I really appreciate my readers forwarding issues, questions, and problems that they face when reading my blog.

Recently, Dana from AzDana.com wrote me with an unusual problem, one that I didn’t know initially how to answer.

Hi,
I really enjoy reading the content of your posts. However, the font in your newsletter is much too small, so I usually end up deleting
without reading your emails. I know that there’s an option in my
browser to increase font size, but its too much of a pain to increase it just for your emails, then switch it back. All my other emails are fine and easy for me to read.

Thanks,

At first, I was skeptical that I could do anything, because I got emails that had the same problem. So I checked. This is a typical posting and how it looked in Dana’s (and your!) mailbox.

It doesn’t show so clearly, but you will notice that the text in the email requires a pair of binoculars just to read the letters. Even the Google Ads show up fairly clearly. Problem? You bet, if your readers can’t read your emails then they will likely be unwilling to sign up or maintain their subscription to your blog! Now that would be a pity.

So I investigated. Lo! and behold! You can actually do a number of tweaks for your emailed daily subscriptions, including font, size, logo, etc.. When you log in, click through to the “Publicize” tab, and you’ll see the “Email Subscriptions” tab on the left.

Then click on Email Branding, and your page will change to this:

You can now tweak your email to your heart’s content. Check the preview when you need to see how the current settings look. You can also add a logo if you wish, though the space is limited to a square of 200 pixels (traditional banners WON’T work).

This tweaking should help to make your blog posts appear much more friendly, recognizable and readable when they appear in your subscribers’ inboxes. Hopefully, the subscribers will actually read them!

There was a time after Microsoft Office had established its rule of the roost that its competitors in the Office Software market were reduced to hollow shells of what they had been. A good example, of course, would have to be the current product of WordPerfect Office, which has changed hands quite a few times. IBM’s alternative called LotusOffice. Many of these products still exist, but it’s been in recent years that the competition has started thriving again, as more and more products come to market.

1. OpenOffice started life as part of StarOffice, before being bought and made Opensource by Sun Microsystems. Now at version 2.2.1 and available on all major platforms in a variety of languages, it’s catching people’s attention. While it’s not on a par with Office 2007 in terms of usability, it’s priced well and many individuals and smaller organizations are adopting it in preference to M$ Office.

2. Apple’s iWork’08 has recently been announced (timed to pique M$’s own 2008 office edition?) and now includes a more traditional word processor view in its package, as well as presentation and even spreadsheet functions.

“Pages and Keynote make it incredibly easy, and even fun, for anyone to create stylish documents and presentations very quickly,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Numbers rounds out the iWork suite, which is far more intuitive and easy to use than anything else out there.”

iWork’08 can also handle both the import of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents as well as export documents in Microsoft Office file formats or PDFs to make easy sharing.

3. Google Apps recently updated and is developing its online offerings. While it’s not true that they were the first, think Groove, ThinkOffice, to name but two, they are aggressively developing their small business footing by starting off with the simpler functions. Rumor has it that Google is going to bump out its offerings with a Presentation Tool. The list of tools that you can use is now quite impressive, and many are the stuff of the modern ‘virtual’ company…

There are a plethora of offerings too in other places. I found 17 alternatives for Windows, and there are alternatives for other systems, too. So, whither M$? Are you sticking with Office or migrating? My own business is now running only two copies of Office, and we’ll soon be entirely using OpenOffice 2.2 and up in Chinese and English.

There were a number of primary motivating factors that prompted me to migrate.

1. price – the cost of running five copies of Office in our business is just too steep. Even with volume licensing, we wouldn’t get much of a break. If it were the case that this were the only issue, we’d still consider buying but…

2. licensing – I can’t be bothered to keep track of license numbers anymore. Why do the copies I legally purchased have to be installed and activated online? Isn’t it enough that I bought the copies with my own cash (legal ones, too?)? It seems to much like punishing your customers for the sins of the IP thieves… shouldn’t it be the other way around?

3. deployment – still it’s a hassle to deploy copies of Office across the systems we use, and the continual threats to Office from viruses, etc., really make me want to stay away from them. I can’t just set up one install, and then ghost everything. I have to install the applications EACH and everytime.

4. updating – I keep my products and systems fairly secure with virus scans, and checking for other infestations, but frequently having to download updates requires too much time, and too much hassle involving questions from staff members (‘should I install this?’ or ‘what’s going on?’).

YouTube has been a godsend for many bloggers who create video for whatever reason. In fact, I had used it to upload a bunch of presentations that my students had made over the last year or so, but towards the beginning of the year, when Dreamhost updated its own media facilities to include an FLV player, hosting and an embedded in WP plugin, I was all set.

YouTube had increased the restrictions to 100mb of upload, and a maximum of 10 minutes. Now, with Dreamhost, I could create videos of any length, and did so. But, I was frustrated. There was no easy way to put the videos together, to create a kind of TV channel. I could do so by posting everything within individual posts, and visitors could click through each post by themselves. But it really doesn’t have the “Channel” atmosphere.

Recently, though, I had a look at YouTube again, which I haven’t logged into for sometime. Lo! and behold, they’d created a ‘customer player’. There are two kinds, I much prefer the other one, but this one fits the pages of my website, nicely.

Step 1: In fact, it’s quite easy to do this. Log into your YouTube account, scroll down to find the ‘custom player’ section.

Step 2: Click to create a custom player, and you’ll be taken to the appropriate page.

Step 3: Enter your information, and choose the color scheme from one of the nine options.

Step 4: Choose your layout style, I like the second, but it’s too wide. The first one has an interactive style that is very attractive, though. (It’s featured above).

Step 5: Your content needs to be organized in a playlist (I’ll assume you know how to do that!). Select your playlist, and hit ‘select’.

Step 6: Then click on ‘generate code’ and you’ll get a lot of code to embed just like a regular video. Paste the entire code into your website as-is. Hit ‘save’ and ‘publish’ (if you are using WordPress).

Then you’re done. You should see something like the video screen at the beginning. Have fun.