DTG News and Else
DT&G: Vol. 13, Number 11, November, 2003 ~ The eZine for Design, Typography, & Graphics   (since 1990)  

November: Holiday Opening

This happens to me every year. I look at the calendar, and am suddenly shocked that it's November 5th already! Wow, where did the fall go? I realize we only have a few precious weeks left before the end of the first semester at JMU -- and that a few short weeks later, Christmas and New Years. I also realize that the 10th Anniversary of the Design Center on the web is growing near.
      In planning for our 10th celebration, I call upon all of you to send in your ideas and suggestions of appropriate activities for the celebration. Just pass your comments and suggestions along -- should it be a CD-Rom, books giveaways, par-tay? I'll be looking forward to hearing from you. Now... enjoy everything November has to offer...

November: Fonts Festival

All through November, we continue the fonts festival with a "Heritage" typography theme.
      We'll pick up after the Renaissance (where we left off last month) and journey through the 1700s to the return of the Quill as typographical instrument, and the invention of points and picas as the measurement system for type. Finally, we'll pay a little visit to one of the first printers in the new world, Colonial America -- way back in 1735! Just in time for the... November Holidays

Congratulations Font Festival Winners

The first half of the Fall Fonts Festival is over, and we continue on through November -- so, if you haven't entered, get to it. The following winners will be receiving the Fonts CD package from Fonteam International --
Neil Minshall, Ottawa, Ontario; Christopher Quereau, Oneonta, NY; Mark A. Gordon, Rolla, MO; and Nick Seabrook from Pensacola.
Special thanks to Fonteam for being our anchor sponsor during October and November. Even if you don't win, folks, please take a look at this great fonts CD... which keeps the "deep" discount just for DTG readers. While you're there, you're invited to read the comments from our first five Font CD winners!

Congratulations "Design School" Winners

We wanted to say congratulations to all our winners in the September "Back to Design School" giveaway. A special thanks goes out to Peachpit Press work helping sponsor the promo, and for sending out copies of their books to all the winners.
* Brian Fuschetto of Norwood, NJ takes the GRAND PRIZE, taking home copies of ALL the books in the "Design School!" Congratulations, Brian.
* Susan Oakes from Lake Grove won The InDesign for QuarkXPress Users Book
* Max Gilbert, Little Rock, AK, gets The Non-Designer's Design Book
* Catarina Telendyl-Schneider in Florida gets the Photoshop 7 Killer Tips Book
* Kitty Garrett wins The Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard Classroom in a Book... Design School Winners

Feature: Interview with Max Alexander Kisman

Max is the creative force behind Union Fonts -- bringing lively typography into today's digital world greatly influenced by the "60s" rock-n-roll scene. Amazing new fonts from Union Fonts

Design A Successful Holiday Postcard

It doesnt take a lot of time, money or effort to create, print and mail a great postcard. When done right, a postcard can be enormously effective. Read these top tips for a successful Holiday Card Promo

Fonts for the Holidays

Everyone loves the autumn and holiday season! We continue the Festival with more "Heritage Fonts" including: Plymouth a typeface reminiscent of the original Thanksgiving story; Pushkin, aunique font based on the handwriting of Pushkin; Bete Noir a tribute to the sexy screen star of the 20s; Black Jack the casual script that defies its name, and several others! Check them out at the Festival page Oh, and don't forget you can download them in the Publishers' Warehouse!
      We'll also see the perfect "Ornamental" initial caps font for the holidays from Gallo Fonts

WebDesign Critiques: November

This month we have a "nice" critique gone bad when Beth Rogers of Rogers Web Design, goes head to head with your humble editor's brutal counter-critique. You don't want to miss this one! While the editor is on the war path, he also works with reviewer Jon Winchester to tweak the Texas Center for Multicultural Studies web site. And if that weren't enough, Abbeymore BandB is back with a smashing make-over, and a half dozen others get their day in court! WebDesign Critiques

SPAM: win one, lose one

While the spam plague continues to proliferate, relentlessly getting more prevalent and more disgusting, at least there have been a few victories. Although the House has passed the first anti-spam bill, it's still up to the Senate to sign off on it. And if they do, then what? The future looks dubious indeed for any relief from those internet criminals known as spammers.

