#web to print software

[flexiweb2print]

Unlock the Power of Wide Format Printing for Stunning Visuals

In the realm of current printing, Wide Format Printing has arisen as a unique advantage, particularly for organizations, specialists, and picture takers looking to establish a major connection. This creative innovation considers the development of huge scope prints that catch consideration and pass on messages such that conventional printing essentially can't coordinate. In the event that you're thinking about growing your print abilities or improving your visual correspondence, Large Format Printing and Canvas Printing are two fabulous choices to consider.

What is Wide Format Printing?

Wide Format Printing alludes to any printing interaction that produces prints bigger than the standard 8.5" x 11" size. This kind of printing is great for huge presentations, like standards, banners, bulletins, and expo designs. Whether you're hoping to advance a brand, feature work of art, or add a striking visual assertion to your space, Wide Format Printing offers the flexibility and scale that little arrangement prints can't give.

Advantages of Large Format Printing

Large Format printing empowers organizations and people to make striking visuals that stick out. Its advantages include:

High Perceivability: Bigger prints normally catch more consideration, making them ideal for the end goal of promoting, for example, occasion advancements, retail facade presentations, or public help declarations.

Artistic liberty: With the capacity to print on various materials, from vinyl to texture, Large Format Printing opens up imaginative opportunities for both expert and individual activities.

Sturdiness: Large Format prints are in many cases utilized in outside settings, so strength is critical. The materials utilized are intended to endure the components, guaranteeing that your illustrations stay energetic and in salvageable shape for longer periods.

Top caliber: Notwithstanding the size, present day huge organization printing produces great prints with fine subtleties and rich tones, making them ideal for everything from special banners to enormous scope visual prints.

The Craft of Canvas Printing

One of the most famous uses of Wide Format printing is Canvas Printing. Changing photos, work of art, and plans into exhibition quality material prints brings a hint of class and masterfulness to any space. Whether you're designing a home, office, or exhibition, Canvas Printing permits you to feature your number one pictures with a finished, top of the line feel.

Here's the reason Canvas Printing is so pursued:

Creative Allure: The surface of the material adds profundity and character to prints, making them seem to be unique canvases than basic multiplications.

Customization: With Canvas Printing, you can undoubtedly make custom pieces that match your space's tasteful, whether you need high contrast representations, dynamic scenes, or theoretical plans.

Life span: Material prints are outwardly engaging as well as strong. With legitimate consideration, they can keep going for a really long time without blurring, making them a brilliant long haul venture.

Financially savvy: Contrasted with customary workmanship prints, Canvas Printing offers a reasonable choice for those needing to make excellent craftsmanship without burning through every last dollar.

Why Pick Wide Format, Large Format, and Canvas Printing?

Business and Advertising: Whether you're hoping to plan pennants, career expo shows, or retail location materials, the advantages of Wide Format Printing for limited time intentions are unquestionable. It gives your image the visual effect it requirements to stand out and fabricate acknowledgment.

Individual Undertakings: Need to save recollections in an awesome way? Large Format Printing and Canvas Printing are ideally suited for transforming your most loved photographs into explanation pieces for your home or office.

Craftsmanship and Photography: Specialists and picture takers the same advantage from Canvas Printing as it gives a reasonable yet proficient method for showing their work. The rich surface and fine detail permit pictures to stick out, making a vivid encounter for watchers.

Conclusion

At the point when you need to have a major effect, Wide Format Printing and Large Format Printing are your go-to arrangements. Whether you're upgrading your advertising methodology, showing craftsmanship, or making paramount gifts, these printing procedures give unequaled quality and scale. Furthermore, in the event that you're searching for a method for giving your prints a creative energy, Canvas Printing is the best decision, mixing artistic work with current innovation.

All set large? Embrace Wide Format Printing and Large Format printing for your next venture and experience the distinction it can make in your visual correspondence!

[onprintshop]

Web to Print Software: Everything You Need to Know

A comprehensive web to print software is a one-stop solution for print businesses to thrive, emerge, and sustain. Although it was first developed for commercial printing, there are several advantages of web 2 print software. It can 100% transform all types of printing companies (including B2B, B2C, and trade printers) to deliver better CX and boost sales.  

What Do You Mean by a Web to Print Software? 

Web to print software is a very advanced form of technology that leverages the power of automation to digitize print businesses. It streamlines the entire workflow of any print e-commerce to help them boost sales and revenue, enhance CX, reduce business costs, and so on.  

With a web to print solution, print service providers can enhance their capabilities in many ways. They can ensure top-class customization, the smoothest buying experience, the fastest delivery, and efficient print order processing.  

