What do you do with 1,500 photographs?

In hope of sparing some folks hours of boredom I’d like to share my ideas on this topic here.

The Endless Stack of Photos

We have all been there. A friend or family member brandishes a stack of photos, saying “Let me show you photos of our trip to Ecuador…” (oh no… here it comes…). At this point, you reach for the photographs, but they hold the stack out of reach. They then turn each one over slowly, telling a long tale about every single image. “Oh, look at this monkey, it was so cute when he stole the candy out of little Billy’s hand and spit it into Aunt Sally’s hair.” and so on and so on.

You begin to look at the size of the stack and estimate how long this process will take.

Everyone has been on the receiving end of this treatment, but have you ever been the perpetrator?

It’s an easy trap to fall in to. To be honest, when you are showing photos to a friend, each image brings back a wave of pleasant memories and it is tempting to bask in the enjoyment of the memory, talking about how you felt at the time, as your friend’s eyes begin to aquire a glossy sheen.

Don’t Be That Person

Remember how it felt the last time you endured a four hour photo flipping marathon and have pity on those around you.

Here’s my strategy for pleasant photo sharing:

• Pare down the photo collection. Substantially.
• Create an attractive photo album with the finest photos of the lot.
• Hand the album to your friend and let them turn the pages.

Back to those 1,500 photos from India…

Here is one of the pages from the album I made from that trip.

As you can see, the end result is fairly simplistic, with a few very nice photos.

Paring Down the Stack

Even the most avid photographer understands that nobody wants to see a thousand photos. And don’t think that just because you made a slideshow with music instead of printing the photos that you are exempt. You can afford to cut the number down quite a bit.

Consider that a typical Hollywood motion picture contains less than 10 percent of the total footage filmed. Stanley Kubrick, ever the perfectionist, took this to the extreme with shooting ratios around 100 to 1. Following the analogy, in photography, it is quite reasonable to take dozens of photos for every single picture that you might share to others.

The real trick is deciding exactly how far to go with the selection process.

In my experience, you can weed out the bad photos for hours, and when you think the job is done, you can still go back and toss out a few dozen more.

I filter my photos in three major phases, using the five-star rating tool of my photo library software to help keep things in order. I personally use iPhoto, but any other good photo library suite should offer ratings and smart folders.

Phase 1: Removing obviously bad photos

This is a very quick pass through the whole collection. I start by selecting everything and marking all photos with a neutral rating of three stars.

I then find any photos that are underexposed or are blurry and give them one single star. Along the way, any photos that obviously have no useful content get the same treatment.

Phase 2: Identifying decent photos

I use a smart folder to show all photos with three stars or greater. This hides all of the junk from the first pass.

Now, I go through each photo and give it a deeper look. I sort them into three different stacks, giving two stars to anything that has useless or boring content and giving four stars to photos that I think are worth showing to people. Photos that don’t fit either description retain the neutral three-star rating. These are often repeats of the one good photo I tossed in the four-star stack.

Phase 3: Identifying the best of the best

I use a new smart folder to show only photos with four stars or better.

This is the hardest part. I go through the photos and try to find the absolutely best photo that expresses each experience or thought.

• If the photos are of places, then it makes sense to check that you have at least one photo of each important place you visited.
• If these are shapshots of friends and family, then you probably should verify that each person shows up in at least one of the pictures.

I often have a difficult time working through photo collections from visits to my wife’s family in Brazil: there are hundreds of people in the pictures and I often have doubts over who is family and who isn’t. Fortunately, my wife sits patiently with me and helps at this stage.

Look again at the photos of the elephant ride and the snake charmer. I probably have two dozen different shots of the snake charmers, while the elephant shot was a single dodgy photo taken by the tour guide. I was able to pick the very best snake charmer photo, but I had little choice with the other—there was no way I was going to omit a picture of me on an elephant so I used it. These are the kinds of tradeoffs we are dealing with.