California Chalks Up a Spam Win
      The Golden State wins its first antispam judgment, against marketing firm PW Marketing. The company is fined $2 million under a 1998 statute; the state expects spammers will be easier to prosecute under its tougher new law.
 
* U.K. Plans to Extradite Spammers
      Calling the flood of junk e-mail a criminal threat rather than a mere irritant, British lawmakers hatch a plan to bring overseas bulk e- mailers to trial.

* Spam Pitches Are Mutating Faster
      Trying to stay one step ahead of ever-improving spam filters, spammers are creating and trying new tricks much more quickly. Antispam developers are keeping up, for now. By Ryan Singel.

* Spammers Clog Up the Blogs
      Ever searching for paying customers, spammers have turned their attention to blogs, where they mass-post target URLs in the comments section. By Chris Ulbrich.

* New Virus Dresses Up as E-Mail
      Another seemingly innocuous e-mail is a virus in disguise. The virus threatens to turn any recipient's PC into a spam server ... or a frog. Bwahh haa haahaahhh!

If you want a little "pay back" for all that spam, go and read this web page. Then copy it and host it on your site too! Make them pay! Spam Report

And now the news...

from the DTG readership...

Web Page Design without HTML

Realmac Software has rolled out a new web design package that allows users to design, create and publish web sites faster than ever before. Despite being fast and simple to use, websites are produced to a consistantly high standard. It comes with 20 pre-designed themes and there are purchasable "theme packs" as well. For $24 it could be worth a look just for templating. See: Rapid Weaver

PdfCompress takes a bite out of fonts

Metaobject's inexpensive new version 4.3 of PdfCompress answers at least some of the flaky programming Apple's part-time programmers have built into the Mac OS X PDF engine. PdfCompress tackles edit-data left in PDF files by applications such as Adobe Photoshop. Removing this data can make files up to 10 times smaller. PdfCompress has received rave reviews from all over for being the best PDF compression utilityPDF Compress

CyberGauge 4.2 Supports Panther

Neon Software's is now sporting a free update for Panther and Xserve Owners. This bandwidth monitoring software works with any SNMP-based device, including routers, switches, and servers, and monitors bandwidth usage -- automatically creating utilization graphs as well as daily, weekly, and monthly quality of service (QoS) and billing reports. See Neon Software

Apimac Cleans Text in OS X and Mac Classic

Jessica Tomati wrote in to give us a heads up on the new Clean Text 3.0. This handy application removes, converts, encodes and replaces attributes from any text, setting it up for other uses. See Clean Text

ASCII Text not to be left out...

ASCII/edit is the first WYSIWYG editor for tables, diagrams, or simple graphics made of ASCII characters for Mac OS X. It's a cute program, letting you arrange text on a page, as with a layout software; align and indent paragraphs, like in a word processor; and add lines and rectangles, as in a drawing application. The output, however, is simple ASCII text, which you can include in e-mails, newsgroups, or source code. It requires Mac OS X 10.1. It's Shareware -- ASCII Text

InTouch Gets a new name: Phlink

Ovolab's Phlink, the final version of its telephony application for Mac is now combined with the Ovolab Telephone Adapter, a small USB device, and can answer telephone calls and identify the caller through Caller ID. It takes messages, and sends them by email! It can be set to execute scripts, launch applications or open documents by simply pressing numbers on the telephone keypad during the call. Stay In Touch

Help for Panther Security woes

Panther presents its users with improved features for secure networking; however the security features in Panther does not support the standard IPsec and is therefore not compatible to most VPN gateways. VPN Tracker is compatible to over 150 gateways devices and will now bring essential security compatibility to Panther users to secure their networking. Panther and VPN Tracker secure networks can be established and all branch and home office users and mobile workers will be able to securely share files over the Internet. Demo VPN Tracker

