Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 Part A

This is the 1st installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course Using Sharepoint 2013 by Infinite Skills. Sharepoint is a website often called a sharepoint site and central repository for workers information. You can share documents and as long as you have the necessary permissions can search for stuff. It allows file sharing and integrates with programs like Exchange 2013 & Office 365. Most work is done within your web browser and information is in the form of files and folders with a lot of stuff being stored in sub folders. A sharepoint site is normally a top level site with lots of subsites and things like libraries forming a hierarchy. Everything is termed a site collection although a small firm might only have a single site. Generally each department within a company will have a sub site. Employees will often have what we call a mysite and all this works equally well as an internet site or intranet site. All sites have a URL which has a hierarchy beginning with the name of the website and working down through the various subcategories. A home page which is the page you first land on in either a main site or a subsite will contain home in the address. Internet Explorer which is also made by Microsoft is fully supported through versions 8-10 and other versions and browsers will work most of the time with mostly minor if any glitches. Active X controls sometimes don't work with other browsers. If you work quite a lot with a particular webpage you can save it as a favorite to make it easy to subsequently find. HTTPS means a site is a secure site requiring a password and user name etc. A lot of the sharepoint pages end with the filetype .aspx which is a file type generic to this program. The foundation version doesn't support mysites but the standard, enterprise and office 365 versions do. If you are merely learning how to use Sharepoint I would recommend getting a single user account of the office 365 version which is just $4 per month and is good value. Sharepoint also integrates with social media sites and you can follow others and have updates about them put on your mysite which centralizes it and saves you having to go to there page. 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

The book I read to research this post was Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed which is an excellent book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book is quite comprehensive in its coverage of Exchange 2013. The first version of this software was Exchange 4.0 and the reason it was version 4 but the earliest version was that versions 3 and earlier were Microsoft Mail which was a desktop program not a server product. It had nothing to do with Exchange in its software architecture. Prior to this if a company wanted a server communications network they had to use Novell Groupwise which meant all the hassles of making sure the Novell operating system ran on their servers. Exchange is designed in particular to run with Lync 2013, Sharepoint 2012, Office 365 and in particular Outlook. Outlook comes in several flavours, there is OWA which can be used on a guest machine via the internet, or Outlook Anywhere which works via mobile devices. Sharepoint is useful if the works have to work together and communicate via computer in a complex way. Exchange is more than capable of straightforward communication. Lync handles instant messenging and Im in general has caused problems for companies in other programs because viruses can exploit vulnerabilities inherent in it. Having it in a server product that integrates with server Microsoft products is a way around that.If a computer handles sensitive data the company should consider issuing staff with smartcards you swipe in addition to using strong passwords and you can buy PGP which stands for pretty good privacy certificates which you can use with the computers in particular to discourage man in the middle attacks. I enjoyed this book which would have been out of my league had I not done a video training course in Exchange 2013. It covers it in lots of detail and must be one of the definitive books on the subject. I think a lot of people would find this book difficult to follow.

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part F

This is the last installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. The simplest way to have text credits in your movie isto click text/ new text/ default text. You might have to resize the text file in the timeline and will have to format the text in the dialog box. There are many text presets including rolling text like what they have in tv programmes. You can click animation / animation preset and animate the text that way. The titles and text has lots of text presets and they often have areas colored black which are alpha masks and take on the background you provide. Tools / smart trim is a tool that analyzes your video and can even tell you if it is too boring by using an algorithm that analyzes things like faces. It also tells you things like if the exposure is wrong. It shades in the parts on the timeline that can be improved and you merely hover over them with the mouse for the suggestions and decide whether to accept them or not. There are keep and select all options. Simply click on the footage and a menu comes up. Instant movie gives the movie a genre theme via the various presets. Video merge merges 2 video but usually requires you either mask part of the image and adjust the tolerance or use a single color chroma screen in the part you wish it applied to. If you select publish and share/ make dvd/ or tools/ dvd menu you must use the menu marker at the point you want the dvd menu and place stop markers at the end of each piece of footage so it knows to return to the menu. In addition you want a fade preset at the end of each piece of footage. There is an option to have motion in the menu. You also want a scene marker at the beginning of each piece of footage. There are various other options like web dvd which converts the film to HTML and you can have it on your website complete with menu. You can also upload the video to sites like YouTube & Vimeo. The next blog series will be on Microsoft Sharepoint which I will probably start tomorrow. 

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part E

This is the 5th installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 which is based on what I have learnt doing the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. To delete highlight it on the timeline and press the backspace key. The red line that some refer to as the playback and plays stuff in real time is called the CTI or current time indicator. If you click on tools/ time remapping it can slow down or speed up your video. If you click on tools/ time stretch it does a similar but doesn't offer the same amount of control. If you click on tools/ pan and zoom it moves in and out of a scene and to adjust where it moves there is a box you drag and drop. You can also resize the box to adjust magnification. Click create output when you are finished. There are something called markers which essentially mark a position in your film so you can find it easily. There are beat markers that mark a position in your soundtrack and another beats timeline opens when you use this. Video will adapt to fit the available space when used in conjunction with this. There are menu markers that mark a position for the menu and interlocked content in DVD production. You can right click the video and choose marker from the menu and then in, out, next numbered etc. Next numbered is used when there are several markers and puts them in order. Don't use more than 2 types of transition. You should at most have one type for the credits and one type for use during the actual film. You can taper music with transitions which are found in transition/ dissolve. There are also used at the end of the film. One trick professionals is having a white color matte at the beginning and end of the film. The shift key can be used in conjunction with the timeline to make it lock to points. If you go into Elements Organizer and select a video and click view details it gives you the properties for that video. If you have to adjust the counter in the settings for something clicking the shift key increases the individual increments speeding it up. There is only one more installment in this series to go.

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part D

This is the 4th installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course on this software by Infinite Skills. If you set up an effect with various settings you can store it as a preset so you can re use it. Simply right click the effect and from the menu select save as a preset. It's stored in the my presets folder and to delete simply select it and press delete. To stretch a piece of video known as time stretch simply right click the footage on the timeline and select time stretch. Select your length and click save. There are various pips or picture in picture effects in effects under presets. If you do this make sure you render it afterwards. To adjust the settings in pips open the motion module. You must insert keyframes at key points although often this is done automatically. Select music and select the piece you want onto an audio timeline usually soundtrack. If you click transitions/ dissolve and say how many seconds duration you want you can insert a fade at the end of the video usually. The arrow key above the timeline scrolls up the timeline. The spacebar plays the video. The enter key plays it from the start. Control+k cuts the film at the point the playhead is. The red line is the playhead. Control+z is undo. If you click on effects, then audio effects there are loads of sound effects. The fill from left or right settings are ideal if you have a mono microphone. If you click on the music tab there is a smart sound option and this is a program you can purchase separately in its own right although it is a part of this program. You can choose one of the preset mood settings to suit your video. There is lots of music available with this module. You can change the length of the music by entering a figure in the duration box. There is a smart sound store where you can buy music cheaply. You can preview the music. In tools/ smartmix you can set whether you want sound in the foreground or background and if the latter it automatically inserts a key frame and turns down the sound. I'll try and do another installment a bit later.

