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Dear Ask the Geek,

I have a question for the photo geek. What book or resource do you recommend to learn tips on using a DSLR? Want to increase my knowledge before my trip to Lucca this April.

Thanks,
Kristen

Dear Kristen,

this time I’m trying something a little different and I hope you’ll find it useful – I’m answering you in a quick video! Check out my answer regarding improving photography with some helpful tips about using your manual, books and sites you can read for tips, and setting some goals for improving your photography. I’ve also included some helpful links below the video (direct link to the video in case you don’t see it)

Books & gear I mentioned:

• The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby [Kindle ebook version]
• The Digital Photography Book - Volume 2 by Scott Kelby [Kindle ebook version]
• The Digital Photography Book - Volume 3 by Scott Kelby [Kindle ebook version]
• All 3 volumes of Scott Kelby’s The Digital Photography Books - [Kindle pack]
• More camera/video gear and photography booksI use or recommend - and more books that talk about composition and the more artistic side of photography

I also wrote a post about tips to improve your photography with any camera (not just a DSLR).

Other sites & blogs you should check out: (have a favorite site? leave it in the comments)

• Digital Photography School (they have a very active forum, too)
• Photofocus
• Phototuts+
• Jasmine Star Photography (especially for portraits / wedding)
• Strobist
• Joe McNally
• Stuck in Customs
• Nicolesy
• Mitchell Kanashkevich (he has a lot of ebooks, too)

Hope that helps,

Sara Rosso, aka WIHT’s in-house geek

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are to Amazon – I’m an Amazon affiliate and I will receive a small percentage if the product is purchased. 

The presentation “Tools for Entrepreneurs: Create. Collaborate. Communicate.“ started out as a way to explain very technical things to non-technical people, but I quickly realized that most people when approaching technology get intimidated by the “What’s DNS? Do I need a dedicated server?” kind of questions and therefore feel they can’t understand technology.

I feel that this technology intimidation is really due to the fact that they don’t really own their idea, and better understanding it will guide any decisions they have to make with their idea moving forward.

For me, the biggest online tool for most entrepreneurs is definitely their website. Having a website is like putting your shingle out declaring you’re in business.

In this presentation, the first section focuses on further defining your idea so you can create the site, offline, before engaging someone to build it for you (or building it yourself). From who the users / customers will be and what kind of information they want, to what the actual purpose of the site will be (conversion), to defining a list of must-have and nice-to-have features for the site.

The second section focuses on how to collaborate with those who will help your idea become a reality, from working with collaborators remotely, to the kinds of tools and software you’ll need to collaborate, and setting some guidelines for those tools to be effective.

The third section focuses on methods and approaches for communicating your idea, whether through the use of social media or just being consistent in your entire presence online.

Be sure and page through the entire slideshow to see the resources I included at the end for those looking for open source software alternatives to proprietary software, and links for getting started with ebooks and Creative Commons.

Below is the slideshow, click through to see the slideshow in your browser:

It was a great experiment and I’m really pleased with the results. Soon I’ll share what I learned on the technology side, but for now I’m just enjoying seeing it for sale online.

If you want to check it out, you don’t need to have a Kindle to read it! Here are links to the (free) Amazon Kindle App software for Android phone, Blackberry, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Mac or a PC. After you download and install the Kindle App software, you can buy the book and read it on your device!

Buy How to Order an Italian Coffee in Italy in your Amazon store! (note: the content is in English regardless of the Amazon store you buy it from):

• How to Order an Italian Coffee in Italy on Amazon.com
• How to Order an Italian Coffee in Italy on Amazon.co.uk
  
• How to Order an Italian Coffee in Italy on Amazon.de
  
• How to Order an Italian Coffee in Italy on Amazon.fr

All the applications suggested are linked to their Android Market pages so you can check them out immediately – click on them! Here’s a direct link to Productivity on your Android Mobile – 10 Tips & 40+ Apps on Slideshare.

Did I leave one out? Let me know in the comments.

This week has convinced me I'm doing a Vision Board & Workshop in November, in Italian here in Milan. If you're interested, let me know.—
Sara Rosso (@rosso) September 22, 2011

After speaking with several friends who are struggling to see the next evolution of themselves, I decided to hold a Vision Board and Planning Workshop in Milan, Italy. It will probably be in Italian unless a majority of the participants desire English.

I’m working on the agenda and logistics as you read this, and I’ve already gotten enough interest to start picking a date. If you’re interested, feel free to contact me or leave a message on this post and I’ll get back to you with more details.

My answer is always the same: it depends.

Sophia at Fiction Vixen put it more eloquently than I could and listed a bunch of considerations that I suggest anyone read when deciding if they should add plugins to their self-hosted WordPress site (spoiler: you might not need every plugin under the sun).

One of my favorite points from her post which I totally agree with:

When searching out plugins there are a few things to consider before downloading and installing them on your blog. Plugins are fun and can really enhance your blog…or occasionally create some huge headaches…Before you go plugin crazy, stop and think about whether or not that plugin will really enhance your blog and/or your blogging experience.

