Category Archives: Web Design

Mac vs. PC?

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I haven’t been blogging as much lately cause Tyler has commandeered my computer to work on a project. He got this video capture software that converts VHS tapes into useable media files that he can then edit (a lot of it is breakfast television-type shows he performed on when he was young) and save the files by burning what he wants onto a dvd. Good idea, but the stuff doesn’t work on his Mac, so he’s taken over my PC!

Which leads me to an age-old questions…Mac or PC?

I have a desktop PC and like it well enough. I use it all the time. Tyler bought a MacBook Pro a few years back and can use Logic and Reason for his recording stuff. But lots of “computer” people – designers, developers, etc, swear by the Mac and I kind of feel like I’m left out of the community by not having one!

I just find it interesting that people are absolutely black and white about loving Macs and hating PCs.

Before you keep reading, please note that I am not a computer specialist, I only have a couple of computers to compare, and you really shouldn’t take my advice about anything!

But, I’ve noticed a couple of things:

The Mac boots up much faster.
The Mac is less prone to viruses and spyware crap.
The Mac is great for music editing software, and I like using iMovie, so I can imagine other media programs would be great too.
The PC has lots of crap on it, including Internet Explorer, which I seriously dislike and is always trying to make itself my default browser!

But some programs, like this video conversion one, aren’t compatible with the Mac.
And I already have the Adobe programs that I use all the time, on the PC.

The biggest thing is budget and convenience. Besides having the all the software I need, and I know exactly where everything is on my PC – photos, videos, all my files. Also, I seriously have trouble remembering not to right click constantly when I use the Mac!!

As I’ve learned…we work better having separate computers (I guess we could learn to share) so I suppose I’ll carry on primarily using my PC and hoping someday to make the upgrade. Or maybe just get Windows 7.

What do you think, Mac or PC? Or does it even matter?

Bandzoogle – websites for musicians!

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My brother and I sat down last week to talk about making a website for him. He’s just finished up a Masters in Jazz piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and is back in O-Town looking for some work. He’s got lots of projects on the go with his musical friends, and does some teaching, but he wanted to put together a website. After all, everyone has a website!

So, we went over everything he wanted, and I sketched out a little site map and then did some research on tools to make a music website and came across Bandzoogle.

I knew of it already since quite a few of my musician friends here in Ottawa use it, and their sites look pretty good:

bandzoogle websites

http://www.jacksonmilesmusic.com
http://www.petervoith.com
http://www.jfilephotography.com
http://bencoopermusic.com

So I thought I’d head over to the site and check it out for myself.

bandzoogle home

Once you’re created a trial account, you get access to the control panel. Step 1 is to give your site a title, and then select a font. These can both be changed later if you want.

font selection

Next, you select a website style from a library of templates. I filtered by “Modern” and picked this template.

site style

There is also a beta feature called style designer, that lets you customize your site style (background image, line-height, colours, and so on) without doing any coding. Sort of similar to the visual editor in Dreamweaver. Pretty cool feature if you want to make some custom changes, and the controls were easy to use.

style designer

After choosing my site style, I added a header image. Then I went into the Edit Pages tab and created the pages I wanted to make up my website – Home, About, Projects, Links, and Contact.

add pages

Then, you can select a feature to put onto your page. Check out all of the features:

features

You can move the blocks around and next to each other as well until you get a structure that you like.

I added some text fields and put some plain text into them. You can add images, links, anchors, and work in the source code (click on Source) from this tab.

text

Here is my trial page – just keep in mind that I don’t have any content or images yet, but still wanted to get an idea of what the page could look like!

my trial

Back to the control panel. Next to the Edit Pages tab, there is a Design and Options tab, where you can make changes to the site style, header, font, and colours. At the bottom is an area to modify the css.

custom stylesheet

I used Mozilla’s Firebug feature to go through the site and find out what the styles were, then added a bit of my own css to spread out the menu buttons, give some padding to the columns, give the text a bit of line-height, and change the colour of the events headings.

updated trial site

So not bad at all, even though I need more info, like songs, and social media links, to test out the full capability.

Overall, I think Bandzoogle would be a great alternative to creating a content management system from scratch because they’ve made this especially for musicians. I also had a look at some of the additional features, like search engine optimization, pre-built mailing lists, and a site traffic section. I think this is much easier to learn than installing a version of WordPress (and you know I love WordPress) and searching through plug-ins.

The subscription plans start around 10$ a month, which is not bad at all, considering you get your stuff hosted AND you get technical support from real people.

So check out Bandzoogle – I have a feeling I’ve only scratched the surface – and I’ll report back once my brother’s site is actually complete!

Google Reader – the basics

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I love, love, LOVE my Google Reader. I only discovered this amazing technology last year and I am so happy that I did! If you like to visit blogs regularly but don’t like having to type in the website each time, or look it up, set up Google Reader!! Seriously, it changed my life. I’m not exaggerating!!

Don’t be scared – let me walk you through it.

First, go open an Internet browser. I use Firefox on my PC. Type in www.google.ca (or .com) into the site address bar at the top of the screen.

address bar

See where it says Sign In at the top right? Click on that link. If you already have a gmail account, just go ahead and sign in with your e-mail address.

sign in

If you don’t have an account already, click on Create an Account now.

create account

make account

Go ahead and fill in your info, and then click on the “I accept. Create my account” button. It’ll bring you to the main Google screen, and you’ll be signed in. You should see your e-mail address on the top right now.

done

To get the Google Reader going, look at the menu across the top left, and click on more.
You should see Reader close to the bottom of the list.

reader list

Once you click on that, you’ll be in the Google reader. Time to personalize the interface! I personally minimize the “Home,” “People You Follow,” and “Explore” tabs, by clicking on the little minus sign in a box. I am following some people on Google Buzz, but when I go to my Reader – I just want to read!

minimize

Now to set up your content. First, add a blog that you like by clicking on the Add a Subscription button. Like…my blog for example! Enter the url, and then click “Add.”

subscription

Added my Ottawa life

If you have lots of websites and blogs that you want to keep here, I would suggest organizing them. I make folders for each of my interests, and then sort the website into the folder. Just go to the subscription you’ve just added, and rollover to the right of the title with your mouse. An arrow should appear. Click on the arrow, and select New Folder.

new folder

Then name your folder, and the blog will stay in there. If you want to move the blog to a different folder, just roll over the arrow, click, and select the folder you want it to go into. If you later want to get rid of that website, just go into this same menu under the arrow and pick “Unsubscribe.”

If you want to get really in depth with sorting and organizing your subscriptions, click on “Manage Subscriptions” at the bottom left side of the page.

manages

manage subs

Now for the fun part – reading! The google reader shows items that have been posted to a blog but are unread by you by highlighting the title in bold, and displaying a count of how many unread items you have. Each folder has a count, and each blog has a count.
Items get marked as read once you have scrolled through them and read them. If you skim a bit and decide you don’t want to read it all, click on Next Item, at the bottom.

next item

If you’ve been neglecting to read everyday and have too many items, just click on “Mark Items as Read” and pick your option – items older than a day, a week, or two weeks.

mark as read

If you have items that you want to save, you can bookmark them (in Firefox, you can go to the top menu and choose Bookmarks – Bookmark this page) OR you can use this new service I’ve recently discovered called Read It Later. I’ll go into that more in another post, but if you want to check it out on your own, the website is http://readitlaterlist.com/

read it later

Happy Google Reading!