Managing Teams

The book I read to research this post was Managing Teams For Dummies by Marty Brounstein which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. A team as defined in this book is a group of worker from 4- 13 working towards a common goal. If you have less than 4 they tend to pull in their own directions and there is no cohesion. More than 13 and it gets bogged down in red tape. It is a fallacy that all the members have to be happy because at the end of the day some people aren't natural team players and what matters is they do a good job despite that. Everyone in the group should have a clearly defined role and know what they are doing. When you have meetings obviously if you are looking for a solution have a board and have a brainstorming and no idea no matter how daft should be ridiculed. The aim is to come up with as many ideas as possible. Later you look at their feasibility. Look at the idea of retina display for things like iPads, that must have seemed a pretty dumb idea when first suggested yet now it is a feature and very popular. Any meeting should be structured and have definite goals as to what you want from it. You should make sure every member contributes and if you have someone who is dominating the meeting you shouldn't say something like I think you've said enough for one meeting as that is limiting their contribution which might be important. You can say something like x speak and I'll come back to you in a minute. Obviously everything the group does should be for the good of the group not the individual and the selfish members need to be told off. I did enjoy reading this book and I think it is quite an interesting subject. There isn't a huge amount of information in the book and I think it is probably of most interest to managers.

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part C

This is the 3rd installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills about this software. To start a project click file/ new project, then name the project, click ok, select what folder to put it in & click ok. You then import your movies and drag them one at a time onto your timeline. You can right click the movie and click remove audio to temporarily remove audio alternatively there is a coloured line that can be dragged down until it says 0 decibels and that does the same job. To adjust the images on the film select the movie click adjust and then there are other options but the ones we are interested in are color/ color RGB & smartfix. Color RGB adjusts the picture in terms of red, green and blue. Smartfix automatically adjusts the picture and color adjusts the picture in HSLV mode which stands for hue, saturation, lightness and vibrance. Saturation is pure color and vibrance is intensity of color. You can adjust the color modes manually or click one of the automatic options which on the whole do a good job. If you click applied effects you can adjust the shadows. There is also a render button on the timeline which if you do a lot of adjusting reduces the work the processor must do if you render it from time to time. In the lighting option under applied effects there is brightness, contrast, exposure, black and white options.  There are also auto levels and auto contrast options to automatically adjust the film. You can drag items from effects into the timeline and then they appear in applied effects ready to use. One is blue view cartoon which lets you turn your movie into a cartoon and has lots of options you can adjust also don't forget to render for the changes to take effect. To use applied effects you always select the film you are working on first, but if using effects you drag the effect onto the film timeline. It's an important difference. An advanced feature is inserting keyframes which are placed where something significant takes place ie resizing image in an image, sometimes called a PIP or picture in picture. Sometimes the program inserts keyframes automatically. You can also move a keyframe to adjust where an effect takes place. Smartfix found in applied effects when applied puts modules into adjust automatically not normally more than one or two as it fixes the image. It's good for fixing things like shakiness. There is also a delete effects button you can click to remove effects and don't forget to save regularly. Premiere Elements does auto save at regular intervals but you don't want to rely on that entirely. 

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part B

This is the 2nd installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 which is based on what I learn on the Infinite Skills video training course of the same name. One thing worth bearing in mind is if you capture from tape it is in real time so a tape will typically take 60 minutes. Make sure your batteries are topped up as there is nothing more infuriating than them going flat mid capture. You will normally select add media/ then select the type of capture device. Sometimes a capture type won't match up to the device you just have to experiment to get it right. This is especially true on older devices. It should display the model of your capture device but remember it doesn't support every device. Sometimes you will have to use the proprietary software that came with your device to capture it or capture from a media card and then copy the folder into Premiere Elements. When you capture a piece of film which you will also have to click capture to capture it you can also play, rewind and fast forward with in the captured film. If the footage goes missing through re labelling right click the film's icon and choose replace footage, and select the film name from a list. In post production found in the clip monitor the bars and tone is the same as a test signal and can be found by right clicking the footage then selecting it from the menu and goes at the beginning of the footage, it allows you to adjust the picture and volume. The colour matte which can be found in the same way fills in any unused space so you don't mistakenly think the equipment is faulty. It is just a blank colour screen. To open the clip monitor right click the footage in project assets and choose open clip monitor from the menu. With in this program you can also play and rewind the clip etc. The safe margins command in clip monitor found in the same way as colour matte protects the screen with text going with in the inner border and action being preserved so you can see what is going on with in the outer border. Set in and set out edit where footage starts and stops with in clip monitor. You can edit it there and then copy it into the timeline. You can have upto 99 audio tracks with in the timeline in expert mode and if you were making an action feature film with lots of special effects it is quite feasible you would need something like that. You drag and drop the edges of the film with in the timeline to edit it and click the x icon and select the side you want cut to edit the film. The film will tend to jump to the left to fill the unused space when you do this. If you put the video on separate tracks it will snap to each other as you go from one piece of film and edit it to another. An exception to this is there is a piece of audio soundtrack on the timeline because you need to edit this the film will remain static on the timeline as you edit it. I will try and do another post in this series tonight.

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part A

This is the 1st installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course by Infinite skills of the same name. This is a video editing program although it will also do slide shows and handle things like photos and audio.Adobe has now gone over to cloud computing with the Creative Cloud series which I think is excellent value but you need the latest hardware to work with it so I thought I'd have a go at learning an older piece of software and incidently there is a professional version of Premiere Elements called Premiere Pro CC. Aparently if you learn all the major keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Elements and you might know a lot of them already as a lot are the same in Windows you stand to save 1 hour in every 8 hours you are working according to a university study. There are hundreds of shortcuts in this program and many that you can self define but this is just the 20 or so most commonly used ones. There are 3 steps to using a video editing program which are input, processing and output. Input is often called importing which you will usually do from a camera or media card. Output is putting it on something like DVD or the web. There are video studios in most big cities that you can rent by the hour and are very expensive. You need to get as much as possible done in as little time as possible in these places. Another option is disused warehouses where if you want something like a stage you can probably rent these quite cheaply for a day. Adobe Elements Organizer is a part of Premiere Elements but functions as a separate program on your computer. It stores things that you import ready to go into your video editing program. You can get into Organizer by clicking Add Media/ Elements Organizer. In Premiere Elements there are quick and expert buttons and quick is for working quickly and has fewer features. Most of your work will be done in the expert mode where you have more control over your work. There is a clean button that clears out your cache of video on your hard drive and is especially important if the video becomes corrupted or you need the space. You can get into the settings with edit/ settings/ general and there are also other settings on the same menu like project settings. Having these settings set right can save you a lot of time. Within your video timeline if you click the video portion and select time stretch there is a nifty feature where you can slow video down slightly to fill a slot. You can use a dissolve with sound as well as video and normally set it for around 1-2 seconds. To open a project the quickest way is to select control+o then select new or existing project. Each file has a log file which shows the steps you have taken and this is refreshed each time you save it and obviously you want to save frequently to keep this file manageable as well as not lose loads of work. I will do another installment tomorrow.

