Author Archives: aym4t

About Apple and Mobile Ad Blocking

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On LinkedIn, I read an interesting editorial piece about Apple’s encouragement of developers to enable ad-blocking for their mobile apps. It’s really quite worth the read, whether you’re an Android user or an iPhone user, content advertising takes up great amounts of space on our smaller devices, are often hard to dismiss, and if you’re zoomed in, might leave you stuck with no access to the option to close it. Annoying!

According to this article, Apple’s fight against enabling ad blocking from within content reading apps means “Publishers are screwed. – Google is really screwed. – Consumers win. – Apple really wins.”

I agree with all but the idea that consumers really win. You see, Apple hopes that this will move publishers to use their iDevice NEWS app, to make up for the loss in income from the advertising. Apple has found a new way to monetize, and this time, the focus is the news. So, the “Consumers win.” quote may depend on what kind of consumer one is. If a person really wants to read the news under this new model, they’d have to pay a fee to view the news in their app – perhaps a subscription fee (isn’t EVERYTHING going to monthly payments, nowadays?!)

As a person who reads The LA Times, what I’ve been stuck with is the option to pay a bundle of money every month to view just the online version, or pay a smaller amount each month, but be forced to receive a printed paper (at least I can just stick to Sunday) – but online viewing comes with that fee! The idea is – they want to ensure that I get those advertisements!

So, under Apple’s new model, a news consumer like me – one who doesn’t want to pay a subscription to read additional content, I wouldn’t be happy paying through iTunes to read a paper with no ads. I’ll deal with the ads, so I can occasionally read a variety of news sources and periodicals – if I can deal with those ads for free.

What do you think? Would you rather pay a subscription to view your periodical and news content online, or would you rather dismiss ads for free?

The editorial worth reading: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/apples-brilliant-assault-advertising-google-jason-calacanis

 

 

 

Adobe is Severely Limiting it’s Font Installations

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In a recent article on InDesign Secrets, I can finally find the reason why so many of my InDesign classes have been having font errors when using files from the Adobe courseware. It seems that InDesign – and all of the Adobe programs, for that matter, are no longer installing the fonts that used to come with the programs! I’ve been using Adobe programs for too many  years than I want to count, so of course, I have the fonts installed, but so many of my students are downloading demo software for their classes, and work in an environment with security limitations, so they can’t easily access Adobe’s Typekit (part of the Creative Cloud suite).

In my opinion, this is a terrible move on Adobe’s part, and I can’t quite figure out why they’re choosing to do it. Over the years, I’ve seen Adobe seemingly losing touch with their users in quite a few ways, but in software that’s ABOUT design, I can’t imagine what they’re thinking.

To view the post on InDesignSecrets.com, please visit http://indesignsecrets.com/adobe-drops-fonts-leaves-users-stranded.php

There’s an earlier article about the issue here: http://indesignsecrets.com/happened-fonts-indesign.php   (which includes a work-around)

And, for a list of the fonts originally installed, and mostly still necessary, please see Adobe’s article here: http://www.adobe.com/products/type/creative-suite-6-installed-fonts.html

As for me, I’ve backed up ALL of my installed fonts into a directory I use for my font management program. I suggest you do the same. If you’d like instructions for doing so, please comment on this post.

 

Good deal on Adobe Training Videos by TrainSimple

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I’m not usually one to suggest people learn from others, considering Adobe Training is what I do – but I firmly believe that giving students ideas for supplemental learning can always help them to practice what I teach and help to embed the information they learn in my classes.

