Logical Expressions Blog

Yesterday, amidst great fanfare, Steve Jobs released the iPad. You might think that as an author, avid reader, and book publisher, I'd be wildly excited about this new gadget. Do I view the iPad as the "future" of publishing? No. Like many techie devices, it has been saddled with an utterly stupid name. Yo Steve, what were you thinking? The feminine protection jokes made at least 79 circuits around the Internet mere hours after the announcement. Beyond the name, I find I have a problem with hoopla-laden technology launches. It feels like déjà vu all over...

Although I don’t use Twitter often, yesterday, I wandered over there and took at look at the happenings in the Twitterverse. Much to my surprise, I had a lovely red notice on my page that said my account was suspended. If you click the link on the big red box on your page, you find a page, which I now know contains the “Foul Owl.” (Not to be confused with the Fail Whale, which is equally useless, yet different.) The Foul Owl told me that I could look at the Twitter status to see if something was...

Over the years, I have saved many of the emails we receive through the contact forms on our various Web sites. In addition to our main Logical Expressions site, all of our article sites (The Publishize Newsletter, Computor Companion magazine, Logical Tips, Pet Tails etc., have comment forms that appear on the article pages. I receive contact form emails from at least one of our sites almost every day. Most of them are from happy people who have solved a problem thanks to one of our articles. If there's such a thing as karma, we have points...

by James Byrd The title makes it sound like this is going to be a complicated posting, doesn't it? Not to worry: the subjects of this post are about making things easier, not harder. The "logical half" of Logical Expressions (that's me) has been busy with a couple of side-projects that came to fruition this week. I wrote articles about each of them on my Nerdy Musings site. The Logical Expressions Redirector The PayPal Button Converter for ASP.NET The LE Redirector is essentially TinyUrl on steroids. If you aren't...

This week, I discovered that the online version of the Redbook article (with me and my photo in it) has appeared online. You can check it out here: http://www.redbookmag.com/your/letting-intuition-guide-you The article is called "Trust Your Gut. Change Your Life." The description is: "Tap into the power of your intuition to make your dreams happen. Learn how these five women used theirs to change their lives." My story is on page 2 of the online version: "Listening to her gut led to...A life-changing move" The article goes on to describe how 14 years ago, James and...

Once again, I'm a little late in mentioning this, but the new issue of Computor Companion magazine is online. (We were on vacation, so blogging wasn't really on my "to do" list.) Anyway, the new issue has these articles: Demystifying Nerd Words (all about misused and confusing terminology) How to Create a Postcard in Photoshop (based on my experiences creating promotional postcards for our books) Digital Photos 101 (Dian Chapman gets graphic-y) How to Set Your Retail Pricing to Meet Your Financial Goals (complete with cool online calculating tool) Q&A on a Weird Excel...

After putting off redoing our Logical Expressions corporate site for quite a while, we finally bit the bullet, gutted it, and started over. The new version is online here: Logical Expressions, Inc. Corporate Site In addition to changing the design and clarifying our message, with information for people who want to: write a book, publish a book, or promote a book, the new site also has a number of new pages that better showcase all the stuff we do. Now we have pages...

This winter we have received more than 14 feet of snow. Clearly winter is here. And so is the winter issue of Computor Companion magazine. This issue features these articles: Customize Word 2007 Document Themes Lay Out Your Book in Microsoft Word Create a Photo Calendar in Publisher Banish Bullets from a PowerPoint Presentation Understanding Disk Partitioning Which Blogging Tool Should I Choose and more... We've also decided to open up advertising to outside advertisers. This press release describes it... Award-Winning Content Web Sites Now Accepting Outside Advertising ...but basically,...

I sent out a notification to our Logical Tips list last week with a special pre-order price on our new books, since I thought they wouldn't be available on Amazon for a while. It turns out I was wrong; the Logical Tips books are already on Amazon too! They don't have cover graphics yet, but if you do a search on my name, you see they are all listed: Amazon Search for Susan C. Daffron I discovered this because I looked at our sales report and a couple have already sold. Egad. The other ultra cool...

