Thursday, August 02, 2012

Two More Tools You Can Use

Pinterest and Everything: A pair of my customers, Nancy Diehl and Kathi Kemper (authors of Art-Based Curriculum) turned me on to Pinterest. Okay, I'm still a little short of turned on, but I'm looking at it with, uh, interest. Some publishing consultants and a ton of small-business consultants are saying, "You gotta be there." Pinterest is another one of those social-networking sites that seem to spring up overnight. This one allows you to "pin" items into various self-determined groups (categories) that entangle with other folks pins and groups and supposedly do you good. I have barely stuck my toe in the water, and I'm still trying to figure out how to keep my business interests separate from my personal interests, which would seem to muddy the waters. On that score, I found this post by Social Media blogger Betsy Kent, who seems to enjoy the game and have it figured out. Still, the whole concept seems a little chaotic, like the rush of consumers into Walmart on Black Friday. Still, it pays to pay attention.

My second find came about because I was working on a project with hundreds of images and no file or folder naming conventions. Much of my time was spent on searching for the customer's photos. And then the search mechanism on my Windows Explorer broke. Great. I went online looking for clues on how to fix it. When I got nowhere with that, I looked for an alternative. I found a free program called Everything. Well, that about covers it. I don't expect much from freeware, but Everything is a beauty. It's fast. Really fast. Like instant. It makes Microsoft's search look like a dinosaur. It's a little cumbersome to adjust your search parameters, but I'm finding little need to do that. I downloaded mine at CNet. Saved my bacon. The Publishing Pro.

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