Monthly Archives: May 2008
Font Management Best Practices
May 30th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Whether you’re working on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.5 (Leopard), if you’ve got more than a few fonts, font management can quickly become a critical part of your daily workflow. Too many fonts can cause your application menus to take forever to load, and even cause some application instability.
To help you navigate through all of the locations where fonts can be installed in Mac OS X, as well as whip your fonts into shape, we’ve created a Best Practices Guide. This document will help you clean up your font directories and help you get started with a font manager, such as Suitcase Fusion.
We’ve updated this guide to contain lists of all of the critical Mac OS X fonts for Tiger and Leopard, so you’ll be able to confidently remove fonts that were installed on the system, and only use the fonts that you prefer.
Download the font management best practices guide from the Extensis website.
Portfolio Project Sync at the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Symposium
May 30th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
In conjunction with Adobe Systems and CDW, Extensis will be participating in the the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Symposium next week. If you attend this event, you’ll get a preview of Extensis Portfolio and see how Project Sync provides a direct connection to your files from Adobe Creative Suite applications.
If you’re interested in attending, here’s the pertinent info:
- Adobe Creative Suite 3 Symposium
- Tuesday, June 3rd
- 8:00 a.m – 4:30 p.m.
- Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 1201 Market Street
For more information and registration details please visit: http://www.regonline.com/CS3Symposium.
Logo math – apple plus flag divided by choppers equals Apple
May 30th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
The Logologos site has a fun concept much like the song chart meme over at Flickr. For these, I can almost see a logo designer pitching her next concept in the board room. If only only white boards came with a good set of clip art we’d probably see more of these type of equation.
Lunch 2.0: Portland Style!
May 29th, 2008 by Kelly Guimont
Yesterday at the Vidoop offices in NW Portland, the latest Lunch 2.0 was held, complete with bacon and hardhats! More on that in a minute. Here’s my best description of it: Lunch 2.0 was a Silicon Valley thing where people would informally invite their friends/fellow geeks/etc to their campus to check out their cafeteria and such. Since the ideas of a) free lunch, and b) geeks gathered were both good ones, Lunch 2.0 became an unofficially official thing. Since then the idea has spread all over the world, but taken a special hold in Portland where we have loads of tech companies. Our first Portland Lunch 2.0 was held in the offices of AboutUs, and you have to admit getting to have lunch with the original wiki developer himself (Ward Cunningham) is awesome. Plus we got to see the AboutUs offices and learn how they accomplish things, it was really nice.
I haven’t gotten an opportunity to go to the last couple, but then #3 was yesterday at Vidoop and it was great! They had hardhats to give away and the bacon level was exceptional, especially for a lunchtime. As all Lunch 2.0s do, they started with a bit about the company and what they are up to, and then we were set loose on the sandwiches and bacon wrapped dates. My turkey sandwich even had bacon in it!
Nobody else in our office was able to get away who had wanted to go, so just Paul and I went over and I got to ride on the back of the Scooter (hence the safety orange). It is usually fun in Portland when a group of geeky types get together, whether it’s for lunch or five minute talks or having a beer and working on your blog, and yesterday was no different. If it sound like something you want to do there are details on the site about how to start a Lunch 2.0 craze in your city. And if you do it yourself or you’ve attended one, let me know in the comments.
(Photo courtesy of Aaron Hockley)
Adobe CS4 beta applications ready for download
May 28th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
If you’re in the mood to check out the future developments of creative applications, take a moment to check out three new beta builds that are forthcoming for Adobe Creative Suite 4. Adobe has made available builds of Adobe Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth.
Of course, since they are beta builds, you might run into some performance issues, but that’s the payment for using the most cutting edge technology. Beta builds run for 48 hours for all users, yet if you’re a current CS3 user the beta builds will run until CS4 is officially released.
Head on over to the Adobe Labs site to download your copy.
Create Awards – Early bird deadline May 30th
May 28th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
If you’re looking to boost your cred, one good way to do it is to enter (and win) a contest or two. Every year, the Create Awards, judge thousands of creative projects in a variety of categories. So, if you have an advertising campaign, design project, photos, video or other project of which you’re proud, consider entering it into the competition.
The entry fees are lower if you put your entry into the mail before May 30th. Anytime after that and the fees go up $20 per entry, so it’s worth getting your ducks in a row ASAP.
Mary Ellen Mark, Scott Markewitz and Steve McCurry all benefit from Extensis Portfolio
May 27th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Today we announced that three highly-acclaimed and well respected professional photographers all trust their image collections to Extensis Portfolio.
