We live in a world with lots of avenues to get content for our projects. Several websites specialize in searching for media that you can download and use in your product. Just because you can find it, however, does not mean you can use it. There are legal requirements that you need to be aware of when you are using content created by somebody else.

For example, I can’t just do a Google image search and find any image and put it directly into my project. The person who created that image has copyright protection on that content. You can not use it unless you get a license to use it from the copyright holder.

When you are working on a project for personal use, you probably don’t have to be too worried about these restrictions. However, when you are doing work that will be used in any kind of professional setting or commercial setting, you have to be very careful how you use others’ intellectual property.

Take, for example, the case of NBC currently in the news. NBC is being sued for using somebody else’s intellectual property, without properly licensing it. A very similar thing happened at a company where I used to work. The company had been purchased by a larger entity, and was going through a re-branding. The new branding used a font that the company hadn’t licensed properly. When I read the license agreement and realized we were infringing on somebody’s IP rights, I escalated to the management, who had to pay tens of thousands of dollars to use the fonts the way they were planning to. However, paying those tens of thousands of dollars up front saved them potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in the lawsuit that might come from using the fonts illegally.

Since the work you create represents the company you work for (or your own company, if you are an contractor), you really need to pay attention to intellectual property issues to protect your company from being held liable for infringement.

Here are some tips for using intellectual property properly:

• When you use somebody’s material, be sure you get written permission to use it, including exactly how it will be used. If you are going to use it for commercial purposes, be sure that it is properly stated.
• Don’t just assume that people put the content on the Internet so it can be used.
• If you purchase stock photography, make sure you abide by the terms of the license agreement. Generally, you don’t purchase unlimited rights; normally your license restricts how the property can be used (if it can be downloaded, for example; or if it can be used on a T-shirt or mug).
• If you create something from scratch while at work, that work belongs to your employer. You can use that in your work product in any way you want. If you make a derivative work, you have to be sure you are licensed to do so.
• “Fair use” is a defense in court; it is not a legal protection, per se. Be very careful about saying “I can use this, because it is ‘fair use.’” You don’t want to get sued to prove that it is, in fact, fair use. When in doubt, don’t do it.
• Track your IP use. Many licenses to use IP include time restrictions; after a certain date you have to re-pay to continue to use the image. Be sure your organization is in compliance with these rules.
• When you use somebody else’s work, be sure you give proper attribution. In many cases it is required. In other cases, it is just the morally right thing to do.

A special note about Creative Commons License

There are lots of images available out there under a Creative Commons license. There are several forms of this license, but you need to be very careful if you use Creative Commons-licensed material because most Creative Commons licenses require “share-alike.” That means that if you use an image licensed with a Creative Commons license, your entire project must also be licensed under the same license.

That means if you are creating a help system that includes a single Creative Commons Share Alike image, then your entire help system may also be required to be licensed under a Creative Commons Share Alike license.

Watching out for others’ IP rights is good for the community. It means you can also expect your IP rights to be respected. It is the responsible thing for us to do, and as writers, we owe it to ourselves, our employers, and our community to make sure we are in compliance with intellectual property requirements.

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Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this should not be considered legal advice. If you have questions about intellectual property issues, please seek the advice of an IP attorney licensed to practice in your locality.

• Dramatically faster build time for PDF targets
• Smaller file sizes for PDF targets
• Auto Save

Dramatically faster build time for PDF targets

The first thing I noticed when I built a PDF target using Flare 4.2 was how fast it was.  I’ve commented in the past about how important hardware is in getting the best build time from a Flare project, but I’ve become accustomed to the build time for my hardware set. Last week in Flare 4.1 I build three PDF targets, then I re-built them in 4.2.  Here is a break down:

So, a group of targets that were taking me a total time of more than 20 minutes to build now build in less than 5 minutes. That is a significant improvement.

Smaller file sizes for PDF targets

The next thing I noticed when I built a PDF target was how the file sizes are dramatically smaller now. This is another place that 4.2 shows huge strides. Check out these file size comparisons between 4.1 outputs and 4.2 outputs from my current project:

There are going to be a lot of happy customers when they see this! My three PDFs used to exceed 50 MB in size (added to our project’s already large download file). Now these same files only take up less than 10 MB in size. Wow.