In a Nutshell 

The above facts summarize that a web to print software can skyrocket your print business in many remarkable ways. One of the best w2p innovations available today is OnPrintShop’s #1 and state-of-the-art web to print software. It can revolutionize any print business with the highest authority. Team OnPrintShop has over a decade of extensive experience in transforming hundreds of print businesses. 

[ajinkya-2012]

Web To Print Software Market

[ragdollgaming]

Fascinated by one student in particular who keeps coming into my computer lab and then mostly using their laptop

[devquester]

Why You Should Use WordPress as Your CMS

[techorage]

Unlocking the Essence of a Software Development Company: 3 Intriguing Facets

Dive into the dynamic world of software development as we unravel the fascinating layers of a Software Development Company. From cutting-edge technology to the art of innovation, explore three intriguing facets that define the essence of modern software development companies. Discover how they shape the digital landscape and revolutionize industries.

[mayabonni]

Ballot Counting Management Software by HRsoftBD

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Book Cover

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover!” We’ve all heard the phrase and we all know that’s impossible. Because the cover of a book is the first thing a potential reader sees—it should stop them in their tracks. It’s a very powerful marketing tool; having a well-designed book cover is crucial.

Tips for Making a Great Book Cover Design

Using more than two to three typefaces on a cover is discouraged, as it can look really messy.

Keep things simple. Your cover will be in a sea of other covers so try to keep your design from getting muddy and make sure it stands out.

Show your designs to people who have a design eye and/or you trust. It’s great to get feedback.

If you hire a professional designer, write a brief and send them info. Be really clear on what you want. Designers usually do a certain number of design rounds included in the agreed upon fee and any extra rounds of design will be extra.

If you hire a professional designer, they will likely have ideas about printing and may have connections to printers. They are a resource so don’t forget to ask questions.

Don’t forget: a book cover is an important part of selling any book. Whether you decide to do it yourself or collaborate with a professional, pay special attention to this part of the process, as a great cover goes a long way.

6-Step Guide: Professional Book Cover

STEP ONE Generate Ideas. Look around at book covers you like. Go to a bookshop and peruse what’s currently happening in book cover design. Take notes of what elements you like on the cover image. A certain typeface? Color? Do you prefer an image or an illustration or something purely typographic on the cover? Another option is to create a mood board. You can use a platform like Pinterest or Evernote, or create a folder on your desktop, and pull book cover inspiration from the web. While you’re gathering inspiration, keep in mind what genre your book is and what kind of book design feels appropriate.

STEP TWO Find a Designer (Who Could Be You!). Do you have design skills? If so, your next step is to begin layouts and mock-ups of the covers. You should use whatever software program you are comfortable with. Most professional book cover designers use a program from the Adobe Creative Suite:

InDesign. InDesign is a multi-page design platform but can also be used for single page design.

Photoshop. Used to manipulate and experiment with photography.

Illustrator. Illustrator is a vector-based program, which means you can create graphic art that can be scaled up or down without loss of quality.

Photoshop and Illustrator. These can also be used together as you can bring your Photoshop file into Illustrator to set the type after you have worked with your cover image.

If you don’t have design skills, now is a great time to hire a book cover designer. The first step is to figure out what kind of budget you have for this. A designer’s fee will range depending on their expertise. Get a figure in mind and then write a design brief which should include the book specs:

Size

Print-run

Intended audience

Where and how the book will be published

Anticipated publish date

You should also include a summary of what the book is about and what you are looking for in a cover. Also share the inspiration you’ve gathered with the designer.

If you don’t have design skills but want to create the cover without the help of a professional, there are a few software programs you can use, such as Canva or 100 Covers, design tools that allow you to DIY the cover (for free or a fee).

STEP THREE Decide on the Dimensions. If you’re self-publishing and printing with a local printer you can work with them to make sure your book dimensions will fit on their printer (remember a book prints front, back, and spine in one sheet of paper). It’s also a good idea to find examples of books whose size you like and feels good to hold. Use that as a jumping off point for your book.

Book Cover Dimensions List. If you are printing for a specific market, from print to ebook, here is a handy list:

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing File Format: JPEG or TIFF Cover Size (Recommended): 2560x1600 pixels Cover Size Requirements: between 1000x625 pixels and 10,000x10,000 pixels (one side must be at least 1000)

Apple iBooks File Format: JPEG or PNG Cover Size (Recommended): 1400x1873 or 1600x2400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: at least 1400 pixels wide

Barnes & Noble File Format: JPEG or PNG Cover Size (Recommended): Rectangle height and width, at least 1400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: Min. 750 pixels height and width

Kobo Books File Format: JPEG or PNG Cover Size (Recommended): 1600x2400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: Min. 1400 pixels width

Smashwords File Format: JPEG or PNG Cover Size (Recommended): 1600x2400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: Min. 1400 pixels width Draft2Digital

File Format: JPEG Cover Size (Recommended): 1600x2400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: Tall rectangle

STEP FOUR Choose Your Style

Photo-based cover. If you’re creating an photo-based book cover, you’ll need to source stock imagery. There are lots of great resources online to find stock imagery including ShutterStock, Getty Images, and Adobe Stock. (Keep in mind: most photography archives require payment to use their images. Always investigate the copyright of images you’re interested in using.) Look for images that convey or allude to your book’s genre. You can use programs like Photoshop to manipulate your image, making it black and white instead of color or cropping it in a certain way.

