5 Extremely Easy Ways To Backup Your Computer By Jimmie Lee Staley

Source: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/5-extremely-easy-ways-backup-your-computer.html

One surefire way to ruin a day is to find that your laptop/computer has been compromised. The culprit could be an accidental spill, drop, or even a virus, but all of a sudden your life is gone. All emails, pictures, jokes, projects, and bookmarks that make your life easy—Gone! In order to be ready for this crisis, it is necessary to make backups of the information you love and cherish. Here are a few ways to make sure all is not lost.

1. Cloud Programs like Crashplan, Carbonite, & Backblaze

The most effective backup method is via cloud service, which protects your information in cyberspace. Another more traditional method is through a restore function within your computer or a hard copy backup of all your files. The reason the cloud services are more effective is that they update often without any work on your part. This type of backup is more inclusive. The likelihood of having different components backed up, such as photos, music, bookmarks, saved emails, and files is significantly higher. It simply provides the most up-to-date info accessible through an internet connection. You can also be selective of what you want to backup. For example, you could opt to never have temporary internet files backed up. This may be a good thing if your source of the crash was a virus downloaded via an internet app or email.

A major drawback to this type of backup is that cloud drives can be susceptible to hacking. The data is stored in cyberspace, where it may be at risk. This is something that needs to be researched with any cloud service. Each company has a security protocol, and it would be wise to find out if that company has ever been hacked or how it is rated among all the other cloud services out there. Like every industry, there are always good ones and then better ones.

Most operating systems now have a “time machine” function where you can restore your computer to an earlier date. When you shut down each day, your computer saves all the programs and updates through that date. Being able to go back to a prior date might allow you to work around a suspicious file that has been downloaded that may be a virus or some other malware. This also is the simplest way to restore all your information. Internal backup systems on both Windows and Mac operating systems have become much more user-friendly over the years.

The downside of this is that other files may not be saved. Peripheral data obtained via the internet or files downloaded after the restore date may no longer be accessible. This could be very frustrating if, for instance, you collected many diverse sources for a project and then had your computer crash. Some of the research or even the breadcrumbs that may have led you to sources may not be readily apparent, and you risk having to reinvent the wheel.

3. External Hardrive

Investing in an external drive to store major files may be a good idea. This is sort of an old-school but comfortable way to have privacy and protection. This is what most people have seen IT departments use to restore computer function in the past. There are many who trust this alternative more than any other. It is user-dependent, since what is saved is what you consciously backed up. It has known parameters without external factors (relying on software or security) to protect your information.

The downfall is that if you have not backed up information recently, you might lose necessary or vital information and programs accessed since your last backup. This is the biggest problem with this sort of backup—it takes diligence to remember to backup information. It is common for people to forget to backup or save their work, and that human flaw can make your life harder if you depend on this method.

4. CD Backup

This is a more primitive method of system restore. Burning the inventory to a CD will, of course, provide you access to those files up until the date of it being burned; however, you have multiple discs to contend with as well as errors in burning that you may not have caught at the time you backed up those files. It may be unreliable to a degree. This sort of safety net allows for a great deal of issues, such as having incomplete copies of programs, glitches within the burning process, disk defectiveness, and human error. These all could be factors in making your day much more complicated.

5. Thumbdrive Backup

The most basic of backups of only prominent files to a thumbdrive is the most limited form of backup. Thumbdrives have relatively limited space and thus can not store much data. However, this is a very easy way to save information that came be taken anywhere at any time. You can take your entire desktop on vacation via a thumbdrive. The only drawback is the space capacity of the drive itself.

Using one or varying combinations of these sorts of backup methods will help to save you time and frustration when your computer crashes. It is better to be prepared, despite the cost of and amount of thought and energy needed to make such alternatives viable or more practical for the amount of information, the level of security, and the accessibility that you personally feel comfortable with. Each of these ways provides the basic remedy for the problem of a computer that has crashed. It comes down to personal choice, preference, and comfort. Which way works for you?

Case Study: Adobe InCopy helps maximize efficiency for in-house design team By Wendy Millard, RGD

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-study-adobe-incopy-helps-maximize-efficiency-wendy-millard-rgd

October 16, 2015

Challenge
Our job involves maintaining and updating all existing print collateral, but the amount of effort it takes to make updates to this material can really burn up a lot of the team’s time. Add another language into the production and that’s considerable time that could be spent on new creative projects. 

