I’m too young to remember the telegram but from what I’ve read, it’s a short concise message to someone far away. Telegram style is a way of writing that attempts to abbreviate words and pack as much information into the shortest possible number of words and or characters as possible.

Sound familiar?

Incidentally, you can still send telegrams if you have distant relatives that don’t respond to telephone calls, emails, fax or smoke signal.

Way back in 1886, some people were using the telephone and other people were trying to find a fair way to make those people pay for it. Angry diatribes printed in the newspapers were common, subscribers were up in arms over ridiculous fees and nobody could agree on whether usage based billing was justified.

Sound familiar?

Remember calling cards? You may have used them in college to keep long distance relationships intact or to call home from a European phone booth. Well, they’re back! And they are not only a solution for 25 cent a minute mobile long distance charges, they are a way to make a statement about your statement. In Canada, fair competition regulated by the CRTC, is an effort by the government to encourage competition and fair pricing in technology. However, Canadians are still paying some of the world’s highest cell phone bills.

Calling cards are a backwards way of saying yes to savings and no to outrageous fees.

Here’s how:

• Invest $20 in a 900 minute calling card.
• Download a free iphone app that remembers and auto-dials the access number and PIN. It even allows you to customize a timed response based on the voice prompts you receive when you dial in.
• Never pay carrier fees for long distance again!

Whether you’re in Canada or the U.S. this is an easy way to take advantage of history repeating itself.

The commonly accepted practice remains asking yourself a series of technical questions about the app’s functionality and then grouping them according to purpose. I have been following this procedure since being introduced to folders and it has been fraught with difficulty.

Is the calculator a utility or a productivity tool? Does the address book belong in the reference or social folder? After finally making an educated decision on how best to file an application, I was then faced with the problem of relocating it for use. This wasted valuable time. Time I could be using to abuse bandwidth based billing limits with.

I am happy to report that this issue no longer plagues me! I have a achieved iphone freedom and I have done so using the power of colour.

I found that even when utilizing the correctly named function-based folder structure, I was still reliant most of the time on locating the application by it’s prominent colour scheme. This often proved itself when someone else was using my phone and I would be helping them locate something. I would tell them what it looked like rather than where it lived. I probably couldn’t even tell you the names of my folders for that matter.

The dynamics of this new system is easy. Each folder has a colour. Similarly coloured apps are placed together. Most apps are brand driven which lends itself well to recognition by colour.

If you want to try it, please feel free. All I ask is that you put the seconds you save toward something more meaningful than I do – like talking to someone face to face about something other than this.

There are other services similar to it, LivingSocial and TeamBuy are two others. It seems to fit snuggly into a social buying niche that may start to give consumers more of a say into the prices of products they want or need.

This month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review featured an article on an aspect of Groupon that could be interest to many of the businesses who are considering delving into Groupon as a marketing strategy. Before diving in, it may be of benefit to call a team meeting and explain how the business may benefit from these extreme cost cutting measures. As it turns out, the euphoria that the Groupon-holders experience may be equivalent to the disappointment that employees feel while servicing these bargain-hunters.

Most employees feel a certain level of pride associated with the brand they represent or the level of expertise required to carry out their on-the-job responsibilities and can be easily offended when this offering is sold for next to nothing. It can easily be taken personally – when one is not mindful of the bigger picture.

In addition to the unhappiness employees feel with giving away their product or service, the typically bargain-minded Groupon user can add to the displeasure by showing a lack of etiquette by tipping poorly or being generally un-knowledgeable. This type of behaviour can further enrage the employee – resulting in a less than pleasant experience for all in involved. In fact, research has shown that the level of an Employee’s self reported happiness can directly influence the success or failure of a Groupon promotion.

Seeking your team’s approval for a Groupon promotion may be something to easily overlook. However, training on dealing with difficult customers and buy-in to the bigger picture may be the most important thing you can do to ensure the tidal wave of Grouponers don’t impact the morale of your employees and tarnish the great first impression you are hoping to exhibit.

