A Mini-Bridge to Everywhere

Adobe Bridge is indispensable. That's why it's included with all of the CS5 suites and with most of the applications if you buy them individually. It is particularly useful in conjunction with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign because it makes organizing assets easy. CS5 includes the "Mini Bridge" with several applications to bring Bridge's functionality inside programs such as Photoshop. If you use any Adobe application and you haven't yet explored Bridge, you're cheating yourself.

Jan Kabili has a short (less than 3 minutes) explanation of Bridge that she created for Lynda.com. It's also available on Adobe TV and I have permission to include it here:

Kelly McCathran describes the MiniBridge as it applies to several Adobe applications in this brief 6-minute Adobe TV video:

What do I like about the new MiniBridge? There's so much to like that I've made my own video.

Bridge has been around since CS2 and has improved with each new version of the software. If you're not using Bridge, you're missing some important features. MiniBridge makes it even better.

Most people dock the MiniBridge on the right side of the screen, but I can make a good case for docking it at the bottom. Did you know that if you drag and drop an image from Bridge (or MiniBridge) onto Photoshop, Camera Raw opens automatically. Or you can select several images and then press the spacebar to start a slide show. And, if you have several images that work together as a group (HDR, depth of field, or panorama) selecting them all and then choosing a Photoshop option can save several steps.

My video:

This is something new for TechByter Worldwide. I feel that the video file's quality is too low and the size is too great, so I'm already working on that. But let me know, please, what you think of having embedded videos in the program!

Microsoft: Did You Misunderstand the "N" or the "O"?

I keep changing Windows Update to "download but don't install" and Microsoft keeps changing it back to "automatic". Stop it already! The most recent incident occurred on June 24th. Fortunately, that was a Thursday, so it wasn't a big deal. But this has the potential to be a real pain. I set Windows Update to "download but don't install" because that's the way I want it to work. Will Microsoft please stop deciding how I want to use my computer!

This is the problem: The office computer is encrypted. At boot time, someone with the appropriate password must be sitting at the computer. Sometimes I work from home and I cannot provide a password that must be entered from the local keyboard when I'm 20 miles from the computer.

This really isn't a particularly complicated scenario and it's one that I would think somebody at Microsoft might be able to understand.

Because the system restart happened at 3am on a Thursday, it wasn't a big deal. When I arrived at the office 3 hours later, I simply provided the password and booted the computer. But some of the tasks that are scheduled to run between 5am and 6am didn't run because the computer was sitting at the login screen, waiting for someone to provide the password.

Had this happened at 3am on a Saturday morning, it would have been a serious problem. It would mean either waiting until Monday morning to gain access to the system or driving a 40-mile round trip (wasting more than an hour and more than 1 gallon of gasoline; thanks to the Cash for Clunkers program, it would be a little more than 1 gallon instead of 3) just to restart the computer.

Either way, I lose.

Look, Microsoft, I'm smart enough to know that critical updates are important. I run them immediately when I'm at the computer. But I would really appreciate it if you would allow me to control my own destiny. When I set Windows Update to "download but don't install updates", I meant that it's OK for the Windows Update service to download updates but not to install them. That all seems so clear to me, so please honor my request.

Because Microsoft seems to be incapable of honoring users' requests, my recommendation is simple, basic, and clear: Check the Windows Update settings once per week and, if they're not the settings you prefer, change them.

What Can You Watch Instantly on Netflix?

The Watch Instantly feature on Netflix is fine if you want to watch older movies, but that's about the change. Netflix and Relativity Media have signed an agreement that will make Relativity Media properties available during what's called the "pay TV window". That's the time when movies are available on premium TV channels, but not elsewhere.

In the past several years, I've come to enjoy Netflix. I was given a year-long subscription as a gift, but I've continued to renew month after month. As for the Watch Instantly feature, I ignored it at first. The video was low quality and choppy. These days the video is medium quality and no longer choppy. But the selections have been weak. In some cases, I could view a film that was in my queue or one that I had already viewed on DVD. But this new deal changes things fundamentally even though Relativity isn't one of the larger players in Hollywood.