Periodically, I encounter something that makes my online world better. Today in a forum, I found out about Windows Live Writer. If you have a blog, it's an incredibly cool tool. You can update your blog from your desktop, so you don't have to log into your blogging software. It's fast and easy to use. Anyway, blogging is part of many people's marketing mix these days, which ties into this week's article. If you'd like to read it online, use the link below: http://newsletter.logicalexpressions.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=146 Enjoy!  Technorati Tags: web business,marketing,online business,publishize

Those who read our Publishize Newsletter via email know that this last week was filled with technological challenges. My satellite Internet went belly up and I spent a lot of time troubleshooting an email problem my assistant was having. (Yes, I DID finally figure it out!) Anyway, the fact that my computing biorhythms were clearly at a low ebb, makes it all the more amazing that this week we also launched the Publishize Your Way to Success podcast. In addition to sending out the newsletter via email, now we also have entered the realm of audio. Check out the site: Publishize Your...

As usual I am delinquent in mentioning that we put up a new issue of Computor Companion magazine last week. This issue has a lot of helpful articles. Check them out: Back Up Your Computer Regularly and Reliably   Use Word Bookmarks   Add an Index to Your Book with InDesign   Consider PowerPoint for Digital Scrapbooks   Customize Your QuickBooks Invoices   Q and A: How to Open Docx Files Here Comes the Bride-zilla   No TV? No Problem! As always, a big "thank you" to all of our authors, some of whom have been contributing to CC since the very beginning way back in 1999. We love...

In one of the forums I'm in, there's been a lot of discussion on selecting a shopping cart. One point I made seems obvious, but maybe isn't as obvious as I thought. The person who was looking into a new cart posted a link to the sales site for the cart she is considering. One thing that jumped out to me immediately was that the Web site had no links to live stores. In evaluating a shopping cart, I think the first step should be to actually go through the process of buying something from a site using the cart software. When...

...the more they remain the same. I just read an interesting report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The report basically looks at what Web 2.0 really is and if we should care. Riding the Waves of Web 2.0 They ask: "As researchers, we instinctively reach for our spreadsheets to see if there is evidence to inform the hype about any online trend." Their conclusions seem to mostly be no. For example, the biggest thing most people really do with the Internet is send email (53%). They also compare the concept of Facebook to Geocities circa 1996. Clearly personal pages are...

Last Friday, I sent out the last regular issue of our Logical Tips newsletter. I got a lot of really nice emails from readers thanking me for all the tips over the years. Since it's summertime and lots of people are on vacation, I thought I'd also post a note here to let subscribers know that you won't be getting a Logical Tips email in your inbox today. This page explains the change and future plans. However as I said, we are starting up a new newsletter in September. So if you want to keep hearing from us, please check out our...

The new issue of Computor Companion is online. In the new issue, you find out how to: Create Books and Long Documents in InDesign Use Photoshop to Remove Red Eye Send ECards Safely Measure the Success of Your Email Campaign Get Up and Running with Microsoft Vista Share Your Presentations online and more... Check out all the articles at the Computor Companion magazine web site.Technorati tags: computor companion, daffron

As some people know I have been writing our Logical Tips newsletter for about 6 or 7 years. Recently, I decided that it's time to compile all those tips into books. Of course, technology changes over the years and some tips are now sort of old. So I enlisted some help in testing the tips. She is reading them over first, so I can then go in and update them all to Windows XP and Office 2003. (Note that I'm not going to delve into the land of Windows Vista or Office 2007.) Anyway, today my tip tester said, "I absolutely love...

This week while my spouse was out of town, I took it upon myself to go nuts and remove 700 tons of obsolete computing technology from our world. This massive office reorganization entailed recycling hundreds of magazines and catalogs and taking advantage of the new computer recycling program Staples has instituted: Staples Computer Recycling Program I've been avoiding dealing with old technology for years. I refused to put all those creepy chemicals from monitors and circuit boards into a landfill, so they have been collecting dust under our desks and in boxes stashed all over the place. It was a good thing that...

Apparently, this year is the 50th anniversary of the font Helvetica. An article on the Slate site called: The Helvetica Hegemony discusses the history of Helvetica with an online slide show. It's sort of astonishing how many companies have used this typeface, even before the days when you could find it on every computer. My favorite line is this one, which appears on the last slide: "It's the tofu of typefaces: bland in itself but ready to absorb whatever flavors you add to it." As a vegan graphic designer who has seen a lot of both tofu and Helvetica, I was seriously amused ;-) Technorati tags:...

I just found a great article on search engine optimization (SEO): 8 Myths of Search Engine Optimization He basically says what we've been saying for years. SEO is all about words. Everyone seems to want to turn search engine optimization into some mystical voo doo, but basically if you write a lot of good articles, and create sites with clean HTML code, in the end people will find your site when they do a search. Google never penalizes sites with good writing, clean code, and links coming in from other respectable sites. It's boring, old fashioned, and true. However, sleezeball tactics like bogus...