Auto Save

MadCap has finally introduced a feature that is sure to please long time Flare users: Auto Save. You can set Auto Save in the Tools | Options setting. When enabled, by default, Flare will auto save your topics every 10 minutes. I set mine to five. Back when I was using Flare 3, this would have been huge, huge, huge, because I had serious stability problems with Flare (due to some problems with my computer, it crashed at least once per day). I now have a different system, and combined with my Flare 4 upgrade, I’ve had a serious improvement in application stability. I don’t think Flare crashed even once on me during all of January.

Auto Save is a fantastic improvement, but I’m even more thrilled with the overall stability of Flare, which seems to be much better in the V4 line than it was in the V3 line. But if you’re stuck with some kind of problem like I had on my old machine where some conflict causes Flare to be unstable for you, then you’ll really get bang for your buck for this feature. (Especially since it is a free upgrade for all Flare V4 users.)

Conclusion

I am thrilled with this release of Flare. The improvements for my projects are significant, and I’m not even a Feedback customer. If you are a Flare 4 user, upgrade today. If you aren’t a Flare 4 user, what are you waiting for? Join us in the 21st century. You’ll be glad you did!

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Disclaimer: If you aren’t aware, I’m a Flare Certified Trainer, and have been certified MAD (MadCap Advanced Developer). I’m also a MadCap MVP  (volunteer administrator) in the MadCap forums. I’m an avid Flare user and advocate, but not a MadCap employee.

I’ve been looking forward to the latest version of Jing, which was released last week, and when it first came out I found some things that I loved about it.

Unfortunately, however, I have decided that TechSmith blew it big time in one critical area for me.

To understand why this is important, let me give you a bit of background.

Like I said, Jing lets you take a quick screen shot or video of your comptuer desktop. This tool has become a valuable tool in my kit. When I’m working with pre-release versions of my company’s software, I often discover bugs. I can quickly take a screen shot of a problem in our application. Jing saves the screenshot to a pre-determined location, and puts the filepath on my clipboard. I go to the bug repoting system, and just click “paste” to put that filepath into the attachments field. It makes attaching an image to a bug report VERY quick, and painless.

The same thing goes for screen casts. When I find a bug that results from a process I encounter, or whose functionality is better shown in a video, rather than captured in a still image, I can use Jing to grab a video, record my audio commentary of the bug. When I save the Jing video, Jing saves the video to a pre-determined location, and puts the filepath on my clipboard. I go to the bug reporting system, and paste the filepath into the attachments field. My developers love it.

I also send jing videos and images via instant message to my co-workers all over. It is a quick and easy way to share information.

However, the newest Jing, released last week made a major change to the way that videos are shown when you play them. Now videos expand to the full window size, regardless of the size of the recording window. I never record full-page videos. It is harder for people to process, and wastes space on the file system. Now, when people open my videos by opening the video from the bug system, or by clicking on the link in my IM, the video plays full screen. My boss has a 30″ screen. I created a video that was about 300 pixels wide by about 200 pixels high. It was expanded to full screen on his monitor. He had to stand back several feet to even understand what he was seeing.

I contacted TechSmith to disucss this issue. They tell me that this is a “feature” in the new version of Jing, and suggest that I embed the video into an HTML page to control the video size.

Nonsense. This is about quick sharing. There is no way that I’m going to take a video, then create a html page, then embed the image into the html page, then save the page, then upload the page to a server and then send the html page’s location to a co-worker. Not going to happen. Remember TechSmith? This is about quick sharing of information. There’s nothing quick about making me embed the video into an html page in order to make the size be at  100%  of the recorded size.

I wish I were writing about what I like in the new Jing. Problem is, I can’t recommend it for anybody who wants to take video  because I believe this “feature” makes it unprofessional at best, and unusable at worst.

TechSmith? Can you hear me? Can you fix this please?!

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Update (1/29/09): TechSmith heard and answered. Check it out.

As for me, well, I may submit a photo or two. But what I’m really interested in is seeing the finished product from all the photos that the rest of you take, so get busy!

