirt Apple Corps soldiers to pry the little brick of electric crack from my sweaty fist before my credit card spontaneously hurled itself across the counter screaming for Steve’s baby. Intuitive is a LOT cooler and WAY more fun than either blue screen or the beachball. Much to AT&T’s rude awakening.

However, I am pleasantly surprised that the rumored “under-$1000” price tag of the iPad came in at a base model starting at $499. But  “under $1000” is usually marketing speak for $999, plus shipping. Still pricey, and more than many netbooks, but still, reasonably accessible for the comfortably affluent. I however, have to buy groceries. And the next $600 tech purchase is most likely the next Adobe Creative Suite upgrade. And AT&T may live to regret this, but somehow Apple got them to agree to some rather affordable data plans.

Meanwhile, I am finishing this up, at home, on my still spunky studio G5, on a full Pro Keyboard with my Wacom tablet. I have firewire and USB gizmos connected, including a scanner, printer, firewire drives including terabyte backup drive. I have about six applications running, and iTunes is playing a lush spacey electronic  grove from some internet radio station, on pretty decent speakers. That’s right. Multitasking, baby.

Just sayin’.

Apple iPad Page
Apple Video Intro
Cnet iPad Coverage
Cult of Mac Coverage
Gizmodo, Apple iPad First hands-on
Engadget iPad Hub
Angry Zen Master

“This has all happened before. And it will happen again.” – Cylon Hybrid, Battlestar Galactica.

That said, catalogs are SO fun…

At the Production Meeting with the publishing team the previous Friday, we reviewed the pagination, cover content, and set the catalog size at 200 pages. We decided to aim at an art to press deadline for the end of the month as reasonable, if tight.

So last Friday morning, while I am well under way with stripping in the 2010 pricing to the re-designed 2010 catalog and setting the folios, I have an email from my contact. The Sales Force needs us to add 9 pages of critical products to the book.

Fine. Re-Paginate, 212 pages.

TECH ALERT, but read it anyway. Pros, you can skip this paragraph, you already know what’s coming.  [ For most print processes, bound books have to be set in multiples of 4 pages, and some large scale print methods such as high speed web presses, use signatures of 8 or even 16 page sheets. So adding ODD numbers of pages is always problematical. Even the very common stapled booklet needs to be printed 4 pages art a time, each sheet printed both sides, folded once on the spine. Okay, get it now? ] End Tech Alert

Midday: I take a call with one of the content editors, adding three more pages. Re-Paginate the book again. Still 212 pages, but just barely. Now the Index is crushed to one page and half of the inside back cover.

Oh yeah… put back all the little icons they had you delete last round. (&#%$#@!!!)

4:15 PM. Another email. Adding four more products. Thankfully one requested was already in the book. But will have to expand two items to a two page spread from one, to keep from TOTALLY fouling the right | left spreads and re-laying out the entire book from the insertion point. Even with the formidable tools in InDesign, it’s a non-trivial task. But at least now we are back to having two full pages to use for the Index. (That inside back cover space is still there to invade!)

Re-paginate. Book is now 216 pages.

Email back: “Of course this is complex enough that the “end-of-the-month” target is likely well trashed —with an anvil, but we’ll forge on.” Can you see the look on the Coyote’s face as he plummets into the canyon? Well, I’ve had that look. And will probably have it again before I retire.

Meanwhile, every other project in the Studio gets pushed back, and my clients circle like hungry wolves. Somehow I will tag-team some of the most pressing work into the rotation. This has all happened before. And it will happen again.

Of course, one of the advantages of being a self-employed freelancer, you can choose work on the weekends. Certainly motivated. Which is time to stop mucking about on the Studo Blog and get back to it!

But I still dread each approaching Friday with appropriate suspicion and paranoia.

Till next!

This time, takin' on the wee beasties...

Sorry I haven’t posted in some time. The Studio has been very busy with work and my personal life collided with the business. My wife suffered a dislocated and fractured shoulder at the beginning of October. So I have been taking care of her and doing a lot of housework along with trying to well… work. So not a lot of time for writing blog items. But do have a little something for you.

