Simply-Basic.com

Email’s back up. Disregard the below message. Just to let everyone know, I’m working on getting Google Apps to host my emails rather then my current web service due to some errors sending to some domains. If you try to send me an email and it gets sent back, wait a bit and try again. It should all be resolved here in a little bit.

If it is urgent, sent it to kolbert.john [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks for being understanding! I’m anxious to get it back up as well.

There are thousands of PhotoShop tutorials available freely (and not-so-freely) on the internet. When their written clearly and documented nicely they can be quite useful. Today I came accross a tutorial that wasn’t only well written, it looked downright fun! It’s called Face Off and was written by Richard Isbell.

Here’s the original photo:

And here’s the final project:

The tutorial is easy to understand and seems fairly straight forward to follow. Check out the Face Off PhotoShop tutorial to see how to do it yourself.

Images shown originally published at http://xtro32.com/tutorials/face%20off/faceoff01.htm and used under “fair use” rights.

On many occasions it’s just nicer to show somebody how to do something rather then tell them how to do it. I recently had such an occasion with Ronald, who promptly introduced me to this excellent piece of software. It’s called TeamViewer, and it’s a free (for personal use) desktop sharing and remote control tool.

Honestly, I’m surprised I’ve never heard of it before (am I the only one?). Downloading and installing it took only a few minutes. After you launch the program you’re faced with the following screen:

On the left is an automatically generated ID and password. You give these if someone is connecting to your computer. On the right you enter the ID of the computer you are attempting to connect to.

Overall, usage was excellent. I was able to demonstrate what I had been doing. When I ran into trouble or needed to be shown something, Ronald was able to take control and let me observe. There was a slight amount of lag, but that is expected.

Here are some listed features:

• file transfer
• works behind firewalls
• free version available
• high security standards

I see myself using TeamViewer in the future with clients and co-workers to increase productivity. And based on my first experience, you should too.

I’ve finally finished uploading the new design for Simply-Basic.com. It took a little longer then I expected, but thing’s went pretty smoothly. The blog brings a new look (come out of your RSS readers!) comes from a modified version of the Arthemia theme. The homepage has a slight magazine-feel to it, yet keeps the true blog format

With the new look comes a stronger resolve and improved focus. I’m got some great ideas for tutorials and reviews, including videos! Take a few minutes and look around. Let me know of any bugs or problems you see. Since it’s already nearly 2:00 in the morning I’ll right up all the changes tomorrow, but I hope you enjoy the new look. Here’s to a successful blogging future!

As many of you know I’ve been working on redesigning Simply-Basic for a few weeks now. I’ve gone through two premium themes and various free themes trying to find one that I could customize to my liking. I’d redesign it from scratch but just don’t have the time. I’m happy to tell you I’ve finally found one that is exactly to my liking.

I’ve been costomizing it for a few days and it’s nearly completed. I’m hoping to re-launch Simply-Basic no later then this coming weekend. The site will be down for 2-3 hours while I upload the theme and create all the new pages and test it. I’ll send out an annoucement a few hours before I begin.

So what can you expect from the re-launch? First, you’ll notice that everything has been changed. The logo, the color scheme, the theme, it’s all different. Second, there will be much more attention to detail. I’m changing the way links are displayed, including a “Print this Post” feature, creating a comment policy and a sitewide advertising policy.

I’m also getting set up to create video tutorials and reviews. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time and decided now is the perfect time to start. Also, after a few weeks for minimal posts due to some personal reasons, I’m ready to finally start regular posting again.

So look for it in the next week. Simply-Basic v2.1 is almost ready. Are you? Stay tuned for a few screenshot previews.

I’m happy to announce the release of Email Protect 1.0, a WordPress plugin that automatically obfusctes email addresses in posts, pages, and comments. What is the advantage of this? It allows you to safely display email addresses yet protect them from spam bots that harvest email addresses from the HTML of webpages.

Here is an example of it in action:

Text Obfuscation:
emailme [at] here [dot]com

Image Obfuscation:

Here’s it’s features at a glance:

• Automatically protect email addresses from spam harvesters in posts, pages, and comments
• Obfuscate email addresses using text (myemail [at] example [dot] com) or images
• Control email text replacement for the “@” sign and final period in emails
• Control font, font color, background color, and border color of obfuscated email images
• Convert any email address in your template into obfuscated text or images by inserting a simple function call into your pages

Visit it’s offical release page to download or leave comments/suggestions