Illustration-based cover. If you’re considering a more graphic approach to your cover, Illustrator is the tool to use. You can bring hand-drawn drawings into it and outline them to create scale-able, high-res illustrations which you can manipulate within the program. You can also create shapes, patterns, experiment with typography within illustrator and play with color, transparency, size and much more.

Typography-based cover. Finally, many successful book covers use typography as the main graphic device. This takes some skill and knowledge of typefaces, the historical context of a typeface, and how to manipulate it thoughtfully. That said, using type as a graphic can be very impactful.

STEP FIVE Pick a Typeface (Font). No matter what kind of cover you are designing, you are going to need the title of the book and the author’s name on the cover. As mentioned above, picking an appropriate typeface is very important. You want to pick something that feels right for your book—is it a sans serif or serif? A heavy weight or lighter weight? You want to make sure it’s not something with a lot of baggage, like Comic Sans or Papyrus. It is a good idea to actually do a little research on when, where, and who your typeface was designed by to give you context and feel out if it will be right for your book. You might also consider using up to two different typefaces, one for the title and one for your name. A serif and sans-serif mix can give a bit of contrast and visual interest. There are some typefaces that pair really well together. Check out the website TypeWolf to get ideas of what fonts pair well together.

STEP SIX Test, Tweak, and Repeat. Once you have a few versions of your cover, print them out on your home printer and take a look with a critical eye. Does the type size feel chunky? Too bold? Too small? How does your image look? Is it cropped right? Are the lines of your illustrations too thin and not showing up? Go back and refine your design and then repeat! Don’t forget to look at your book cover as a small thumbnail as well. People are on their mobile phones and you want to make sure your cover still stands out and is impactful.

Book Cover - serves as your first impression with potential readers—and though book covers don’t always look the same, they do tend to contain the same essential elements.

Design standards may be different in the world of traditional publishing than they are in self publishing, and book cover templates for physical paper books may differ from those of ebooks—but they all serve the same purpose.

Some Functions of a Book Cover

A book’s cover provides essential information. At its most elemental, a good cover includes a book’s title, the author’s name, the publisher, and the price.

A good cover offers clues about your book’s content and tone. Your cover design indicates whether your book is a work of high-minded literary fiction, a pulpy page turner, or a compelling work of non-fiction.

A front cover reveals a book’s genre. You can usually tell if you’re holding a thriller, a memoir, a sci-fi epic, or a nineteenth century classic just by looking at a book’s cover art and typography.

A back cover offers broader context. It may feature quotes from reviewers and fellow authors. Softcover books may contain a plot summary or author biography on the back; those summaries and bios are typically moved to the inner flaps of a hardcover book.

How to Hire a Professional Book Cover Designer

Book covers are marketing materials, and a well-designed professional cover can make your book stand out among the competition. If you want someone with expertise in the realm of cover design to work on your book, you may want to hire a professional book cover designer. Here are some steps to consider when hiring creatives to design your book cover:

Hire a cover artist. A cover artist produces the cover art and imagery that will appear on your book cover, either on their own or with heavy input from an author or publisher.

Hire a graphic designer. Certain graphic designers specialize in layout; they incorporate cover art that you provide them—whether that’s an original illustration, photograph, or even a stock image—into the overall design of the cover.

Find a cover designer online. Reedsy is one of a number of online resources for independent authors, self-publishers, and anyone connected to the world of books. Many professional book designers list their services on Reedsy.

Use your personal network. Seek out writers’ groups, either locally or on Facebook. In these groups, people share professional referrals and help support one another when a member has a new book in the works. A group of like-minded individuals can be an invaluable resource when creating your own book cover for the first time.

When to Call a Pro:

You have a budget (a designer’s fee will vary depending on experience and location).

You have enough time to work with the designer.

You have a clear idea of what you want or at least what you don’t want.

You don’t have any design skills.

You don’t want to invest in the design software.

Your book isn’t selling.