You can see in this screenshot how I flagged most of the photos as three stars (I have already hidden all of the one-star dreck). There is one photo that has four stars, while the one next to it had an unappealing composition in my opinion, so it got two.

How far should you go?

I suppose this comes down to personal preference, but I like to keep things down to thirty or forty photos—from a starting point in the thousands. In a photo album, you can represent your whole trip in fifteen or twenty pages. This is far less intimidating than a big thick stack of photographs.

Of course, context is important. I will go out on a limb here and say that a new baby can be shown to co-workers in five photos.

In the end, I create a smart folder that shows only photos with five stars. And boy do they look good!

Tweak the best photos

My favorite tool of all for tweaking photos is the crop tool. A good crop can dramatically change the composition of a shot while still retaining the purity of the photo.

I will also straighten any slanting horizons and possibly fix funky light balance at this point. The tool set provided in iPhoto is quite adequate for these simple tasks.

Now create a slick photo album using any of the great tools available online.

Make the Photo Album

Again, I like using iPhoto. It allows you to easily create fancy albums using templates and so forth. Once you are done, you can buy a finished album with a few clicks.

Once you have your short list of photos, use a five-star smart folder as the source for the photo album. You can then spend a pleasant evening or two playing around with the layouts and composition and adding captions to your photos.

• Create a smart folder that shows only five-star photos
• Create a new photo album based on that smart folder
• Choose a pleasing layout
• Add your photos in varying page styles to the book
• Write some informative and/or witty captions for the photos

This is a screenshot of the iPhoto application, with the A-list photos along the top and the snake charmer page in the editing window.

You can even make albums like this online, without any editing software whatsoever…

This is a similar photo album creation tool that is run completely from the Winkflash website.

Now, finish picking out the features you want on your album (e.g. cover style) and place your order.
In my opinion, these albums come with the optimal number of pages (usually 20). Any more pages could make it tedious and boring. Fit your vacation into those 20 pages.

These books usually cost around forty bucks, but they are worth every penny.

The Finished Product

When everything is done, you will have a beautiful printed photo album that looks like you bought it at a book store.

I have seen photo albums from three different outfits up close.

MyPublisher

I have a couple of albums from these guys and they are near perfect. The pages look like thick magazine pages, with magazine-quality photos. I found that my white-on-black text bled a little.
Note that the leather used on the leather-bound books is paper thin.

These folks are always sending me coupons for 40% off, so it seems that you really don’t ever have to pay full price for their wares.

Apple iPhoto

These are identical to the MyPublisher books. Indeed, at one time iPhoto could send its output to either MyPublisher or Apple. I heard a rumor that MyPublisher did the books for Apple at one point.

The only down side to the Apple books is that you pay high shipping costs. Otherwise, the books are perfect.

Winkflash

A friend shared one of these with me. I happened to have my India album nearby, so we compared them. On the one hand, Winkflash is much cheaper; however, the image quality is not nearly as nice as the other books. Perhaps I was looking at a lower-end book from them, but the ink dots were a little coarse for my taste.

Summary

By putting a little effort in aggressive photo selection, basic image tweaks, and then taking advantage of the many photo book tools out there you can create a beautiful album that is a pleasure to leaf through.

These books have been available for several years; even so, whenever I hand one to a friend, they page through it, transfixed. People really love these albums and they actually enjoy looking through them.

Oh, and they make great gift ideas too!

What does this topic have to do with reducing paper in our lives? Believe me, printing one of these books is so much neater and cleaner than printing hundreds of loose photos. And you will enjoy them more.

Soon after returning from that trip I wrote a review of my Kindle experience. Now some time has passed and I am coming back to relate the Kindle experience over time.

The novelty hasn’t worn off!

I’ll admit it: I’m a gadget geek and I’m afraid to imagine how much hard-earned income I have frittered away on pretty devices that I really don’t need and that often get tossed to the back of some gadget drawer.