In early-December I posted this in my personal blog…. And to complete the Tech Fail Trifecta [ joining the failed washing machine and water heater]… My faithful Canon printer started to funk out last night. It began to print thin pale streaks in nice neat precise 3mm stripes. UH oh. After the many cycles of cleaning and test prints, and then a 40 min ride with Canon’s tech support, pretty much convinced me the print head was probably hosed. And a replacement head costs near the cost of replacing the same class printer. So will take a shot at trying to fix it N1NJ4 style before I stick a crowbar in the wallet.

Anyway, for you Geek Squad trainees…

Here’s the test print… those stripey bits are supposed to be SOLID.

This is a bit of a Color Test Document from InDesign.
Shows the CMYK color formulas… yeech. BAD printer.

And from a PDF of the  same document, what it’s pretty
much supposed to look something like.

So… that’s My grumble for today. But if we don’t get hosed on the home repairs… maybe a opportunity to upgrade to a better printer…

I posted this item in our holiday note… “And now the office [Studio] printer is getting cranky and disobedient. Kurt has been hunting the web and ebay for parts, to make the technology fail trifecta…”

I ended up replacing the Printer Head in our aging Canon Pixma iP4000, the attempt to clean it proving to no avail. So for about $50 I replaced the print head in the beastie, delivering me from temptation to buy a new printer… like a 13 x 19″ PixmaPro 9000… And of course shortly thereafter, started getting the “Waste Ink Tank is Nearly Full” error… while printing Holiday Cards. So another dive into eBay for discontinued partz. Did score replacement ink absorber pads. Woot. Mind you the “waste ink tank” is actually a nest of SPONGES that comprise most of the base of the printer. When they’re saturated, they’re pretty much done.

About two weekends ago, took the beastie apart and had at it.

EWWWWWWWUUUCCCHHHHH… NASTY.

The amount of ink the nearly dozens of pads of various sizes absorbed was just plain INSANE. Thank the gods I had latex exam gloves on hand. But a couple of very geeky hours, MANY q-tips, and a pile of Newspaper, tissues and paper towels later, I essentially had a refurbished printer. Was worth the attempt, considering how past warranty this thing is. Interesting that the major wear points of the machine wore out practically all at once. They pretty much expect you to buy a new printer by then.  HP is probably the worst in this regard, followed by Epson. Those two are the worst for this sort of thing, but Canon is certainly not immune. I imagine Brother and Lexmark are similar.

So what the heck am I about with all this tech drama?

Over the past  decade the latest things for the home office/small business computer user are photo-realistic inkjet printers, largely supplanting laser printers in the home and small office. These wondrous devices print at resolutions and print quality that was at one time reserved for very large companies. As recently as ten years ago a high resolution color laser printer cost in excess of $5000, and often required separate computers or Raster Image Processors to run efficiently. The first inkjet printer I purchased for the studio, a mid-range Epson Stylus cost under $300. It’s replacement,  the above mentioned Canon Pixma iP4000 next to my working computer cost under $200, and it produces prints as good or better as the corporate behemoths.  It’s also obsolete; I can now get a similar class device for under $100. If I buy a new computer from the right vendor, Mac or PC, I can probably get one for free or nearly free.

Why are these manufacturers nearly giving these devices away? This becomes clearer when you have printed out a few hundred pages. These printers require regular feeding of Ink Cartridges. These tiny tanks of ink, two, four, seven or even eight or more at a time, can become very costly, especially if you print many pages. If you print at maximum resolution on ( also pricey) photo or glossy paper, you will run through even more ink. Lower-end printers are absolutely sold at a loss, knowing that you will be back for ink, again and again and again, at very comfortable margins. Furthermore, the specialized papers that give you the best looking prints are not inexpensive. These media costs can drive the cost per page surprisingly high. Before you snap up that bargain in Staples or Office Depot, carefully consider your current and future printing needs.