One side effect of all the work we've been doing lately is that we now have a string of products that we sell through our online store. I'd never really thought about it before, but finding product orders in your email is a really fun thing, particularly since for the past few years, mostly what I've found in my in box has been spam. As I've ranted before, spam just infuriates me. Early on, all the nerd gurus said, oh it's no big deal, just press the Delete key. Then everyone started getting not just a few annoying unwanted emails, but...

This week I learned that the Emoticon is turning 25 this year: Web Smiley article I think it's kind of cool, since I use emoticons all the time. (In fact, a number of years ago, Diane Chapman wrote a rather popular Computor Companion article about the tremendous variations in emoticons...people can be rather creative with their punctuation marks.) This week I also saw a lot of the less fun side of email. Apparently, many people who are way, way too enamored of their CapsLock key came out of hiding. I think you know what I mean. I'm talking about the people who send...

Today's hardware failure is brought to you by the letter K. So there I was trying to write an email and type the word "okay." All was well, until the letter K just wouldn't work for me. Sure the letter K may not seem like much, but you really don't know how much you miss it until it's gone. I'd been avoiding the reality that my keyboard was filthy, but I could avoid it no longer, since I had to write an email to a guy named Ken. I yanked off a few key caps. It appears sharing an office with...

As I was trolling through the ever-so-boring world of technology news this evening, I realized that I forgot to report that I finally saw Microsoft Vista last weekend. The experience was hugely underwhelming. It left me thinking, "gee, the greatest minds at Microsoft took six years to do that?" We went to Staples where they dutifully had many copies of Vista out on display. A little HP laptop was running the new operating system, so we moused around a bit. It's got more animation and it looks sorta like newer Mac OSs. Big deal. I mean is anyone actually excited about Vista?...

Is it any wonder people don’t trust the government? Anger Grows Over NSA Surveillance Report In a sign that political opposition to surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency may be growing, a wide range of top Democrats took aim at the program throughout the day and called for immediate hearings to investigate the president’s eavesdropping and data-mining efforts.Technorati tags: daffron

Because I create Web sites, I feel it’s my duty to periodically see what “award-winning” Web design looks like. So today I looked at a few of the Webby Award Nominations. Mostly award-winning design looks expensive. I mean, gee Google Maps has a GooglePlex full of programmers on the task. Of course it’s cool. Since that kind of money has no bearing on my world, I’m always more interested in the “personal” categories. However, the monotony of the 20th black background Flash with distressed fonts intro screen really gets me down. I wish this “wow I’m so cool” look would just go away....

I don’t know if it’s me or the Internet, but I’m finding life online more and more depressing. I get about 70-80 spam messages a day, half of which are phishing scams trying to steal pretty much anything from me they can. And a friend of mine is struggling dealing with people stealing her content. It’s not just the random loser reposting stuff either. Teachers and professionals are ripping her off. These people know better and are justifying it by saying that copyright is just too hard to understand. Actually, it’s not. It’s quite simple. If you didn’t write it, it’s not...

An article in Fortune suggests that even the guy who invented cubicles, Robert Propst, thinks they were a mistake:  Cubicles: The great mistake It’s been more than 10 years since I’ve experienced the horror of a cubicle. And I don’t miss it at all. Technorati tags: daffron

for the information-overload that too much technology has created. Big wigs are even having conferences about it: Information Overload “There’s even a name for the attention deficit disorder some fret the tech industry has created. “Continuous partial attention,” as they’re calling it, is an adaptive behavior pattern many consumers have adopted to cope with the need to multitask and boost productivity in the digital age. ” Here’s a hint people: turn off your stupid cell phone for a change. Technorati tags: daffron

For those who are too busy to pay attention to what the kiddies are doing, now the world has a new technological spy tool named Bob just for you: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6042249.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn  “Bob consists of a timer and a reporter box. A device’s plug is locked into Bob, which is then plugged into a wall outlet. Parents assign their children a certain amount of time on the device by day or week, and when it’s up, Bob cuts the current. ” You just gotta know that the comparisons to Microsoft’s ill-fated Bob will be coming down the pike shortly. Technorati tags: daffron

Okay, am I the only one who thinks this is disgusting?http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,70322-0.html?tw=rss.index Wanting to look like a Romulan or Klingon seems like a sort of pathetic Trekkie dream, if you ask me. Maybe I’m not open minded enough, but even the pictures grossed me out. I can’t imagine doing this to onesself on purpose. Technorati tags: daffron