My fear with the Kindle was that it would fall into this category: I would read a few books on it and then it would slowly find its way deeper under piles of other stuff—papers waiting to be scanned and guitar music that never will be learned. Eventually, it would be charged up once a year to avoid feeling guilty for not using it.

The reality is that I use the Kindle today almost as much as when it first arrived. Though my reading has not picked up nearly as much as I would like it to, whenever I do have a chance to read, I pick up the Kindle.

One thing that has remained constant: I can hold the device for hours, reading peacefully, and it still “disappears in my hands” as promised. The text is still as enjoyable and crisp.

Newspapers still aren’t for me

Many years ago the local paper would have a regular promotion where they all but gave away the paper for six months. I would try it, and then regret it as I found myself tossing unread paper after unread paper into the recycle bin. I just am not a newspaper kind of guy: As much as I like reading the paper, and I would like to be tuned in to world events and enjoying my favorite columnists, I don’t seem to ever sit down to read the paper.

One thing has become clear over the past few months: it’s just as easy for unread electronic newspapers to collect in a pile as their paper counterparts. I have a subscription to USA Today, but I might actually only read it once or twice a month. I am probably going to end up canceling that subscription. Reader’s Digest, on the other hand, makes a welcome appearance once a month and I enjoy reading it.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the usability of the Kindle came from my wife. She was telling me about some story she had started reading in Reader’s Digest at the doctor’s office, only to be interrupted by the nurse calling her. I handed her the wonder gadget and showed her how to read Reader’s Digest. She had no problem whatsoever working her way through several back issues.

My wife hates technology. She likes the Kindle.

Lame Recommendations

One area where I have been somewhat disappointed is in the recommendations from the online bookstore. I just don’t understand Amazon’s algorithm for determining which books to recommend.

It is clear that your entire Amazon book purchasing history is used, but it is not clear how.

For example, in the past several months I have purchased exactly two books by Joseph Wambaugh and two by Kurt Vonnegut. Why, then, does my recommendation list always contain these two authors in the top slots? I have bought dozens and dozens of books from Amazon, often multiple from an author. I would hope that their recommendation would be a little better than that.

One book I bought on the Kindle recently was The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I also have two by Kim Edwards, the author of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. These, and several like them, though they might place my Man Card at risk, are evidence of a genre of books that I hope Amazon would detect and use to better choose my recommendations. No, I’m stuck looking at Wambaugh and Vonnegut forever I guess.

Last week I sent an order with several children’s books out west for my cousin’s three-year-old. Guess what appeared before Kurt in the list: a recommendation for a children’s book, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

In the area of book recommendations, I have been quite disappointed.

Questionable Top Seller List

There are three lists of books provided at the home page of the store: New York Times Best Sellers, Kindle Top Sellers, and New & Noteworthy Books. I guess the first list speaks for itself.

The Kindle Top Sellers list, though, has a glaring defect that really limits its usefulness in my opinion: many Kindle books are free or very cheap, and therefore might be overrepresented in the top seller list. As an example of this problem, I quickly opened the list right now and found a book called Weaving Words ranked #5. There are exactly two customer reviews of this book and the average rating is a pitiful 1-1/2 stars. The key to success? It’s free.

I would rather pay $9.99 for an absolutely awesome read than slog through a free book.

It’s not all bad in the Book Store

To be fair, there are definitely good parts about the book store. As I said last time, the free chapters are unbelievably handy. I have already read and dumped several boring first-parts of books. If there is a complaint about that, it is that often books come loaded with so much frufru before the first real chapter that the “first three chapters” you download really only include fifty pages of cruft, followed by ten pages of actual book.

On multiple occasions I have heard about a book from some other source and then hopped on to the Kindle Store. I then read a few reviews, read the first chapters, and then bought the book. This is a convenience that must be experienced.

The Record Club Blues

Remember a long time ago, when we rode our dinosaurs to school (my brother an I had to share one) and we did our homework on stone tablets? People were members of record clubs such as BMG or Columbia House. These were an awesome bargain, as long as you could negotiate the tricks and traps they used to induce you to buy records you never wanted.