Kylie Minogue - Kiss Me Once

I am reviewing the pop music album Kiss Me Once by Kylie Minogue which is a very good album. The lead single failed to get in the top 10 in Britain which is unusual for Kylie but I like this album and think she should have some big hits with some of the other tracks. Kylie is probably most famous in Britain for her music produced by Stock, Aitken & Waterman and starring in Neighbours. A well known story is that when she travelled from Australia to Britain to work with Stock, Aitken & Waterman they forgot she was coming there and had to hastily write I Should Be So Lucky while she waited outside and that became one of her biggest hits. I did look at the Wikipedia on Kylie and would recommend it. Apparently she was born in Melbourne in 1968 and there is a quite sexy statue to commemorate her in the docklands there. She is the 3rd most successful female soloist ever in Britain. Her most famous single is probably Can't Get You Out Of My Head which won the Brit Award for Best International Single among other awards and was a massive single even being her breakthrough single in the USA where previously her only hit had been Locomotion. She has got a very good singing voice and must be one of the most beautiful women in the world even though she is 45. Not many people realize she had a small role in Moulin Rouge as a fairy. She also had a more substantial part in Streetfighter with Jean Claude Van Damme where she got the chance to do some martial arts although her acting wasn't great. She has been a judge on The Voice UK & The Voice Australia talent shows where I have just seen on the internet apparently she is quitting the UK show. She is famous for her relationships with her neghbours co star Jason Donovan who also had a pop career & Michael Hutchence of INXS fame who famously committed suicide and also was an influence on Kylie getting her to have a sexier image. I did enjoy this album and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part G

This is the 7th and last installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills with the same name.  The offline address book is an address database that is downloaded and stored locally. For most jobs you will search for addresses with a query or following certain criteria ie all the addresses in London. This following criteria and filtering we often call rules. You can replicate mailbox data from one server to another up to a maximum of 16 with in Exchange Server and we call these mailbox servers. If one mailbox server goes down it is simple for another one to take and only one will be active with the others passive at any one time. Data is written from the active server to each of the passive ones and they are kept updated. This is called database availability groups. Microsoft tried to force businesses to buy Sharepoint Server in addition to Exchange Server and it is very costly, by stopping having public folders in the latter and only in the former. There was a public outcry from particularly small businesses who would also have to train their staff to use Sharepoint and Microsoft backed down. Starting in Exchange Server 2007 SP1 public folders have become even more of a major feature with them having a different file type but residing in the same database as other information avoiding the need for replication that was common in earlier versions. Since the 2013 version you have to have to have a mailbox with in the program to access public folders. A high availability server which is by definition one that is up 99.999% of the time equating to 5 1/2 minutes of downtime per year which isn't even as long as the time needed to power up a server. This is mainly achieved by having several servers with back with at least some ready to take over at a moments notice and of course lots of replication and updating. Some companies like Amazon which stand to lose a lot of money if there is a power outage even have generators ready to keep everything on line. I'll try and start a new series of blog post software tutorials tonight. I noticed I did say Exchange handled Instant Messaging in an earlier post and it's actually Microsoft Lync Server 2013 which does that.

Sharepoint 2013

The book I read to research this post was Sharepoint 2013 For Dummies by Ken Withee which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book is more of a general overview of what Sharepoint can do rather than a tutorial on how to build a Sharepoint site. A Sharepoint site is one that integrates with Microsoft Office and server products like Exchange Server and makes a site where people in a computer can share work, check things like their appointments and do projects together. There is a program called Sharepoint Designer 2013 which has replaced the now little used Frontpage & that does the more heavy duty construction of a Sharepoint site than just using Sharepoint Server. It does help avoid having to work too much with things like HTML and uses a graphical user interface and a typical site is largely constructed from apps within the program like Calendar & Gantt Chart. When you start there is the option of 2 views either Web which is good if there is a lot of pictures and multimedia on the site and Wiki which is suitable if it is mostly text. You can subscribe to Sharepoint Online which starts at $4 per month for a single user although I think in all probability you would probably need a Office 365 and multi user accounts unless you are just experimenting with it. It does say in the book building a sharepoint site is very complex and no book is big enough to explain every feature. I'd like to learn more about this and will probably review more similar books. It works with mobile devices in that you can have your sharepoint either in minaiture form, in a form that displays the HTML or a form where your navigation buttons are enlarged. I think in most cases the last option is best. When Sharepoint 2010 came out Sharepoint Online lagged behind it in coming out with the upgraded version but Microsoft have said in future they will release future versions simultaneously on both platforms. I think Sharepoint Online represents much better value than buying the software and also there are online versions of Exchange Server that you can subscribe to as well. I really enjoyed reading this book and I do think it's quite an interesting subject. 

Outlook 2013

The book I read to research this post was Outlook 2013 For Dummies which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com . Outlook is primarily a personal organiser software that is part of the Office 2013 suite of programs from Microsoft and of course gets a regular update every couple of years or so. It also integrates with your email account although that normally can't be a web based one like yahoo or gmail and most businesses use a personalized corporate email accounts system that works fine. It also has things like calendar and notes features. Apparently the average office worker spends 28 hours a week answering emails and things like spam and phishing are major problems, one feature in the program is you can block a user directly or based on a criteria like country suffix if you get a lot of spam from a certain country for example but bear in mind it might prevent legitimate customers from contacting you. There are some slightly different variants of Outlook mainly Outlook.com & Outlook Web App or OWA. Outlook.com is what Microsoft is upgrading all its email accounts to and this will share the Outlook interface and if you have ie a hotmail account the address will stay the same but it will be upgraded. New email accounts will have the Outlook.com suffix. OWA is a web based version of Outlook that works with Exchange Server 2013. It has a similar interface to Outlook. New users to Outlook are often surprised when they open the program they aren't presented with a blank screen like the other Office products but it has quite a lot of information like emails and to do lists. You can color code to do lists so you can see at a glance what is the most important. Some things are quite simple like you click reply to open a replying message type you email and click send. There is a reply all feature which you wouldn't normally use and is if you get a message sent to you and several others you can send the same reply to the other recipients which would probably be bad etiquette. It also has an RSS reader where you can subscribe to blogs and podcasts. It can also translate your messages to and from another language. I really enjoyed reading this book which does a good job of explaining this program.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part F

