Big-time Prints

I’ve got a fairly capable printer at home, an HP Photosmart that can handle up to 19” prints. But sometimes you just want to go bigger - and maybe try something totally different.

Try outsourcing the job to mpix.com next time you need an enlargement. I’ve sent them several print jobs, and have been very impressed with the quality and turnaround each time. The prices seem reasonable, too. (BTW I get no compensation from mpix).

I’ve been getting the Gallery Wraps, which are just gorgeous. Your photo is printed onto canvas, and the canvas is stretched over a wooden frame. The image wraps around the edges of the 1.5”-deep frame, and the resulting three dimensional look is sweet. They come with thick black cardboard backs with hanging hardware already installed. You can literally pull these out of the shipping carton and put them right on your wall. A few readers of this blog have seen the results and can attest to the quality.

The mpix system works like many other online photo processors - you set up an account, upload your photos, and choose formats and sizes. Their online cropping tool works pretty well, and for the Gallery Wraps you get a preview of how the wrap affects the main image.

Now, for printing big 20x30” canvas wraps, you’ve gotta have a pretty substantial image to work with. 7 megapixel images are not going to cut it. In fact, some order sizes are greyed-out if your image is too small.

Also, you’ll have to know a bit about your color setup for best results. mpix uses, as most online processors do, the sRGB color space. I exported my images at 250 dpi, with no downward scaling, and selected the “Do not color manage” option on the order. That's a bit risky if you're not totally sure about your software and monitor calibration, because mpix will not refund a print that doesn't come out right if you elect to skip color management. How you size and crop these is important, too.

And, of course, you gotta have an image worthy of printing at this size and cost. That part, I can't help you with in this blog.

Anyways, give it a try the next time you need to go big-time.

Do you have a favorite online source for print processing? Share your findings here by responding to this post.

RapidWeaver 4 coming soon

Ars.technica recently wrote a very promising preview of Realmac Software’s RapidWeaver application, a graphical Web page editing program. I spent a fair amount of time using Rapidweaver 3. It's pretty good, but not quite there yet because of some major annoyances . RapidWeaver 4 looks like it’s gonna up the ante with some great improvements. It'll be out for beta testing within the next month or so. Realmac hasn't released an official launch date yet.

RapidWeaver is a very visually-oriented, drag-and-drop sort of Web page creation program. Who is it for? Well, it’s more advanced than iWeb, but not as advanced as Dreamweaver, if that helps. It has much more of a focus on blogging than any other development app I’ve tried; indeed, its site templates are based around the assumption that blog posts will be the meat on your site’s dinner table.

Of course you can “go under the hood” if you want and do the real HTML geek stuff, but mainly it’s for quickly and easily creating, maintaining, and uploading template-based sites.

The templates are nice, too, and there are plenty of Realmac as well as third party theme packs you can purchase. And there are almost 400 "Add-ons" which supposedly let you easily drag-and-drop more advancd features into your site. Haven't tried those. A lot of Mac software developers use RapidWeaver templates on their own sites.

It’s not available for download yet, but when it is I’ll give it a try and let you know. I'd hold off buying RapidWeaver 3 unless they offer a substantial discount on version 4.

Gmail is a very useful web app

I know, I haven’t posted any blog entries in a while. Been busy like crazy with projects, and this time of year it’s even harder with the start of our Little League team and also all the yard work that has to be done early spring. At least tax season is behind us.

Anyway, let’s see...what’s the latest tech tip I can share with you? The coolest thing I’ve tried lately is Gmail’s

Here’s how I have mine set up. I’ve got Gmail configured to check my main two accounts via POP3, BUT leave messages on the server. That’s an important option, because that way messages will still download to my “main” tower system at home. If I didn’t tell Gmail to leave messages on the server, Gmail would download and remove them and they’d be unavailable to me on my main computer. That would be bad.

Gmail has lots of useful options for this, too - such as the ability to respond to somebody using the address they sent to originally. This cuts back on the confusion that can happen when somebody who emails you at one particular address and gets a reply from another. If you email me at vin@keystonewebs.com and I reply through Gmail, it should appear to come from keystonewebs.com.

Other Office-ey features include an address book, which you can populate from your Mac’s address book in a variety of ways, integration with Google calendar, and integration with Google Documents.

Oh, and it even has an out of office function which, after the next few hectic months, I’ll be ready to use when I take my vacation!

If you’re an email power user with multiple accounts, which you need to access from various locations while still preserving a “master” account somewhere,
Gmail is the way to go. It’s (naturally) free.

