Monthly Archives: December 2008
Macworld 2009 Free Passes
December 18th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
UPDATE
Thanks for visiting the Extensis blog. Unfortunately, we’ve given out all of the tickets that we have for Macworld Expo. Hope to see you at Macworld!
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There’s been a ton of talk recently about Apple events such as Macworld Expo and Apple Expo. Well, here’s you chance to get out there and check out one of these events before Apple is no longer a part.
Macworld 2008 is again being held this year at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from January 5th through the 9th.
We’re again offering an opportunity to get a free pass to the Expo Hall.
To get your free pass, simply make a comment on this post.
Be sure to use your correct email address, otherwise I won’t be able to send you a free ticket. We won’t use your email address for anything else, and it will not be displayed publicly.
Suitcase Fusion 2 praised by industry experts
December 17th, 2008 by Claire Taylor
Following on from the perfect five awarded by MacUser, Suitcase Fusion 2 continues to receive a great response from the industry’s top titles. The most recent Suitcase Fusion 2 reviews come from IT-Enquirer and MacWorld UK:
Erik Vlietinck, IT-Enquirer: “It has become the best font management tool for the Mac once again”.
“The floating previews make working with Suitcase Fusion (2) extremely powerful. I believe that for the first time, font management has actually become more of a continuously useful tool than just something that you need, but once you’ve set it up, forget about it”.
Rob Henry, MacWorld UK: “More than an incremental tweak, then, it should be on the wish list of anyone who works extensively with fonts”.
“Suitcase Fusion 2 is evidently a well-thought-out product that takes a potentially complex task and simplifies it”.
Happy Holidays from Max Kerning
December 16th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Have yourself a merry little Maxmas. Yes, in the spirit of the season, our virtual corporate spokesperson, Max Kerning has created a little handbook for sensible holidays.
No, this handbook doesn’t give you the latest font management or digital asset management tips. This is more of a practical guide for giving gifts, holiday cards and the like. And since it comes from Max, you can be sure that it’s done with a certain sense of refined style and impeccable attention to detail.
Happy holidays from all of us at Extensis!
Gartner report on digital asset management
December 15th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Thinking about getting software to manage all of your digital media (pictures, video and audio)? Well, you’re in good company! According to a recent Gartner industry report, up to 22% of companies will be investigating digital asset management within the next year.
Check out the Gartner DAM report.
If you’d like to know more about using Extensis Portfolio Server to manage your assets, I’ll be giving an online demo of the product tomorrow. Click here to sign up for the webcast.
Suitcase Fusion 2 late breaking feature
December 15th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
As mentioned on the blog last week, we added a new feature to the most recent release of Suitcase Fusion 2, and it’s so fresh and new that we didn’t even get it documented as a feature.
The new feature allows you to drag any font, or folder of fonts to the Suitcase Fusion 2 application icon and have those fonts automatically added temporarily and activated in Suitcase Fusion2.
If you drag a folder of fonts onto the Suitcase Fusion 2 dock icon, a set is automatically created in Suitcase Fusion 2 that contains the newly added fonts.
It’s important to note that if you want to add fonts when Suitcase Fusion 2 isn’t running, you must first choose to keep the Suitcase Fusion 2 application icon in the dock. To do so:
- Launch Suitcase Fusion 2.
- In the dock, Right-click or Ctrl-click the Suitcase Fusion 2 application icon and choose Keep in Dock from the menu.
You can now drag fonts to the application icon whether Suitcase Fusion 2 is running or not.
DAM at The National Gallery of London
December 12th, 2008 by Cindy Valladares
On Wednesday I had the great pleasure of hosting a webcast featuring Colin White, Head of Photography at The National Gallery of London. We got a tremendous response from people who wanted to learn more about the digital asset management efforts at the Gallery, as well as about DAM best practices.
If you couldn’t join us, I encourage you to watch the on-demand recorded version. Colin started out sharing some of the Gallery’s objectives: preserve, study and enhance their collection of Western European paintings from 1250 to 1900 (over 2,300 paintings in the collection). Another objective was to display the collection to the widest possible public.