Thursby also sees security problems with Panther

They've rushed ADmitMac v1.1. to the market for the integration of Macintosh systems into Microsoft Active Directory and Windows NT domains. Microsoft has stated that its earlier protocols were "vulnerable to widely published attacks for obtaining user passwords." ADmitMac v1.1 is the only Mac product that provides full support for NTLMv2 in addition to its use of Kerberos and encrypted LDAP authentication. See Thursby Security

Teachers with OS X need QuizMaker

Well, that's not all together true. ALL teachers need QuizMaker Pro version 5.0! It performs in OS X, Classic Macintosh, and Windows 95-XP creating, archiving, administering, grading, and analyzing multiple choice, matching and short answer quizzes. The best news is it's sharewareMaking Quizzes

The Panther Roars (in Pain)

There was a flurry of news from external news sources last week as Panther made its big debut. So soon after an OS upgrade, Apple rolls out Panther to at least a few unhappy campers:

* Bye-Bye Data: Glitch in Panther
      In this Wired story we learn that Apple Panther has a serious bug that wipes out external FireWire drives during the upgrade procedure. According to author Leander Kahney -- worse, many Mac users are backing up to external drives before upgrading. Some are losing everything.

* A hapless Wired News reporter forgets to back up his hard drive while installing Apple's latest update to OS X, code-named Panther. The installation glitch leads to a world of hurt. A product review by Leander Kahney. See: Panther Roars

Online PDF Proofing may be the thing

eProof is an online PDF proofing solution that could help you avoid communication hassles and delays in the proofing process and establish online proofing as the mainstream proofing solution. You might need Online Proofing

Crushed for time?

StockLayouts offers a Collection of high-end templates for print, when you're just plain out of time. They're customizable, and should help you create professional-looking marketing materials. They support QuarkXPress, PageMaker, InDesign and Microsoft Publisher for both Mac and PC. Stock Layouts

Crunch those graphics file tighter

Anthony Olaleye is telling me about Miliki Super Compressor -- a new software that compresses digital photos and documents up to 10 times their original size. Embedded image objects, such as photo realistic images, are automatically recognized and treated differently from line art images. It also has an image quality selector for digital image compression. Miliki runs on Windows XP, 2000, Me, and 98. See it at Miliki.net

Keep it confidential and restricted

SignStation, the digital signature and cryptography application for windows XP users now features one-step crypt and sign plus one-click decrypt-verify. Gives you configurable Certificates paths along with multiple signatures and multiple asymmetric encryption. If you need confidentiality and content access restriction, this could be the one.Security at last!

Need labels?

Worldlabel.com manufacturers blank laser and inkjet labels in over 40 sizes. Each label size is available in 18 different materials including clear, colors, foil and more. There's even a Label Designer Wizard as shareware. See World Label

Game Players: the 80s are back!

Retro game fans, rejoice! Soon you will be able to play your favorite old-school games from Activision on your Mac! This Remix Edition is jam-packed with over 75 Atari 2600 favorites from Pitfall! and Kaboom! o River Raid. Activision Anthology: Remix Edition features an '80s-themed soundtrack that will let gamers play their way down memory lane and an additional 30 titles not available on anyone's game station! Mumbo Jumbo.com

Here Come the Holidays

With the holidays just around the corner, I know many of you will be producing your holiday promotional pieces. Please send a copy to the DT&G so we can show it in our Holiday promotionals department -- let your fellows learn from your successes!
      Sometime during November we'll be opening the Design Center's Holidays section. So keep an eye on the center and visit often.
      Here's all the best to you and yours for this November 2003... it will be a great month! Enjoy.

Thanks for reading

Fred Showker
Editor / Publisher, DT&G Magazine

Parting words: on the subject of performance

"Resolve to perform what you ought.
    Perform without fail what you resolve."
        Benjamin Franklin

Participate in your Design Center

Lots of fun and information for all... don't forget, any community is only as good as the participation of its members. We invite your tips, tricks, comments, suggestions and camaraderie.