As a freelancer, my time literally turns into money if I track it properly. For over a year, I’ve used Harvest, and I couldn’t be happier to pay for the service. I whole-heartedly recommend Harvest to colleagues and clients knowing they will not only find it adequate, but that they will become advocates themselves.

The team behind Harvest, Shawn Liu and Danny Wen, work tirelessly to make it better, always unveiling little gems that make Harvest more functional and more friendly. Whenever I have had contact with them, they have been quick, helpful and always friendly, usually receiving a response in minutes. You can’t beat that for customer service.

Recently, one of my clients moved all its time-tracking and estimating to Harvest. The employees and contractors love it because it’s easy to track their time. The project managers love it because they can keep tabs on their projects, people, and budgets. The accountant loves it because he can cut the reports 100 different ways, or just download all the data and slice it up in excel.

If you have a need to track your time, try out Harvest.
http://www.getharvest.com/features

I admire that Adobe offers fuction-driven packages of their ever-growing stable of software, but with 6 versions, it can be a little hard to figure out which version of CS3 you need to buy.

After making my own little check-list diagram and eliminating packages out one by one, I determined I need CS3 Design Premium. Design Standard doesn’t have any web stuff, and Web doesn’t include InDesign.

An easier way is to use Mark Eagleton’s Adobe CS3 Configurator. You just put in what programs you want, and it give you ALL the options for obtaining them, including buying more expansive suites, supplementing lower-end suite packages and buying all the program individually.

Great work, Mark. It’s much more straight forward than Adobe’s Tool. I don’t have my copy yet, but I hear that Flash and Photoshop play nice like childhood friends.

Here’s hoping.

Technorati Tags:
design, computers, tools, software, adobe, cs3

This is the next must-have peripheral for creative folks.

What is a storage robot? Basically it means to you never running out of disk-space, never losing data, and never have to configure anything. You don’t even need to turn it off to replace smaller drives (or failed ones) with bigger ones.

Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

I know alot about storage, and I’ve never seen anything like this, and it’s cheaper than “dumber,” less friendly, less robust solutions.

Watch the demo, it’s amazing.

http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx

Technorati Tags:
computers, tools, drobo, backup, storage, hdd, RAID

For all of you who shoot in RAW, there are two programs designed specifically to make working with your photos easier, faster, and more intuitive. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and Apple Apeture.

Lightroom is available from Adobe. I’ve been using Lightroom since its beta period, and I love it. Editing, sorting, and printing is drop-dead simple.  It runs on my 3 year old laptop, and accomodates screens of all sizes, with is a huge plus. **Lightroom works on both Mac and PC.

Apeture is Apple’s more elitist take on the same concept. While Lightroom will run on pretty much any Mac or PC, Apeture is hardware-hungy and will only run on very specific machines.  I’m told by people who know that while you can use it on smaller setups, Apeture is optimzed for dual-monitor, or very large screen use.
**Apeture works on SOME MACS.
Download the Apeture Compatibility Checker to see if your computer makes the cut. Apple keeps expanding hardware support, but I still can’t run it on my 12″ Powerbook G4.

If anyone has any first-hand experience with Apeture, please put it in the comments. I’m sticking with Lightroom, at least for now.
Happy shooting.

technorati tags:adobe, apple, apeture, lightroom, photoshop, RAW, photography, tools

Tangerine is a new Mac program from the Potion Factory that will analyze the music in your iTunes library for BPM (beats per minute) and beat intensity. It also has a gorgeous, intuitive interface.

This is great because most music files don’t come with this information, but once you have it, there is all sorts of cool stuff you can do with it

A few things I’ve been playing with is finding the best BPM combo for computer work and for run workouts. You could also use it to find just the right dance music, or the perfect soundtrack with the right flow for your viral video or student film. Once you get going, this is a huge asset in music selection. It also syncs iTunes so you have access to the data there to sort with or to create Smart Playlists which Tangerine does not seem to support.

Another thing it encourages is serendipity. I have 30GB of music in my library, statistically, I rarely listen to most of it, but when I make playlists from beat levels, I hear music I haven’t heard in a while, often juxtaposed perfectly with another song from a completely different genre, something that I would never have thought to put together before.

Here is a sample from my “Working Mix” demonstrating the variety of music that can share the similar characteristics. By matching BPM and intensity, you get a seamless vibe and flow with a variety of music.

