Info Adept
My name is Laura Blalock. I have a Master’s in Information Science, which I use to build websites with Web Standards. I specialize in small businesses, working one on one and non-profits, giving them websites to help them fulfill their dreams.
My name is Laura Blalock. I have a Master's in Information Science, which I use working one on one with small businesses and non-profits, giving them websites to help them fulfill their dreams.
Latest Articles
What I learned about design from Iron Chef
15 February 2009
Yes I am one of the many geeky Iron Chef fans. I loved the original and I love the American version as well. It only hit me tonight though, the may things I had learned from a mere tv show that ca be applied to my own, non-culinary pursuits.
Have a plan
They may not know what the specific ingredient is going to be but they obviously have a plan going in.The secret ingredient is revealed and they go straight to work. The plans have to have some flexibility to account for the unexpected, but you never see anyone asking what they should be doing.
Work now, play later
When they go to work, they are all work. There is very little goofing around until the bell rings and it's all over. Which doesn't mean it's joyless, these are people doing what they love best. There's plenty of celebrating after but the work is their first priority
Stop and look at what you've got
You see them tasting things constantly, checking the seasoning and the doneness. Recently I was creating artwork for a project and was very unhappy with it. I had the luxury of time so I went to something else and came back later. To my surprise, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had thought.
Get opinions
Countless times I've seen sous chefs ask the head chef to taste something. Sometimes you don't have the time or simply can't step far away enough from what you are working on to evaluate it objectively.
It's in the details
Every teacher I've had in art school has told me this numerous times. But nothing has gotten it through to me like watching an ingredient that was little more than a decoration be delicately cooked in wine and carefully placed just so with instruments that looked like tweezers.
Don't be afraid to start over
Something else you see often is chefs unhappy with the way a dish is working just throwing out everything and starting from scratch. Despite the time constraints they're under, they won't turn in something less than their best work.
I'm sure there are many more lessons to be gotten from watching masters apply their art. I'd love to hear things others have picked up on.
How to Succeed Marketing to Generation “G”
09 February 2009
How to Succeed Marketing to Generation “G” — Copyblogger
There’s a brand new generation for online marketers to adapt to.
This time, however, the generation is not defined by date of birth. This generation is defined by repulsion at the corporate and political greed that has plummeted much of the world into economic doldrums.
In other words, Generation “G” is all about generosity and sickened by greed.
I don't intend to make this a link blog but this particular article is particularly pertinent. I see this very attitude all around me at school and with my friends.
My favorite iPhone Apps
28 November 2008
Thanksgiving and I finally have a break from school and time to work on other projects.
- Evernote is my external brain. There is a desktop app for Mac or PC, an iPhone app and a web app that all sync automatically. There's even a Thunderbird extension that sends things to your account. Text, audio, or photo. It's searchable, taggable and has categories.
- Bookshelf is an e-book reader specifically for iPhone and the iPod Touch. It supports a lot of file formats (no DRM), including all my MobiPocket formatted files from Webscription.net. The best part is the customization options. There are a number of color themes and you can set the font and the size for what is easiest to read for you.
Any time I mention e-books, someone goes "But I like paper". I like paper too but paper is heavy and bulky to carry around. I can fit a dozen books on my phone, which is backlit for low-light situations and always have something to read when I have to wait. Plus, with Webscription.net's free library and low prices I can save money and a tree.
- Mah Jong is an old favorite game of mine and Moonlight is the best execution of it for the iPhone. There are several layouts and a free as well as a pay version.
- Sudoku is popular all over these days and Big Bang's web version for the iPhone was the most popular option. The installable version is still good, though there are a couple of changes I would like.
- Yes I'm a Twitter addict. All my friends are too so it works out to help us keep up with each other. I've tried several different Twitter clients for the iPhone, including Twitterific which is my desktop client but I've only fallen in love with Tweetie. It loads quickly (moreso than the website) and gives you access to all the normal Twitter functions.
There are lots more great apps and I'd love to hear your favorites.
Testing
26 July 2008
I have an iphone so I'm trying the wordpress app.
**Edit**
Interesting that it had no problems posting here yet I haven't been able to post to my personal blog. Something about an invalid id. I also find posting a little unintuitive. Instead of a publish button, you change the status to published and then save. I know that's how the software works but I was still looking for the "Post" link.