The one real down side to a record club was that their catalog was always incomplete. I remember wishing I could find Pink Floyd at BMG and realizing that it probably was never going to happen. Different artists were often available from one club or another but not both.

Sadly, this phenomenon endures today in digital form. There are no sources of digital media that sell everything. The iTunes store and Amazon have different MP3 catalogs, and Barnes & Noble and Amazon have different eBook catalogs.

The limited catalog can be blamed in part to the need to prioritize which books to digitize: though I might want to read a particular Clive Cussler novel from 1975, Amazon might have put that on the back burner while they digitize more recent works.

Unfortunately, I imagine that the majority of the limited catalog is due to licensing, copyrights, and lawyers, as well as a desire to compete by not allowing your competitors to sell your best selection—a balkanization of authors that helps the book sellers more than the customers.

The fact that these eReader devices come hooked up to a book store and have built-in DRM means that the market is not open. I cannot browse the Barnes & Noble catalog from my Kindle and buy books there; likewise, a Nook user cannot buy from the Kindle store. This does not help us as consumers, as there is little chance that anyone will buy two of these expensive devices so they can access two catalogs.

Another problem that is caused by this nontransferable content is that you are now married to the product line. My Kindle book collection is worth more than the Kindle itself. Do I want to jump shop and move to a better device sold by a competitor in the future? No, and that’s exactly what Amazon wants. There is no incentive for any of the eBook manufacturers to make it easy for you to switch devices.

Final Thoughts

Given the state of the eBook market, it makes sense to choose a good device that has a predictable long future. Amazon is the online book powerhouse and is a safe bet for longevity. Reviewers are constantly singing the praises of the Kindle, and any new eReader review contains the obligatory comparison to Kindle.

I would heartily recommend this device to any avid reader. Indeed, a couple of weeks ago I was online with AppleCare working out the replacement of a problematic iPhone. We chatted a bit while waiting for reboots and such, and I’m fairly certain that I convinced the nice AppleCare woman that the Kindle is exactly what she needed in her life.

The key was that she said that she likes reading more than anything. If reading is what you live for, don’t delay. It’s not like “reading from a computer” and it’s far more convenient than a suitcase full of books.

When the original Kindle was announced, I was skeptical of its utility and I just couldn’t see myself using one. In the year or two since it was released, I have occasionally dreamed of buying one, but balked at its steep price. The combination of a new version (Kindle 2), a price cut, and a vacation was all it took.

In short, I love it, and it is the perfect companion for a long lazy vacation. In this article, I’ll cover several of the high points as well as a few of its shortcomings.

A Display (almost) like Real Paper

As far as I’m concerned, this is the only feature that really matters. Most will agree that reading from a screen is unpleasant. I have read books on a wide variety of sub-par screens such as laptops, Palm devices, and my iPhone—they are all pretty bad. Why is this screen so special?

To be honest, you really must see one of these e-ink devices in person to fully appreciate the difference between Kindle and a netbook display. I saw my first e-ink device in a Borders book store—they had the Sony Reader on display. If you are in a Borders, you might want to see if they have any on hand. If you have any gadget-geek friends, ask around to see if one has a Kindle you can hold in your hands.

The first time you see the display, you will be surprised at its paper-like qualities.

To show this, take a look at this close-up of the screen:

• It works by reflected light, like paper. There is no backlight.
• The letters appear to be printed right on the surface—look at the text around the coins to see what I mean.
• You can read in direct sunlight with no loss in quality. Indeed, I took the photo in sunlight to show this.
• The display consumes no energy unless it is changing pages. In fact, when you put the device in sleep mode, it displays one of several images of literary figures until you wake it up again.
• The display is just as crisp at any angle:

In this image, not only do you see the effects of an amazingly thin depth of field from my lens (a bit more than I expected), but you can see that even at a very flat angle, the screen looks pretty much the same.