Steve McCurry is best known for his award-winning color photography who shoots in an intense documentary style that captures both the joy and heartbreak of the human condition. Steve has covered world events including the Iran-Iraq war, disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the Gulf War and many others.
Mary Ellen Mark was voted the most influential woman photographer by American Photo Magazine. She is known for her images that fall between social photojournalism and portraiture.
“I often get requests from clients for my images,” says photographer Mary Ellen Mark. “Portfolio’s extensive archiving and retrieval capabilities enable my staff to find the right image in a timely and efficient manner and track its usage.”
Scott Markewitz has been recognized as one of the world’s greatest adventure photographers. His work has appeared on over 350 US and international magazine covers. He is best known for his amazing ability to capture the impossible as it happens on skis.
Going Green at Extensis
May 23rd, 2008 by Megan Banman
If you haven’t heard the phrase “going green” somewhere in your day to day life, you’ve probably been living in an underground bunker for the last five years. It’s a trend that has pervaded most areas of society including food production, the automobile industry, waste management and yes, even the world of design.
More and more, I am finding entire conference tracks, associations and websites dedicated to informing designers about reducing waste, saving resources and utilizing environmentally-friendly materials. Two design associations that are especially saavy about this movement are AIGA and UCDA.
AIGA San Diego recently hosted the Y confernce: an entire event dedicated to teaching designers how to integrate enivornmentally-healthy practices into their organization. The association’s main website also has a section dedicated to society and environment.
UCDA also dedicates a page on their website to education and discussion about the environment and design. Both of these sites provide great information and resources for how to adopt and promote sustainable business practices.I’m happy to say that our design department here at Extensis has already begun to embrace a green approach to printing our event graphics (both literally and figuratively).
This is a picture of our new tradeshow backwall which was just unveiled at the HOW Design Conference in Boston.
Not only does it feature the lime green color from our new branding palette, but it also includes all the text on one portion of the overall wall. What this means is that whenever we need to update the text, we just have to print one panel rather than re-printing the entire wall. This allows us to cut down drastically on printing resources, time and money whenever we attend a new event.
I’m also proud to say that Extensis offers an office-wide recycling program for paper products, cans and yes, even the beer bottles from our in-house Lounge 2.0. 
Certifiable, and now Apple Certified!
May 22nd, 2008 by Kelly Guimont
So, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of a Mac geek. (Just a little, it’s the tiniest bit!) Last summer in my annual review my boss (Scooter Enthusiast Paul Krummenacker) and I discussed making me a Mac geek in more of an official capacity. So it was determined I would start on the path toward Apple Certification and put my money where my mouth is, as it were. So at the end of April I went off to Leopard Support Essentials training, and spent three days learning about Leopard and some of the features that were new and also where things can go wrong. So after filling my brain (and my Hello Kitty notebook) with information and bits of stuff to remember, I studied and studied some more. Then I studied for awhile after that. And yesterday I took the test and passed! Basically this means I’m certifiable by Apple’s standards too, so they went ahead and certified me. I wouldn’t have made the certifiable joke (it really is too easy) but I know I will hear it around Extensis if I don’t get to it first, so now my fellow employees will have to be creative! Shouldn’t be too hard here at Extensis, right?This means I am now an Apple Certified Support Professional, and with more testing and training I can become a Technical Coordinator or System Administrator if I want to. So far I think I’m going to stick to Support Professional and see how that goes. Do you have a certification? Was it difficult to get? Leave a comment, maybe I’ll need some other certification next!
Images in higher education roundtable – New York
May 21st, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Universities are perfect places for intellectual exploration and discovery. Of course the entire process can require (as well as produce) a large number of digital assets such as images, documents and so forth.
So, can you best manage all of these assets without getting buried and not able to find anything? A digital asset management (DAM) solution can help you wade through the sea of assets find the items you want, when you need them.
To help you get started, we’ve organized a roundtable discussion where you’ll hear how two organizations, The University of Pennsylvania and The College Board, implemented a digital asset management solution using Extensis Portfolio. Extensis Integration and Consulting Services Engineer, James Grace will also demonstrate the solution and be available to answer questions about how Extensis Portfolio can fit into your workflow.
This session is open to all who want to find out more about DAM, Extensis Portfolio, and how to effectively manage large numbers of images in a higher education setting.
So, here’s the pertinent info:
- Date: Thursday, May 29th
- Location: 333 Madison Avenue
9th Floor, Conf. Rm. #920
New York, New York - Time: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST. (Lunch provided.)
To register, please fill out the Images in Higher Education Registration Form or call Megan Banman at 503-290-0339.