Today I am raving. Sorry in advance.

The Problem

I’ve recently started using 1Password to store all my information. As a freelancer as well as a full-time employee, I have a similar set-up in my home office and at work. I use the same hardware and software, and access the same servers and require the same information from both locations. This information is now available to me anywhere and it’s changed the way I work.

1password Welcome Screen

Previous to using 1Password, I stored hosting information and CMS logins for all my clients, third-party web application passwords, and anything of historical importance in a secret binder locked away in the filing cabinet. To access it was painful, to access it remotely was impossible. I needed a solution.

The solution I was looking for needed to be digital so I could access and copy/paste usernames and passwords quickly. The solution needed to be secure and it needed to be accessible online.

The Solution

1password is a traditional software application for Mac or Windows with browser extensions (and mobile apps). The software is a repository for everything you use online and off. It stores website logins, FTP servers, secure notes, payment information and even software licenses. You can add this information manually or let it capture the information the first time you login to a website. When you need a password, either auto-fill your information in your browser or copy and paste the hidden information from the application itself.

This is not only a solution for daily access issues but it’s also a long term storage application for information you never want to lose. 1password information is encrypted and stored locally. For remote access to your data, you can easily sync with Dropbox which opens up an HTML based interface that is very similar to the look and feel of the application – which is super nice.

At first I was wary about security, but as I considered the digital alternatives to printed information, there were no better options than what I’ve found using this solution. Agile offers another application called Knox – a military grade vault creator which can go the extra mile to alleviate security concerns if you are looking for extra peace of mind. Using the secure password generator that comes with the application to create passwords, is one of the best things you can do to prevent thievery.

Stored Passwords

Browser Extensions/Auto-fill options

The End

1Password has a retail price of $39.95 and gives the option of a free 30 day trial. This is the best investment in software I’ve made in a long time. Knowing I can access the keys to my digital life any time I need them is something I can’t put a price on.

If you have any questions, comment away! Sorry for raving. Goodbye.

If you have indeed followed all of the instructions up to this point, you would have created a MYSQL database and ensured the user of this database has sufficient access privileges. The reason you are seeing this error is because the path to the Database host on ICDSoft is not the standard path suggested by WordPress.

Ironically, in earlier version of the wp-config file, there is a comment beside the DB_HOST field that says there is a 99% chance you won’t need to change this value. Well, ICDSoft users fall into the 1% category that will have to change this value. The code from the wp-config file is displayed below:

// ** MySQL settings ** //

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘database_name’); // The name of the database

define(‘DB_USER’, ‘username’); // Your MySQL username

define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’); // …and password

define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost:/tmp/mysql5.sock‘); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value

define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);

define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);

As highlighted in bold, the correct path for the DB_HOST is not localhost, it’s localhost:/tmp/mysql5.sock

Add this to your config file, revisit wp-admin/install.php and you are good to go!

Here’s a promo code for 20% your hosting package if you want: http://www.icdsoft.com/promo-code/ICDsoft20

Mozy

I personally cannot recommend this online back-up service to more people. Mozy is an easy to install program that syncs your computer or multiple computers to a remote server. With unlimited data transfer for $4.95/mo. and the unlimited peace of mind that comes with knowing all your artwork is safe from disaster is a deal you can’t refuse. And if you do refuse this deal, they have a FREE 2GB storage account as well. How can you refuse free?

Dropbox and Dropio

Both Dropbox and Dropio offer you the ability to share files with other people and users. Dropbox gives you the ability to sync files between multiple computers. I use the free 2GB account on a regular basis as I’m typically working between various work stations around the office. Both are easy to use and offer a great way to get your print ready files to the printer.

Firefox/ColorZilla/Measureit

I’m almost positive that you’ve heard of these extensions for Firefox. Measureit gives you the ability to size up any on-screen object that needs to outfitted with a specific graphic element. Just drag the ruler and take your dimensions to Photoshop. Colorzilla is another useful tool that picks a color off a website for you. Great for matching specific shades.