Song	Artist	Genre	BPM
Most Of The Time	Bob Dylan	Soundtrack	75
Mr. Jones (Rare Acoustic)	Counting Crows	Alternative	90
Wreck of the old ‘97	Johnny Cash	Country	75
Laura	Scissor Sisters	Pop	91
Young At Heart	Joss Stone	R&B	75
Dnd	Semisonic	Alternative	91
Wilbury Twist	Traveling Wilburys	Folk	75
Slipped Away	Avril Lavigne	Pop	92
Lulu – Act 2 – Scene 1(4)	Alban Berg	Opera	75
The Metal Head	The Sidekicks	Unknown	92
You Keep On Lovin’ Me	Sherrie Austin	Country	75
The Skeleton Song	Mighty Mighty Bosstones	Rock	92
Celtic Fiddle	Enya	New Age	75

Tangerine’s controls allow for you to do alot very easily, and has a cool interface for displaying artwork, and relative BPM.

While I recommend it for current use, there are a few things I’d like to see before it comes out of beta:

• Better Error Messages/Handling: I originally had some problems getting it to load my iTunes library. It loaded it, processed 5000 songs in about 3 minutes and errored on every single one of them. I told it to reanalyze, and after 8 hours on my 2-year-old Powerbook, it had analyzed my whole library with only a few errors. Making this more intuitive or having more informative error messages or logging besides “Error.” would be helpful.
• An “Analyze songs without BPM/Intensity Data” option: Currently if you add more music or have errors, the only option is to reanalyze the whole library. If there is a way to do this already, please let me know.

{Tools, Technology}

Technorati Tags: art, inspiration, music, software, tangerine, technology, Tools

I have a 12″ Powerbook. About two months ago, it started acting really slow. It was taking 45 seconds to register a mouseclick. It stopped booting up on the first try. Not good. I booted from the Mac OS X install DVD which lets you run several utilities, including Disk Utility and Terminal.

When I launched Disk Utility instead of:

SMART Status:Verified

I was greeted with:

SMART Status: Failing. Backup any unsaved work if drive not totally failed yet.

Luckily, I had backups of almost everything already. What wasn’t backed up already, I was able to copy to my external hard-drive via the Terminal. I have Applecare so I took my computer there and they replaced the drive, took them about a week. If I didn’t have those backups…years of work would have been lost.

So all you Mac users, here are some steps to ward off disaster:

1. Install SMARTReporter .It will proactively monitor your hard drives and alert you to any problems, maybe even in time to avert disaster. Disk Utility only runs when you ask it to.
2. Print My Mac Won’t Start – A Tiny Troubleshooting Guide. It will tell you what to do when your Mac is acting funny. I keep mine in my laptop sleeve and it saved me by telling my how to boot from CD, External Drive, how to check a disk, etc
3. Backup. Backup. Backup. Have more than two copies of your photo library. Email yourself important documents. Burn CDs and DVDs. Just think about if it was gone.
4. Be Redundant. You can mirror your hard drive to an external drive with a free program called Carbon Copy Cloner or the commercial and very good SuperDuper! or Chronosync. Both are well worth the $30 they cost and provide more functionality and a friendlier interface. If your drive dies, you can boot from the external drive and continue like nothing happened. (Just hold down Option while your booting and it will let you pick which drive to boot from.)

Note: Hard drives are mechanical devices. Given enough time, they will all fail. I have seen drives fail straight out of the box, and I see others still running fine after 10 years. Some fail slowly, others in the blink of a power surge. You can’t predict when they’ll die, so you had better always be prepared for the funeral.

Technorati Tags: technology

Pantone doesn’t advertise it, but they offer a 20% student discount on all graphics products. That beats the best deals on eBay or anywhere else for new stuff, but you have to CALL them at 866-PANTONE.

Everyone else can get a 10% through the creativepro affiliate store on Pantone.com if they join creativepro.com.

Also, they just introduced the Uncoated Color Bridge and you can get a Color Bridge set which includes both Coated and Uncoated at a special price.

The following are things that I wish I had had on the first day, and while I got along fine, having them earlier definitely would have eliminated some hairy moments. In no particular order:

USB Thumbdrive

Why: Use to transfer files between computers to share, print, or have printed at Kinkos or Staples. By far the easiest way to move multiple files between computers.

Considerations:

• At least 128MB
• USB 2.0 (not a huge deal, but faster)
• One with an internal battery will help as you can plug it in more places (hubs, keyboards, etc). An unpowered one is fine (that’s what I have) but you will have to plug it into the computer proper, or into a powered hub.

Digital Camera

Why: No matter if you are a copywriter, art director, or account planner, you will need to get images out of reality and into a computer. A digital camera lets you bring just what you want to your finished ads and give them a unique feel as opposed to using the same grainy, wrong proportioned stock photography as everyone else. Granted, someone in your group will have a camera, but it is good to not have to rely on others.