In many cases you won’t need any or many plugins for your WP site, since it can do a lot of what you need out of the box. Taking some time to really evaluate what features you need on your site will save you some trouble in experimenting with plugins just for the glitter-factor (and probably keep the site loading faster, too).

Check out the full post at Fiction Vixen about WordPress plugins for noobs.

Also, be sure you check out Automattic’s Jetpack plugin which brings WordPress.com features and a few other plugins to all self-hosted WordPress sites, for free!

They specifically asked me to speak about using WordPress as a website, instead of a blog, as many journalists are now interested in maintaining personal websites as well as continuing to create all the content they do for external publications.

I really only needed one slide to explain how to do that – it’s very easy! I’ll let you discover how via the slides.

The presentation is geared at those very new to WordPress – so new, in fact, that I included a little bit about WordPress’ history and its community which I think are strong points in choosing to use it (awesome people are making an awesome product).

We spent a lot of time in questions after the presentation, many of which would have been answered by articles I’ve already written on this site, like:

• What is DNS? DNS in Plain English
• How to Choose Web Hosting for your Website or Blog
• Ask the Geek: How Do I Find and Install a WordPress theme?
• The Quick and Dirty Guide to Getting Started with WordPress

The slides aren’t actually meant to be self-explanatory – I went in-depth into most of the concepts and screenshots in person, and don’t like to put much content in my slides, so if you have questions, be sure to let me know!

In English:

In Italian:

SARA: What is the Baker framework?

DAVIDE: Baker Framework is a very simple idea: use HTML5 for books and magazines. In many ways, it’s like the missing piece between the book and the web: it allows the creation of enhanced, multimedia books with web technologies. Even if you can tweak a lot current standards like epub2 and mobi (and the upcoming epub3 is even more interesting) you can’t really create a rich, interactive and high quality book or magazine with these. That’s exactly what Baker is for.

The good part is that the Hpub format we are defining alongside Baker is just a set of HTML files zipped, so it’s also ready out of the box for the web.

SARA: Why were you inspired to create it?

DAVIDE: When I saw the iPad for the first time I almost immediately hoped for a new platform and format for digital books. I know I probably read too much science fiction, but I almost felt what could be possible in terms of the reading experience. Unfortunately since April 2010 nothing new has appeared: we’re still stuck to epubs, or we are forced to use Adobe tools and build complex – even if rich – magazine applications.

So by then the months were passing and I kept thinking: “It’s so obvious, HTML5 and ebooks on the iPad, why is nobody doing that?” Then with Marco and Alessandro we started building it alongside the first book, 5×15 in Tokyo, and every time we read a title about ebooks we were worried to see our idea built by someone else. Up until now, we are still the only one out there.

SARA: Who is the Baker framework intended for? (How) can a non-techie use it?

DAVIDE: The framework has a quite broad audience, from developers to authors to publishers. You can use it standalone or integrate it with your own application – like someone already did and successfully released on the App Store.

It’s possible for a non techie to use it: we’ve received good feedback from authors that are using iWeb to build the visuals and then they follow the step-by-step instruction we provide to build the app.

However this is one of the parts I’m not truly satisfied with, even if it’s already quite simple compared to similar solutions. I’d love to provide a really simple publishing experience to anybody, it’s something that we planned in some way, but as of today it isn’t there: it requires a lot of work, and that might come from the community itself, we’ll see.

SARA: Can you point us to some interesting projects already using the framework?

DAVIDE: Sure! There are two recent releases that I find very interesting, both for concept and the result. One of them is Forgotten Colours by Play Creatividad from Spain, a great conversion of a successful book that’s a collection of inspiring short stories about colors, with interactive elements. Another one is Timbuktu, an Italian interactive magazine specifically designed for kids. Both of them were very well received with great online coverage.

SARA: What’s next for Baker framework? What about you?

DAVIDE: We have already a few big features in place for the next version, that is probably going to be 2.0: orientation support (portrait, landscape or both) and iPhone support, two top-requested features. We are still working out a few things, so I can’t give you a precise date, but it should be somewhere in the next couple of months.

For me Baker is a really interesting experience because it’s probably the most successful open source project I’ve ever done and I’m learning a lot from it. The response we are receiving from both authors and developers is very energizing and we keep getting confirmations that it’s a good thing. I think we are also moving forward quite fast: if you think about it, the first release was in November, just 5 months ago and we already managed to push out the 1.1 version a couple of months ago. So there’s no next for me now… unless you count a few other side projects, but for these only time will tell.

SARA: Some resources to get started with the Baker framework:

DAVIDE: Even if the framework itself is quite simple and our official page is very clear, that’s something we are working on to improve. As of today the biggest resource is Google and our lively community on GitHub, but we are planning some more tutorial-like content published directly on the website in order to help less tech-savvy people.

Visit the Baker Framework site.

More information on the Baker framework:

• Baker ebook framework on Mashable

Have a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask the Geek,

A friend set up my WordPress site and the design for it, but now I want to change it and give my site a new look. How do I do that, and where do I start?