If you are spending a great deal of money running off short runs of color documents at FedEX/Kinko’s, you can certainly use an in-house printer. But if you are printing dozens of pages or more at a time, look at the current crop of business class Color Laser Printers, basic models can be had for hundreds, and their ink/toner consumption is much more cost effective. This can also be a good solution for short runs of multipage documents such as sales presentations. Low-cost inkjet printers are also tuned for attractive color for digital photos, but are not always appropriate for color proofing.

Bear in mind that inexpensive inkjets also seem to have iffy drivers. And for the lowest cost models, two or three changes of ink, will cost the value of the printer itself.  I particularly don’t like the single Tri-color cartridges. These will give you an out of ink error if only ONE of the three colors is low or out… even if you are trying to print in BLACK. I much prefer individual ink cartridges. And it further annoys me that when I have spec’ed 100 percent yellow in a CMYK document, and the printer uses CMYK ink, why are there flecks of cyan and magenta in the yellow? And that 50% gray, has dots of all four colors? Shiny pretty? Sure. Color proof? Get REAL. But I could seriously spin a whole ‘nother rant off that topic.

Anyway…

When you get into hundreds or thousands of copies, that is the time to consider commercial printing, with the additional benefit of the printer’s expertise, broad options and professional quality. With the penetration of Digital printing into copy and small print shops, short run color printing has become much more accessible and cost effective that ever before. The ability to send documents directly to print vendors online, and the capability of many applications to output PDF files directly makes this a much easier and straightforward process than ever. And the Mac,  since the introduction of Mac OS X, has the ability to create PDF files from any application that supports the Print function. Sweet.

I could go on, and bore the everlovin’ FRAK out of you, so I’ll save it and leave you with these. Which cover many of the points rattling about in my fevered brain a lot more entertainingly.

Enjoy. Actually, I was thinking more on the lines of – *Fist pump* “YEAH!”

The Oatmeal / Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

YouTube: CollegeHumor Originals / Your Printer is a Brat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQGtucrJ8hM

Image size, Standard NTSC vs Broadcast 1080i High Definition Image source: RDP Video Productions

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been busy. Being booked solid is a good thing for a freelancer. Being booked solid while having a number of real life issues… not as comfortable, but comes with the territory of home and family. Being booked solid and being paid somewhat indifferently. That is certainly… less good, but seems a function of the current uncertain economy. But that’s neither here nor there. I also promised a piece on data protection and backups and the like, but this is still fresh in the Studio. So hitting it while I can rant with good store of fierce.

A couple of months ago, one of my best and favorite clients approached me about a PowerPoint project that they were having some problems with. So I agreed to take a look at it. Some of the problems hinged on the destination of the presentation— a giant 40-inch plasma screen going into their freshly redesigned lobby. I did the specs on the actual LCD, and discovered that it’s native resolution was 1080i… yes, 1900 x 1080 pixels. Not huge by 300 dpi print standards. But HUMONGOUS at screen sizes. So I agreed to build the big graphics for the slides.

So far this is still straightforward. But was not destined to stay that way. The president of the company wanted some fairly upscale animation effects. And an animated title. So the project slipped into the Flash animation level. Recent versions of PowerPoint have the capability to display video on the slides, so I could export the Flash work to Quicktime or Flash Video files and embed them in the Flash Slides.

As things progressed. The client passed on another request. They want a scrolling type effect to run continuously at the bottom of the presentation, and have a picture-in-picture effect of CNN or something running in the bottom left corner of the screen.

This just became a Video Project.

Since it is going to an 1080i device, it has become a HIGH-DEFINITION Video Project.

To get this done, I have to get additional software. First off, the HD Version of iMovie. Then it was on to eBay to get a compatible–and discontinued (Power Mac G5) version of Final Cut Express that had the desired feature set. But that done I went back to work and built the project. A few rounds of drafts, corrections and tweaks I had a final version.

Whoops. No, I didn’t.

They were so happy with the overall look, they wanted not just their projects, but also their services and client testimonials, with differentiating graphics and more animation added.

Fine. Back to work and got the enhancements done. Of course this meant essentially a rewrite, rebuild and re-rendering of the video. The resulting product is not Pixar stuff by any means, but got the job done. Huzzah. The finished piece was just under 12 minutes long. Perfectly fine to keep a visitor in the lobby reasonably entertained and informed about my client’s company.