How to Design a Book Cover Yourself

If you don’t have the budget for a pro designer or just have a DIY itch you want to scratch, it is easier than ever to design your own book cover. While it may not be quite as rudimentary as when you covered your textbooks in a brown paper bag back in fifth grade, modern technology has made cover image design accessible to anyone with a computer. Here are some tips:

Use a template. There are numerous websites that offer book cover templates and step-by-step tutorials covering basic cover design skills. Some even have a free book cover creator tool, along with cover ideas, design tips, pre-made design templates, and digital cover image tools.

Use standard design software. Book covers can also be made using standard home computing software including Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and even (with a little sweat equity) Google Docs. This is particularly easy if you are importing a pre-made cover image from another source.

Make a prototype. The process for assembling a book is straightforward and satisfying. If you want to test out how your book will appear in print, you can learn to bind a copy yourself.

When to DIY:

You don’t have any budget for design.

You have design skills to do it yourself.

You have the design software.

You have a template and know exactly what you want.

You have people with an eye for design that can guide you.

How to Make a Hardcover Book

So you’re ready to bind your own book. Here’s what you’ll need:

Content, of course.

Uncoated printer paper for book pages

Decorative paper for endpapers, such as wrapping paper or cardstock

Davey board (aka bookbinder’s board), thin chipboard, or cardboard for the book covers

Craft knife

Polyvinyl acetate (PVA) glue such as Elmer’s glue

Hot glue gun and glue sticks

Ruler or straight edge

A long stapler

Thin fabric or book cloth for cover

Binder clips

Thick decorative paper (optional, for dust jacket)

Paper trimmer (optional, for trimming book pages)

Paintbrush (optional, for spreading glue)

There’s more than one way to bind a book, and you’ll find tons of great tutorials online for making homemade books, including Japanese bookbinding and perfect bound softcover books. The most popular style of hardcover book binding is called case binding, which is traditionally done by stitching pages together with thread. Here is how to make a hardcover book step-by-step—no sewing or special materials required:

Assemble the content. The number of pages and the type of paper you work with depends on whether you’re binding a novel, a full-color photo book, or a sketchbook. Familiarize yourself with the format by taking some hardcover books down from your bookshelf and observing how they were made.

Format your pages. If you’re creating a blank book, you can skip this step. If you’re printing a book with text, you'll need to format the text so that you can print it into a book. You can get help with this at a copy shop, or you can download book design software and print at home. Eventually, you’ll end up with a PDF with a page count. This page count has to be divisible by four so that your book can be bound as folios made up of eight sheets of paper (32 pages) each. You may need to add some blank pages at the end of the book to keep your page count correct for the folios.

Print and fold. Once all of your pages are printed, fold pages in half and stack eight within each other, making sure the pages are in the correct order. Staple the folios together in the folds, alternating the location of the staples so that you don’t end up with a bulge in the spine.

Bind your folios together. Arrange all of the folios in the correct order and flatten them between heavy books. Once your folios are flat, it’s time to glue them together. Hold the folios together with binder clips and use a glue gun to glue the folios together along the stapled edge. This will become your book’s spine. Be careful not to overdo it on the glue: Use just enough to keep the folios together. Before the glue cools, use a thin piece of fabric to cover the spine only.

Even out the pages. Carefully trim the edges of the pages with a paper trimmer or craft knife, if needed.

Make the hardcovers. Cut two pieces of cardboard for the front and back covers of your book. For the spine, cut a piece of cardboard that is the same height as the front and back covers, with a width equal to the thickness of the spine plus the front and back covers.

Attach the hardcovers. Paint the cardboard (both covers and the spine piece) with a thin layer of PVA glue and attach to the cloth you’ll use to cover your book, leaving a space between the covers and the spine equal to one and a half times the thickness of the cardboard. Let dry.

Assemble the book. Use PVA glue to attach the fabric-lined spine of your bound folios to the cardboard spine. Keep the book propped up between other books while you wait for it to dry.

Attach the endpapers. Trim the paper lining so that it’s twice the size of the first page and fold it in half. Paint glue onto the inside of the front cover and the front page, and attach paper lining. Repeat with the back cover.

Make the dust jacket. If you’d like to cover your book with a dust jacket, measure a piece of thick decorative paper as tall as your book and as wide as the entire book, plus a few extra inches to fold over the edge of the cover. Fold the dust jacket over the bound book. Lay another heavy book on top of it to help the dust jacket keep its shape. This is the place to add a cover design, if you’d like.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[beesmygod]

if you were making a syllabus for a comics class, besides the obvious (homestuck, hark a vagrant, a comic from KC green, a comic from ONE), what comics would you say best represent webcomics as a medium/ are needed to represent the medium? I always liked your hitmen for destiny rec and was wondering if you knew anything else like that

