As someone who attended college online and now works full-time online, it's disheartening to see the internet filled with so many scams for both education and jobs. Search for online college or online jobs, and 99% of what you'll see is total junk - and worse. It's bad enough if the so-called educations and jobs aren't real, but the worst thing is that many of these links will lead you to scams that will try to bleed your bank account dry and then some.
The Verge recently did an incredible job investigating into the world of online scams with their Scamworld piece. If you haven't read it already, take the time it takes to go read it, or save it to your Instapaper queue to read later. Even if you're already aware that most Work online from home links are scams, it's worth the read just to be better informed so you can help out less informed family and friends. In short, it shows how these so-called internet marketers are ripping off people with the promises of instant internet riches, only to be lining the pockets of scammers and at the same time making their poor victims more afraid of the internet than before.
I'm frequently asked how to find work online. People always mention that they've seen links about Google paying you to work from home, or some way to make thousands each month from home, and ask if they should try them out. No. Never. Don't even dare to click through or submit your email unless you know what you're doing.
The thing is, there are many legitimate online jobs. I work for Envato, a company with such a global team they made an infographic about it, and Metalab, another company with employees around the world. Many companies today will hire the best people from anywhere, since so many jobs can be done with a laptop and an internet connection from anywhere. And there are many legitimate ways to get education online, even from locally accredited, non-profit universities with stellar track records.
But, the companies with real online jobs and real online degrees are simply real companies and real colleges. They're not out there advertising that you can work or study from home. They're pushing their own credentials as they would in the real world, telling people what they make and teach and stand for. Sure, they work online. But that's not why they exist. They're first and foremost real businesses selling real products and services and educating real people, and they don't need special offers, overblown promises, short time promotions, pushy telemarketers, and more to get people signed on. They just deliver the results, and the best employees and students come and work or attend locally or online. And the world goes on as it did before the internet.
So how should you find a job online, or an online college? The way you'd find any other job or college. For colleges, find a college you want academically, then see what learning options they have. Many real colleges have online classes today, and it's just one of the many things they offer. For jobs, find your niche, show you're a hard worker and have the skills needed, then look for a job the way you normally would. You might have to try harder to find a college or job you can do online, but there are plenty of options out there. And there's many ways you can learn on your own though courses, say, on iTunes U or Tuts+ Premium (an Envato offering), and many ways you can create your own job by creating products and selling them (be it eBooks on the Kindle Store, apps on the App Store, handmade goods on Etsy, or anything you can think of with a Shopify store). And hey, those things you make might lead to your next job.
But don't even consider looking at jobs and colleges that only focus on their online aspect. It's a scamworld out there. Stay safe!
My first Photoshop experience came by way of Photoshop Elements 7, with the Photoshop/Premiere Elements bundle. I was rather surprised how much power Adobe packed into their entry-level version of Photoshop. It's obviously designed to make it easy for average computer users to, say, remove red eye and make a photo book, with the bright colored icons and wizards that come with it. But it's actually powerful enough to do most Photoshopping jobs most of us need to do, and if Photoshop is out of your price range, it'd be the 2nd best option I'd recommend, hands-down.
The funny thing was, upgrading from Photoshop Elements 7 to Photoshop CS 5.1 was a bit jarring. Sure, the interface was much more professional, but it was also a light grey. I'd gotten used to Photoshop Elements' dark interface, and found it rather nice, except for the bright icons in the tool palette.
Then news broke of Photoshop CS6's all-new dark interface. Photoshop pros around the blogosphere praised the new dark interface, noting how professional it looked and what a change it was from Photoshop's standard interface. And I had a hard time laughing. The new Photoshop CS6 interface color is rather similar to the color scheme Photoshop Elements has been sporting for years, except in Photoshop CS6, your tools palette is filled with nicely shaded light grey icons instead of Elements' candy-colored icons.
One nice extra in Photoshop CS6 is that it has 4 color schemes, one darker than the default and then two lighter ones, with the lightest being basically the same as it was in CS5. I happen to prefer the default interface color, but it's very nice to have the choice, and Adobe's done a nice job of integrating the custom colors into their apps without feeling half-baked or quirky. My only frustration is that, while many of the other CS apps such as Illustrator got the new UI, InDesign didn't get the new interface options, and still looks largely the same as it did in CS5. Guess we'll have to wait for CS7...