Signed

WordPress newbie

Dear WordPress newbie,

You can find WordPress themes all over the Internet which is the great thing about WordPress – anyone can develop for it. I strongly recommend starting with the WordPress.org Theme Directory as the themes there have been reviewed and there’s a higher guarantee that no malicious/spam/ad code has been inserted in the theme (a small risk of using Google and looking for WordPress themes).

I suggest browsing the Popular themes first. These are all free themes and you may find a few designs you want to come back to. If you have a specific feature or layout in mind (like how many columns, main color, or style, etc.), you can use the Theme Tag Filter tool to narrow it down.

If you’d prefer a theme that is more unique or has support from the theme developer associated with it, you may also want to browse the WordPress.org Commercial Themes directory which lists many companies that offer custom themes for a small payment and give you access to various benefits with your purchase.

There are usually some themes already installed on your WordPress site and can be accessed via the Dashboard at Appearance > Themes.

Make note of which theme your site is currently using (it should be the theme featured as “Current Theme” at the top of the Manage Themes tab) so you can go back to your original setup if necessary.

To add other themes from the WordPress.org theme directory, click on “Install themes” and search for a type of theme or a theme name.

You can preview it or install it directly. Click on Install and confirm Installation.

After installation, you can preview it again how it will look with your content, and if you decide to Activate it, click on Activate. It’s now live on your site!

Open the front page of your site in another browser tab/window and see how it looks – click around to different posts and pages to see if you like it.

If you need to go back to that original theme you made a note of when we started, go back to Appearance > Themes and search for the name of your original theme in Manage Themes, and click Activate it to return to the original.

Note that you can add dozens and dozens of themes to your local theme directory so don’t feel like you have to choose or install just one at a time to your local directory. For a commercial theme, you will have to upload the theme after purchase before being able to activate it.

The only other thing you would need to check is if your sidebar content (recent posts, comments, etc. ) is using widgets (check for their existence at Appearance > Widgets) – widgets are easy and great for you to be able to upkeep, and they are independent of the theme which makes switching themes painless.

If you aren’t using widgets for your sidebar content, now is a good time to set them up before switching the theme. Once we get them into widgets, you’ll be able to switch themes easier, and then it’s just making sure we include your stats.

Note: this is an answer for a self-hosted, paid hosting user using the WordPress.org software – if you have your site at WordPress.com, you can use the theme.wordpress.com directory

Enjoy playing with your site’s theme!

Sara Rosso, aka WIHT’s in-house geek

I use Google Apps for my domain and integrate several other email accounts into what I call my “control tower” for email.

Gmail keeps growing and adding new features, and gives users a cool way to learn Gmail tricks by becoming a Gmail Ninja, but one thing I really like is that they have Gmail Labs which gives users access to experimental features that can be activated as desired.

You’ll find a lot of great tricks and features in their Gmail Ninja tips, but my 5 favorite Gmail Labs add-ons are:

• Undo Send
• Canned Responses
• Sender timezone
• Refresh POP accounts
• Multiple signatures for multiple email addresses

Undo Send

Undo send perhaps is the most important add-on you can activate. After you’ve hit the “Send” button, it gives you the ability to cancel sending an email for several seconds. That attachment you forgot to send, that email you probably shouldn’t have, the person you forgot to copy on the mail, all now have a savior. At least for a few seconds.

Enable “Undo Send” and the next email you send, you’ll see “Your message has been sent” and then a link to “Undo” that will remain visible for several seconds. After it’s gone, your message has been delivered.

Canned Responses

Canned Responses, especially for someone who has a website and receives a lot of emails with the same types of questions (solicitation, guest posts, advertising, advice, moving to Italy, etc.), are a time saver!

Canned Responses will show up right next to the “Add an Attachment” link in your email editor. After you click “Reply” just click on the Canned Responses drop-down and “Insert” and select the applicable message. Or, if you’ve just crafted the perfect reply, you can save it by selecting Save > Create new Canned Response. It has saved me a lot of repeating myself.

Sender Time Zone

Now that I’m working with a very international team, and very international clients, it’s hard to keep track of what time it is wherever they are. When I need to answer an email, it helps me to use Sender Time Zone so I can know exactly what time it is where they are. Are they sleeping, and won’t see the email for a few hours, or are they just about to walk out of the office, so it’s best to send the email as soon as possible?

Refresh POP Accounts

Refresh” link to the right of your main navigation buttons, and it will show up to the right of the “More Actions” button.

Multiple signatures for multiple email addresses

This last feature is actually not part of Gmail Labs, but it’s a feature that was added only recently and it’s one I’ve rejoiced about. If you manage multiple email addresses in Gmail, it’s likely that you don’t want to use the same signature for all of them. You can set up individual signatures for each account by going to Settings > General and scrolling down to Signature.

Do you have any tricks you use to enhance your email experience? Even not in Gmail? Let me know.

Images: Google, and screenshots of my own Inbox.