After the Holiday, I will be writing brief tips on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I will show you guys effective ways on getting crawled, spidered and scanned by the major search engines on the web.
For now, enjoy the Memorial Day Holiday – TTFN 
iTNews Reports - Microsoft is chipping away at development of its new Expression line of software for designers, releasing two new preview versions this week of the evolving applications.
The new community technology previews (CTPs) of Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer follow Microsoft’s release last week of the first preview version of the line’s third application, Expression Web Designer.
Microsoft’s Expression line is squarely aimed at Adobe. With technology like Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Dreamweaver, Adobe has enjoyed years of a near-monopoly hold on web developers. Microsoft’s previous entry in the web development tools market, FrontPage, was generally derided by professionals as a lightweight, standards-unfriendly program for novices. (more…)
If you set a lot of type in Illustrator, you’ve probably realized that one typesetting feature has not been available – a simple way to underline type. With CS2, this long-awaited feature has finally arrived. Open your Character palette, and under the Options flyout menu, choose “Show Options.†A new button in the right hand corner of the palette is now available for formatting type with underlines. Just select some type and click the Underline button. There’s also a Strikethrough button available to the right of the Underline button.
Layers magazine Tip of the Day
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — This Caribbean nation’s flag is going where no Dominican has gone before, a New York congressman said.The Dominican flag will be aboard a U.S. space shuttle this year, said U.S. Rep. Jose E. Serrano, who requested the honor to thank the 100,000 Dominican constituents in his Bronx, New York, district.
“It is this Puerto Rican congressman’s humble tribute to a great community,” Serrano said in a Monday phone interview. (more…)
According to a story in Macworld, the recent QuickTime 7.1 update is causing issues for users trying to install the Adobe Creative Suite 2 (and point products) on Mac-Intel machines.
From the story: “Some customers have been experiencing issues installing Creative Suite 2 on Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X, version 10.4.4 and later,†an Adobe spokesperson told Macworld. “We are working closely with Apple on these issues, and have determined that they occur after installing QuickTime 7.1. Both companies plan to post additional information on this issue shortly.â€
Apple and Adobe are repoted to be working to resolve the problem-no word yet on a work around.
Graphics.com: Twisting Pixels Releases Four Collections of Effects Plugins for Photoshop.
PixelCreation, PixelPack 1, PixelPaper and PixelSampler work with the Mac and Windows versions of Adobe Photoshop or can be run as standalone applications.
Photoshop plugins first showed up in the pre-digital camera era and provided a means of quickly creating special effects that would otherwise require many manual steps. The increasing capabilities of Photoshop rendered many of these early plugins unnecessary, while the parallel growth of the digital camera market resulted in a shift that saw plugins increasingly geared for improving the quality of photos, rather than adding special effects. From that perspective, the Twisting Pixels collections are relatively unusual in being devoted to special effects creation.
PixelCreation includes visual and tonal enhancement filters that can create such effects as fluffy clouds, moon effects, constellations and celestial skies. PixelPaper is devoted to paper effects, allowing users to fold, crumple, crinkle, curl and bend pieces of paper, while controlling lighting and textures. PixelPack 1 is a collection of more extreme filters that includes RockCandy, Extrude, Label Maker, Stain and Texturizer. PixelSampler is more photography oriented, in that it provides eight filters to give images such effects as black and white, duotone and monotone. The good news is that PixelSampler is made available as a free download.
The PixelCreation, PixelPack 1 and PixelPaper collections can be purchased on the Twisted Pixels site, with free trial versions available for download.
Here is another quick tip from the guys over at Layers Magazine
You’re working on a logo design which will have the name of the company large above the word “CORPORATION†much smaller with each letter evenly space to the full width of the much larger name. You have not settled on what typeface you will be using for the company name, so you have to keep re-spacing out the letters in the smaller spaced-out lettering every time you change typefaces. Or do you? Not at all. Set the word CORPORATION in a separate Text Frame and select the frame with the Selection tool. Drag the left and right sides of the frame’s bounding box to the width of the company name. Now the secret – Select CORPORATION with your Type tool and in your Paragraph palette, choose Justify All Lines (the last Alignment button to the right). The individual letters in the word C O R P O R A T I O N are evenly spaced to the full width of the Text Frame. This forced justification will make all lines in a paragraph justified. If there’s only one word, the individual characters will be space out to the full width of a column or frame. So if the width of the company name changes when you change typefaces, simply change the width of your Text Frame to this new width.
Source: Layers Magazine