if we're talking about representations of the format rather than just examples of good comics, i think the choices would be really different. for one thing i would cut hark a vagrant and kc green comics since, while both good, they "operate" more or less the same as print comics and utilize the internet primarily as a means of distribution rather than incorporating it into the creation process (beyond making colors websafe, when applicable)

as a lowbrow example, jerkcity (or whatever its called now) is a purely web-based creation. the scripts are private chats dumped into microsoft comic chat and generated from pre-made software assets. im not a fan personally, but there are xkcd comics that make conscious use of the web-medium/infinite canvas to create comics that can literally only exist in a web format (homestuck is the same, but on a massive scale which would make it hard to teach in this scenario). bouletcorp (english website dead? huge loss imo) featured quite a few comics that took advantage of readers needing to scroll in order to obtain more information. e.m. carroll's horror works capitalized on the use of scroll and click to induce tension in the reader. dinosaur comics managing to squeeze decades of comedic juice out of clip art dinosaurs arranged in the same layout every day.

i feel like a class about webcomics should be about the comics that differentiate it from the print medium, if that makes sense. manhua would also fit into this but i would choose cutbu as the example bc i love cutbu comics lol. they came back last year just so everyone knows. with a comic called 28th century superfan

[flexiweb2print]

Transform Your Wedding Invitations with Web to Print Software

Weddings are snapshots of happiness and festivity, and several fantasies about making a novel and critical experience for their visitors. One vital component in this cycle is the wedding card, an image of the event and an encouragement to be essential for their unique day. Yet, how might you make your Wedding Invitations card really stick out and mirror your own style? The response lies in Web to Print Software, a progressive device for modifying and printing excellent wedding cards effortlessly.

What is Web to Print Software?

Web to Print Software is a creative arrangement that permits organizations and people to configuration, redo, and print different items on the web. With regards to weddings, this product can be a distinct advantage for making customized Wedding Invitations. Whether you lean toward a conventional plan or something more present day and one of a kind, this innovation offers vast potential outcomes. It gives an easy to use interface, giving you the opportunity to browse a wide cluster of layouts, textual styles, varieties, and illustrations to plan the ideal wedding card.

The Advantages of Utilizing Web to Print Software for Wedding Invitations

Perpetual Customization Choices With Web to Print Software, you can try different things with various plan components and make a Wedding Invitations card that genuinely mirrors your character as a team. From picking the paper type to redoing the phrasing, you have full command over everything about your greeting card.

Time and Cost Productive Gone are the times of visiting numerous printers and going through endless hours settling the plan. With Web to Print Software, you can plan your wedding cards from the solace of your home, at your own speed. The expense reserve funds are huge as well, as you can without much of a stretch look at costs and find the best arrangement on the web.

Excellent Prints When you use Web to Print Software, you are guaranteed of expert grade quality for your Wedding Invitations cards. The product incorporates with great printing administrations, guaranteeing that your plan converts into dazzling prints on premium paper.

Manageability Many web to print stages additionally offer eco-accommodating printing choices, permitting you to plan lovely wedding cards without hurting the climate. Assuming you're cognizant about manageability, search for Web to Print Software that utilizations reused materials and eco-accommodating inks.

Comfort and Availability With the capacity to plan on the web, you can get to Web to Print Software whenever, anyplace. Whether you're at home or in a hurry, you can deal with your wedding card plans, share them with relatives for criticism, and settle them at whatever point you're prepared.

Instructions to Plan the Ideal Wedding Invitations Card

Pick the Right Format The most vital phase in planning your Wedding Invitations card is choosing a layout. Most Web to Print Software stages offer a great many formats, from conventional to contemporary styles. Contemplate your wedding subject — whether it's natural, one of a kind, present day, or exemplary — and pick a plan that supplements it.

Customize the Text Once you have a format, customize the text to match your wedding subtleties. This is where you can get imaginative! Add significant statements, one of a kind text styles, and exceptional messages that address your romantic tale. Keep in mind, the phrasing ought to establish the vibe for your occasion — whether it's formal, relaxed, or energetic.

Add Individual Components Consolidating individual components, for example, commitment photographs, monograms, or wedding date stamps, will make your greeting card much more extraordinary. Many Web to Print Software choices permit you to transfer your own pictures, giving you complete inventive control.

Settle the Plan Prior to hitting print, ensure you survey the plan on numerous occasions. Check for spelling mistakes, arrangement, and variety consistency. You could arrange an example print to perceive how the eventual outcome will look.

Conclusion: The Future of Wedding Invitations

Before, Wedding Invitations were many times seen as a bit of hindsight in the wedding arranging process. Be that as it may, with the progression of Web to Print Software, planning the ideal Wedding Invitations card is presently an interesting and inventive piece of the excursion. Whether you're going for a conventional look or something completely special, the potential outcomes are unfathomable. Embrace the force of web to print innovation and make Wedding Invitations that will have an enduring effect on your visitors!