OpenX

Similar to Google Ad Planner, OpenX is built by a well supported community of open source developers who have created an awesome ad sever for the web environment. Host affiliate ads or paid ads on your site with full control over how often an advertisement displays and to whom it displays. OpenX has been configured to serve ads for our advertising purposes and it comes highly recommended.

Woopra and Click Density

In addition to the mainstay of Analytic world, that being Google Analytics, there are a variety of up and comers that offer stats and behavioral tracking for your websites. Woopra is a free option which offers WordPress implementation through a plug-in. Click Density is another that shows heat map overlays for your sites in an effort to help you discover what content you have is hot and which is not.

Hootsuite

If keeping in touch with tweeps is a priority, check out HootSuite. It’s a Twitter management application that gives you the flexibility to tweet to multiple accounts at once or at a time. You can also track the actions of your followers and create nice looking charts and graphs to put up on your filing cabinet.

TinyChat

Have you been looking for an easy way to video conference or chat with colleagues and clients in a private online environment? Well you’re reading the right post. TinyChat supplies the world with free, disposable online chatrooms. When used carefully, this can be a great tool for video conferencing with a number of people at once. Be forewarned however, that the public chat rooms are unsupervised and can contain some strange and perhaps disturbing behavior.

ProofHQ

Go green, save paper and impress your clients with this online proofing platform. ProofHQ can provide the tools you need to collaborate, revise and approve print proofs or online mock-ups. It’s full of a wide array of functionality that will make you wonder why you didn’t use this service sooner.

What the Font/Font Burner

Met your match with a font that will not be identified? Try uploading it to What the Font. It will detect its distinct characteristics and render a verdict. If this does not provide the desired result you can also post your mystery font to the forum where a number of font enthusiasts will solve the case before you can say “Arial Rounded MT Bold.” Another useful font site is FontBurner which is a service that embeds non web-friendly fonts for easy inclusion on your website.

Icon Finder

If you are on the hunt for an icon, start your search at IconFinder.com. Recently outfitted with a shiny new robot mascot, this site will locate the icon of your dreams in seconds.

Please feel free to make additions to this list in the comments!

Logitech Keyboard and Mouse

The Logitech diNovo Edge and the MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse are both great peripherals that combine the convenience of wireless connectivity and a smooth user experience. The diNovo keyboard in addition to being sleek and modern in it’s design complete with touch sensitive navigation, is also equipped with bluetooth wireless technology and is fully rechargeable. The MX1000 is dependable, accurate and has a long battery life. I have two!

Another Logitech product that you might find helpful is the Logitech NuLOOQ Navigator which is not a mouse or a keyboard but simply a an ambidextrously alternative to the traditional navigation peripheral. It uses a navring that you push or pull in different directions and four customizable buttons for programmable functionality. It’s a non-dominant hand option for multitaskers.

Samsung SyncMaster Monitor

The Samsung Syncmaster 943SWX is a 18.5 inch monitor that provides the on screen space needed to run multiple windows and look good doing it. The screen’s matte finish is easy on the eyes and so is the glossy finish that surrounds it. It’s great for any design application and the price is attractive as well.

M-Audio Speakers

If you’re not rockin’ K-OS in itunes, you might not be taking full advantage of your music collection for the benefit of your portfolio. M-Audio Studiophile AV 30 is a set of highly rated compact powered speakers from a company that designed with the same critically acclaimed technology that has made M-Audio monitors popular in recording studios. These speakers are loud and clear when they need to be and small enough to stay out of the way in your office.

Wacom Bamboo

The Wacom Bamboo tablet turns your monitor into a notepad. Useful for designers and photographers alike, it’s a customizable and convenient way of touching up photos, bringing illustrations to life, and navigating between tools. It takes some time to get the hang of but those that acquire the required skills swear by it’s functionality.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H20

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H20 is an 10MB camera with a price tag that will make you smile. Combining Sony’s practical rechargeable battery and a 720p HD-quality movie capture with a 10x zoom lens, this camera is full of practical features and it’s easy to use.