This is the 6th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course by Infinite Skills of the same name. Much of this course is about the various technologies inherent in one of these networks and the different types of account you have to set up. Set up the accounts etc themselves is quite straight forward. Designing the network and making sure everyone can do their job is the hard part. Exchange 2013 is an email, telephone and maybe instant messaging network with things like back up and archiving emails thrown in. It also has to integrate with software like Sharepoint & Office. A dynamic distribution group is where a message is sent out to a group but a query is executed and only members who meet a certain criteria like being at a location, receive it. You select recipients/ groups and then the down arrow by + and not a - like I said in some of the other lessons and select dynamic distribution group. You then select your criteria for what is similar to an advanced search. A room mailbox is a mail account for a room like a meeting room or conference room where you might have a meeting. You go into EAC, select recipients/ resources then the down arrow by the + button and choose room mailbox & fill in the relevant information to create a room mailbox. If you have trouble finding the room or are going to be late for the meeting the idea is you can contact them. Another benefit when all this is integrated is say you need a room for a meeting at short notice you can find an empty room via Exchange Server. You have to set up a criteria in Outlook Web App in addition to EAC. You can also go into EAC & select recipients and mailboxes and if you have full access rights send a message via someone else's mailbox either as him or on behalf of him. Those are 2 separate options. A final thing I'll mention is you should keep the log files and databases on separate hard drives because if your database fails the log files might help with restoring it and finding out what went wrong. Also with cloud computing being so popular it's recommended you have a RAID 1 or 1+0 to store your data but not essential. But do bear in mind you might have to restore your data and the internet might be down for whatever reason or even your cloud provider might be having maintenance done on their site which might be down. 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part E

This is the 5th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I learn on the Infinite Skills video training course of the same name. A recipient is a mail enabled object within the program. User Mail Boxes are assigned to individuals.  EAC & EMS create user mailboxes with EAC creating individual ones & EMS creating them several at a time. Users have to have an active directory user account. A Mail User is an object that can access internet resources and has an Active Directory account. To create a mail contact go to EAC and select the recipients tag, select contact then + then fill out the information required. In Exchange Server enabled groups are called distribution groups. In Active Directory an enabled group is a group not security enabled whether mail or not. It's important you know the difference even though both have the same name as you will work with both Exchange Server & Active Directory. You can distribute an email to every member of a distribution group for them all to see. This is done in a shared mailbox which isn't connected to a user but rather a group. To create a shared mailbox go to EAC then click recipient/ shared/ + and of course fill out the information. A mail enabled security group lets you email the group and then all the members can read it. To create a mail enabled security group click recipient/ groups/ -/ security/ and then fill in the group details. 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part D

This is the 4th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 based on what I have learnt doing the video training course of the same name by Infinite Skills. The journaling element of Exchange Server is the copying and backing up of emails. Even if an email is deleted a copy stills exists in back up and this is important for a business in this day and age for legal purposes. Database journaling works with the same interface and there are several other types of journaling.  To configure & create in journaling we use what are called rules. A rule scope is retained by the agent.The person who sends the email. It contains stuff like the smtp address and is put and the name of the recipient's mailbox. You at the very least when journaling need to set up a mailbox for reports to be sent to. The default size for a mailbox is 2 GB although this can be changed. Archiving which is backing up things like emails does it in a more central way than the mailbox. It's mostly older stuff that is archived and there is a rule set than if they are older than a set amount they are archived as long as they have been read. This feature that they must be read is called retention hold. When an email is received it will have a delete date displayed. Databases have to be defragmented, compacted and online maintenance has to be carried out by default late at night. Compaction is done to remove empty spaces from tables. If storage space runs out back ups will cease to be performed and you should check every day to see it has been done. You definitely shouldn't be tempted to set and leave it as problems can arise. If you go into outlook web apps like in outlook clicking new message brings up the message dialog box and send sends it.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part C

This is the 3rd installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 based on the video training course by Infinite Skills of the same name. Your edge transport role server is in what we call the demilitarized zone with a firewall in front and behind and is on the perimeter of your network. The edge transport role server was not originally a part of Exchange 2013 and it was necessary to run Exchange 2010 with service pack 3 to do this job. Of course this changed with Exchange 2013 with service pack 1. If you run the online version of Exchange which is part of the Office 365 suite it works out at only around £4 per client and might be a good choice for small companies. An object is anything in the real world that needs representing within the program and Exchange 2013 has support for 20,000 objects which is a huge upgrade on the 500 of Exchange 2010. The infrastructure of an exchange network is normally to have several sites with a particular object represented in one site to avoid replication which is a new feature of 2013. We call this being web based with each site having its own URL. The links between the different domains or sites we call transitive trusts. It's always simpler to have one domain but in practice multiple ones are used. A multiple domain is called a tree and several multiple domains is called a forest. A domain controller is a server running active directory directory services on it. A global catalog server is a kind of index of information on the network and microsoft recommends having 2 per domain. Exchange Administration Center handles public folders among other things. I'll try and do another post in this series tonight.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part B

This is the 2nd installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I've learnt on the Infinite Skills video training course of the same name. The 3 types of information for users  stored on Exchange Server are email, calendaring and address books. Exchange stores, routes and delivers email. With the calendars others can see them and see what you have scheduled and make appointments. There is also an address typically for each department ie human resources, sales etc. Outlook is often used in conjunction with this program and there is also outlook web app and this still uses the same acronym OWA but has had the name modified and the program has been considerably updated. It can also route things to mobile devices. The exchange administration center is a new feature combining several different modules in earlier versions. It's also accessed via a URL which is new. All data is stored in databases. It still uses jet EDB databases but where as these could be unreliable in previous versions in this they have been updated and the problems ironed out. It was rumoured they were using a different form of database in this version prior to its release. Exchange Server works with Windows Server 2008 R2 & Windows Server 2012 and later versions will work with Windows Server 2012 R2. There are 2 server roles in Exchange Server 2013 but 5 in 2010. Each role is a separate server but modern practice is to put several server roles onto one server and partition it. A 3rd role has been added to Exchange Server 2013 SP1 which is edge transport server role. The other 2 roles are mailbox server role and client access server role. Two of the roles in 2010 have been combined. The main reason we have less server roles is the processors are faster and more efficient. The edge transport server role is based on the perimeter of the network and handles all the email coming to and from the organization. I'll try and do another blog post in this series later tonight.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part A