By using Web to Print Software, you can guarantee that your wedding card mirrors your own style, establishes the vibe for your festival, and adds a dash of inventiveness to your important day. Begin planning today and make your Wedding Invitations as extraordinary as the actual occasion!

[ajinkya-2012]

Web To Print Software Market

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

[academicfever]

Research 101: Last part

#Citing sources and the bibliography:

Citation has various functions: ■■ To acknowledge work by other researchers. ■■ To anchor your own text in the context of different disciplines. ■■ To substantiate your own claims; sources then function like arguments with verification.

Use Mendeley:

It has a number of advantages in comparison to other software packages: (1) it is free, (2) it is user-friendly, (3) you can create references by dragging a PDF file into the program (it automatically extracts the author, title, year, etc.), (4) you can create references by using a browser plug-in to click on a button on the page where you found an article, (5) you can share articles and reference lists with colleagues, and (6) it has a ‘web importer’ to add sources rapidly to your own list.

plagiarism – and occasionally even fraud – are sometimes detected, too. In such cases, appeals to ignorance (‘I didn’t know that it was plagiarism’) are rarely accepted as valid reasons for letting the perpetrator off the hook.

#Peer review

For an official peer review of a scholarly article, 3-4 experts are appointed by the journal to which the article has been submitted. These reviewers give anonymous feedback on the article. As a reviewer, based on your critical reading, you can make one of the following recommendations to the editor of the journal: ■■Publish as submitted. The article is good as it is and can be published (this hardly ever happens). ■■Publish after minor revisions. The article is good and worth publishing, but some aspects need to be improved before it can be printed. If the adjustments can be made easily (for example, a small amount of rewriting, formatting figures), these are considered minor revisions. ■■Publish after major revisions. The article is potentially worth publishing, but there are significant issues that need to be reconsidered. For example, setting up additional (control) experiments, using a new method to analyse the data, a thorough review of the theoretical framework (addition of important theories), and gathering new information (in an archive) to substantiate the argumentation. ■■Reject. The research is not interesting, it is not innovative, or it has been carried out/written up so badly that this cannot be redressed.

#Checklist for analysing a research article or paper 1 Relevance to the field (anchoring) a What is the goal of the research or paper? b To what extent has this goal been achieved? c What does the paper or research article add to knowledge in the field? d Are theories or data missing? To what extent is this a problem? 2 Methodology or approach a What approach has been used for the research? b Is this approach consistent with the aim of the research? c How objective or biased is this approach? d How well has the research been carried out? What are the methodological strengths and/or weaknesses? e Are the results valid and reliable? 3 Argumentation and use of evidence a Is there a clear description of the central problem, objective, or hypothesis? b What claims are made? c What evidence underlies the argument? d How valid and reliable is this evidence? e Is the argumentation clear and logical? f Are the conclusions justified? 4 Writing style and structure of the text a Is the style of the text suitable for the medium/audience? b Is the text structured clearly, so the reader can follow the writer’s line of argumentation? c Are the figures and tables displayed clearly?

#Presenting ur research:

A few things are always important, in any case, when it comes to guiding the audience through your story: ■■ Make a clear distinction between major and minor elements. What is the key theme of your story, and which details does your audience need in order to understand it? ■■ A clearly structured, coherent story. ■■ Good visual aids that represent the results visually. ■■ Good presentation skills.

TIPS ■■Find out everything about the audience that you’ll be presenting your story to, and look at how you can ensure that your presentation is relevant for them.

Ask yourself the following questions: •What kind of audience will you have (relationship with audience)? •What does the audience already know about your topic and how can you connect with this (knowledge of the audience)? •What tone or style should you adopt vis-à-vis the audience (style of address)? •What do you want the audience to take away from your presentation?

■■If you know there is going to be a round of questions, include some extra slides for after the conclusion. You can fill these extra slides with all kinds of detailed information that you didn’t have time for during the presentation. If you’re on top of your material, you’ll be able to anticipate which questions might come up. It comes over as very professional if you’re able to back up an answer to a question from the audience with an extra graph or table, for example.

■■Think about which slide will be shown on the screen as you’re answering questions at the end of your presentation. A slide with a question mark is not informative. It’s more useful for the audience if you end with a slide with the main message and possibly your contact details, so that people are able to contact you later. ■■Think beforehand about what you will do if you’re under time pressure. What could you say more succinctly or even omit altogether?