Drobo Storage Robot

Data back-up is everything. Data Robotics Drobo makes redundancy new and exciting. We don’t have one but we want one. This storage robot is a fully automated, hot-swappable, RAID back-up system that can be modified for Network Attached Storage (NAS). It runs quietly and offers an informative dashboard and simple light notification system to provide data security.

Synology DS209

Comparable to the Drobo is the Synology DS209 Network Attached Storage. If the Drobo is a one trick pony, the DS209 is a thousand trick pony or a herd of a thousand ponies each with a unique trick. This unit does everything! Offering file sharing, scheduled back-up, a mail server, built-in PHP+MySQL, hosting with FTP access, itunes server, and even remote camera management, what’s not to love?

Western Digital External Hard drive

The Western Digital My Passport External Hard Drive is a great external drive for portability. It uses one foot-long USB connector that phantom powers the drive. The Passport comes in sizes up to 500GB and is competitively priced. From our perspective, it has no drawbacks.

D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router

Don’t forget the internet! The D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router is a super fast router that is easy to set-up, Gigabit LAN ports and the latest in wireless security. Dlink’s router interface is simple and straight-forward which makes it easy to get back to what you do best.

What do you use on a daily basis that you can’t imagine living without?

Recruiters
Graphic Designers don’t fit the mold, they tend to run solo or congregate in like-minded groups. With this being the case, recruiters don’t typically deal with designers on a regular basis and as a result, don’t understand how to find work for them. Unless you are lucky enough to have a good connection with a recruiter who knows you personally and feels confident placing you, don’t bother going this route.

Job boards
Your first stop when visiting online job boards should be The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. Jobs from across Canada are available from a variety of industries. You will also be assured that the design of this website is pleasing to the eye which I’m sure is something you’ll appreciate. Continuing on the tour of job boards, be sure to drop by Freelanceswitch.com and Krop. Both of these sites list design opportunities, however they may or not have local relevance for you.

The Classifieds
It’s important to scour the classifieds, as archaic as that practice may sound, some of your best leads could come from kijiji.ca or craigslist.org. On Kijiji, you will discover the best results by searching your city for graphic design positions. On Craigslist, the well organized categories will allow you to visit art/media/design or web/info design for jobs that may be up your alley.

Career Finders
Perhaps the most traditional of online sources for jobs of any sort are websites like monster.ca, workopolis.com, and regionalhelpwanted.com. Monster.ca is seemingly the most useful of these as it provides you with the ability to save searches and receive frequent email updates that match your specifications.

Outsourcing Sites
The ubiquity of world wide internet accessibility has given rise to the concept of easy online outsourcing. Finding work, or finding talent is as easy as visiting sites like getafreelancer.com, elance.com, and odesk.com or even crowdspring.com (which is more a contest website than a job website). You will find a lot of work on these websites but you will also find a tremendous amount of competition as you are bidding against like minded professionals from many different economic situations . If you are planning on finding work via any of these sites, be prepared to work for a lot less than you may be accustomed to.

Aggregation Sites
Without a doubt, your most useful tool in fighting unemployment is the rise of aggregators in popularity and functionality. These are websites that do the searching for you, visiting all the websites you’d want to check and assembling the results for your review. There are three websites that do this job quite nicely. SimplyHired.ca, Indeed.ca, and Eluta.ca are great places to continue your search without expending the effort of clicking from site to site.

Good luck! Your dream job is out there somewhere, you just have to find it.

See that little icon at the left side of your URL bar? What you’re looking at is a favicon.