The only shortcomings I can think of are that it isn’t color (no big deal), and the contrast still isn’t exactly like a printed book—it’s more like the black-on-grey of a cheap newspaper.

Some may find the page-change flash annoying: when you change pages, the display flashes black for a split second in order to clear the prior page.

The Reading Experience

With a display like that, it’s hard to go wrong.

One of the main complaints of the original Kindle was that it was too easy to accidentally turn pages. They have fixed this problem, and now you can easily turn the page from either side, while avoiding accidental page turns. It feels quite natural, and the paperback-sized screen is just big enough to feel like you are really reading a book.

The device is very small, so you can carry it anywhere (please buy a cover, though). There is no longer any need to fold the newspaper fifteen times to avoid encroaching on the personal space of your fellow commuters.

Over my vacation, I read several books with ease. Amazon says that they want the Kindle to “disappear” in your hands, so as to not distract from your reading enjoyment. They have achieved this goal.

The Kindle Store

All things considered, this was the deal maker for me. The fact that I can go to the Kindle Store wherever I am and buy a new book is unbelievably cool. To sweeten the pot, Amazon allows you to download the first few chapters of any book for free. That way, you can decide before paying if the book is going to be a good read. This ability to download free samples was what sold the device for me.

For example, while we were driving through South Carolina the other day, I suddenly developed a hankering for a good first-person WWII book. After a few minutes of figuring out how to find WWII materials, I started paging through dozens of interesting possibilities and finally settled on Iron Coffins: A Personal Account of the German U-Boat Battles of World War II by Herbert A Werner. How neat! I was looking for yet another memoir of D-Day battles from an American author and stumbled on a German’s first-person account of his U-boat experience.

Periodicals

Amazon provides a relatively short list of newspapers and magazines that you can subscribe to, including the New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and others. There are also a few magazines to choose from (33, to be exact).

As with books, you can sample the wares before buying. You can have one 14-day subscription to any periodical for free.

I subscribed to Reader’s Digest and USA TODAY. Both of these seem to have been well adapted to the device. Every morning when I turn on my Kindle, the day’s edition of USA TODAY automatically comes down over the air.

Built-in Internet

I’ll be brutally honest here: you really don’t want to surf the net with this device. The Internet connection exists mainly as a means of connecting to the Kindle store. If you are the kind who likes surfing the ‘Net using the text-only Lynx browser, on an actual vintage VT-100 terminal over an acoustic coupler modem, then this might fit your style.

In a pinch, you can zip to Wikipedia, but don’t expect to use it to manage your eBay auctions or watch YouTube.

The image at right is a screenshot generated right from the device. Trust me—even browsing a Wikipedia article is a painful experience.

What’s Wrong with Kindle?

Any complaints I have about Kindle are minimal, bordering on nipickery, but you should know of some of the minor annoyances.

• Any navigation and pointing and clicking is clunky and slow. It really does remind me of typing on an old-school terminal over a 300 baud modem, where it was quite common to accidentally type in several characters before the computer caught up and started displaying them.
  Sometimes you move the “mouse pointer” down to an item you want to click on, but it lags and you click once too many times, and then the final button press clicks the wrong thing. I managed to accidentally buy a book this way—fortunately, Amazon provides a “I made a mistake” link.
• No touch screen. While struggling with the navigation, it is so tempting to just poke at it. At the moment, this is likely a blessing: the Sony Reader has a touch screen, at the cost of a substantially muddled display.
• The book prices are a little steep. I’m certain that the publishers are partly to blame on this, but it is hard to accept that a dead-tree edition only costs a few bucks more than an electronic edition. There are none of the losses associated with publishing, stocking, shipping, and then handling returns on these books, but they still cost almost as much.
• Come on, only 33 magazines? I know that many magazines are glossy and colorful, but I wouldn’t mind a reduced-cost version of Wired, for example.
• They don’t give you any kind of case. You are spending $300 on this fine device and the least they could do is give you a cotton slip cover!
• You can’t replace the battery. This is no big deal for me, since I am already on my second iPhone: the technology advances fast enough for me that I buy the latest gadget before the battery in the last one dies.
• They aren’t even close to reaching the full potential as a book reader, and likely won’t. Since Kindle supports DRM content, why can’t we have an online digital library where we can check out books for a week and return them? Why can’t an outfit like books24x7 allow me to download a full book to my one registered Kindle?
  Certainly, these uses would conflict with Amazon’s business model, but it is a shame to see this unused potential.