This has a number of implications for a PowerPoint presentation: ■■ Avoid distractions that take up cognitive space, such as irrelevant images, sounds, too much text/words on a slide, intense colours, distracting backgrounds, and different fonts. ■■ Small chunks of information are easier to understand and remember. This is the case for both the text on a slide and for illustrations, tables, and graphs. ■■ When you are talking to your audience, it is usually better to show a slide with a picture than a slide with a lot of text. What you should do: ■■ Ensure there is sufficient contrast between your text and the background. ■■ Ensure that all of the text is large enough (at least 20 pt). ■■ Use a sans-serif font; these are the easiest to read when enlarged. ■■ Make the text short and concise. Emphasize the most important concepts by putting them in bold or a different colour. ■■ Have the texts appear one by one on the slide, in sync with your story. This prevents the audience from ‘reading ahead’. ■■ Use arrows, circles, or other ways of showing which part of an illustration, table, or graph is important. You can also choose to fade out the rest of the image, or make a new table or graph showing only the relevant information.

A good presentation consists of a clear, substantive story, good visual aids, and effective presentation techniques.

Stand with both feet firmly on the ground.

Use your voice and hand gestures.

Make eye contact with all of your audience.

Add enough pauses/use punctuation.

Silences instead of fillers.

Think about your position relative to your audience and the screen.

Explaining figures and tables.

Keep your hands calm.

Creating a safe atmosphere

Do not take a position yourself. This limits the discussion, because it makes it trickier to give a dissenting opinion.

You can make notes on a whiteboard or blackboard, so that everyone can follow the key points.

Make sure that you give the audience enough time to respond.

Respond positively to every contribution to the discussion, even if it doesn’t cut any ice.

Ensure that your body language is open and that you rest your arms at your sides.

#Points to bear in mind when designing a poster

TIPS 1 Think about what your aim is: do you want to pitch a new plan, or do you want to get your audience interested in your research? 2 Explain what you’ve done/are going to do: focus on the problem that you’ve solved/want to solve, or the question that you’ve answered. Make it clear why it is important to solve this problem or answer this question. 3 Explain what makes your approach unique. 4 Involve your audience in the conversation by concluding with an open question. For example: how do you research…? Or, after a pitch for a method to tackle burnout among staff: how is burnout dealt with in your organization?

[blubberquark]

Are Game Blogs Uniquely Lost?

All this started with my looking for the old devlog of Storyteller. I know at some point it was linked from the blogroll on the Braid devlog. Then I tried to look at on old devlog of another game that is still available. The domain for Storyteller is still active. The devblog is gone.

I tried an old bookmark from an old PC (5 PCs ago, I think). It was a web site linked to pixel art and programming tutorials. Instead of linking to the pages directly, some links link led to a twitter threads by authors that collected their work posted on different sites. Some twitter threads are gone because the users were were suspended, or had deleted their accounts voluntarily. Others had deleted old tweets. There was no archive. I have often seen links accompanied by "Here's a thread where $AUTHOR lists all his writing on $TOPIC". I wonder if the sites are still there, and only the tweets are gone.

A lot of "games studies" around 2010 happened on blogs, not in journals. Games studies was online-first, HTML-first, with trackbacks, tags, RSS and comment sections. The work that was published in PDF form in journals and conference proceedings is still there. The blogs are gone. The comment sections are gone. Kill screen daily is gone.

I followed a link from critical-distance.com to a blog post. That blog is gone. The domain is for sale. In the Wayback Machine, I found the link. It pointed to the comment section of another blog. The other blog has removed its comment sections and excluded itself from the Wayback Machine.

I wonder if games stuff is uniquely lost. Many links to game reviews at big sites lead to "page not found", but when I search the game's name, I can find the review from back in 2004. The content is still there, the content management systems have been changed multiple times.

At least my favourite tumblr about game design has been saved in the Wayback Machine: Game Design Tips.

To make my point I could list more sites, more links, 404 but archived, or completely lost, but when I look at small sites, personal sites, blogs, or even forums, I wonder if this is just confirmation bias. There must be all this other content, all these other blogs and personal sites. I don't know about tutorials for knitting, travel blogs, stamp collecting, or recipe blogs. I usually save a print version of recipes to my Download folder.

Another big community is fan fiction. They are like modding, but for books, I think. I don't know if a lot of fan fiction is lost to bit rot and link rot either. What is on AO3 will probably endure, but a lot might have gone missing when communities fandom moved from livejournal to tumblr to twitter, or when blogs moved from Wordpress to Medium to Substack.

I have identified some risk factors:

Personal home pages made from static HTML can stay up for while if the owner meticulously catalogues and links to all their writing on other sites, and if the site covers a variety of interests and topics.

Personal blogs or content management systems are likely to lose content in a software upgrade or migration to a different host.

Writing is more likely to me lost when it's for-pay writing for a smaller for-profit outlet.

