since 2000
| February | Little |
|---|---|
| March | Some |
| April | Some |
Talespinner spins with the following fine products and services
| antivirus | Avira AntiVir - like the others but less difficult to renew, free version available for extra PCs & reassuringly European |
|---|---|
| blog engine | Tumblr is quickest & easiest to work with. The popular WordPress has more features but it’s a real fiddle to set them up, and you’re stuck with quite a lot of their branding. But actually I can probably hand-roll a blog as easily as set up an engine |
| books | Book Depository - book specialists with the best prices on many books, free delivery worldwide and minimal crass-selling (British too). Play.com as first fallback, Amazon as second |
| browsers | Firefox the mighty for development, repetitive tasks & heavy lifting. Chrome the nimble for quick one-offs. Plus the rest for testing, including all 3 of the 4 pandemic versions of Internet Explorer (along with the 2 spare computers that that entails), namely IE7-IE9. (Now that Microsoft itself has turned against IE6 I have consigned it to the bin with a huge sigh of relief.) |
| carbon offset | As Environmental Transport Association puts it, “Until there is a better way, there is the ETA”. Obviously reduction comes before offsetting, but there’s no link for that... |
| The Bat! email client for the main load - lets you keep all your mail accounts open at the same time, a surprisingly rare feature. GMail for transient stuff I rarely want to download. Firetrust MailWasher Pro for ace spam filtering where you can see it (no more false positives); option of bouncing spams right back at the bar stewards who send them | |
| energy | Good Energy - electricity from 100% renewable sources & gas that supports the growth of renewable heat generation |
| FTP | FileZilla, a lovely little free product that does a great job |
| icon creation | Axialis IconWorkshop, another case of do little & do it well |
| image processing | Corel Paint Shop Pro - near-Photoshop features for a less outrageous price... once you learn to avoid a couple of infuriating bugs (and yes, two is two too many for version 12 of anything). Paint.NET is a pretty good free alternative |
| IP lookup | WEBNet77 provides a brilliant, free geo-location database that enables you to identify the country of origin of incoming links |
| ISP | Who cares? Internet (& voice by landline) are commodities now... |
| music | Spotify is my wondrous source of copious free (& legal) music to work to |
| notation | Sadly I’ve only once composed a musical sting for a client and I don’t think they used it anyway. If the time comes again, Sibelius is the unbeatable but ridiculously expensive king. The cheaper Finale Allegro exhibits flashes of adequacy |
| PDF reader | Foxit Reader is more polished than Adobe Reader, easier to keep up to date and free though you still need Adobe Reader for those dreadful interactive PDFs that HMRC and Companies House seem addicted to |
| video production | I don’t do much of this, but my first port of call would always be the charming, creative and talented folks at Two Cats Can |
| web development | Adobe Dreamweaver is least-worst, but disappointingly flaky for a mature product. Notepad++ is good for quick tasks (and free) |
| web fonts | Font Squirrel provides a thoroughly well thought-out free service that lets you see what you’re getting and packages up your chosen fonts neatly for immediate use. Typekit is more of a palaver to use but the quality of the typefaces tends to be a demi-snadge higher |
| web hosting | LiquidSix offers a flexible, friendly service at reasonable prices |
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e mark@talespinner.co.uk //
m 07711 571719 //
mark.iliff