The ugly specter of Digital Rights Management

One particularly troubling concern is with the Amazon DRM model in general. On the one hand, it seems that Amazon wants you to treat the Kindle and its content as a service. You are paying a substantial sum for a service. Since there is DRM involved, you really don’t own the content in the true sense of the word. You can’t give a book to someone else. Much of the value of Kindle is derived from the permanent connection to the Kindle Store, and your online bookshelf. Unfortunately, many customers have found that when they fell out of Amazon’s good graces, by returning too many purchases, they were shown the door quite rudely and locked out of their Kindle accounts forever. It seems that Amazon would like to have their cake and eat it too; treat their product as a service, but then tell you it is useful as a standalone product once you are left out in the cold.

And who can ignore the irony of the whole 1984 debacle, where books were yanked out of customer’s Kindles as they slept?

To be sure, most Kindle customers are not recklessly returning big-screen TVs after Super Bowl Weekend and returning GPS units after their summer vacations, so the whole Amazon lockout issue is probably not a concern for most. Likewise, Amazon should have learned their lesson from 1984. Forewarned is forearmed. Make sure that you understand the risks and limitations before you dive in.

What’s Right with Kindle?

• The display is beautiful.
• The battery lasts several days, as long as you turn off wireless.
• It really does disappear in your hands, as promised.
• It will hold every book I ever plan on purchasing.
• The online store is almost perfectly implemented—it’s extremely easy to purchase new books anywhere.
• Those free samples are the best.
• The free iPhone companion app lets me see my Kindle books on my iPhone too, and it keeps my current page in sync between the devices.
• It’s Paperless!

My Conclusion

There are tons of features that I haven’t covered, such as the built-in dictionary, the “read-to-me” text-to-speech feature, and the MP3 player features. I hopefully have covered the key features that really matter for an eBook reader.

For me, the fact that I can carry a ton of books in my hand without involving dead trees is great.

If you are an avid reader, but you are not a starving college student living on ramen, order one. You will not be disappointed.

I have always been a big fan of HowStuffWorks, with their detailed in-depth articles describing such disparate topics as manual transmissions and money laundering.

Anyway, author Diane Dannenfeldt has written a lengthy article on How Paperless Offices Work, giving ample coverage to myriad aspects of the topic:

• Introduction to How Paperless Offices Work
• Benefits of a Paperless Office
• Transitioning to a Paperless Office
• Managing Digital Documents
• Going Paperless at Home
• Paperless Office Solutions

Take a look at the full article here: How Paperless Offices Work (howstuffworks.com)

23 tips for getting organized, streamlining your online time, managing your media and more

In this Computerworld article, the writer gives several great tips on getting your geeky side in order. I’m happy to note that procurement of a Fujitsu ScanSnap and scanning your life to PDF made number 4 on his list.

Other useful tips include topics such as cable management solutions (for that rat’s nest of wires), Google Desktop search and Google Sync, online identity management, and protecting your children online.

Check it out: How to simplify your tech life (Computerworld)

Another issue altogether is the spam email that is carefully crafted to appear as if it has come from your bank, saying cheerfully “Your statement for May is available online, just click here to access!” … but whoever clicks will inevitably be providing their secrets to some ne’er-do-well in New Zealand who will promptly empty their accounts.

Here is a simple, quick, and free way to avoid phishing attacks as well as casual/accidental exposure to unwanted adult content.

OpenDNS

The service I am referring to is OpenDNS, a free domain name lookup service that you can use in lieu of your Internet Service Provider’s own DNS servers.