The Quicktime h.264 file was also nearly 8 GIGABYTES. Uh-Oh.

Logistics issues loom. The night before I was to leave for a family trip, (yes freelancers do try to get away once in a while) I attempted to upload the file to their servers. After a nearly five hour upload, the server hangs the connection at  87%. This is worse than just dropping. Most FTP server can resume a dropped or interrupted upload. But a hang is … “opps, I lost my mind there. So very sorry.”  You have to cancel or force quit the file transfer and START OVER. There were tears, but in my defense it WAS late at night and I was very tired.  In the end, I stuffed it onto a Dual layer DVD Disc and express mailed the file to the client from on the road. Families of freelancers are long suffering and tolerant. In other words, awesome.

But still no joy. For some reason,  support for Qucktime Hi-Def on Windows, is at best grudgingly enabled by Microsoft. Sometimes works. Sometimes… THIS time, doesn’t. Could not play the file. Some of you have no doubt seen Windows Media, and Flash Video. Neither is ready for HD prime time either.

They want a “regular” DVD.

Okay. So we’ll make a DVD. Supposed to be easy, right? “Burn your own DVD Video’s!” all the software and computer flacks scream in an orgy of self-congratulatory marketing. There is a very healthy market for software that enables users to create and produce and add soundtracks and otherwise slice, dice and cuisinart their home (and amateur work ) camcorder and DVR video. And another busy market to rip, archive, burn and spit out CDs and DVDs. But the marriage is not all THAT happy.  With so many variables in the process, there are plenty of places in the chain for things to go wrong.

When I dived back into iMovie HD, I discovered that there was NO HD Disc-Burning option, and iDVD did not support HD. The Disc created there was “kind of” Higher-definition standard Def., or about 720 Pixels tall. Looked like CRAP on the 40’ display. And they even looked crappy on our perfectly ordinary 24” television. Obviously NOT the answer.

In the process, burned a LOT of coasters. More on this later.

So it was back to the software store to get the most current update to Roxio’s Toast software package with an Blu-ray HD Option. [Roxio Toast 10 Pro]  Since a blu-ray BURNER would be an expensive upgrade to my gear, I was also attracted by the option to burn HD-DVDs. This was Blu-Ray formatted HD content that would fit on a standard size DVD-R, up to about 30 min. of content in the smaller data space. So far so good.

After a few more coasters, had a disc. Which refused to play on the client’s player. Different discs – tried both +R and -R discs, both unsuccessful. I got a hold of the Sharp Aquos tech specs and discovered that almost NO recordables were compatible with the player. And further research revealed that recordables have VERY poor playback success on Blu-Ray players. The format is just too intricate and finicky and the tech is just too new. I heard from a friend that when her brother purchased a wide screen at Best Buy, the sales person advised him AGAINST the Blu-ray player option, as they were getting lots of complaints about Blu-ray DVD not playing consistently. He said to wait a year or so till the standard settled down.

Steve Jobs in 2008 called the Blu-ray format a “Bag of Hurt” when questioned about Bru-ray support in Mac OS X. and on that year’s versions of Apple Laptops. Apple’s approach has been to embrace streaming video delivered via the internet, specifically content via iTunes and have de-emphasized HD video DVD playback and burn support on the Mac. But times, and consumer tastes will eventually prevail.

And according to the Wikipedia summary of the format, that is part of the problem:

“the idea of using inexpensive DVD media became popular among individual users. A lower-capacity version of this format that uses single-layer 4.5GB DVD discs has been unofficially called BD5. Both formats (BD9 and BD5) are being used by individual users for recording high definition content onto recordable DVD media.[112][113]

Despite that BD9 format has been adopted as part of the BD-ROM basic format, none of existing Blu-Ray player models supports it explicitly. As such, the discs recorded in BD9 and BD5 formats are not guaranteed to be played on standard Blu-Ray Disc players” — Wikipedia-Blu-Ray Disc

As it stands, typically NOT.

Furthermore, I’ve discovered that not all recordable media are created equal. A lot of users have had real problems with Memorex DVD Media. I have a stack of coasters to attest to that. The cost or brand of recordable media seem to have little to do with quality of the discs.

