During the day I work as a graphic designer at a local newspaper and I work on…. wait…. I’m not sure if I can say it…… Windows … 2000.

Now, you can’t really blame the newspaper because not every company can afford to buy the latest and greatest and believe me, this company does try.

As a designer though, it’s the equivalent of working without a soul…

It’s always amazing to me at just how much more inspired I am to be creative as soon as I get home and jump on my iMac, crank up the tunes (iTunes isn’t allowed at work so I use my iPod) and get into the mood Apple products inspire.

They really are much more conducive to creativity than… well, I don’t even need to say it (windows).

I don’t have Apple’s newest operating system (leopard) but tiger alone puts any version of windows to shame. I mean, I just don’t have the problems I used to have with windows, and I’m a pretty advanced user. I always manged to fix whatever arose but seriously, why deal with that? I just don’t have problems on my iMac (ok, I lie, games aren’t exactly Mac friendly).

Here are 10 reasons why people should switch and give Mac’s a shot:

• They’re conducive to creativity and fun
• They’re easy and intuitive
• Your mac isn’t going to get sick from all the viruses running around the internet
• Macs don’t come with all that extra crapware (crap software) installed that is a total pain to get rid of.
• They come with software that is useful, works and isn’t annoying.
• Macs can run anything a PC can
• Mac users are apparently smarter
  
• Installing and Removing applications is so simple a 5 year old can do it
• Everyone I know that has made the switch vows they will never go back and wished they had switched sooner.
• You don’t have to defrag macs

Those are just a few, here is a list of 50 reasons. Want 10 reasons to upgrade to a PC though?

Top Ten Reasons for Upgrading to a PC instead of a Mac:

• You enjoy reading computer manuals
• Buying parts ‘not included’ is your idea of being patriotic
• Blaming it on the PC is a great excuse… for anything
• Tech support is your idea of telephone dating
• Your favorite computer game is figuring out where your files are
• You look forward to today’s new virus (or worm, or both)
• You like listening to telephone support hold-button music
• Letting the kids play on the Mac next door frees your time (eliminates after-school kid sitters)
• You think Bill Gates deserves the money
• You have nothing better to do with all the extra time

I thought this video was pretty hilarious!

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Why is it that old people are so resistant to learning new things? Specifically the common technologies available today. Ok, even people that aren’t old are like that but what gives? Our elders should know by now that learning is part of life.

What I really don’t understand is how people can go around not realizing that by being so resistant to learning new technology, they put themselves at risk for being useless. Ok, thats a little harsh but there is some truth in it.

Technology is the way of tomorrow and already the way of today, it’s just progressing faster and faster. More and more of our world is becoming technology oriented and the jobs of yesterday are becoming obsolete. There is definitely no sign of that changing either.

In school, learning a second or third language was strongly stressed (which I regret not taking advantage of) but today technology is almost like a language that will set you apart from the rest of those people out there trying to get the same job you are. Why wouldn’t you get ahead of the curve?

Most of you reading this are probably not so technology resistant but it’s always a good time to learn something new. The geeks and nerds of yesterday are today’s millionaires and billionaires, don’t get left in the dust!

Here are some cool places to catch up on your tech-savy-ness:

• Webopedia: Quick reference guide for the tech. lingo that sounds like a foreign language.
• AARP.org: Online classes and more for learning tech stuff
• Edublogawards.com: Big list of educational blogs (Don’t know how to blog, go to lorelle.wordpress.com)
• internet4classrooms.com: Nice collection of technology tutorials
• Google Features: Good place to learn how to use Google and the services/features they have to offer
• Learnwebskills.com: Lots of stuff to learn about the web. Good info. on search engines

Thats a start at least for those of you looking to learn new technologies. If you know of a good place to learn new tech. stuff let me know by commenting and I will add it to the list!

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Lately I have been running into a giant brick wall when trying to write blogs. It has been terrible! I planned to blog at least once per day and that has become more of an impossible task than I imagined. Of course I could just login and post bleh bleh bleh, but thats not what I want to do.

I want to post something people WANT to read! I’m usually pretty good at getting past those kind of road blocks but it’s been a task that has really challenged me.

Today, I gave in to the nature within myself and got my lazy rear-end out of my apt. and visited the outside world just as I should have done long before now.

Here is a good read about 7 keys to invigorate body, mind and soul, plus here are some of my tips to get the Tiger within yourself fired up and roaring once again!

1. Break up the mundane. Part of the problem is turning things into “I have to“. Once you do that you try to force yourself to sit down and get something cranked out. That doesn’t work for me. I want to have soul in what I offer to my visitors. A little piece of myself so to speak.

So don’t let yourself get to that point. Go outside and do something out of the norm. Run down the street yelling “I’m invincible!” or “I love my wife/girlfriend!”. Find some new music (pandora.com). Go workout or go for a brisk jog in the early morning hours. Visit the beach (Sven’s World). Just get out of your box and invigorate the Tiger within! Rawr!

2. Get fresh! When you’re trying to blog every day you can run out of things to blog about pretty quick. What I tend to do when that happens is stumble around the internet until I get inspired by something.