When your computer goes to a web site, the name of the web site must be converted to a numeric address, in much the same way that you use a telephone directory to look up a friend’s number.

This lookup service is typically provided by a server owned by your Internet Service Provider. The address to this server is automatically configured when your cable modem connects to the network the first time.

The way OpenDNS works is you change the Domain Name Server (DNS) setting in your router to now point to the OpenDNS servers instead of your ISP servers. By doing this, you have changed the default telephone directory used by your home network.

A Phone book with the Bad Numbers Missing

To take the phone book analogy further, imagine that in your new phone book, all of the phone numbers for shady businesses such as escort services and massage parlors have been replaced with a special number. When you dial that number, a pleasant older woman gives you a gentle scolding for trying to call such a business.

This is pretty much what happens with OpenDNS: when your browser asks for a page from www.naughtystuff.com, the OpenDNS server points you to a different place, a nice page from OpenDNS that says that the page is blocked and explains why.

One fix for your Entire Network

There are many options available for “net nanny” style software that can be installed on individual machines, such as the kids’ machine. These features are also embedded in modern versions of Windows and OS X. But, what about all of the little portable devices that find themselves into kids’ hands? How about their gaming consoles?

Since you configure OpenDNS at the network entry point to your home, the router, any device attached to your network is automatically covered.

Customizable Blocking

You can use OpenDNS without an account, just by pointing your router to their servers, but the real power comes when you register with them (for free) and make your own choices about what you want to see.

You can choose which parts of the Internet you don’t want to see using their online configuration tool. You can either use their “High/Moderate/Medium/Low/Minimal” options or you can pick and choose individual bits of stuff to allow or block.

Here’s a look at the categories available when you choose the custom blocking level:

Basic Setup (about 20 minutes)

• Configure your router to use the OpenDNS servers for DNS lookups.
• Create a free OpenDNS account.
• Install their small updater program on one machine on your network.
• Log in to your OpenDNS Dashboard on the web and configure your blocking settings to taste.

Why do you need the updater utility?

In order to provide the custom blocking, the OpenDNS servers need to know your main IP address assigned by your Internet Server Provider. The desktop utility simply informs OpenDNS of your new IP address if it ever changes.

What do users see if they go to a blocked page?

They see a page that indicates the site that was blocked, along with a short reason and a link they can click if they want access to the page. If they click that link and fill out the short form, you will get an email from OpenDNS with the user’s request.

The remainder of the “blocked” page is a search form with some sponsored links.

You can customize the message as well as the image shown on the web page. When someone reaches a blocked page in my network, they are greeted by a picture of our calico cat, Roxy.

Keeping the Honest People Honest

This approach to blocking unwanted web sites is not a complete solution for keeping your kids from where they shouldn’t go; it is more like a simple padlock: it keeps the honest people honest. A determined individual can easily get around this product using various techniques, but they have to make a conscious effort to do so.

The real strength of OpenDNS is that it helps avoid accidental exposure to unwanted web content and phishing sites.

“How a lifestyle experiment and a disaster made me realize the value of turning atoms into bits” — Mike Elgin

A couple of months back, Mike Elgin of Computerworld posted an article on his foray into the paperless world: Paperless office? Ha! How about a paperless life?

In this followup article, he considers how lifestyle changes and the raging wildfires closing in on his city have made it clear to him that it is critical to protect whatever can be easily preserved in digital form.

Mike gives a sound strategy, starting off with a fast pass at just getting it digitized with little regard for perfection, followed by more focused efforts.

He pointed out how some objects just aren’t as important as the memories that they represent, illustrating this with a photograph of his son’s martial arts trophies that he has since donated to various organizations.

Mike makes it very clear that backups are mandatory. My kind of guy!

Here’s the whole article: Why you should digitize ‘everything’ (Computerworld.com)

Printing Documents

In a perfect paperless world we would never have need for dead trees. But that isn’t about to happen—there will always be a need to reprint certain important documents, and occasionally one may wish to print something for use away from a computer (e.g. a recipe).