Designers thrive on creative challenges: doing the research; generating ideas; coming up with concepts and solutions for clients and executing the chosen design. That’s what we went to design school for, right? In reality, we're looking at round five of copy edits or making decisions on whether text will be bold or capped or not bold. These types of questions can become a runaway train if you do not have enough process in place to minimize the back and forth of
copy edits.

Solution
Beyond defining a clear process for managing workflow, it is important to have the right tools for your team to keep things running as smoothly as possible. Adopting Adobe InCopy is a key part of our solution that has allowed for greater collaboration among the marketing, design and translation teams. It empowers the copywriter, editor and translator to make their own changes directly in InDesign files with minimal involvement from the designer and no chance of their changes affecting the design layout. In fact, when you have the network bandwidth of a larger corporation both the content author and the designer can be in the same file at the same time, making changes without overwriting each other's work. It’s an easy check in/check out process to update the files.

Process 
Buy in and trust are both important in making changes to any process, so we started small with a key business partner who often submitted changes to existing materials and was adaptable and open to trying new technology. We used Lynda.com to first get the training needed to use InCopy and then tried it out on several design requests that came through from this business partner. We defined the process and steps and created a Design SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for the team to use. Once we felt comfortable with the solution, we took it to other teams to promote and demonstrate how it improved our process and turnaround time on the work.

Result
What had previously been a back and forth workflow with multiple proofs and annotated pdfs became a much more efficient process. Once we had our translation team actively using the tool, we saw a decrease in revisions and proofs from an average of five down to one or two proofs to final approval. We further rolled out the tool to all Marketing and Communication specialists.

Today, the InDesign/InCopy workflow is a main part of our process for most existing and even new creative development where the business partner is able to try different tag lines and content for review and approval.

Most times the process works without a snag, but we have come across some issues to be aware of:

1. The InCopy user needs to be comfortable with technology and take the time to get the training which can be accomplished through online sources such as Lynda.com
2. The InCopy user should not be working off of lower-bandwidth or VPN access. This will corrupt your file and cause frustration on all fronts.
3. Fonts can be an issue and can also cause corruption. Be sure to set paragraph styles and have the business partner use them.
4. It is a best practice to establish clear guidelines/Design SOPs for both the business partner and the designer regarding the process and responsibilities of using the tool.

Overall, our designers love the fact that InCopy can free them of the multiple revision cycle. Business partners enjoy the streamlined process and the ability to make changes themselves. This tool is definitely worth a look if you are trying to find ways to improve efficiency in the use of your creative team’s time
and energy.

For more information on Adobe InCopy, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy.html - See more at: http://www.rgd.ca/2015/09/28/case-study-adobe-incopy-helps-maximize-efficiency-for-in-house-design-team.php#sthash.chKvto5E.dpuf

For More Information about the RGD:
http://www.rgd.ca/about.php

GREP for Editors By Chad Chelius

Source: http://incopysecrets.com/grep-for-editors.php
October 20, 2014

If you’re like most people, you just got done reading the headline of this article and said “What in the world is GREP?” People who have been using InCopy for years, still aren’t sure what GREP is even though they probably see it every time they open the Find/Change dialog box.

GREP stands for General Regular Expression Print and although that probably doesn’t make things any clearer yet, just understand that GREP is like Find/Change on steroids. The premise behind GREP is that you build search terms using Regular Expressions that intelligently searches out text content with intelligence and precision accuracy. GREP can literally save hours of your time by cleaning up what you would normally do manually. If you think that GREP requires that you learn an obscure language in order to achieve find/change greatness, you’d be only partially correct. The point of this post is to introduce you to some GREP searches that you can use today without learning a single lick of code!

GREP is found in the Find/Change dialog box, so open it by choosing Edit > Find/Change or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd+F (Mac) or Ctrl+F (Windows) and click the GREP button at the top of the dialog box. This is where you can type in GREP expressions to search for content. As promised however, you won’t need to type anything in here! At the top of the Find/Change dialog box is a Query drop-down menu that contains six built-in GREP searches that you can use right out of the box. These searches include:

• Change Arabic Diacritic Marks – For Arabic text, this changes the color of diacritical marks.
• Dash to En Dash – Changes a single dash separated by spaces to an En dash.
• Multiple Return to Single Return – Note that it says multiple. This changes more than one return in a row to one return.
• Multiple Space to Single Space – Changes multiple spaces in a row to a single space.
• Phone Number Conversion (dot format) – Changes phone numbers to a standard format separated by periods.
• Remove Trailing Whitespace – Not a deal breaker if you have spaces at the end of a paragraph, but this search tidies up your text by removing them.