Here is a list of podcasts I subscribe to (meanings of fonts discussed below):

Audio-only

• BYU Recent talks
• Grammar Girl’s QnD Tips
• Legal Lad’s QnD Tips
• Newsweek OnAir Podcast
• NPR: Car Talk’s Call of the Week
• NPR: Most E-mailed Stories
• NPR: Shuffle
• NPR: This I believe
• NPR: Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me
• PotterCast: Harry Potter on the Air
• Tech Writer Voices

Video Podcasts:

• CNN In Case you Missed It
• CNN Paging Dr. Gupta
• Eye to Eye with Katie Couric

Of these podcasts, the ones in bold are my favorites that I try not to miss. The ones in italics are the ones I listen to when I’ve listened to everything else already. The other ones I listen to when I have time, but I don’t feel bad about missing an episode or two.

If you like Car Talk, you should definately get the Car Talk Call of the Week podcast. Its about 5 minutes, and it is very, very funny. Die hard Harry Potter fans would enjoy the Pottercast podcast; it is a weekly one that takes about an hour. The BYU Recent Talks is a recent subscription for me. They publish talks given at BYU weekly devotionals. I’ve listened to a couple of these, and wonder why I didn’t take better advantage of the weekly devotional when I was at BYU.

Okay. Enough of my rambling. What do you listen to? What are your favorite podcasts? Do share!

Then I thought about it. Who had the first CD player in our family? My sister Wendy. In fact, not long after she got her CD player, she gave me my first CD for my birthday (Kenny G’s “Breathless” album). I would sneak into her bedroom when she wasn’t home, carefully (VERY CAREFULLY) take her Alabama’s Greatest Hits CD out of the player and put in my prized Kenny G, and listen to the clarity of the music. Then I had to have a CD player. But it turns out that I’m what Dilbert creator Scott Adams might call a “technological topper”. I had to get a better CD player. Mine had a remote control.

A few years later, who was the first person in the family to have an e-mail account? Not me. It was Wendy again. After that, who was the first person in the family to get a Palm Pilot? That would be Wendy. She bought the Palm IIIe. I followed a few months later with the Palm IIIxe — more memory (that I never used– but hey, it was better!).

Who got the first cell phone? This one I’m not sure about, but I’m pretty sure it was Wendy. Who got the first laptop computer? Wendy. Who got the first iPod? Again, Wendy.

In each case, I wasn’t far behind. But I’ve always been behind. Yes, it turns out that the technological early adopter in the family is my sister Wendy. She gets all the newest toys and from her I decide that I can’t live without whatever toy it is she has now.

Such happened recently with her iPod. She has had an iPod for quite a while now. Long enough that my brother got one. Then my parents got one. Now Christina and I have one. I think Wendy is on her second. She graduated from the 5GB iPod a Nano. Rick bought one; it was a U2 edition, which was pretty cool, but it got stolen out of his locked office.

I’ve been looking at them for a while now, and when we first heard about the possibility of a new job at my new company, Christina and I decided that if I got the job, I could get an iPod. When the new job became a more possible reality, Christina had to warn me to not take the new job simply for the iPod. (Don’t worry. I didn’t.)

I was going to wait to buy the iPod until after I had started my new job, but we realized that I have a ton of stuff on my work box. I love to listen to music while I work, so during the course of the two years I’ve been at this job, I brought my favorite CDs and made MP3 files out of them. I also took some of our digital camera images and used my work box to upload them to our web site, since we didn’t used to have a high-speed connection at home.

All told, I have a lot of stuff. Transferring with a 250 MB USB key is impractical, and I don’t have a CD burner at work, just your basic 20th century CD-ROM. So any data transfer was going to have to take place over USB.

Instead, we decided to go with the iPod. It gives me plenty of storage space to handle my music and all my files. I’m really excited about the iPod. I am going to start running for exercise, and I think it will be a lot of fun to run while listening to my favorite tunes.

So I wasn’t the first one in the family to get an iPod. In fact, I was the last. But mine has more storage capacity. So there.