I am doing a new series of blog posts on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I have learnt doing the infinite skills video training course on the same subject. We are going to start with a bit of history. The first version of what we might regard as this was Exchange 4.0 in 1996 and there were earlier versions but they were for desktops. This was the first server version. Exchange 5.0 ran on NT4 and would integrate with a program called Outlook 97. Exchange 5.5 was a major upgrade and was much more reliable than previous versions. In some places you still see this version still being used. With Exchange 2000 email and network accounts were merged. Exchange 2010 was 64 bit only. Exchange 2013 supports upto 8TB of RAM. There is a standard edition that supports upto 5 mounted databases and an enterprise edition that supports upto 100 mounted databases. Mounted databases are ones that are in use. You can have others that aren't currently in use and also the figure doesn't include the recovery database. If you want a free 180 day fully working evaluation version of Exchange do a search for exchange 2013 evaluation. You need a fast connection to do the download as it's around 30 GB. The file format it uses is NTFS. To install Exchange you need to first prepare your active directory schema which can either be done manually or automatically. Manually is slower but gives you greater control over things like accounts. When you install it at one point if you are running multiple Exchange Server programs you need to install mailbox role and client access role. If running a single instance you only install the mailbox role. I will try and do a 2nd installment in this series later tonight.

Joomla 3 Part D

This is the last installment in my blog post series on Joomla 3 based on what I learn on the Addison-Wesley video training course. Plug ins are found in extensions, plug in manager, type, select type of plug in select where it goes click one of the save options and refresh the site. Disabling a plug in can adversely affect how the site function and there is no new button when you activate a plug in. You can install various languages within joomla but they won't translate an article instead they will translate the standard text within the site like menus. You can change the look of your site with a template. They give you a variety of options that you can adapt which varies from template to template. The purpose of a template is to save you a load of work in constructing a site and also if inexperienced people are writing articles it prevents them changing certain things that you don't want changed. There is a site at http://joomlaskins.net where you can get templates. If you click users, user manager it displays the various users on your site and their roles. Super User is the owner normally of the site although Administrator is similar. Editors and authors can edit and publish articles. I have enjoyed doing these articles and hope you have enjoyed them too.

Joomla 3 Part C

This is the 3rd installment in my blog post series on Joomla 3 which is based on what I learn from the Addison-Wesley video training course. You can have an alias like automate having it say you have written an article for example. To do this click batch then select. You then scroll down to the bottom box which has various categories and has move and copy under each category. Move deletes the original where as copy copies it. The extensions are found under the extension menu. The most commonly used ones are there.  A joomla site is made up of things like extensions, modules & components. You can find more extensions which extend the usuability of your joomla site at http://extensions.joomla.org . A lot of these are free but some are ones you must buy. Sometimes there is a free version with limited features and one you buy that is a premium version. You should look for good ratings and reviews prior to downloading one, in particular look to see if it was complicated to install. If you install a banner on your page one nifty feature is it will tell you how many times it has been clicked. To set up a contact page which tells viewers how to contact someone. Click menus, contacts, contacts.You will then have quite a lot of fields to fill in with the ones with a star being compulsory. You then save and refresh it. To check for updates click components, joomla update. Every site needs at least an administrator who is normally the person who was responsible for building it. To redirect to another site click extensions, system, system redirect. Then enter both addresses. Choose save, refresh. Smart search isn't recommended for big joomla sites instead they use basic search. This is because as it scans the site it takes up a lot of resources in terms of memory space and processor power. To display weblinks within a category. Click components, weblinks, create category new. Fill in the fields. You then save and refresh. I will try and do the 4th and last blog post in this series tonight.

Joomla 3 Part B

This is the 2nd installment in my blog post series about Joomla 3 based on the video training course I am studying with Addison-Wesley. If you click content/new article it lets you post a new article. If you fill in the article details and select a relevant category it links to that category. Obviously by article details I mean heading and text. If you type an article in notepad it contains less formatting information than many programs and if you click the html button you will see cleaner code. I would suggest use gimp to edit your photos before going on the website. It's at http://www.gimp.org . It's free and there is a tutorial on using it on this site. It's also just as powerful as photoshop. If you go into global configuration and choose toggle editor it lets you copy and paste html which can be something like the reference to an Amazon book. Don't forget to refresh it. If you select global configuration, editing layout has features for things like number of featured blogs or intro blogs where it only shows a small portion of it. In global configuration, user, there is an unpublish button which can remove something temporarily. There is also a trash and remove trash button with the latter removing something permanently. There is if you scroll down a meta description box where you can enter information that will appear in the search engine when someone searches for something. Don't use the meta keywords box as there has been so much abuse of keywords in the past, search engines ignore it. I may do another blog post in this series later tonight. It's likely this whole series will only be in 4 parts as there aren't that many features to joomla.

Swing Trading

The book I read to research this post was Swing Trading For Dummies by Omar Bassal which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Swing Trading is similar to day trading but with the latter you aim for quick gains of a lesser amount often carried out in the same day, with the former you look for bigger gains over a period of time. You use methods like fundamental analysis & technical analysis to analyze the stock market or what ever else you invest in and ideally you make a profit. Something I did read in another book is things like the stock market can be unpredictable you have to remember the people deciding whether to buy or not to buy are only human and sometimes they can inexplecably go up or down against the trend of what they should do. When there is a strong dollar generally US industry does well & when there is a weak dollar generally commodities because they have to be imported and they are priced in dollars do well. Swing trading can be share dealing, commodities or ETF's or even other things. A lot of understanding swing trading is understanding charts especially candle stick charts which were originally used in Japan to track the price of rice. Obviously things like penny shares are best avoided and you want to make an educated guess when trading so minimize the risk. Don't forget you can get a return of 50% if you bet on black or red in a casino but only have a 50% chance of getting it right. The risk is too great and you don't want your trading to go the same way. You have to be reasonably sure the market is going to react the way you want. Even if stocks go down you can still make money by shorting the stocks which means you sell your stock and agree to buy stock on a certain date. Of course afterwards the stock has to go up in price and in the intervening period has to go down or you will end up owing money. I did enjoy reading this book and it is an interesting subject. 

Mutual Funds

The book I read to research this post was Mutual Funds For Dummies by Eric Tyson which is a very good book which  I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book was published in 2010 so is a little dated especially because a lot of the book reviews different companies which obviously is only up to that time. Mutual Funds or Mutually Assisted Funds are a kind of fund where a lot of people invest in the same spread of what are similar to Exchange Traded Funds but the risk is spread over a wider range which greater risks to be taken which should result in potentially higher returns. A lot of big companies and governments take out loans often of at least several hundred thousands over normally 60 days which are what Mutual Funds are invested as. If you were extremely wealthy you could buy these bonds directly and would potentially get a nice return. Companies that claim returns much above 20% and there are quite a lot are probably making it up. You get get a bull market where in general returns are up but anything substantially higher than the market is unlikely. Especially watch out if someone in something like a church or club you are a member of starts trying to offer to invest your money for you in this kind of thing. It's quite common. You are best off sticking with established companies although this still carries risk.  I did really enjoy this book and found it very interesting.

