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Welcome to Data Designs Publishing's Quick News & Tips! Late April 2009
An exciting feature available in Acrobat, tips on saving money, marketing in a down economy, and a website we can't live without...all in this month's Quick News & Tips.
You'll also find some software tips. Software tips are great, but they don't always solve the problem you're currently having, do they? If you find yourself trying to accomplish something using any of the Adobe products and it's not working, give us a call...we just might be able to help you. We offer free telephone support. If we can't troubleshoot your problem, we have other resources that might just do the trick. So don't hesitate to give us a call.
In the meantime, enjoy this issue of QNT!
Sandy Hovatter, sandy@DataDesignsPublishing.com, 419-660-0500 | |
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| Interactive 3D Images In PDFs - Wow! |
From our "Betcha Didn't Know" Department
Did you know that the last two releases of Adobe Acrobat Reader have built-in 3D CAD viewing capabilities? Now you can distribute 3D CAD images in Acrobat documents that can be interactively manipulated by anyone with the free Acrobat Reader program. Click here to download a simple example. Once you have the file open in Acrobat Reader version 8.0 or higher, the drawing will open with a button in the upper left corner saying, "Click to activate 3D." Click on it and a whole new toolbar of 3D manipulation tools appears. Click on the image and drag with your left mouse button to rotate the drawing if full 3D. Click and drag with your right mouse button to zoom in and out. There are a couple of small drawbacks with using this 3D image viewing capability. First, the files tend to be quite large so emailing them might not be your best option, but imagine having a CD or DVD full of this stuff bundled into your next printed catalog. Your engineering customers will go wild.
The second issue is that you can only embed 3D images that use the .u3d file format (Universal 3D). This file format is relatively new, but thanks in part to Adobe's adoption of it, it's gaining acceptance throughout the industry.
Data Designs Publishing can help you design interactive, high-impact Acrobat applications that include 3D images, documentation, and audio or video clips that can make your products come alive to your customer base. Give us a call and we'll see what we can cook up together.
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| Nifty Website Alert - www.drop.io |
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Another site we suddenly can't live without. It's a great free or inexpensive site that allows you to save and transfer files.
You can create a "drop site" in less than two minutes, spend a couple more minutes personalizing it if you like, then begin to upload large files at will. You can give others access to your site or simply send them links to the files you've uploaded. The files can be text, video, or audio files. You can set dropped files to automatically be deleted at a pre-set time.
Each drop comes with an e-mail address, a voicemail and conference call number and other services. The first 100 megs of space is free. If you want to drop larger files, an individual premium membership costs $10/year gives you one dropsite and 1gb space. Need more space, drops and/or bells & whistles? Other plans are available.
This site is definitely worth looking at. Click on the logo above to check it out.
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| Marketing Tip of the Month |
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When times are tough, be sure you still have current literature to put in the hands of your customers. If you've done any reading about marketing in a down economy, you know that they all encourage you to maintain your marketing budgets as much as possible. Nevertheless, most companies will cut their budgets. That makes it a perfect time for you to not slash yours. Here are two reasons why:
- By cutting back on their budgets, your competitors will not be putting their name in front of your customers and prospective customers as frequently. Take advantage of the opportunity to be the most frequently seen vendor. It opens up opportunities to gain market share.
- Yes, many business are reducing their marketing budget, but a Fedex Office survey revealed that 47% of businesses expect to increase marketing and advertising spending this year. Don't let your competitors out-market you this year. (The survey polled business owners of firms who employe 5 to 100 employees and have revenue of over $100,000 annually.)
- Many suppliers of marketing talent, services and products will reduce their prices as their business slows down. Take advantage of lower prices to update your printed and digital literature at a lower cost.
Don't lose market share during our down economy. Market smart by using reputable and cost-effective firms and by making the most of digital opportunities. Data Designs Publishing offers among the lowest rates while maintaining a very high efficiency. Our March 09 issue provided many ideas about how you can save money by producing many of your marketing pieces digitally.
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| Gratitude Offering Update |
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Between March 15 and May 15, we are discounting all invoices 10% AND giving an additional 10% to the charity of your choice.
It's our way of saying "Thank You" to God and to all of you during Phil's recovery from the heart attack he suffered on February 4th. He is doing well and we couldn't be happier about it. Another thing we couldn't be happier about is how kind you have all been over the past few months. But we should have expected it. We have the best clients!
Since March 15, we've given donations in your names to the Michael Stern Parkinson's Research Foundation and The Cleveland City Mission. Thanks for letting us be a part of giving to worthy causes.
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| Data Designs Publishing Website Gems |
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Have you checked out our website lately? Here's just 2 things you'll find there:
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Managing Document Updates - Save Time & Money with These Tips |
| Make it Easy
on Yourself and Others! |
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Whether you're responsible for updating a price list, a one-page flyer or a 500-page catalog, here are a few tips to make the process go more smoothly:
> Talk with your desktop publisher about the process. They ought to be able to work with you in whatever way is easiest for you, and they may have valuable tips to help save you money.
> If a committee is reviewing the document, be sure to identify a single point person to review the suggested changes before sending the information to your desktop publisher. Frequently the inputs are inconsistent and your DTP-er probably isn't an engineer qualified to make decisions about content. What that means is that your next draft will be more incomplete than you'd like. What that means is more frustration than you'd like.
Save Money by
Managing the Process!
> Provide as complete information as possible for the first draft. Even minor changes can significantly affect layout in some types of documents.
> Don't expect a Table of Contents or Index until the content is firm. Do you really want to pay to have them created multiple times? Minor changes can shift items from one page to another.
> Avoid long delays in the middle of the project. No matter how good everyone's notes are, long delays require a period of time for your DTP-er to bring themselves and staff back to the point at which the project was dropped.
These are just a few of the things you can do to control costs and minimize frustration when managing the update of large documents.
Oh, and did we mention "Call Data Designs Publishing?" Our goals are to make your job easier and make you look better to your boss and your customers. |
| Software Tips |
| Adobe InDesign CS3/4 |
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Those Helpful & Pesky Guides - Guides are great when you need them, but they can be really annoying other times. Here are a couple of tips for using Guides:
* Guides are easy to draw - simply pull them from the ruler into the document.
* Use the View > Grids & Guides menu to snap guides to the grid or snap objects to your guides.
* When using multiple layers, each layer can have its own guides.
* Set Guides to show/hide at different magnifications using the Layout>Ruler Guides menu.
* Automatically set up regularly spaced horizontal or vertical rules using the Layout>Create Guides menu. (This is a great help when you need it!)
* Marque select guides using the pointer tool. The same rules apply as when selecting any other items - every rule your cursor touches becomes selected.
* Select all the rules on the page by pressing Cmd-Opt-G (Mac) or Control-Alt-G (Windows).
*Delete all rules on the page by selecting them (see above) then hitting the delete key. |
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Thanks for reading our e-newsletter. If you experience any glitches, please let us know.
If you have a tip you'd like to share, let us know that, too. If we use it in a newsletter, we'll be happy to give you full credit for it.
Sandra Hovatter
Data Designs Publishing
419-660-0500
Copyrights & Credits:
©2009, Data Designs Publishing, Norwalk, OH
Adobe, InDesign, Acrobat, and CS (Creative Suite) are registered trademarks of the Adobe Systems Incorporated. |
If you received this newsletter from a friend and want to receive it directly from us, e-mail us at info@DataDesignsPublishing.com. Include "E-Newsletter" in your subject and your e-mail address. | |
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