I am constantly gobsmacked at how hard some “professional” applications make things.

Take for example something as obvious as a shape with a dotted line.

I want to make some buttons for a website. Ordinarily I’d just create a shape in something like Keynote or Powerpoint with the appropriate line, cut and paste into something like Seashore and cut the bits I need. No it’s not the “ideal” way to do this, but it consistently works and takes me ten minutes, tops.

But I’ve recently become a Photoshop person. I like the layers, which PS will do. But try getting a dotted line on a shape. Really.

Finally after hours and hours of searching, I found how to do it here.

Surely they can make something like this simpler? Or is this the now standard “exclusive” approach rather than “inclusive”? After all, we can’t have just *anyone* doing graphic design can we? There’s lines of demarcation to worry about.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g&hl=en&fs=1]

Another use for an iPod Touch.

Sounds a bit like the apple remote to me, but as the article says, the touch can also act as a keyboard (if you are prepared to get used to the thumb-tapping interface).

With companies like Meraki slowly rolling-out blanket wi-fi access (and Meraki is part-owned by google, so they’re doing this potentially to add value to the Android phone) it won’t be long before the Touch can actually be used viably as a VoIP phone.

Give it a couple more years though… we’re a good 3-years behind the tech here in OZ.

Well, it ain’t an iPhone…

Looks like a pale version of a Crackberry or even — goddess forbid — a Palm Treo.

Funny how Sony Ericsson is bagging the devic, especially since they’ve just linked their destiny to Microsoft.

So, it’ll really be a battle of the phones. iPhone is apparently going gangbusters wherever it’s sold (and some places it isn’t), the Crackberry is potentially making a rod for its own back, Palm is just about dead, so what else is there?

Well, the OpenMoko Neo1973 still hasn’t been released, but it still looks very good, and sports a nifty touch-screen a’la iPhone, and there really isn’t any real competitor as far as I can see to the iPhone other than the aforementioned Android…

So the game’s afoot really…

Thanks to L, who took this pic close to work…

This is very interesting

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTehTbT7aho&rel=1]

They’re right when they say that the studios are only assessing and distributing movies that they can make a buck off of; the same as every other business out there. Movie-making is a business, it’s not about creativity.

I, and friends, have a similar issue with the publishing industry.

The music industry is exactly the same.

This is the beginning of something interesting and new; the net has given us a way to communicate ideas and our creativity — be it good or bad — to the entire world (other than those countries being actively censored of course). The concept is revolutionary, and totally circumvents the business models which have worked for the last 100 or more years.

Now the key is to keep-up the momentum, so here are some additional links:

• Publish your book or periodical online at Lulu.com
• Show your movie or short film online at youtube.com
• Play your music for anyone to hear at myspace.com

These aren’t the be-all and end-all; there are plenty of other ways to get music, movies and books out there into the wide world; the next stage is getting it known.

And that’s where HTML metatags come in handy. You have to capitalise on the bots by working out the best search terms which will get your content to the top of the search results…

Ultimately, this is open-source for everything else. We’ve got open-source software, there’s the potential for open-source hardware, but open-source music, movies and books is a new development…  And like everything else that’s happening in the world, it’s making big-business very very scared.

Good.

Well, I’ve had some luck finding people with the same sort of HP printer problems as I’ve experienced. Glad to see I’m not the only one losing time and energy attempting to do something as simple as installing a printer.

It just goes to show what I was saying earlier: HP isn’t a company I’d like to deal with on an ongoing basis.

Honestly, if they made any other items in the world with this degree of difficulty to get them working, they’d be out of business in three minutes flat. What is it with the computer industry churning out stuff that becomes incredibly difficult to use?

Dear Hewlett Packard,

I have a friend who owns both a Windows XP PC and a HP Officejet 9110 multifunction print,fax,scan,copy machine.

I’ve recently been asked by her to clean-up and reinstall her system for her, a task which took a little time due to the computer being the aforementioned Windows machine.

However, I have achieved this task admirably.

That is, until it came to reinstalling your printer.

Initially I thought that the Windows drivers might handle the printer; the system certainly popped up saying the system had found the printer with monotonous regularity. But alas, this did not work once I shifted the printer to the Apple wireless network. It didn’t even work when the printer was connected to the computer!

So, I reconnected the printer to the computer and started again, with your purpose-built HP Officejet 9110 CDs which came with the unit.

This took a little time to install, but it wasn’t an issue, I felt like a latte anyway. When I arrived back from the shop, I found the software had installed. A quickish restart, and there appeared to be no more complaints.

Being the arse-covering tech that I am, I tried to print. This worked. Good; just what I was hoping for.

So I tried to scan something.

The printer initially came up with an error stating there was no software installed.

Funny, I thought, I could have sworn I just had a latte while waiting for the software to install. A quick check revealed my empty cup and there, in the Start Menu, was HP printer software.

Odd, I thought.

So I tried the process in reverse by firing up your image management software. Another latte later and it was up and running.

I clicked the scan button in the UI and was greeted with a message saying there was an error connecting to the scanner.