So, I thought sharing a deal on a lifetime subscription to TrainSimple’s Adobe Training might be helpful to those who want reference information, and ways to practice what I teach. Take a look at this deal – good ONLY today!

https://deals.cultofmac.com/sales/lifetime-of-train-simple-adobe-training

27 Useful Design Tips

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For my design and typography students, here’s a really nice blog with some tips and ideas to improve your feel for good design, good use of typography, and maybe provide some inspiration.

http://digitalsynopsis.com/design/beautiful-illustrated-graphic-designer-tips/

Unlimited Cloud Backup – $50/year

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It happened. My backup hard drive used for my daily backup died. It was one of those 4TB MyBooks, that is made up of a RAID of 2, 2TB disks. On that SAME day, I had to teach an online class, which often somehow screws up my Time Machine (which takes ages to fix, but is doable, and got done). BUT, I still felt my data was safe in the event of a serious problem because I’d just renewed my subscription (I’d gotten an initial free 3 month trial) for BackBlaze. I figured that having ALL my other work data on the cloud for only $50/year wasn’t a bad idea – and indeed it wasn’t!

BackBlaze doesn’t back up my operating system, applications or parts of my user folder, but I have several other terabytes of data that sits on my startup and other connected drives. I live in earthquake country and my office electrical is… let’s say… overloaded. I was given a gift of a new 4TB multi-interface replacement backup drive so I can have my local backup again (nice gift, right?)- AND I ALWAYS HAVE A SEPARATE LOCAL CLONED BACKUP OF MY STARTUP DRIVE – but for $50 I had peace of mind – and that’s a great thing!

Check them out at www.BackBlaze.com.

BACKUP – automatically to the Cloud

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BACKUP!!!

So, you guys know I’m very neurotic about backing up my files, and I found this service that gives you unlimited space for automatic backups – IN THE CLOUD!

I have dual hard drive backups in my home office, PLUS a separate backup for my startup drive. But living in SoCal, with earthquakes, I’ve always been concerned about earthquake damage hurting my backups, leaving me with nothing.

Recently, I discovered BackBlaze.com. for $50/year, they offer unlimited space for backups, allow the backup of external drives, retain backups for 30 days, and will back up almost everything (system files and Applications won’t get backed up). I have 4 internal drives and several externals. All of my media (photos, videos, and even the files created as temporary files for my video editing), all of my office work files, personal files – and it’s safe and encrypted. All offsite, and all for $50! There isn’t a limit on file size, either – so my largest multi-gig files can be uploaded. It’s not exceptionally speedy, but I can even control the speed of the backups.

I highly recommend checking them out at BackBlaze.com.

Net Safety on Public WiFi

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CNET has published an excellent article on Web Safety when you’re out and about with your laptop or devices and using a public WiFi station. There are some pretty big risks that people might access and steal your data, your private logins and your identity information (including credit card numbers and passwords).

Check out their article at:
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/tips-to-stay-safe-on-public-wi-fi/

Everything Got Hacked

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Hi guys. My entire website got hacked, so I’m recreating everything from the basics (at least, all the stuff that uses WordPress). This is a test of the app that lets my posts go to my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Lesson is – if you use WordPress for anything (I use it for blogs only, right now), UPDATE often! Especially plugins!

Adobe Premiere Pro CC to include MorphCut

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Adobe Premiere Pro CC to include MorphCut – There’s something with the potential for greatness coming to the new Adobe Premiere Pro. In the right hands, this can be used for smoothing edits between different portions of a continuous clip, without having to cut over to a B roll, making (interviews in particular) edits cleaner and fixing a potential slew of problems.
My worry is what it’s going to do in the wrong hands. For example, the hands of politicians, news media, unscrupulous attorneys…
Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6wPUtKg-Ac

New Adobe Character Animation Application Shown at NAB

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At the NAB Conference from April 11th to April 16th, Adobe announced a new app, coming to Adobe Creative Cloud members.

Adobe Character Animator does just what it says it will do. You can use pre-created characters that appear to come with the app, or you can create your characters using Photoshop or Illustrator and animate them. I believe I’m initially most impressed with the facial recognition and animation activation, which takes prompts directly from your webcam.

Of course, version 1 of anything will have it’s issues – but this looks really promising!!!

http://www.rgbhq.com/nab-2015-adobe-character-animator-preview/