In this session, Dave Curlee will show you just how easy it is to incorporate video into your WordPress blog. He’ll introduce you to tools, tips and techniques that you can take immediate advantage of, and will explain that it can be as simplistic or elaborate as your budget will allow.

I really don’t like to move.  I mean really! I do like fresh starts, that’s always great.  It’s nice to get rid of clutter, throw out all the stuff that’s been piling up in the garage, and just start over.  That part, I’m cool with, it’s the chaos that ensues during that time that I don’t like.  I’m not an organizer, or more accurately I can organize stuff but I get scatter-brained and have a hard time seeing through the chaos to what needs to be done and what’s done.

The Fly Lady over at FlyLady.net has come up with a great article on moving.  Packing supplies, prepping the house to sell, packing and setting up at the new place are all covered.

Now when the moving truck gets there, you will need to be the director. Have the children stationed in their new rooms (so they are out of the way, unless they are big enough to fetch and tote). Tell the children not to start dragging out their stuff, until the furniture is in their room and they have a place to put their clothes. Have them to put the boxes against one wall. Warn them about not trying to climb on top of them LOL. You have your hands full. You don’t need a trip to the emergency room from a busted noggin.

Main Rule here: As you unpack it, put it where it goes and breakdown the boxes and throw away the paper. Do not start another box until everything is put away. I don’t want you to handle it twice.

Read the full article here…

My office / studio has been the last item on the list, next to our bedroom.  Kat’s come in and boxed up a little bit of stuff, but mainly the place has just become a storage area for a few boxes and some clutter.  Meanwhile, I’m still meeting deadlines and working on projects.

I thought it might be cool to make a few blog posts showing my progress in the moving process as well as give folks a look at my setup… messy as it currently is.

I just finished 90% of three projects and have some time to actually start packing now, so here’s what the place looks like now as I packing the stuff on my shelves.  I’ll post some progress pictures and eventually, the new digs.  This will be a cleansing and hopefully not too stressful week.

We’ve heard people talk for years about touching up or airbrushing photos to make them “perfect”, but what do they really do?  What’s the decision process?  How do they do it?  How much is too much?

There are many techniques and sometimes it can take a fine hand, but I’m convinced that anyone with a little Photoshop experience, can easily master the skills needed to touch up a photo to get that “magazine cover” look.

Here are Five Professional Photoshop Facial Retouching Tutorials that are sure to open your eyes to the “perfection” options at your disposal. Be sure to leave a comment and show us what you’ve done.  We’d love to see your before and after work.

You’ve seen it just about everywhere.  You’ve been seeing it for most of your life, and you didn’t even know it.  It’s called Stock Photography.  Over the years, I’ve really become aware of just how much stock imagery is all around us.  There have been times when I’ve bought an image from iStockPhoto.com used it, and then later, seen it used in a magazine ad by one company and a billboard ad my another.

The ideal is to always take your own photos, but, there are many circumstances when it’s not practical.  Weather, scheduling conflicts, sick talent, lack of any real money to hire talent….. can all be limiting factors when trying to take your own photos.  However, there’s tons of professional photographers out there that have taken amazing photos and are more than willing to have you use them.  Sites like iStockPhoto.com have really made stock photographs affordable for bloggers and micro-publishers.

Once again, our friends over at WebDesignBooth.com have compiled a list of 30 Websites to Download Free Stock Photos.  After going over this list, I realized that there are a few of them on there that actually charge for the photos, so don’t freak out if the aren’t ALL free.

Quality and selection vary on these sites.  Be sure you check to make sure that your usage follows their licensing guidelines. Read the full article…

Let me start off by saying that I’ve been using Photoshop since 1994.  I’ve taught myself everything I know (tutorials helped), and I literally love that application.  Photoshop is always running in my task bar.  Without Photoshop, I’d have never developed the skills that aid me in all areas of production.

With that understood there are tons of free Photoshop alternatives out there.  Over the years I’ve played with a few of them.  Mostly I’m familiar with The Gimp and Paint.net.  When discussing The Gimp, I tend to refer people to GimpShop, it’s a fork of The Gimp that gives the user interface a more Photoshop-like feel.  I’ve found The Gimp, to be a little odd to work with, simply because I’m so steeped in Photshop usage.  That being said, all these apps seem to really do a good job.  A lot of work has gone in to these apps, some of them have a VERY long history and have really refined the tools and UI.

Dicky over at WebDesignBooth.com has compiled a nice list of 15 Free and Great Photoshop Alternatives.  If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to work with photographs, create works of art or simply make a cool icon for your website, one or several of these are worth taking a look at. Read the full post here…

The concept is to take all of the company’s current knowledge base articles and for each, produce a video that will walk the client, in detail through the solution to the given problem. The ultimate result is to lower customer service overhead by allowing the clients to easily and quickly, solve their own issues.

If it feels good…. PRINT IT!  Rasterbation rocks!  Don’t let the name fool you.  The Rasterbator is an amazing little app / web app that allows you to create some amazing large format artwork.

What the Rasterbator does is lets you take a regular photo / snap shot and blow it up as large as 20 meters.  The file is rasterized, converted into a multi-page pdf document and prints on standard 8.5 x 11 paper, color or greyscale as you’d like.  The results are amazing.

A couple of years ago, when this first came to my attention, I printed a Clone Trooper from Star Wars.  The image ended up being 6 feet tall, and was a GREAT addition to my office.  Quality is based on your print settings and printer’s abilities or limitations.

Depending on your printer and settings, you can print either borderless or with a border, which yields a great artistic look.

I highly suggest that you give this as shot.  The cool thing is that you can rasterbate with someone you love…