They needed a solution that would allow them to organize and distribute their digital content within the Gallery and externally. The content would be used for Web sites, presentations, press/marketing materials, staff information, commercial purposes, social networking sites and podcasts.
The National Gallery chose Portfolio because they needed a digital asset management solution that would fit into their existing infrastructure (cross-platform organization with Linux, Mac and Windows servers and SQL database), was intuitive for end users, straightforward to install and administer, affordable and could get them up and running in days.
Content currently organized in Portfolio include: a photographic image library, a slide library and a document library. The content is distributed via their intranet, accessible to staff members via a web browser.
Lessons learned. In review, Colin shares with us that Portfolio allowed their departments to become more interconnected, and provided the following additional benefits:
- Improved access to images and documents
- Improved image quality
- Improved dialogue between users
- Wider range of content accessed
- Improved cataloging
- Replaced expensive support fee
Other assets that you might find useful in your DAM journey:
- Article: Digital Asset Management at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
- Digital Asset Management Best Practices Guide
Feature Requests = Your Words + Our Action
December 11th, 2008 by Kelly Guimont
Have you ever had a suggestion to make something better and thought, “Oh it won’t matter if I make a suggestion, they’re a huge software company and I’m just one person.” Well, please quit it. Make that call! Sometimes it works!
When we released Suitcase Fusion 2, one of the things it didn’t have (that the old version had) was a method for something we like to call “Temporarily Add and Activate”. This was a good way to knock out the one-off job and if you have a lot of single jobs (a service bureau, for example) this was a HUGE timesaver. Here’s what it did: You drag your fonts to the Dock icon for Suitcase, and the fonts would be added and activated, but ONLY until you restarted. Once you restarted and your computer came back up, those fonts were not just deactivated, they were not still hanging out in your font manager either! When you have to crank through a large number of “single use” fonts, this is of immeasurable use. However, since we don’t have a way to tell how many people are using any particular feature, when it came time to determine features for the new version that happened to be one that for whatever reason didn’t make the cut.
We received a lot of phone calls from people who were trying out the new version of Fusion and missed that feature. Every time you call us and tell us about the feature you love that was in the last version that isn’t in the current version, or you wish there was an easier way for you to do something within our software, we record that. If you aren’t the first person to ask for it, your “vote” gets added to the tally. When features are being considered for new versions of software those votes all get considered. That doesn’t always mean things will change, but your vote is counted and enough of them usually get a feature implemented.
So as of the new update to Suitcase Fusion 2, the Temporarily Add and Activate feature has made a triumphant return! So if you were disappointed you couldn’t update because you need this feature as part of your workflow, don’t let that stop you any longer. And next time you think about calling or emailing your feature request to a company that makes software you use, don’t just think about it, do it! You never know if your vote will be the vote that puts that request over the top.
Kinetic type to sell an idea
December 10th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Well, if you aren’t totally tired of this kinetic typography thing, here’s a one that’s being used to promote an idea – the notion that all people have the right to live free. So, check out the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Art and the display of scientific data
December 10th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Edward Tufte might have a good chunk of the market when talking about the visual display of data, but sometimes the data itself is just so beautiful, nothing else must be done for it to be considered art.
Take for example the image that’s displayed in this post. It’s a visual representation of the geological history of the Alluvial valley of the Lower Mississippi River. When all of the various courses that the river has taken are overlayed one on top of another it’s a beautiful display of history – some might call it “art.”
If you’d like to download all of the data yourself, check out the Army’s website for the complete plate downloads. Otherwise, check out this Flickr page.
Suitcase Fusion 2 updated (v13.0.1)
December 9th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Today we released an update to our single-user font manager for Mac OS X, Suitcase Fusion 2. This release includes fixes for a number of issues that were reported by users, as well as a number of speed improvements.
If you are a current user, you can download this update automatically by choosing Check for Updates from the Suitcase Fusion 2 menu.
Otherwise, if you aren’t a current user, download a free trial copy of Suitcase Fusion 2 for yourself and try it out.