Considerations:

• 2.0 megapixels or more will be fine. Great deals can be had on 3.2MP cameras everywhere.
• Optical Zoom is important, forget digital zoom. Digital Zoom is the same as cropping.
• Manual controls are very nice to have, but are not critical.
• You don’t need an amazing digital camera, or even a new one. You can always hook up with a kickass photographer with great equipment later if you have a really killer idea.

Day Planner

Why: You will have more projects, groups, and meetings to keep track of than at any point in your life up to this point, no matter what you’ve been doing before.

Considerations:

• Whatever works for you. Cheap paper, phone, or expensive PDA, the key is it needs to be something you can always have with you and always use.
• Online tools are great as a supplement, but you need something you can carry with you (and use in a power outage).
• Your school may give you a paper planner at the start of the year (mine did). If you don’t have anything else to try, start with that, you may be surprised how well it works. If it doesn’t work for you, you’ll be better prepared to evaluate alternatives based on the strengths and weaknesses of that experience.

Adobe Creative Suite Premiere

Why: In AdSchool, Photoshop is a noun, verb, and adjective (with a y). You can’t get by without it. Acrobat makes PDF Files which is how you exchange files with professors, classmates, prospective employers, and print shops. Quark has pretty much lost the battle, so you’ll be using InDesign to layout ads. Illustrator is useful at times, especially if you can draw, and especially for logos.
Considerations:

• Creative Suite Premiere because Standard does not include Acrobat Professional.
• Adobe subsidizes students with a 75% discount on their products. The $1200 Creative Suite Premiere is only $400 with for educational buyers. So make sure to bust out your student ID and never pay full price.
• You may not need to buy Adobe software if you have access to labs with the software installed. Most people, however, like to be able to work on their own computer (if they have one). Pay for it if you can.

Little Notebook and Pen

Why: So you always have paper to jot down ideas and inspirations as they happen.

Considerations:

• Any notebook will do, but anything bigger than about 4×6 will be hard to carry everywhere. Small drugstore pads are perfect. Also, look on the sale rack in bookstores.
• The Moleskine brand has developed something of a cult following (www.moleskineart.com) but can pricey. I think they are great, but I write way too much to use them exclusively.

Color Printer and LOTS of ink

Why: You will need to present color prints of your work on a regular basis. You will either need a printer or make plans to make all of your prints at a copy shop or a school lab.

**STAPLES Copy & Print Center will do color laser prints for you for $0.39/each plus $2.50/first file and $0.99/additional files. Put all your ads in one PDF and save.**

Considerations:

• A printer that has a tank for each individual color. This lets you replace what you use with less waste.
• Price out ink cartridges on the models you are looking at buying. Some printers have only high cost, name brand cartridges available. Other printers have low-cost alternatives which are just as good. Search online and on Ebay for the best prices. For example, I have a 6 cartridge Canon inkjet. The Canon brand cartridges are $12/each. I can get them on Ebay for $2/each including shipping.
• Buy a lot of ink up front and keep extra on hand. If not, you will run out at the most inoprotune moment imaginable. I promise.

General Supplies

Black Markers, Black Boards, Spray Moung, etc

Considerations:

• Sharpies in Ad School are like No.2’s in Elementry School. Markers come in various sizes and weights and price ranges. Find one you like that is cheap enough to constantly replace. (Sharpies ~ $1)
  
• Black Presentation Boards will often sell out at art stores as you near midterms and finals. You can reuse them to a point, but they beaten up pretty easily. Also, nothing sucks more than having to wake up early and go all over the city to find enough boards for your final presentation and end up paying 3x more for them. Always good to stock up. (Black Boards ~1-2)
  
• Spray Mount. About $12/can but one can will last forever. Spray it very lightly, especially if you want to reuse the board.
• Legal pads, notebooks, sketchbooks, etc: something to take notes with and jot ideas down. I buy the 12-pack of legal pads at the office supply store for $6. Some friends only use particular brands of sketchbook.
  
• Sometimes there just don’t seem to be enough tacks to hang up all the work. They disappear like socks in the dryer.
• Razor Blade Knife. You’ll need it sometimes, and nothing else will do. Box Cutters from the hardware store work great, and they are cheap. When the blade starts to dull, you break off the tip and have a fresh one. Exacto Knives are hard to make a long, straight cut with, in my experience, but better for detail work. Your mileage may vary.

• Metal Ruler. Get an 18″ ruler with either a foam or cork backing to prevent slippage. 24″ rulers are really just too big and 99% of the time and 12″ rulers are too small. Some rulers have a tall, flat side designed specifically for cutting/drawing against, I find this very helpful.