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Adobe is transitioning from Revel app for Devices

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Today, Adobe released the announcement that the free Adobe Revel app for devices is being replaced with the Adobe Lightroom App. While the device app is free to use, it’s suggested use is with the Adobe Creative Cloud (for which, I understand, the price will be going up next year), or with the Photoshop/Lightroom CC subscription.

If you’re a user of Adobe Revel, please be sure to download your photos from your device and your Revel Cloud space prior to the switchover in February.

Here’s Adobe’s message:
This is a friendly reminder that Adobe Revel will no longer be available after February 23, 2016. This is the last day you’ll be able to sign in to the Revel app or access your photos and videos.
Members tell us that the Creative Cloud Photography plan — which includes access to Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC — is the best solution for organizing, editing and sharing their images. Lightroom works on your iOS and Android mobile devices, so you can access all your images anywhere you are — just as you could with Revel.
To get started with the Creative Cloud Photography plan, download your Revel photos and videos and import them into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
If you used Revel exclusively on your mobile device and still have copies of your files in your camera roll or gallery, download Lightroom for mobile to get started.
If you no longer have copies of your Revel files on your device, use our Download tool to download them to your computer.

No More ROBOCALLS!

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I wanted to thank my friend, Lora? for introducing me to NoMoRobo.com. This free service blocks robocalls – and I get a TON of those – and I HATE them! I signed up for the service on Thursday (it’s limited as to who has access to the service – mostly VOIP and Digital Phone accounts – no cellular or landline holders – I have FiOS Digital Voice). The only notification you get is that the phone rings once, then stops ringing.

Of course, I was concerned that it might be blocking legit calls, but I’ve checked Fios, and all the calls seem to be real junk.

I haven’t yet checked if it’s gonna block things like Kaiser’s machine calls, but in my comments here, I’m going to attach a link to an article that talks about the technology behind the service. I feel confident that this is gonna work just fine. Check them out! They’re FREE!

Adobe is discontinuing it’s Edge Tools

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According to an Adobe Blog, Adobe is about to cease support and updates for it’s Edge tools, including Edge Reflow, Edge Inspect, and Edge Animate. Some of their functionality will be implemented within Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Muse – and will also be covered in Adobe’s upcoming Flash Pro replacement, Adobe Animate – which is due out in January.

Creative Cloud members cans till download and use the Edge products, , and security updates will still be implemented

Please see their original blog post at: http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/update-about-edge-tools-and-services/

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.