40 Free and Cheap Stock Photo Sites to Punch Up Your Blog Posts
29 February 2008
It's a common rule of thumb that using images as part of your blog posts helps draw attention to them and illustrate what you're saying. Finding and creating these pictures can be difficult if you aren't a photographer but there are plenty of places on the Internet where people are sharing their own photos for free or low prices. You have to watch the Terms of Use though, particularly if you are selling the article.
- http://istockphoto.com
- http://sxc.hu/
- http://www.stockxpert.com/
- http://www.bigstockphoto.com/
- http://www.imagecatalog.com/
- http://www.photostockplus.com/
- http://us.fotolia.com/
- http://www.openphoto.net/
- http://powstock.com/
- http://www.freerangestock.com/
- http://www.unprofound.com
- http://www.freemediagoo.com/
- http://www.stockvault.net/
- http://www.luckyoliver.com/
- http://www.everystockphoto.com/
- http://www.burningwell.org/
- http://yotophoto.com/
- http://canstockphoto.com/
- http://www.pixelperfectdigital.com/free_stock_photos/
- http://dreamstime.com/
- http://bluevertigo.com.ar
- http://www.imageafter.com/
- http://www.cwd.dk
- http://www.designersdepot.com
- http://www.linkdup.com
- http://freefoto.com
- http://www.freephotosbank.com/
- http://www.photocase.com/en/
- http://majesticimagery.com/
- http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
- http://davidniblack.com/imagebase/
- http://www.nationsillustrated.com/
- http://freelargephotos.com
- http://www.creatingonline.com/stock_photos/
- http://free-stockphotos.com/
- http://aarinfreephoto.com/
- http://www.freephotos.com/
- http://www.freeimages.co.uk/
- http://freestockphotos.com/
- http://nypl.org/digital/collections_images.html
Second Life as a design outlet
27 February 2008
A number of graphic designers have successfully converted their expertise into Second Life businesses. Everything made in Second Life relies on textures… pictures made in an image program like Photoshop… to not only make it look like what the creator wants it to be but to give it depth and reality. So an orb becomes a basketball and an undershirt becomes a tattoo.
Because of the ease of entry (software-Gimp is free, upload fees-10L each, 400L for $1, and time), Second Life has a thriving home-grown fashion market. There are people making a living just making virtual doll-clothes and accessories.
Real world fashion businesses are taking notice of the money and interest being spent by this circle of fans and are coming into Second Life to create a presence for advertising purposes- and are not doing well.
The most memorable of these is none other than Armani. When Armani announced that they were building an in world store there was great deal of anticipation. They hired a good, experienced builder and got a nice store but apparently left the creation of their items (only 10) to their regular designers who presumably didn't have the time to really learn the built-in Second Life tools. The result is a too small collection that the very people Armani was hoping to attract took one look at and said I can get twice the quality at a third of the price.
They aren't the only ones though. A famous athletic shoe retailer created a "build your own" factory that doesn't see much use because the resulting shoes take up too much computer and server resources to render.
American Apparel has a store as well. They at least have more than 10 items and what they have is ok but when you're options include a leather trench coat and being a dalek, very plain colored t-shirts and khakis don't have much appeal. It's also a well-documented effect that you have to release new items regularly to keep traffic (and sales) up, which American Apparel has never done.
Doing it Right
There have been successful transitions. Most notable is a canadian couture designer named Nyla who has a set of shops where she has taken her real creations and remade them in Second Life. Because she took the time to learn the tools and the customer base her products are excellent quality and well-priced while still remaining in her style.
The japanese also have good ideas about in-world advertising. Treasure hunts for freebies are always popular and the word of mouth affect is very strong in Second Life.
Now that IBM has given a demonstration at the National Retail Federation on using Second Life for prototyping, there may be more mainstream fashion companies coming into Second Life but independents who can devote the time to learning the environment will still have the advantage for quite a while.
Help on learning to use the Second Life templates, scripting language and building blocks can be found on the forums. Marketing guidance can be found here.
Research on the Web
20 February 2008
The Internet is a decent place to do research these days. The idea that "everything is online" is still not true but it becomes more so every day. The problem for everyone is that much of this information costs a lot of money to access for large institutions much less small organizations. Help is often available in the form of the public library. Tennessee has a project called the Tennessee Electronic Library, which provides access to a number of databases for any Tennessee resident through their school or public library.