A cause for sudden "mass extinction" of content is the move between social networks, or the death of a whole platform. Links to MySpace, Google+, Diaspora, and LiveJournal give me mostly or entirely 404 pages.

In the gaming space, career changes or business closures often mean old content gets deleted. If an indie game is wildly successful, the intellectual property might ge acquired. If it flops, the domain will lapse. When development is finished, maybe the devlog is deleted. When somebody reviews games at first on Steam, then on a blog, and then for a big gaming mag, the Steam reviews might stay up, but the personal site is much more likely to get cleaned up. The same goes for blogging in general, and academia. The most stable kind of content is after hours hobbyist writing by somebody who has a stable and high-paying job outside of media, academia, or journalism.

The biggest risk factor for targeted deletion is controversy. Controversial, highly-discussed and disseminated posts are more likely to be deleted than purely informative ones, and their deletion is more likely to be noticed. If somebody starts a discussion, and then later there are hundreds of links all pointing back to the start, the deletion will hurt more and be more noticeable. The most at-risk posts are those that are supposed to be controversial within a small group, but go viral outside it, or the posts that are controversial within a small group, but then the author says something about politics that draws the attention of the Internet at large to their other writings.

The second biggest risk factor for deletion is probably usefulness combined with hosting costs. This could also be the streetlight effect at work, like in the paragraph above, but the more traffic something gets, the higher the hosting costs. Certain types of content are either hard to monetise, and cost a lot of money, or they can be monetised, so the free version is deliberately deleted.

The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to link between different sites, abandon a blogging platform or social network for the next thing, try to consolidate their writings by deleting their old stuff and setting up their own site, only to let the domain lapse. The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to mess with the HTML of their templates or try out different blogging software.

If content is spread between multiple sites, or if links link to social network posts that link to blog post with a comment that links to a reddit comment that links to a geocities page, any link could break. If content is consolidated in a forum, maybe Archive team could save all of it with some advance notice.

All this could mean that indie games/game design theory/pixel art resources are uniquely lost, and games studies/theory of games criticism/literary criticism applied to games are especially affected by link rot. The semi-professional, semi-hobbyist indie dev, the writer straddling the line between academic and reviewer, they seem the most affected. Artists who start out just doodling and posting their work, who then get hired to work on a game, their posts are deleted. GameFAQs stay online, Steam reviews stay online, but dev logs, forums and blog comment sections are lost.

Or maybe it's only confirmation bias. If I was into restoring old cars, or knitting, or collecting stamps, or any other thing I'd think that particular community is uniquely affected by link rot, and I'd have the bookmarks to prove it.

Figuring this out is important if we want to make predictions about the future of the small web, and about the viability of different efforts to get more people to contribute. We can't figure it out now, because we can't measure the ground truth of web sites that are already gone. Right now, the small web is mostly about the small web, not about stamp collecting or knitting. If we really manage to revitalise the small web, will it be like the small web of today except bigger, the web-1.0 of old, or will certain topics and communities be lost again?

[cornelis-rage-poetry]

The diary of an Underground Writer December 1, 2024

Today I bought a software program called "Atticus", this is a plug-in for my web browser, with which I can format text for e-books and printed books. It has a bit of a learning curve, but I'm managing, it's doable. There are also limitations, with which I have to learn to work, which is a bit unfortunate, but once formatted it has to follow the rules set by the publishing industry, and you can't start improvising when it comes to things like that, it is what it is. I wish I had more free options, but then it might not work properly for all e-readers.

I've also figured out, where I can buy ISBN numbers and register the copyrights. It's a bit of a costly affair, here in the Netherlands one ISBN number costs €104,95 but a bundle of 10 costs €284,95. So I guess I'll be doing the bundle then, I need one for the e-book version but also one for the printed version. And as it is now, I'm planning to self publish a collection of poems I written the past twelve years, and a short novel, which I finished a week ago. And as I want to release them both as an e-book and a printed version, the first four ISBN numbers are already taken. I'm also working on a set of short stories, but I'll safe that for later. First the poetry collection and the short novel, and see how that goes. And the copyrights, here in the Netherlands, the copyright can be registered at BOIP for €37 for a duration of five years.

I know the chances of someone stealing my work are slim, because there probably won't be that many people reading it, but you never know, and it's better to be safe now than sorry later. Nowadays you simply have to protect your work, because if not someone can copy-past it from the internet and publish it as an e-book the same day. And once a thing like that happens, once it's out of your hands in such a way, it's very very difficult to get it back.

But anyways, I've started formatting my poetry collection, here's a screen shot.

It's not yet final, I may change the theme or the fonts or the overall layout. It's still a work a progress, but it's gonna look somewhat like this.