An adroit mixture of everyday settings and extraordinary events.
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A compendium of strange-but-true recent events as reported in the legitimate press.
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The world of business and finance gets skewered, as Bottom Liners tackles subjects such as foreign takeovers, office policies, getting a raise, and the fast-paced world of Wall Street.
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A wry look at the absurdities of every day life.
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With a daily readership of more than 95 million, Dear Abby is the symbol of a caring heart for millions of people around the world.
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In today's complex world of family issues, learn from Dr. Dobson's lifetime of practical experience in dealing with family problems.
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Basic design principles still apply.
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Bring Life to Your Site
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Computer on a Stick
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A Message From Mike Carroll |
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Planting a Seed
A young woman decided she wanted to grow an apple tree in her back yard. She had never planted anything before, so she started researching all she could about growing an apple tree. She learned about site selection, training and pruning, adequate fertility, pest control, and other factors helpful for creating a healthy apple tree. Every time she went out in her yard, she pictured the tree already grown with rich, beautiful apples all over it. Because of her determination and ongoing nourishment, the seed she planted grew into a flourishing tree that she was very proud of.
Here's the way I see it: You can't plant apple seeds and expect oranges. However, with a little determination and effort, you may be amazed at what you can grow. We plant "seeds" in life more often than we realize, and sometimes these ideas flourish into great accomplishments. If you're looking for creative nourishment, give us a call. We'd be happy to help your seed grow.
Mike Carroll
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Idea of the Week |
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The Secret of Good Forms
There are those who are bored to tears by the thought of designing a form and those who love the fussy challenge of creating a good, clear, usable document. Forms are seriously underrated in the world of graphic design.
| Of the four basic design principles (contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity), the secret to a good-looking form is alignment. Lack of alignment is the single biggest failure that makes a form appear unclear to the user. The other principles are also very important, as in any design, particularly contrast to help direct the user through the form, proximity to keep groups of related pieces of information together, and repetition to tie it all together. But alignment is the key.
The top example uses interesting typefaces and calls out the major features in bold for clarity in communication and visual contrast and repetition, but it doesn’t look as clean and clear as it could.
In the lower example, elements are aligned, which naturally presents a cleaner look. Cleaner (usually) communicates better. Also, the spacing was adjusted so that the elements that belong together (like those two lines of “suggested donations”) are closer together, and the separate elements have a wee bit of extra space between them (following the principle of proximity). |   |
See more great ideas like this!
Click here to visit the Foster-Carroll, Inc. / your"GO TO"printer Ideas Collection.
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Tech Tips |
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Portable Apps
If you are currently using a flash drive simply as a backup or transfer device, you haven't truly unlocked the potential of the USB until you've installed some programs on it. Because portable applications allow users to run programs independently from a removable flash drive without the hassle of installing them, they are becoming a favorite for professionals in a variety of industries. If you aren't already using this feature, here are a few portable apps for Macs and PCs to check out:
- HTTP File Server is a very simple application to send/receive files over the internet, and is very handy when exchanging files that are over the maximum e-mail size limits.
- Foxit Reader is a small PDF reader that is much faster than Adobe Reader.
- OpenOffice Portable is a great alternative to Microsoft Office. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation creator, and database tool.
- Thunderbird Portable Edition is a popular e-mail client that allows you to bring your e-mails and address book with you.
- MemPad enables you to save all notes in a single file but arrange and manage them in a hierarchical tree-based manner.
- KeePass Password Safe Portable allows you to carry multiple login information and passwords on your USB drive accessible through one master password to protect them.
- Firefox Portable Edition enables you to bring your bookmarks with you.
- Google Chrome Portable enables you to run different tabs as separate processes which prevents different windows from interfering with each other.
- Notepad++ is one of the most popular replacements for Windows Notepad.
- Web Design Toy splits into two views where you can instantly preview the output when you type HTML code.
- GIMP Portable is the best alternative for Adobe PhotoShop, enabling you to easily edit images no matter where you are.
- Fotografix is a tiny application alternative to GIMP with features including clone, eye dropper, magic wand, etc.
- Inkscape Portable is an open source vector graphics editor, and is a great alternative for Adobe Illustrator.
- FileZilla Portable is the most popular open source FTP client and allows you to save and conveniently access your clients' server details and settings.
While portable applications are great, just remember if you plan to take a USB flash drive with portable apps to a client site for use on one of their machines, you should always check their IT security policy in case they have security restrictions in place.
Don't worry if the portable app program details sound like foreign language... we'd be happy to help you with both your technical and printing needs.
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