So at this point I am throwing up the hands, and like a professional that I am, sought the help of other pros. I started looking into Video Production Houses in my region to see about having my finished content authored into something playable on my client’s gear.

The trip was not over. One company’s web site looked promising, but after browsing I could find NO PHONE NUMBER, NO ADDRESS, NO E-MAIL ADDRESS or even a contact page. Well, what the FRAK is up with that? I was able to look them up with Google… but if they don’t want to be contacted. Fine with Me. And this could be a whole separate (less polite) rant.

Two other outfits that were quite sympathetic to my situation actually had to turn down my project. Blu-ray was too new, too finicky, and they just didn’t have the gear and the capability. One Helpful Local Outfit looked at my material was able to refer me to the Big Important Video Producer that could assist me.

Which was how I got an inkling of how difficult a format Blu-ray was. To create – encode and author a single disc would cost in the hundreds of dollars. Additional discs need to be individually encoded, over a hundred dollars EACH. Which may be one reason why the Studios chose Blu-Ray over HD-DVD – very difficult to duplicate.

After all this, the client and I agreed that the way to do it would be to connect a PC to the big lobby screen and run the Digital version of the video to the screen.

So while this digital drama plays out, and I wait to get paid, some observations. Amazing things have happened in the world of Digital Video, but we’re obviously not there yet. Eventually, the big tech players, The studios, gear manufacturers, computer makers and software developers will stop trying to STAB each other and get around the big table and decide what’s going to be what with Blu-ray. Equipment and software will become more capable and grow more affordable. Media compatibility hopefully will improve. As HD  content, and consumer acceptance, gains traction, the demand for the ability to create and deliver HD content on the Personal Computer will only grow. And the tech companies will surely respond. At the end of the day, they can usually be relied on to try and follow the money.

Sometimes that works out for both content creators and consumers.

LINKS & RESOURCES

Blu-Ray Disc Format
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/14/steve-jobs-calls-blu-ray-a-bag-of-hurt/
http://theappleblog.com/2009/08/04/will-apple-ever-support-blu-ray/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray
http://apcmag.com/analysis_no_bluray_on_macs_and_nobody_cares.htm

Video Production Houses
Ascent Media
RDP Video Producti0ons

Roxio Toast

http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/default.html

Apple Video Applications
www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/
www.apple.com/ilife/idvd/
www.apple.com/finalcutexpress

Sharp AQUOS
www.sharpusa.com/ForHome/HomeEntertainment/LCDTVs.aspx
www.sharpusa.com/ForHome/HomeEntertainment/BluRayDisc.aspx

HTML code in Text Wrangler. Want a piece of this action?

Hello everyone who may or not be paying attention.

I know it’s been a while but I was a bit distracted by some very consuming system issues with my workstation. But that cautionary tale is a subject for another post. Seriously. Cautionary. Tale. But not now.

One of the requests that I often get from clients is that they want to know how to do simple revisions and update their web site content for themselves. Of course they are concerned in this difficult economy about paying my fair, but non-trivial designer’s rate for what might be a trivial update or minor correction. I do have a minimum quarter hour charge. Which is seriously, just about how long it takes to read the email, take the call, jot a note or two, fire up Dreamweaver or a text editor, an FTP client, log into the hosting provider’s Control Panel, upload the fix, revision or update and then log it on the timesheet. So I do see their point. Or you might just want more control of your own content.

Let me diverge for a moment, and mention that there are do-it-yourself options out there if your needs and design requirements are relatively straightforward. Many of the Hosting providers out there have relatively simple, template based, drop-in-your-content web site plans, such as GoDaddy’s “Web Site Tonight” feature. There are also services like Microsoft’s FrontPage, Apple’s iWeb, and Yahoo’s Small Business Web Sites… etc. But these ARE template based sites and they can be perfectly adequate, but they’ll look like a LOT of other sites out there without a lot of distinction.

Another approach is to construct a web presence around a blog, either through your hosting provider and your own domain, or use one of the well rounded services such as WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Live Journal and the like.