Joomla 3.0 Part A

This is the 1st in a blog post series on Joomla 3 based on what I learn on the video training program by Addison-Wesley Professional. Joomla is a content management system and is more customizable than Wordpress and easier to use than Drupal  which are also both CMS's. The Wordpress program started out as a blogging software and Joomla too has lots of blogging features. Joomla is free although you usually pay hosting fees. It's based around a program called Mambo also a CMS although it has become much more popular. Version 3.0 is the latest version. They update it frequently. You also can use a FTP program to upload it but its not essential. You don't need to understand HTML which you would if using Dreamweaver or Wordpress. You use MySQL & PHP with Joomla. You have a front end or visitors site which is what visitors see. There is also a back end or administrators site which is where most editing takes place. Things like the search box, menus and logo are called modules and are located around the page. The component area is the main part of the page where articles are located. You should use the navigation buttons not use the browser windows to go from page to page whilst editing it. A red x next to an article means it isn't published, a green tick means is published and a yellow star means is featured on the articles page. You click the Joomla icon to go to the control panel. Menu manager lets you create menus. The extensions manager is where you install extensions which extend the usability of Joomla. When you finish work always log out to avoid your site being hacked. You need categories for each article you do. To enable searching and get the article shown in the site you have to link to the article. You use the category manager in the content menu. You click new then enter category to list category and save. To enter a subcategory you select new/ options/ and select the relevant category it is under. You can also designate the number of levels of subcategories you want.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part H

This is the 8th and last installment in my blog series on Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 which I base on what I learn on the VTC training course. I will start another series from tomorrow on something else. Anyway getting back to Elements 9. A very in thing in digital photography is HDR or High Dynamic Range Photography. You can do a little bit of this in Elements. It involves having several photos of the same thing on different layers, dragging one onto the other in layers and making them opaque. The sensor in a camera only detects typically 4,000 colours which is far less than the human eye and can make photos look a bit unreal. Pictures taken at different exposures increase those colours when combined and result in a more realistic photo. You should use a tripod to take the photos which of course in other respects should be identical. For Panoramic Stitching the pictures should overlap by 30-50%. You select file/ photomerge panorama. You add the open files, leave on auto and select blend images together. You click ok, select no to the request to fill in the edges and crop the photo. Note these photos due to being combined can have a large file size so that might need adjusting prior to sending in email or putting on the web. If you are creating something like a calendar, collage or photo book there are options like print locally or via a website that will post it to you. You can print a photo book via shutterfly or kodak. The photos are placed in a book in a default way & it is just a matter of dragging them with the mouse and adding things like text. With calendars you can print locally or via kodak. You have to choose your starting month and year. There are various options like text style and page color. You also type in the month for each photo and a description. You might have to resize photos and then you click order and are taken to the kodak site. It should arrive in 10-14 days. I hope enjoyed reading this series as much as I have. The next series might be drupal or joomla & I might start that later tonight.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part G

This is the 7th installment in my blog post series on using Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 based on what I learn on the VTC video training course. A lot of people especially when learning how to use this software tend to overuse sharp and unsharp. They are mainly for using on parts of a photo that are a little out of focus and overuse degrades the picture quality. The color cast command can be found at enhance/ adjust colour/ remove color cast. It's particularly good for old photos where the color has degraded. It's good to use it in conjunction with adjusting the light levels. A bit of advice is if you photograph a lady and want to Photoshop the picture ask her for permission as she might be offended. Men in general don't seem to mind. If a subject only has minor blemishes it often isn't necessary to fix them. The color curves command found at enhance/ adjust color/ color curves lets you manually adjust the colors in the picture. Really you have to experiment and gain experience to know whether color curves is better than light levels or histogram on a particular image. If you have washed out color and an indistinct background in an image consider converting it to black and white. It's found at enhance/ adjust color/ convert to black and white. It has quite a few preset black and white options or you can sort the image out manually. If you do landscape photography the most important factor is do you like the picture. You can often one good photo into several photos each with different settings with in the program. Always look for something different or unusual to photograph. Most subjects look best off centre on a photo. Ideally the subject will take up 1/3 or 2/3 of the photo. Having a fair amount of background makes the picture more dramatic. Finally there is a color variations command at enhance / adjust color / color variations which displays predefined images with settings applied that you can just click on or alternatively you can adjust the settings and then select an image that looks right.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part F

This is the 6th installment in my blog post series on Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 based on what I learnt on the VTC video training course. The gradient tool brings up a toolbar when selected which includes many options in particular types of gradient like linear gradient which is just a simple gradient. A gradient is a fill colour where the colour gradually changes to one or more colours. To apply the gradient you drag a line across the image where you want it applied. You may also have to adjust the opacity of either the image or the gradient. There is a custom shape tool which when selected there are flyout buttons of common shapes although you can also define your own shape. There is a taskbar that appears with things like fill colour. There is a blur, sharpen and smudge tool where you can adjust the strength of these prior to applying them in the taskbar. There is a sponge, burn and dodge tool which also brings up a taskbar. The sponge tool can desaturate or saturate an area of an image. Dodge lightens and comes from the old photographic practice of touching a negative with an object to lighten that area. Burn darkens an image. In the effects window there are various filters which display the most common options and have a show all command to show all of them. There are also among other things layer effects which can be applied to a layer like drop shadow. In the layer window you can change the opacity. You can also select filter/ filter gallery command for more options in applying an effect. There is various clip art in the effects window. Some you can apply but some have a gold bar which means you must pay via the adobe website to use them. They charge a flat rate which lets you use any. They are called premium clip art. Much of the same commands as are in the menubars are in the toolbar. Beginners are probably better off using the toolbar as some of the commands on the menubars can be almost fatal to your images. Under the window button you can choose what commands you want displayed in the toolbar by either selecting or deselecting the tick boxes.