Unless you want to print photo-quality Helvetica and Times Roman, you now are looking at using a traditional document printer, such as a laser printer or an inkjet printer. These days you may well have an all-in-one printer that combines a scanner with printer and fax.

The main problem I have with any of these printers is cost. Good laser printers are expensive and the cheap ones are just loss leaders to get you to spend $$$ on the toner cartridges. Worse still, those giveaway printers that come with new computers are the epitome of loss leaders—they make their profit on ink. Some have posited that the ink cartridge manufacturers have programmed their products to expire before the ink is exhausted.

Printing Online

For those who only have occasional print jobs, why not print your documents online?

For this article, I looked at two services: Staples Copy & Print and Fedex Office (the Copy Center Formerly Known as Kinkos). I selected these because they have a very large brick-and-mortar presence. Though you can have your documents mailed to you, you really want to go there and get them right now, don’t you?

As always, do a quick Google search to see the current lay of the landscape.

Staples

I started by going to the Staples Copy & Print web site.

Then I clicked on Create Copy Project. There was no need to log in at this point.

I was prompted to choose a local store; I entered my zip and clicked on a store.

After this, I provided a job name and quantity and started adding documents:

After a minute or so I had uploaded both my document on Creating a Basic NAS with Ubuntu Linux and my Secret Missile Plans (sorry, no link for that one!).

Staples supports printing several dozen different document types. Even though my missile plans appear to have a PDF icon below, you can rest assured that I uploaded a Microsoft Office .docx document.

The next step guided me through choosing options for each of my documents. There are plenty to choose from such as single-side/duplex, paper type, layout, folding, stapling, and so forth.

I chose some nice pink paper and set it to duplex.

Beware: The Color option was selected by default. I imagine this feature has earned them substantial $$$ from people who were just printing black and white documents. Sneaky.

Once my settings were all chosen, I was given an opportunity to review the print job before adding it to my shopping cart.

At this point I decided to spare a tree and I emptied my shopping cart.

Fedex Kinkos

The experience with Fedex Office was similar.

I started by going to the Fedex Office Print Online website.

Like Staples, I went through the process of uploading my documents and choosing options.

Beware: Again, the Color option was chosen by default. Make sure you choose B&W if you are printing black and white.

Here is the preview of my Linux document:

How was the Price?

With my basic settings, printing 38 total pages in full duplex, Staples was fairly cheap, coming in at just under $3.00, while Fedex came in about a dollar more.

These prices reflect a per-page cost of between 8 and 12 cents. This is not bad at all, considering I don’t need my own printer!

Note that the different features you choose are à la carte, adding little bits to the cost. If you think the price seems a little high, go and fiddle around with the options you selected.

Beware of that color copy trap. Shame on both Fedex and Staples for making color the default! I suspect that they may have consulted some of those ink cartridge guys for their business model.

The Fedex site openly references a Volume Discount, and it is likely that Staples would have something similar.

One More Option: Sneakernet!

One final technique that I have not mentioned until now is good old-fashioned Sneakernet. You can always put your documents on a thumb drive and stop by your favorite office center and ask them to print them. You will pay similar fees to their per-copy charges. Not bad, especially if you want them to use high quality paper and a top-notch laser printer.

And don’t forget that Sneakernet works as well for photos. Many chain pharmacies and supermarkets have a carry-in photo printing service. Just bring in a thumb drive or a SD card with your photos on it and they can print them for you. It won’t be as cheap as Winkflash, but it’s still a better deal than the old days.

Use common sense here. If you are handing over an SD card that has the only copy of your photos on it, you should probably use your thumbnail to flick the little “read-only” lever on the card.

Summary

In these two articles I have provided several options for handling photo printing and document printing, online or in the store, without ever having to curse at another printer again. I hope that you are able to find something useful here. If you have any advice or feedback on different print services, let me know!