The hard part for me with this review will be to separate the movie experience from the actual movie. See, we went to see Cars in a new theater in Salt Lake has 10 all-digital auditoriums. Basically, it was like watching Cars in HDTV, with a 50 foot screen. The digital cinema was breathtaking. The clarity and brightness was phenomenal. It was like nothing I have ever seen. If you are going to go see this movie again, you should check to see if you have a digital cinema near you. It was worth it. There is only one theater chain in Utah that has the digital cinema projectors: the Megaplex Theaters. (Here are a list of digital cinemas world-wide.) Digital show times at the Megaplex theaters are noted by the icon. (Not all showings of Cars are digital (about half are, depending on the location), and not all movies have been produced digitally, so only selected titles are available in digital.) Currently Megaplex Theaters had ten digital cinema auditoriums at The District, five at Jordan Commons and four at the Gateway.

In addition to the great theater experience, I loved this movie! I read a review that said that Pixar could make a movie about socks and dust and could make you like it, and I wouldn’t doubt it.

When I saw the first preview for Cars last year, I started to wonder if this would be the movie that ruined Pixar’s great reputation. I mean, cars as characters? And they hoped to please a wide-age range audience? My faith was weak. It needn’t have been.

Cars works because Pixar knows how to tell a story. They create characters that you can care about, and they twist them into a meaningful plot with just enough sentimentalism to make it feel-good without making it sappy. Cars is, first, a great story, and second, a movie with great animation (and third, even better in digital cinema…). Not to mention being very, very funny. I don’t want to ruin any of the jokes for you, so I won’t repeat any of them here. But do stay for the entire credits. There is some really cute post-movie additions that you’ll miss if you leave as the credits begin to roll.

It’s family friendly, yet still great date material. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, go watch it. And if it is available in digital cinema anywhere near you, it’s worth the drive to the theater. You won’t be disappointed.

And if you are, then you just don’t know a good movie when you see it.

If you didn’t follow the link, basically the article said that a company has developed a new technology that would prevent television watchers from (1) fast forwarding through commercials (of pre-recorded TV shows), and (2) changing the channel during commercials.

Despite the fact that I don’t own a digital video recorder/Tivo device, nor in fact do I watch much television, I still resent the idea that a company thinks it should be able have that much control over our own televisions. Phillips Electronics, holder of the pending patent, admitted that the technology “might not sit well with consumers.” (Do you think they were able to say that with a straight face?) Instead, they suggested that individual viewers might pay the broadcaster a fee in order to avoid the locking mechanism “feature.”

Given the choice, I’d never purchase a television that included this “feature.” Ain’t gonna happen. And I certainly won’t pay for the possibility of avoiding commercials. If the media conglomerates try to implement this technology, I’ll be in the front of the line of people that get driven away from traditional broadcasting.

TV just isn’t worth it.

I noticed this book not long after it was published last year, and thought it would be interesting to read, but it wasn’t until last week that I considered 1776 as book club material.

In September 1995, Mr. McCullough addressed a BYU forum in the Marriott Center without any notes. A condensed version of his speech was published in BYU Magazine, and can be read here. As I’m no longer a student at BYU, I didn’t attend the forum where Mr. McCullough spoke, but I loved the condensed version of his speech given in the magazine.

I liked the speech so much I read it aloud to Christina, and it made both of us want to read the book. Christina suggested the book as a book club item, and here we are.

If you haven’t joined our book club, I encourage you to do so. We’re small, but we have had a good time discussing the books we’ve read. Your opinions are welcomed and we love diversity. So please join us and share your thoughts about the books we’re currently reading, or share some thoughts about a book we’ve read previously. We’re online at:

http://bookclub.pehrsonfamily.net

The benefit of an online book club is that you get to read and contribute at your own pace. You can read whenever you want and finish whenever you want. When you have time, you can log into the club and contribute to the discussion. We’d love to have you join us, and we encourage you to invite your friends as well.

You can get 1776 at a local book store, or you can order it online from Amazon. It sells at Amazon for $18.51 new; they have used starting at under $5.

If you have any questions, you can e-mail me or leave a comment on this post.

Last month I got a letter from some company that said I could get magazine subscriptions, and all I had to pay was my Delta SkyMiles. This is a perfect solution for me. We got a subscription to Newsweek and another to Wired. (I keep hoping that I’ll see my former roommate Dante Baker on the cover of Wired. It is one of his life goals, you know.) And we got a couple of others, I think. We’ll see when they come.

All of it free! You know they say that their ain’t no free lunch. But there are free magazines if you don’t mind giving up the SkyMiles that you’d never use anyway.