The word ‘favicon’ is short for ‘favorites icon’. Favicons were originally introduced with Internet Explorer 5. To install a favicon, developers could place an image file in the root of their web server with a specific name. This image file would then be used as the favicon for the website, and would be displayed in the user’s ‘favorites’ toolbar alongside the domain of the website.

But why?, I hear you ask.

There are many reasons why you may want to upload a favicon for your website. Firstly, if your site will be aggregated by content providers, or if your sites main feature is RSS, the favicon you upload will be displayed by your RSS feed, making it easy for users to identify your website quickly. It’s also the same case in a user’s favorites list, where there are many sites. You to stand out in that list and provide a quick graphical reminder of your sites.

Also, people DO notice favicons. For example, when Google recently changed there favicon, the blogosphere picked up and all of a sudden there were hundreds upon thousands of posts about the switch.

Your next question will most likely be: How do I create a favicon?

One of the best ways to create a favicon is to visit a website such as Favicon.cc. Favicon.cc provides you with a large square, comprising of 256 smaller squares. On the right hand side of the page there is a Color Picker box, which allows you to choose a color for the box you are about to fill in.
Then, once a color is selected, hover over a box and click it to fill it with that color. You can fill all the boxes with colors of your choice, and when you are finished, click the ‘Download Favicon’ button at the bottom of the page. This will download a file named “favicon.ico” to your computer.

Now, all you have to do is upload this file in to the root of your site’s web server. Once you have done this, the favicon will be available in the URL bar, beside the web address of the site.

Favicon.cc also has a gallery of the top rated user created favicons. The gallery can be viewed here.

The abbreviation FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP is a system that enables website owners to upload and delete files easily on web servers. Typically, the website owner downloads ‘client’ software, and uses this to connect to a server, the details of which are most always provided by the host of the site.

However, there are many different FTP client software packages. Some of them are paid, while some of them are free. This list will narrow all the tools down to five which you should really consider using.

FileZilla

FileZilla is one of the most popular FTP clients. One great thing about it is that it’s cross platform, meaning that it is available for a number of operating systems. FileZilla has some cool features, such as “Site Manager”. Site Manager allows you to save all of your FTP details, rather than having to re enter details every time you want to connect to an FTP server. There is also a log shown at the top of the screen, and a transfer queue at the bottom. The transfer queue allows you to see failed and complete transfers, as well as how many files are left to be transferred. Finally, FileZilla has a File and Folder view, which shows the folders of the PC you are using on the left, and the folders of the web server you are connected to on the right. FileZilla was originally started as a class project in 2001, and it has clearly evolved a lot since then.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a great free source code editor. It has many great features, but one of the lesser known is the fact that you can easily install a plugin which will integrate an FTP client in to the software. The plugin can be downloaded free here. Many other free plugins can be downloaded for Notepad++, all completely free of charge.

FireFTP

FireFTP is an FTP plugin for FireFox. It’s available in over 20 languages, has support for a large number of character sets and has many other features. However, my favourite feature about it is the fact that it can be opened in a tab and you can run it while you’re surfing the net, meaning directories can be in synch without having to have 2 windows open. It is built for seamless integration and is available for all operating systems.

Cyberduck

Cyberduck is a Mac only FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Mosso Cloud Files and Amazon S3 browser. It features a slick interface, with file editing features, as well as a bookmarking system. You can synchronize the bookmarks with your Mac iDisk if you wish, as well. Best of all, it’s open source. A great option for Mac users.

Coffee Cup FTP

Coffee Cup FTP is very similar to FileZilla. What sets it apart however, is the user interface. It’s very friendly and easy to use. With big status panes, as well as a ‘shiny’ feel, it makes for a better experience. It has a very “Apple” feel; works right out of the box.

Dropbox

If you are looking for a great way to share or store files, Dropbox is an easy way to do this. Using software as well as a simple online interface, Dropbox enables you to drag and drop files from the web to your computer and vice versa. It also gives you the ability to store files privately or share them publicly. I use it all the time!

What’s your favourite FTP client or transfer tool? Let us know!