There is plenty online for free though.
- For instance many government departments have websites ending in the .gov domain. Useful at this time of year is IRS.gov where you can download the forms or fill out a free electronic submission form (you can't have made more than $54,000 to use Free File though). They also have information meant to make filing your taxes easier and a "Where's my Refund?" system.
- The first and fastest growing area of free information is medical. Pubmed.gov is the government's free portal to its database of medical journal articles (Medline). Medline is the foremost database of medical citations in the world. These are the articles written by scientists and doctors for other scientists and doctors, where they publish drug trial data you hear about in commercials. Doctors like PubMed because they can get into it anywhere. It can be difficult to understand for those without a medical degree though. MedlinePlus.gov is produced by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine. Searching it gives results in journals, medical dictionaries, encyclopedias and selected websites.
- The New York Public Library has posted an extensive Digital Gallery of scanned images that are free for noncommercial use.
- The American Kennel Club (AKC)'s website is a font of information for prospective and current dog owners including a directory of breeds and a list of registered breeders.
- Open Vault: WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) provides online access to materials produced by WGBH public television station. The database currently houses more than 50,000 audio, video, and film masters.
- TRIS (Transportation Research Information Services) is a comprehensive source for published transportation research on the Web from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Transportation Research Board.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
- Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain. Launched in 2006, Open J-Gate is the contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd to promote OAI. Open J-Gate provides seamless access to millions of journal articles available online.
- In 2003, PLoS (Public Library of Science) launched a nonprofit scientific and medical publishing venture that provides scientists and physicians with high-quality, high-profile journals in which to publish their most important work, while making the full contents freely available for anyone to read, distribute, or use for their own research. The PLoS journals are run by professional editors, trained scientists, and physicians, in close collaboration with editorial boards. Papers published in these journals are peer reviewed using a uniquely consultative process between editors and experts in their field, and are produced to the highest editorial and production standards. Under the open access model, PLoS makes all published works immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use, as long as the author(s) and source are cited.
- AGRICOLA is like Medline but for all aspects of agriculture, including nutrition and veterinary science. Unfortunately, it's also the National Agriculture Library's catalog so you have to be aware of whether you're searching the books or the journal articles.
There are free sources for pretty much any subject, you just have to be careful that they are reliable sources. .edu and .gov domains tend to be good indicators
A NewsGator System Review
13 February 2008
Newsgator has released all of it's individual products for free. This was quite a surprise as they were/are among the leading desktop applications for reading RSS feeds for both Macs and Windows computers. However, they explained clearly that most of their money is being made from business licenses, so the more individual desktops they can control, the likelier their products will be chosen when the corporation starts looking for an overall solution. Also, they'll be collecting "attention data."
If there is a specific feed you love, and you’re constantly emailing its articles to friends or saving articles in your clippings, that’s interesting…and if there are a lot of people doing this, it’s probably a good indicator about the “relevancy” of that content for other users. Similar with individual articles that are getting a lot of attention from users. Basically, by using your data, in combination with aggregate data from other users, we can deliver a better experience for everyone. And that’s a good thing - both for us and for you.
Greg Reinacker
Sounds like Google's relevancy algorithm.
In addition to the desktop software, they've also given free access to the web-based service (NewsGator Online) and the mobile service (NewsGator Go! & HTML mobile reader), all of which sync to each other so that a feed added to or read on one is automatically updated on the others.
NetNewsWire
I started by exporting my list of feeds from my current feed reader Google Reader, and importing it into NetNewsWire, the Mac desktop software. The import went well and I spent quite a while reorganizing my feeds (It seems there is no folder tag in the standard so this happens every time I change readers.).
The software itself is a joy to use, very intuitive with keyboard shortcuts for those of us who feel more efficient using them and fairly extensive preferences for customization. Along with the normal options to flag, email and open the item in a browser are a link to the desktop editor of the user's choice for heavy bloggers and plenty of social web options. Though with the exception of flagging, all of these operations require immediate Internet access. There is no setting it up to be done later as you might wish on an airplane.