The London Underground

The book I read to research this post was Down The Tube by Christian Wolmar which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is about the London Underground System  and was written in 2002 so probably doesn't have the latest information. They were introducing the idea of drivers who just operated the doors to re assure the public they were safe and trains moved and stopped automatically. Nowadays they are some trains that don't have a driver at all. There also was a line built to Heathrow Airport & talk of building a line to Canary Wharf & the Docklands. The book starts by looking at Camden Town station which has a popular market and has seen visitors increase dramatically. The Underground System in general is getting much more popular with travelcards which let you travel anywhere for a flat fee. Bromley which doesn't have an Underground System took the GLC to court over the travelcards and won its case meaning they had to scale back the sale of them. Camden Town has a portion of the station that's disused and also a disused line to Aldwych & London Transport are only too happy to show anybody round although only on request. It is part of their public relations programme. There are rooms filled with machinery that it would be too costly to remove and the ceilings are quite low as people tended to be shorter in those days. Christian is one of the most popular railway authors and fairly recently one of his books topped the History Chart on Amazon which is unusual for a railway book. He is a consistently good writer and I have read several books by him which I have enjoyed. It would be interesting if he updates this book to see what new developments have taken place. I did see a tv programme a couple of days ago that argued London swallows up far too much money developing its transport infrastructure and that it would be fairer to spend more money on other areas of Britain and help them catch up. Apparently they spend £5,000 per head in London and on average £700 elsewhere. 

Big Data

The book I read to research this post was Big Data For Dummies by Judith Hurwitz et al which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com . Big Data is still in its relative infancy and consists of two types of information, machine generated and human generated. Machine generated might be weather data or sensor data from an aircraft where as human data might be something a person said about your product on facebook or search information on a your website. The biggest problem isn't storing all this information but accessing relavant data hidden amongst it and doing something with the data. At one time companies used databases that had to be written specifically for what they wanted to do. Then came relational databases like Oracle & Microsoft SQL Server. These could be adapted using languages like SQL to do lots of things. Now we are going into another era where most information will be stored either on a hybrid cloud or cloud provider. Companies will have virtual servers where 1 or 2 servers will have to do the job of several servers and their massive hard drives will be partitioned to run several server roles possibly with several operating systems. When people go on the internet the computer will be a virtualized workstation with limited permissions to limit the damage a virus can do. Companies will use big data organisations Amazon Web Services to store huge amounts of data but at a fraction of the cost an equivalent server would cost. There are a lot of open source databases like Hbase & PostGRE  where generally they are free to use but in some cases you can buy a technical support package. There are some big players in all this like IBM, SAS & Oracle. You have to shop around for what is best for your requirements. Amazon Web Services are regarded as one of the cheapest and best and are the biggest cloud provider in the world. Of course the hardest part is integrating everything so it works. There are some packages and services which are specific to a particular type of business like SPSS for Psychology Statistics. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book which is on a very interesting subject which as time goes on is going to get more and more important to businesses and organisations. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part E

This is the 5th installment in my series of blog posts on using Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 based on what I have learnt using the video training course by VTC. If you select something you shouldn't you can deselect it by selecting select / deselect or alternatively pressing control and d at the same time. The magic wand has a sensitivity number setting. The magic wand lets you select areas that vary in colour slightly like the sky. If you select the contiguous option it will only select continuous areas. Deselect it to select non adjacent areas of similar colour. The quick select tool almost magnetically selects things but works best with hard edges. The quick selection is sometimes better for selecting areas with softer edges but is of little use at selecting large areas. The type tool button has a capital t and when selected lets you insert and format text. The fx button on the layer lets you apply stronger effects to text. It's automatically on the layer when it contains text. With the crop tool you can have set size ratios or no restrictions are freehand or keep photo ratio where the photo ratio is maintained. The red eye tool works by selecting the tool then the eyes you wish to apply it to. The straighten photo tool works by selecting the tool then drawing a line along the image you want straightened then cropping the photo. I will try and do another lesson tomorrow. 

Wordpress

I am reviewing the textbook Wordpress For Dummies 5th edition by Lisa Sabin-Wilson et al which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com . This book is co authored by Matt Mullwegin the owner of Wordpress who also has his own blog on the hosted version. It can be accessed through the Wordpress home page. I have read several earlier versions of this book and there isn't that much new in this book. If you are looking to get started blogging it's ideal but maybe not for more experienced users. When you join Wordpress you can verify who you are by other sites you are a member of. Of course all the major ones like Twitter & Linkedin are there but also a couple I'd never heard of which are TripIt & FriendFeed. This book also mentions a social bookmark site I'd never heard of called SocialMention. A couple of interesting plugins are Gallery for photo's & Videopress for video's. Normally you have to upgrade your account to display video. Among the self hosted options are http://wordpress.org for a self hosted single blog & http://wordpressmu.org for the multi blog account self hosted version. Both versions are free but you have to pay a third party to host them. Of course if you want to run a business website you can't have any kind of e-commerce on the hosted version. You risk losing your account with Wordpress if you do. I did really enjoy reading this book and it's got a top ten plug ins and themes near the end of the book which is quite interesting. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part D

This is the 4th installment in my blog series on Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 which is based on what I learn from the VTC video training program on the subject. I also try and do these posts daily. If you right click on a layer a menu appears with options including merge layers and flatten image. You will frequently use these options. There is a layer mask button in the top right corner of the thumbnail of a photo. This protects all or part of a layer as you apply effects. In the histogram which shows things like light levels and color levels, you can select an area with the lasso tool and get a reading for that area. There are also different types of histogram to choose from. A PSD file has the layers intact and is a proprietary file common to Photoshop & Photoshop Elements. The hand tool will move an entire picture. The move tool is similar but moves the entire layer which must be unlocked. The rectangular and elliptical marquee tools are fairly self explanatory and let you select stuff within an image. If you select and edit part of a photo you will probably need to feather it which is when the edges are slightly blurred and you enter the number of pixels in the box above the photo. There are 3 lasso tools, the simple, magnetic & polygonal. The magnetic aligns itself to lines and contrasting points. The polygonal uses anchor points to select things. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part C

This is part 3 in my series of software tutorials about Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 which are what I have learned doing a video tutorial with VTC. If you use the auto smart fix under the fix panel it does a good job of fixing a photo automatically. Sometimes you might find the auto color or auto levels tools better. When using these tools there is no undo function as a copy of your photo is automatically made and you can always simply delete it. If you use the crop tool you drag the boundaries with the mouse and can always reset it. There is a rotate and straighten tool also under fix and this can be automated. There is a lighten and darken tool and that has an auto tool which is pretty good but also has 3 manual settings, darken, midtones & lighten which you can adjust. Be careful about having the darken tool on a high setting as it can create noise in the photo. There's an enhance colors tool which it's advised not to adjust hue and brightness. There is an auto tool and you can adjust saturation to good effect. There is a color cast tool to correct color shadow in a photo with an eyedropper tool. A wide angle lens can prevent things being vertical in a photo. You can correct this with the keystone correction tool which will bring up an adjustments screen and you can adjust the vertical setting and then crop the photo. All these tools are in the fix pane & normally you will have to change the photo to 8 bit to edit it. You click on image, then mode & then 8 channels to convert it. If you press the alt key and rotate the mouse wheel it will enlarge the photo on the screen. If you are using the layers tool, you press alt + j to add a layer & if you right click the delete layer button it will delete the currently selected layer. I will try and do another tutorial tomorrow. 