Back on the Elements side of the equation, Photoshop Elements 10 has a slightly darker outer window, with a slightly lighter shade of grey on its tools pallets. It looks much the same as previous versions of Photoshop Elements, with slightly less bright colors than before. Now, we'll have to see if PSE 11 has the interface color options of Photoshop CS6, or if it inherits an "all-new" light grey interface previously seen in CS5...
Another app I've started using more this week is DragonDrop. This simple utility shot up in the App Store rankings after John Gruber praised it on Daring Fireball, but it really is useful enough to be worth the $4.99 it costs. Once you've got the app installed and running, just drag anything - an image, text, part of a website - and shake your mouse, or drop it on the DragonDrop icon in the menubar. The content is then held there, so you can switch to another app to drop it in. It works across full-screen apps in Lion, and while it's a tad hard to activate with a Magic Trackpad, dragging in a circle brings it up pretty easy. Or dropping it on the menubar icon.
Come to think of it, it's like Cloud.app or Droplr for moving files between apps!
Two years ago, I was a PC user, and was quite jealous of all the cool apps that my Mac colleagues were using. One category of apps especially caught my attention: the simple file sharing apps that you couldn't help but notice people using. You'd see d.pr/ and cl.ly/ links on Twitter from Droplr and Cloud.app, respectively. I'd see the nice image preview pages, and feel frustrated that, yet again, they were using an app that PC users couldn't use.
Then, I came across Windroplr, a tiny app built by developer Bruno de Carvalho that let you use Droplr on a Windows PC. It seems silly, but it really seemed to make my PC experience just a bit better. I then got an iPod Touch, and was blown away by how nice Droplr's iPhone app was.
Last year, I switched to a Mac Mini, and started using Cloud.app more than Droplr, and although I kept both installed, I for the most part stuck with Cloud.app. In the mean time, Droplr kept adding new features and revamped their web app, while Cloud.app remained mostly the same. They then added a fairly economical pro version today, and after trying it out for my review on Web.AppStorm, I was very impressed.
First, the web app is awesome. Check out my review at AppStorm for more info. The easiest way to compare it is to look at a screenshot from Droplr's web app when I first tried it:
then compare that with a screenshot from today:
There's no comparison. The old web app looks strikingly plain, with just a row of links and no way to upload files from your browser. The new web app is beautiful, easy to use, and you could make great use of the service without ever installing a native app now. And with 100Gb storage on the pro accounts, you don't have to worry about running out of space, either.
I took a second look at the Droplr Mac app while using it for the review, and was impressed with the drop previews right in the app, and also with how easy it made getting the links to your files. Anything to save time is a bonus, and that little Copy Link button will certainly come in handy. My only frustration is that you can only create notes from the native apps, and .txt, .md, or other code or plain text files won't automatically be viewable in the web app directly when you upload them. That's one thing that I think Cloud.app does better, but then, the Note option in the Mac app is nice too. I'd like both options in one!
I'm not certain if I'll stick with it, and am especially not sure if I'll keep paying for a pro account, but I'm certainly going to be giving it a thorough trial this month. So far, so good. It's impressive how much they've improved the service, and exciting to see the Windows app that got me started with Droplr is now officially Droplr for Windows, and the developer behind it is now part of the Droplr team.
One thing's for sure: I need to share files quickly daily, and Droplr is easily one of the best ways to do that. Be sure to give it a try if you haven't already!
I already knew the iPad's keyboard had much more to it than meets the eye, and have used tap-and-hold to insert special characters as long as I've had an iPad. Most of the tricks in this article aren't new to me, but sliding up on the dash and period keys? Wow. That's totally new, and I had no idea those options were in there. Great stuff.
Search is a great thing when it works perfectly. Google's web search worked so good that most people stopped trying to remember web addresses and instead relied on being able to re-discover their favorite sites with a quick search. Desktop search on computers is nothing new, but for Windows users, it's got such a bad reputation that few would dare to touch it. Windows 7 stepped up the game with decent desktop search, but they were simply playing catchup to OS X at that point.
Because on a Mac, Spotlight search is good enough that you'll rarely have to ever manually hunt for a file or program. It's still not perfect, and most pro Mac users end up using other search and launcher tools like Alfred. I've finally started trying out Alfred this week, and love it so far, but it was Spotlight itself that originally made me realize how useful search could be.