After choosing any one of these built-in GREP searches, the Find what field populates with the regular expression to find the desired text.

In the figure above, the Multiple Return to Single Return option was chosen. Just so you understand a little bit about the content of the Find what field, ~b is the expression for a break character. Putting two of them in a row ~b~b tells GREP to find two break characters in a row, and the + after them indicates that the two break characters can occur one or more times. Brilliant!

The text before running the Multiple Return to Single Return GREP search (left) and after (right).

There you have it! Consider yourself a full-fledged GREP user! Of the six default GREP searches available from the Query drop-down menu, I’m guessing you can take advantage of at least three of them right off the bat. If you have a search dilemma that you think GREP could help you with, leave a comment below. If we hear a good response, I’ll write a post on more detailed GREP searches to help you do your job. Until next time!

Text Editing Efficiencies – Part 1 By Chad Chelius

Source: http://incopysecrets.com/text-editing-efficiencies-part-1.php
May 21, 2015

Normally when I’m teaching the InCopy workflow to a new group of users, I focus on the overall workflow as well has the features and functionality that InCopy provides to make the job of design and editorial easier. I assume that the users are already efficient computer users and breeze over a lot of the more mundane details of editing text. After all, most of the users have been doing this for years if not decades.

During a recent engagement I was observing a group of users putting the InCopy workflow into practice, this included designers, editors, writers, and others. What I noticed during my observation was how much time everyone was spending using the mouse to meticulously select text that needed to be modified in their documents. The process went something like this. Grab the mouse, move it to the correct location on the screen, click and drag to select text, delete or edit the text, rinse and repeat. Now I understand fully that everyone works in their own way and has a certain way of doing things, but I couldn’t help but to think that with a little knowledge, and new techniques, that their efficiency could be improved significantly. When it comes to editing text in either InDesign or InCopy, there’s no better way than the keyboard. I thought I’d share some of my favorite methods for navigating through text.

Navigating using the keyboard

Let’s start with the basics, insert your cursor somewhere within some text. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate left to right one character at a time and up and down one line at a time. This shortcut can be somewhat limiting because you can only move a small amount of space at a time. To speed things up, add the Command key (Mac) or the Control key (Windows) to those same arrow keys. This multiplies the amount of space that you can navigate considerably. Using the Cmd/Ctrl key in conjunction with the left and right arrow keys navigates through text one word at a time and using the up and down arrow keys navigates one paragraph at a time. Finally, using the Cmd/Ctrl key in conjunction with the home and end buttons on your keyboard will navigate to the beginning and end of a story respectively. If you’re working on a smaller sized keyboard without home and end keys, you can still achieve this result by combining the Cmd/Ctrl key with the fn (function) key along with the left arrow (home) and the right arrow (end) on the keyboard. This shortcut will take miles off of your mouse each year!

There’s more to show, but I figured that for this post, I’d focus on the navigational aspects of working with text using a keyboard in InDesign and InCopy. I’ve added a table of the keyboard shortcuts discussed in this post below for easy access later on. Practice these shortcuts until next week and then we’ll discuss how to efficiently select text in the same way using InDesign and InCopy.

Description	Mac Shortcut	Windows Shortcut
Navigate one character left	Left Arrow	Left Arrow
Navigate one character right	Right Arrow	Right Arrow
Navigate one line up	Up Arrow	Up Arrow
Navigate one line down	Down Arrow	Down Arrow
Navigate one word left	Cmd + Left Arrow	Ctrl + Left Arrow
Navigate one word right	Cmd + Right Arrow	Ctrl + Right Arrow
Navigate one paragraph up	Cmd + Up Arrow	Ctrl + Up Arrow
Navigate one paragraph down	Cmd + Down Arrow	Ctrl + Down Arrow
Navigate to beginning of story	Cmd + Home	Ctrl + Home
Navigate to beginning of story (min keyboard)	fn + Cmd + Left Arrow	fn + Ctrl + Left Arrow
Navigate to end of story	Cmd + End	Ctrl + End
Navigate to end of story (min keyboard)	fn + Cmd + Right Arrow	fn + Ctrl + Right Arrow