NewsGator Online
On quitting or exiting the program it synchs it's settings with the online and the mobile reader. Here I was disappointed to see that all the careful organizational work I had done in the desktop client hadn't been transferred over. I know many people don't bother using folders but I do use it extensively to help triage the information coming through my 370 subscriptions. I understood why my folders were lost moving from one system to another but shouldn't two products from the same company be able to cooperate? It makes me doubt how well other changes I make in one or the other will synch across the network which is supposed to be its strength.
Then there's the online service itself, I expected something comparable to the desktop software on the web, in actuality it's very stripped down and the lack of AJAX support after Google Reader makes feel terribly slow. Far too painful to try to use even for one session with the number of items I deal with and expect to get through quickly. Others who track fewer websites or those who publish less frequently (or both) will find the reload speed far more manageable. It is interesting to note that while the web clippings synch, the flags do not. There is a cool trick where you can right click on a feed or folder and act on them (such as unsubscribing or marking all read) without having to load them first.
HTML mobile reader
The HTML reader is very stripped down as you'd expect from something meant to be loaded on mobile devices. It makes for easy navigation and (relatively) fast loading. There's reading and that's all. If you want to do something else with a feed item (e.g. delicious or blog it), then don't mark it read and go back to it later.
Overall it's a good system for people who work on their own computers or mobile devices the vast majority of the time. Those who need a good web-based interface might do better with Google Reader or Bloglines.
Testing new plugin
12 February 2008
You can now keep up with InfoAdept on Twitter. (Yes I am writing more articles, just trying to get a roll started.) You can friend me on Twitter and be notified when new posts are made or just subscribe to my feed and get both articles and Tweets in your RSS reader.
The New Mac Goodies
25 January 2008
I was as excited as everyone else to see what Steve Jobs had for us at the 2008 MacWorld Keynote. And I oohed and aahed at the MacBook Air. But on further consideration I'll be waiting for the new Macbook Pros to drool. IT is clearly designed as a second computer for people with a desktop at home, with a slower cpu, less RAM and smaller hard-drive than most laptops today. But the big consideration for buyers is the lack of an optical drive. Which means no built in cd/dvd player or writer. Calling it a “Road Warrior” machine, Apple clearly believes that most people have gone to using external drives for data backup and transfer. There is a built in technology for connecting to the optical drive of a nearby computer and using it as the Air's own for installing software and burning cds as well as external drives that can be added to your order for $99. There are a number of reviews up now.
- Apple’s MacBook Air Is Beautiful and Thin, but Omits Features
- Switched On: Apple bets that to Air is human
- Analysis: What the MacBook Air is and what it isn't
I used the first iMacs at work which were the first computers to come without disk drives. The technology was becoming dated but it wasn't dead yet so every iMac in the library had to have one of the external drives hooked up which made an awful racket when in use and slowed the computer to a crawl. That's what this feels like. That Apple has once again discarded a technology too early in the search for the cool form factor. I'd rather deal with my full MacBook Pro with everything inside than have to balance one more toy on a cable on the go.
The new movie rental options simply don't do much for me, the 24 hour time limit simply can't compete with the unlimited limit from Netflix and Blockbuster. Here's one guy's experience though and Ars Technica has their own review.
I'm one of those who love my iPhone. I've noticed that those who don't are the ones who want to do a lot of text input on it: emailing and text messaging. The new Maps redo is full of useful functionality and I think a few design tweaks that make it easier to use.
The big thing for me is Time Capsule. Built on their Airport wireless network router, it will work with Time Machine (the backup software built in to the latest OS) to regularly backup all of your macs wirelessly. Backing up files is one of the most important and least thought about parts of computing. It's so easy to forget about when you're doing other stuff and when you're on the computer you don't want to tie it up with the backup. Using a laptop for my only computer, I've never been able to just leave it plugged in to an external drive to run an automated script. With Time Capsule however, I'd be able to just leave my laptop open anywhere in the house and have it backup automatically at a preset time while I'm sleeping. Like everything else it's not coming out until February but there is speculation that the backup over wireless capacity will be released for the latest Airport routers in a firmware update as well since they were supposed to have it to begin with.
MacSparky, the Mac lawyer, has a round up of products that didn't get as much press.
I'm excited for the future. I can't wait to see what developers do once they can run applications on the iPhone without “breaking” it. I will love seeing how the Macbook Air's design affects the Macbook and Macbook Pro's and I'm hopeful for Time Capsule. It looks like a good year coming for Mac heads.