I checked the cable. Yes, connected. But of course it was connected; it just printed something.

Right, third try; Let’s try someone else’s software: Apple’s Bonjour in this case.

This solved the printing, but not the scanning.

Back to the drawing board, or more accurately, the Control Panel and the Add Remove Programmes folder, where I attempted to uninstall the HP printer programmes.

But to no avail; An error message told me I would have to attempt uninstallation again once I’d restarted the machine.

I resisted the urge to go out and get another latte; the caffeine was beginning to make me twitchy (or perhaps it was the ongoing frustrating failures of your software to speak with your hardware?). No matter; I was made of sterner stuff, so restarted the machine once more.

Then I tried the same process: Start>Control Panel>Add Remove Programmes.

And I got the same error message.

I wondered briefly if I had offended some heathen god, but persevered, finding an unistallation programme in the Start>Programs>HP printer folder. This uninstallation worked, and required only one more restart of the system.

Like the dutiful hardware user that I am, I performed said restart, located the HP CD once more and commenced the software reinstallation process. I went for lunch, knowing that it would finish some time before I arrived back.

And I was right, it had finished, and required another restart to make things work.

So I restarted the system and tried printing again. This worked. Good.

I tried scanning again. This did not.

I’m at a loss why your hardware won’t talk to your software and vice-versa on a clean installation of Windows XP SP2. There’s a direct connection, there’s nothing wrong with the cable (as evidenced by the fact the printer can receive a print message and that XP goes freaking bananas and beeps repeatedly at me when it’s connected); so what’s the issue?

Perhaps it thinks I should be running Vista. Think again bozo.

Perhaps it misses the old installation of XP? So sorry, it’s dead; move on.

Perhaps even, it just doesn’t like the muttering and cursing I have allowed to be uttered in its presence while trying to get it to work? Well, to quote The Master: tough, I’m like that when I’m frustrated at inane plastic objects refusing to work.

Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: as long as there is breath in my lungs, as long as I have conscious thought processes going through my head, I will Never Ever purchase an HP product.

Yours with much love and kisses,

Lisa 4.0

Windows fanboys and girls need-not read any further.

I’ve been sitting here all evening — 3 hours — trying to get software and hardware to work on an XP machine. 3 freaking hours.

HP and Windows aren’t good bedfellows. Neither is Palm and PC. Never mind the issue that Symantec virusscan had trying to do a liveupdate.

Everything is so damn hard on a PC. Why is that? Is there some sadistic-streak within every windows user? Or is it the old male paradigm of battling with everything until it bends to your will.

As a female I don’t get that sort of thing. I just don’t have the inclination (albeit I do tonight because friends have made me dinner in exchange for hopefully fixing their PC), but honestly, having to fiddle for hours on end in the vain hope that the fixes you make in the evening are still standing come the daylight, and not sitting there in a gelatenous heap stretches the belief-systems a bit thin. They are the single greatest time-sucker on this planet, the single simplest reason why the hordes of the great unwashed have not yet risen-up, thrown their shackles off and nailed their masters to the nearest tree.

I kid you not, Evil Overlords rule #1: If you want your takeover of the world to go smoothly, give the population PCs (and don’t be using them yourself).

But there is a bright-side to all this:

‘You’ve convinced me to get a mac,’ said G, the owner of the computer.

Chaos and destruction: the PC’s work is done.

So you want to be a technical writer?

Well, it pays well, once you’ve been in the game for a while, and can be fulfilling as far as being able to describe yourself as a writer.

When you start on a project, you’re more than likely going to be dealing with software. Software can be badly designed, well designed or appallingly designed (thus making the word “designed” unnecessary).

However, whatever the state of the software is, you’ll always have a starting point, and then be able to further refine what’s on offer.

Let’s start with a simple window:

Okay, simple, eh? Two fields, a button, a checkbox and two links.

The way to approach any UI analysis (or any analysis at all to be honest) is to start at the top and work your way down.

This is called “Top Down Design” (among other things).

The principle is simple: You have the starting point, and you work-out what else you can do from there. Once you’ve worked-out where you go from the starting-point, you analyse each successive UI element (be it field, checkbox, button, link, whatever) in turn in the same way until you reach the point where nothing else can be done.

So from here, the starting point is the logon window.

What can you do from here?

• You can enter your username and password (Username and password fields)
• You can click login (login button)
• You can click Remember Me (remember me checkbox)
• You can go back to the website you came from (Back to Cake o’clock)
• You can request a new password  (Lost your password?)

So that’s five things on this little window. All of them can be used to form procedures — ordered lists of steps to achieve a particular goal — for example, Logging into your WordPress Blog, Obtaining a new password, etc.

Oh, and one last thing: never let anyone tell you that you can’t be a technical writer because you don’t know some bizarre piece of software (eg, Adobe distiller, Robohelp X5, and the pox of tools, Framemaker). The first and foremost skill of being a technical writer — or any writer for that matter — is the ability to write. And you’d be amazed at the number of people in the world who can’t string a coherent sentence together.

Or maybe you won’t…