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Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine Vol 01 Issue 13
------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine -------
Vol 1, Issue 13
Long, long ago, back when I was in cub scouts, I remember
watching one of those industrial arts public service films. This
one was called "Primitive Pete" or something like that and talked
about using tools for the right reasons. Pete would do things
like use a chisel to turn a screw, and you didn't want to be like
Primitive Pete, did you? The tools we use on line are pretty
sophisticated, but still there are things to which they are
suited and things for which they are the equivalent of the chisel
turning the screw. We'll take a look at some limitations of
online tools this issue.
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In This Issue...
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1. Article: Wrong Tools: 3 Tools with Limitations
2. Blog Posts
3. Shameless Self-Promotion
4. The Fine Print
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1. Article: Wrong Tools: 3 Tools with Limitations
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I have a dear friend who was telling me about having a hard day
at work one time. She said that she had been trying to reattach
the company mailbox to its post, but she just couldn't get the
nails to hammer in. It turned out that the "nails" she was
hammering were actually drywall screws, so you can imagine how
long that would have taken. Give her props for at least taking
the initiative to fix the thing, but she probably would have been
better off using the right tool for the job. Similarly, I've
tried using several online and desktop tools that I've found for
a variety of projects, but many of them aren't exactly perfect
for every use. Here are three of the ones I've used lately and
some of the limitations I've experienced.
*Google Docs*
This is an amazing tool for working on a specific textual
document -- especially for sharing that specific document with a
team of people. It is *not* a great platform for desktop
publishing. The layout features are best designed for building
web pages or for documents where the specific output format isn't
critical. Right now, as I mentioned in an earlier issue, I'm
using Docs as one of the tools to create a documentary video with
my friend Peter. It's a great way to share the effort of writing
a script between us. We don't particularly care what the script
looks like, only that it has the words in the right order for me
to speak them into the microphone. If, however, I wanted to
create a playbill for the resulting video, I would probably look
elsewhere.
Docs also has a slightly limited sharing model. You can share
the individual document with anyone, but it sure would be nice to
be able to share a whole folder of documents with your team.
Right now, if you want to share multiple documents with a group
of people, you have to set the "sharing" features for each
individual document. Kind of a pain.
*Picasa Web Albums*
I love how the online Web Albums are tied in directly to the
Picasa desktop photo manipulation application. Very convenient
and simple to create an album online. The challenge is that once
you have the pictures online, the organizational capabilities of
Web Albums is rather limited.
Basically you can rearrange the order, give them captions, and
delete photos from the album. Unlike Flickr, there's no way to
tag the pictures and no way to group albums into a sensible
arrangement. For example, I've got about nine albums of
Leadership Ann Arbor pictures that I wanted to share with my
class. Unfortunately, they are interspersed with the family
Christmas pictures which makes it a less-than-professional
environment in my opinion.
*OpenOffice.org*
I use this productivity suite pretty extensively and it is a
great set of applications (especially for the price -- free!).
For most purposes it easily replaces Microsoft Office. Before
you run out to get it, though, be aware of a couple of things.
First, it isn't perfect. Documents created with OO Writer might
not look *exactly* the same when opened by MS Word and
vice-versa. You can argue as to whose fault that is -- the
renegade hackers on one side or the evil empire from Redmond on
the other -- but that won't matter much to you if you spent hours
trying to get your formatting to look perfect in one tool, only
to find out it doesn't look right in the other. It's usually not
a big deal, but for those who require a specific look, you need
to be aware of that limitation.
The other gap in the OpenOffice.org suite is the lack of a MS
Publisher analog. MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, and even MS
Access all have their equivalents in the OpenOffice world, just
not Publisher. Not everyone needs that tool, but if you do,
OpenOffice isn't going to be there for you (or not yet at any
rate).
In reading this article, please don't get the impression that I
think that these are bad pieces of software. In every case, they
do what they do superlatively. Each, however does have its
limitations, beyond which it probably wouldn't be wise to push
them. It will only lead to frustration for you and probably loss
of time and effort, too. That being said, though, you might
still want to take a look to see if they might be the answer for
your next project.
Copyright 2007, Greg Peters
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2. Blog Posts
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Links to posts on the "Clearing Up the Confusion" Blog from the last year:
Thursday, August 09, 2007 -- Writing a Name for Yourself
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2007/08/writing-name-for-yourself.html
Saturday, August 04, 2007 -- Setting Your Limits
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2007/08/setting-your-limits.html
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3. Shameless Self-Promotion
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The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg Peters,
owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data Solutions. CDS has
been helping website designers develop better web presence for their
clients for more than a decade. Visit us on the Web at
www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your webmaster.
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4. The Fine Print
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