But if you’re working with someone like me, you’re probably wanting something more custom designed and distinctive in the first place; really marrying your branding and message to the site design. You might want to have more complex functionality or technology on your site. Perfectly fair, and how I make a respectable chunk of my livelihood. But you might not want to bug me about changing one paragraph in your Mission Statement, or correcting a misspelling in your bio. Or you’d like to toss up a news item, and I am off in a tent in the woods that week, or buried with other client’s projects at that moment. Hey, it could happen.

Anyway, there are three general approaches to getting into the guts of your site.

Learn Web Coding

The first is the cheapest, since it can be done with any text editor and an FTP client. That would be litreally learning enough HTML and web tech to actually edit the underlying code of your web pages and upload the changed pages back to the hosting server. As you can imagine, this does imply the heaviest learning curve. And of course, depending on just how intricate the site’s design is, getting into the designer’s code could be problematical. If you’re not careful and meticulous, its real easy to break stuff. And then you’ll be calling your Webmaster or Designer and tossing a bit more than a quarter hour for cleanups. Of course with more modern coding techniques, particularly CSS, and XML, sites can be much more modular and the site’s content and its design can be separated. This makes updates and revisions much less tedious.

Use Web Access Software

Another approach is to use an end-client piece of software that allows users to access the site from their own computers, and make their edits in a more understandable format. One example is Adobe Contribute. This application allows access to a web site, but also lets the Designer/Webmaster restrict access to parts of the site that ought to not be messed with. The application even allows users to generate new pages and links, upload images and documents, while maintaining the site design and structure. Different users can be assigned different roles and levels of access. The interface is similar to Microsoft Word, so it’s a familiar way to work and training is much simpler.

This approach is a bit more costly, as you have to buy specialty software, and it requires the Site Designer to set up the site for access. There is also some training time involved, but not as much as learning full blown web coding. A mid-line solution for moderately complex sites, and reasonably tech-comfortable users.

Use a Content Management System

For more sophisticated sites, or for dead simple access, or both, is the use of a Content Management System. Using a CMS, the end user typically has a web based interface to add or modify content on their site. The software keeps the design elements and the content separated, and the user content is stored in a database on the server. This is the most costly up-front approach, as the site has to be configured from the ground up to use the technology, and set-up is more involved than a basic HTML, XHTML and CSS, site.  All the back end software is stored on the hosting server, and all the user needs is a web browser and the access credentials. This can be a very attractive solution where there is a lot of time sensitive or dynamic content, and the site gets frequent updates.

More and more, business sites are using CMS technology and more hosting providers are offering open source Web Application Software to Web Developers and Webmasters as part of their hosting packages. It does take more than a bit of specialty skill to set up, but once in place, can be very effective and easy to maintain. The initial cost may be a bit more than a basic HTML or CSS based site, but maintenance and updates can be cheaper over time. If you have a shopping cart or an e-commerce site, this is a form of Content Management, with software running on the web server tracking buyers, products, transactions.

However, none of the above typically allow the end user to significantly revise or alter the site design or graphic style. That type of work would require the re-involvement of the Web Designer and Developers. Of course, if you had that skill set, you would BE the web Designer or Developer, and you would already know this.

Still the whole point of hiring graphic or technical professionals is to free up your time to focus on your own particular vocation or specialty, and let us do our thing for you.

Next time, losing the works.  I hope I don’t keep you waiting so long for that one, its frakkin’ crazed…

Stufz (Resources):

GoDaddy Web Site Tonight:
http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/website-builder.aspx

Microsoft FrontPage:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/default.aspx

Apple iWeb: http://www.apple.com/ilife/iweb/

Yahoo Small Business Web Sites:
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/

WordPress: http://wordpress.com/

Blogger/Blogspot : https://www.blogger.com/start

TypePad: http://www.typepad.com/

Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/

Adobe Contribute: http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/

Wikipedia: Web Content Management System:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system

Open Source Applications at Godaddy:

http://hostingconnection.godaddy.com/AllApplications.aspx

(Crikey! I’m not even sure what all this stuff does… )