Netflix says the new agreement means that movies will be streamed to subscribers instead of being broadcast by the traditional pay providers. You've heard me talk about "Net Neutrality" before. You can be sure that Comcast would like to charge subscribers extra for access to Netflix. Net Neutrality would prohibit that. If you pay for Internet access, you should have access to anything on the Internet. (More on Net Neutrality in Short Circuits.)

The agreement goes into effect later this year. "The Fighter" (Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams) is one of the first releases that will be available. Also on the schedule are "Skyline", "Season of the Witch", and "Movie 43".

Although it's not a huge company, Relativity has financed, co-financed, or produced more than 200 features and 50 of those films have reached "Top 10" status in the past two years. Relativity is responsible for "Grown Ups", a film that I swore not to see after being forced to watch the trailer.

I've said in the past that Netflix is a forward-thinking company. With more than 13 million members, Netflix is the world's largest subscription service.

Short Circuits

ICANN: Sex Exists

After shooting the idea down several times, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has finally admitted that "xxx" might be a good top-level domain. Pornography is easily to find and difficult to exclude if you want to exclude it. The xxx top-level domain would make it easier to classify and organize. So it's a good idea, right?

Not according to the adult entertainment industry and a variety of religious groups. Both oppose the idea. The purveyors says that dot-xxx domains will stigmatize the industry. The religious groups say it will make pornography more prevalent. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

ICANN has agreed to proceed on a proposal from ICM, a Florida company, to create the new top-level domain. ICM says its goal is to create an area for pornography—but one that is clean, doesn't serve viruses to visitors, and doesn't house credit-card thieves. In short, if you want porn, you go to the xxx domains. If you don't want it, you block the entire top-level domain.

ICM says that more than 100,000 domains have already registered and the company says it expects half a million domains to be online when the top-level domain goes live in the next year or so. An estimated 6 million adult sites are already online.

ICANN had voted most recently in 2007 to reject the dot-xxx domains. At the time, ICANN (laughably) said that the decision was based on technical problems.

Google vs. China: China Wins

Back in March, Google closed its offices in China and began directing users to its uncensored Hong Kong site. Yes, Hong Kong is part of China now, but the Chinese government has allowed the area's freedoms to remain. It was always more theater than substance, though, because uncensored search results were still censored by the Great Firewall of China before being returned to Chinese citizens.

As of Friday, the Chinese government renewed Google's license to operate a website in mainland China.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said its a stalemate: "We'll keep doing what we're doing, and they'll keep doing what they're doing." The outcome means that Google can continue to pretend that it offers uncensored search results to China and China can continue to pretend that it allows free speech.

Google has a minority position in the search engine market in China, but China has more Internet users that the United States does. And a 30% share of the Chinese search engine market still translates to a lot of money.

Searchers in China can see uncensored search results, but cannot follow links provided by Google if the government feels that the content is "offensive", which means politically sensitive.

The decision by the Chinese government followed a change by Google: Instead of automatically sending users in mainland China to its Hong Kong site, Google offered a link to the Hong Kong site from it's main page in China. That was enough to allow the government in Beijing to make nice again.

Except for the fact that nothing has changed.

TechByter Worldwide is 200 (Podcasts, That Is)

I continue to be both surprised and gratified by the response to TechByter Worldwide as the program passes the 200th podcast anniversary. Because I take a couple of weeks off every year, that's about 4 years of podcasts. The new medium makes it possible for anyone with a message to attract an audience.

Podcasts are available from many locations. Some sites make the podcast available on the site. TechByter does this with a link near the bottom of each program's page. Others make their programs available via Apple's Itunes store. TechByter Worldwide is available there, too, without charge.

This week I found Podcast Alley, another location where you can go to look for programs, so of course TechByter is there, too. Check it out. You might find other programs you'll enjoy there.

Yet another option is Podcast.com and, this will probably not surprise you, I've added TechByter Worldwide there, too.

Several weeks ago, I talked about "Net Neutrality". It's this kind of programming that Net Neutrality attempts to preserve. Instead of limiting content to just the big-media conglomerates (which would make corporate America very happy), the goal is to keep programs such as TechByter Worldwide — along with thousands of other independent podcasts, websites, and blogs — both free and readily available.