Shinkansen

The book I read to research this post was Shinkansen which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. The bullet train or shinkansen was first built in 1964 and at the time was the most advanced high speed train in the world. The first line built was the Hokkaido line part of which links Osaka with Tokyo and it rather famously goes past Mount Fujiyama. The bullet train is quite possibly the most iconic thing in Japanese culture. There are nowadays quite an extensive network of these trains and they are rarely more than a minute late. Funnily enough the conventional trains do sometimes run late and of course stop at more stations. Even at level crossings bullet trains travel at 160 kmph and on high speed stretches do 300 kmph. As the bullet trains are decommissioned and replaced they are mostly sent to Taiwan where they comprise a high speed network. They have the longest land tunnel in the world on a stretch of track for this train. Announcements on the trains are normally made in English. Shinkansen to the Japanese refers to the railway as well as the train. There are many railway companies in Japan and they usually make money from alternate sources in addition to trains. I really enjoyed this book and one thing I would mention is there is a complete bullet train on display at the National Railway Museum at Shilton, Durham, England and they have free admission. 

Home Based Businesses

The book I read to research this post was Home Based Business For Dummies which is a very good book which I bought from Kobo. A home based business can often be a one person operation working from home often with a secretary although this book does look at things like franchises like Macdonalds which is highly sought and you have to put up $45,000 plus pay 12.5% commission on what you earn. Normally when you factor in the other expenses you won't have much change out of a $1 million. Many people do home work via freelance sites like http://elance.com and you have to shop around for the best deal. Some like http://fiverr.com don't pay very much but if you get lots of little jobs you can make a nice living. There is also social media sites to promote your business on and apart from the obvious ones try http://tribe.net & http://ecademy.com. One issue mentioned is having health insurance as if you become ill the business probably depends on you and you don't want to go on a long waiting list for an operation. There are some fairly reasonably priced franchises out there where you benefit from an established company. A lot of franchises and books about start up business ideas are quite frankly rip offs. Some of the best ideas are things like buying and selling especially on sites like Amazon & Ebay where in a lot of cases you can get something either very cheap or be given it and sell it for a substantial sum. Some businesses have had cash flow problems with that kind of business as some of the companies freeze all or part of the money you make in case there are any problems like returns. If you do buy and sell online it is probably an idea to diversify across several platforms and also have your own website to sell from. This book does cover a wide variety of subjects connected to running a home based business. Even things like pets and childcare. One major benefit of running your own business is if you have a real problem customer you can just choose not to accept their custom. I did really enjoy this book.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part B

This is the second installment in my blog series on Photoshop Elements 9 based on the video training course I am doing and some of what I learn. When you first set up Elements you are prompted to set up an Adobe account and ID if you don't already have one. It gives certain benefits like being able to store a certain amount on a cloud storage site free of charge and having Photoshop.com which is a kind of cut down version of Photoshop where you can do simple editing. The effects folder in Elements contains your lighting effects presets. There are folders that are edit, create and share that let you do various jobs. To import your photos you will usually click on file, get photos and pictures then from camera or card reader. Of course some people click on from scanner which requires a driver and scanner software which normally comes with the scanner to work. The pictures will usually be displayed as thumbnails and you can also rate them 1-5 to help locate them but will normally rate them 3-5 and leave the rest unrated. Under the enhance menu you can select auto smart fix to auto repair a photo or auto light levels to auto repair the light and colours. There is also a convert to black and white option under enhance. The create folder lets you create things like calendars and cards and many of the integrate with Adobe online and you pay for and they are posted to you. There is a slide show option that does presentations pretty much like Powerpoint. When sending stuff by e-mail select share e-mail attachment to send a photo as an attachment or photo mail to send the photo within the e-mail. Finally it also has a facial recognition feature with which you have to initially label a photo with the persons name and then it selects possible photos that might be the same person and it learns to recognize the person as it goes on getting better and better. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part A

I am doing a software tutorial with Virtual Training Company on Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and am doing a series of software tutorial blog posts on what I learn from it. I have quite an old computer which won't run any of the more recent versions of Elements. One of the big new features in Elements 9 is the layers mask where you can protect part of the picture from an effect you are applying to a picture. Many of the features in Elements 9 only work with 8 bit pictures which is fine if you work with JPEG's but might limit you with other work. JPEG's are ideal with internet use. TIF's are ideal for printing. RAW files have to be converted for Elements using Adobe Raw Converter which is a free program. Note every model of camera has a unique type of RAW file although they do store all the information about a photo although they aren't an unprocessed format despite the name. Some people confuse dpi with ppi the former being dots and the latter being pixels. There can be upto 16 dots to one pixel and dots refers to a printer and pixels refers to a camera. If you have a poor printer you will have poor prints regardless what camera you use. There is a company at http://datacolor.com that do a spyder range of color calibration software including ones for home cinemas and they do basic models for around $99. When you consider how much high end home cinemas and computer monitors are they are a good investment and it's nice to know the color you see on the screen is the color that will be printed out on your printer. If you are considering buying a digital camera consider visiting http://dpreview.com where they have a database of just about every model and give you unbiased information in detail. In Elements 9 an interesting feature is photomerge which can do either a style merge where it takes the style from one picture and applies it to another photo. There is also panorama where several photos of different but consecutive images of a place can be merged. It generally works best with photos without too much detail or contrast and only works in 8 bit mode. Photoshop has a much more powerful panorama generator. Generally it is best with both both these versions not to let the computer fill in the blank space left by the merge and instead crop it otherwise it might look unreal. I will be trying to do this series daily.

Searching Online

The book I read to research this post was Click: What We Do Online And Why It Matters by Bill Tancer which is a very good book which I bought at a car boot sale. The author of this book uses sites like Hitwise to measure online research by the general public. Obviously when there are big disasters like Hurricane Katrina that tends to become among the most searched for items. Interestingly when Anna Nicole Smith the playboy model whose life was like a soap opera died prematurely many people put in search terms like Is Anna Nicole Smith Dead and even for photos of her dead. A lot of people are obviously quite morbid. A lot of people when researching stuff go to wikipedia but also especially when buying products an increasing number are researching it on social media sites especially Facebook where people can click they like a product and many companies have Facebook product pages in addition to a website. In fact a basic product page is free & I think if you get 25 likes they give you that domain name. There is another social media site mentioned in the book which is geared towards new music which I'd never heard of but might check out called http://imeem.com. This book was published in 2009 when I think MySpace was more popular than currently and there is quite a bit about that. I did read somewhere that facebook is compatible with a lot of formats when it comes to uploading photos and video and that MySpace isn't which did cause a lot of people to migrate to Facebook. I enjoyed this book which is only about 280 pages but is probably more interesting than informative.