What I failed to see is that I just had no drive to have an opinion about the things of the world. Inspire yourself to speak what’s in your mind, not spew a rewritten post of something that’s already on the internet. Get your passion and fresh-ness back!

How do you do that? Sleep in late Saturday (or your day off) if you need rest. Forcing yourself to work while tired isn’t going to help you at all. Once you’re rested, go treat yourself to something special. For me, that’s going outside and getting some fresh air and a good workout, maybe a movie.

Maybe even take a day off work and spend the day how you really want to. Don’t just go hide in your hibernation cave at home. Check out Fun Things to Do

3. Introduce a new passion into your life. Seriously, this is amazing! You know what makes you happy (well maybe not but try this), but do you know what you’re missing in life? A LOT! Go try new food, meet new people, compliment a girl you like (assuming you’re single), take your girlfriend/wife somewhere extra unordinary. You never know what you’ll find!

4. Share with the world. I think this is a big one because it’s exciting to share a part of you with the rest of the world. Take a camera with you and if you don’t have one go buy a disposable. Take pictures of your adventures, yourself, friends and things that make you happy or that are interesting.

Tell your story and enjoy what others have to say about you! Don’t worry, most people are nice and the ones that aren’t will get it back sooner or later. If you have a way to take a video of your adventure, share that. People love videos!

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I guess what this comes down to is get away from the computer, the cubicle, the office, your house/apt and experience what the rest of the world has to offer! You’ll freshen your mind, body and soul!

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I decided to take the jump and upgrade to WordPress 2.5! Everything went pretty smoothly (for the most part) and everything appears to be in good working order. If you notice anything odd or broken please let me know! Thanks!

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One thing that drives me crazy is the way so many of the blogs I come across on a daily basis are designed. I’m not a design or usability expert but I am an internet user, who happens to use A LOT (sounds like I have an internet addiction problem ).

Do your research people, find out what makes a good website actually good! That brings me to….

10 Principals of Effective Web Design

Smashing Magazine had a really nice post on effective web design (link above) that bloggers should really thoroughly check out before designing a website/blog to make sure they’re doing things right. I disagree with a few things there but I won’t argue with them.

Here are a few things that I try to keep in mind while doing my work:

1. Visitors scan pages, they don’t really read them through. That would just be a giant waste of time since they are usually there for something specific. How do visitors scan pages? By anchor points throughout the page. Anchor points either draw their eyes there or is relevant to what they are searching for.

That means blogs/websites need to guide visitors’ eyes through the page. It drives me crazy when I see pages that have no flow or direction.

2. Presentable eye flow (from the anchor points) gives websites or blogs a comfortable and easy feel to the page as well as making navigation and browsing easier. Good eye flow goes along with the way we read. From left to right, then down a little farther in the page, left to right again and so on. What that results in is “Z” eye flow.

It’s a good idea to setup your site to use a “Z” eye flow but if you don’t, at least guide your visitor’s eyes to where you want them to go. The easier it is for your visitors to browse your page, the longer the will likely stay.

3. Give your visitors a reason to stay, and do it fast. If you don’t give your visitor’s a reason to stay at your site pretty much right off the bat, they will leave pretty much right off the bat. I can’t even begin to count the number of websites I have seen that the article or permanent information was just spewn on the page. I only stayed long enough to see the site wasn’t going to help me accomplish my goal (maybe 5 seconds).

4. Make what you have to offer easy to use. If the majority of your site isn’t easy to use, visitors aren’t going to stay. They are going to go find a website that is easy. Blogs don’t have to work about that too much but if it’s hard for people (in any way) to subscribe to your rss, you’re loosing out on readers.

5. Make your posts easy to read. So many blogs just have a title and text….lots of text. That makes me feel like my eyes are going to explode.

Why would I read that? Break up the monotony by using bold or italics, images, smilies, etc. Bolding and italicizing important words, phrases or sentences will help visitors find what they’re looking for faster.

Keep your paragraphs shorter. Even the one above is a little long but because it’s broken up a little with different styling, it’s acceptable. Big blocks of text will be skipped right over. If the important information was there, then you just failed your visitors.

There is a lot of information on the internet on design and usability for websites, so don’t just throw something up and hope everyone is going to flock to your website to read it. I would really love to see some of the blogs I stumble across revamp their sites. I bet they would gain and retain more visitors.

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Well, WordPress 2.5 has finally been released. I’m pretty excited to get my blog upgraded but I think I will hold off for awhile until I’m sure everything will go smoothly.

If anything goes wrong it will probably be related to plugins. If you need to find out whether or not your plugins will be compatible head over here for the list of compatible plugins and plugins that have issues.

If you’re curious about what 2.5 looks like in case you haven’t already looked, Matt posted a video with a quick overview of the dashboard and about posting multiple images. It looks pretty sharp and will be nice to use soon.

There are tons of new features in addition to a new look for the dashboard. If you want to check them out head over here. Some of the features I’m excited to use are:

• The new dashboard of course
• The multi-file upload with status bar
• Few-click plugin updates
• Improved visual editor - this one will be great since it fixes Safari issues and doesn’t mess with your code.
• Built in galleries

If you want a nice comparison laid out between 2.5 and 2.3 check out Optiniche

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