For the past several month, Techinch has had an Adsense banner on the top. No more. This week, Techinch was finally accepted into a new high-quality ad network: Influads. The ads are much smaller and at the same time nicer looking than most other online advertisements, and I'm excited to finally have Techinch with a more stylish ad sponsor block. And hopefully, you'll actually find apps and services through the ads that you'll find useful. Techinch's right sidebar is now sticky, thanks to a tweak using the Script Manager plugin. I don't believe it will be too annoying, but would love to hear your thoughts if it does mess up your reading experience.
Now, back to writing articles that will make Techinch worth visiting...
If you're a creative professional and use any Adobe tools in your work, chances are you'll end up purchasing an upgrade to Creative Suite or an individual Adobe app. Adobe updates Creative Suite on a nearly annual basis, and while upgrades can be expensive, they're far cheaper than purchasing a full copy of any Adobe product. And even if you decide to upgrade to Adobe's Creative Cloud this year, you'll still likely have old copies of Creative Suite or individual Adobe apps hanging around.
Adobe's typically good at making upgrades smooth, but installing an upgrade version of Creative Suite will leave the old version on your computer as before. Unless you want two versions of Photoshop and everything else, you'll likely want to go ahead and uninstall them first. Here's how I just went about this.
First, you’ll want to deactivate your old version of Creative Suite. You don’t necessarily have to, but if you ever need to reinstall it (say, if you need to do something in an older copy, or need to run it on an older computer), you’ll be glad you went to the trouble. Just open any of your Adobe apps other than Acrobat, Help, or any of the smaller apps in the suite, and click “Deactivate” in the help menu.
This will open the Deactivation screen for Creative Suite, which will deactivate all of your Creative Suite apps at once, and will only take a moment.
Once that’s done, you can run any of the uninstallers for any of the Creative Suite apps on your computer. My Mac had an uninstaller for Photoshop, InDesign, and all of the other main apps, and once I’d installed CS6, it did the exact same thing, leaving a handful of uninstallers. But interestingly, all of them will let you uninstall the whole suite, so you don’t need to really worry about it. I just ran the Photoshop uninstaller, and it let me uninstall the entire suite.
Installing your Creative Suite Upgrade Without Creative Suite Installed
Now, if you install a Creative Suite upgrade on a computer that already has an activated older version of Creative Suite, the installer will automatically recognize the older version and let you install your upgrade without verifying your original copy of Creative Suite. If you uninstall Creative Suite first, though, or install your upgrade copy on a brand new computer, the installer will just ask you for your old serial number for your older copy of Creative Suite. So, the important thing is to keep your original serial numbers from every version of Creative Suite or other Adobe software you purchase, and even if you don’t have the older version installed, you can still easily upgrade.
One thing I’d like to note as well: I originally purchased Creative Suite 5.5 Design Standard using the student discount last year. This year, after graduating, I pre-ordered a standard retail download Creative Suite 6 Design Standard upgrade, and it upgraded my student copy just fine. That’s one of the best things about Adobe Student discounts: you can purchase a copy of Creative Suite for up to 80% off their standard retail price, and then keep your Adobe software up-to-date at standard upgrade price after you’ve graduated. Another nice tip: Creative Suite Design Standard is actually one of the best values in the CS lineup, and if you mainly want Photoshop but would like to use Acrobat, InDesign, or Illustrator too, it’s cheaper to purchase and upgrade than any of the two apps by themselves, and still much cheaper than any other CS edition.
So that’s how upgrading Creative Suite works. If you have any questions, or get stuck, feel free to leave a comment below, and I’ll try to give any help or advice I can!
There's two things that have gotten the most attention with CS6: the new dark UI scheme in Photoshop and Illustrator (which actually just looks like a refined version of the UI that Photoshop Elements has used for years, actually), and the new icons. Now, for what it's worth, I actually like the new icons, though the color choice on Photoshop's icon seem a bit odd. One neat thing I noticed shortly after installing CS6, though, was that the new icons are actually translucent. The effect looks rather nice, actually.
Here's a screenshot with the icons at max size over the Adobe website to show the effect in action:
Adobe went a bit more dramatic with their splash screens in Creative Suite 6, enough that they caught my eye and made me take a screenshot. Now, I typically get frustrated with apps that show splash screens, but these weren't so slow as to be frustrating, and are at least a creative bit of art the first time you see them. Acrobat's splash screen, largely unchanged from CS 5, was so fast I could hardly catch it in a screenshot. Now that's a problem worth being glad over!