Oh geesh, I almost forgot the best thing about using Gmail this way - the iPhone! Gmail’s web interface on the iPhone is WAAAAY better, IMHO, than the dedicated mail app. multiple account features. This is the closest thing to Exchange functionality with Exchange and the expense it involved. If you’ve got multiple email accounts and struggle to find a way to access those accounts from multiple computers (from a remote office, or friend’s house, or wireless hotspot), this is the way to do it.

Making Dashboard Widgets from Web Pages

OK, I admit I’ve been a little harsh with Leopard lately. Hatin’ on it, even. It’s just that Apple set such a high bar with Tiger. And there are just enough small annoyances to really sour me while overlooking some of the nifty new things which, yes, I’d miss if I reverted to Tiger. So, I thought maybe I should focus on some positive things once in a while.

Here’s something really neat you can do with Leopard - turn any portion of a web page into your very own Dashboard widget.

If you’ve not used Dashboard widgets before, they’re kinda like mini-applications that you can have pop-up on your desktop whenever you want. They’re not programs in the traditional sense of the word, with menus and file saving and so forth. Rather, they’re single-purpose little gadgets with limited configuration options. The weather widget, for example, lets you put in your location by zip code, and that’s it. I use the following widgets: weather (duh), the Converter (which lets you convert currencies, weight, speed, temperature, time and other units - very useful), an iTunes controller, and a neat little timer which is handy for keeping track of freelance work. Oh, and the Guitar Chords widget. There are also some fun little game widgets. Apple’s site has tons of free ones you can download. While getting this link to the download page for ya, I saw a new widget called “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Countdown.” It does exactly what it says.

Widgets have been around since 10.4. But with 10.5, you can now roll your own Dashboard widgets from Web pages. You gotta use Safari, of course. But basically, it’s as easy as surfing to a page, selecting part of it, and telling Safari to widget-ize it. Apple calls it “Web Clips.”

This is most useful for pages that display the same type of information in the same location each time. I created one for my Cook Forest Online Webcam page, for example. I know that the Webcam’s current photo is always shown on the same page, at the same location. After turning it into a widget, I don’t need to fire up Safari and visit the Web page to see the most recent photo. I can just invoke Dashboard, and there’s the latest Webcam image displayed in my very own widget.

Setting up the Web Clip to become a widget:



What this Web page looks like in widget-format, along with other widgets on my desktop:



Other uses might include stock ticker areas, “picture of the day” web pages, headline areas, and so forth. Here’s Apple’s description:

“Now you can turn any web page into a Dashboard widget. Click the Web Clip button next to the address field in Safari and select exactly what you want your new widget to display. Then click Add, and Safari sends your Web Clip widget to Dashboard, where you can view it alongside your other widgets. You can even customize its border using built-in styles on the back of the widget. Your Web Clip widget is “live” and will update as frequently as the page from which it came.”

If you don’t have the Web Clip button showing in Safari, go to the File / Open in Dashbord menu to do the same. The Web Clip button doesn’t show for me, for some reason; I don’t remember ever turning it off or anything.

There you have it. If you’ve never really messed around with widgets, then you probably won’t understand the value of Web Clips. But now you’ve got some new stuff to try out. What are you waiting for? Go geek out awhile!

Phishing, Spam Increase. Sigh.

Holy cow has spam been annoying lately. Don’t know about you, but mine’s up by at least 10%. I’m seeing a lot of phishing-based spam, too - the kind that tries to get you to “update your account info now.” Today I’ve seen three or four claiming to be from Wells Fargo.

Yes, Wells Fargo is ever-so-nice and helpful, giving me this chance to help them “ensure the integrity and security of our online banking system.” The email claims that they tried to contact me by phone, but were unable to - hence this convenient email with a link to my account information. You know, just so I can review it and make sure it is right.

I think I’ve touched on this before, but one can never be too careful. First, banks and doctors and insurance companies and so forth will almost never, ever communicate with you this way. If there is something to be updated, you’ll probably learn of it via your postal mail communications (a note on your bill or statement, for example) or AFTER logging into their online system. Also, typos and strange grammar are dead-giveaways. Finally - check out the full message header and see where the email really comes from. In Apple Mail, select the message from your message list and then go to View / Message / Long Headers.

I didn’t even need to do that for this Wells Fargo spam/phish. The perp didn’t even bother changing the “Reply To,” which is arbitrary and set to anything you like. It’s “akstcabcaccountancymnsdgs@abcaccountancy.nl” - pretty far removed from WellsFargo.com, don’t you think?

Finally, keep in mind that a lot of times phishers and spammers will use what's called "social engineering" to try to get you to do unsafe things online. This time of year, we're likely to see a lot of fake emails claiming to be from the IRS. Don't buy it.