The majority of people know about Google Docs. But a lot of them don’t know that the forms function exist and what a powerfull tool this can be!

The forms tool allows people to, as te word says, create forms. These forms are more or less like a questionaire people can fill out. You can use drop down lists, checkboxes etcetera, etcetara. This is all fairly common in use and most people will understand the way the forms functionally works.

The nicest option however is to see all the results in a single spreadsheet. People fill out the questions and it’s automaticcaly updated in the spreadsheet. This way you’ll have a clear overview of the answers people gave. The only thing you don’t want to forget is to always set a Name field for viewers to put in their names. If you don’t, you won’t even get the slightest idea of who filled out the form. Below you’ll find a short how to list of this nice function.

When you are into this kind off stuff you probably hearing more and more about Cloud Computing. Unfortunately there are a lot of different explanations for this term. I like to use the following description if people ask me what it is.

Cloud Computing is a system module for use of applications with the use of the internet. The cloud is a metafor for the internet. Web 2.0 is a good example when we talk about cloud computing.

Cloud Computing is the new ASP, Software as a service! No need to install any application on your pc, no you just use the net to save, edit and create your documents for example.

A nice example to Cloud Computing is Google! I personally are really into the Google Cloud at the moment. I use Gmail as Outlook replacement and Google Docs as a replacement for Office. I still have Office installed but more and more use Docs to get the job done. Of course Office has far more functions then Docs, but Google gets the job done! Most people don’t use the great amount of options Office gives you, so Google Docs is a nice alternative for those.

I’m using InDesign fairly often to design newsletters for example. For work I had to send a PDF fail of a freshly made newsletter. However the PDF showed some strange artifacts around certain graphics. I printed it out and saw that the artifacts didn’t show up on the printed version.  I decided to send the document anyway and asked the printer for some tips. And what a nice tip they gave me! In my 4 years of working with the program I never used this tool!

You are probably wondering, what is he talking about. Well, I’m talking about the InDesign Ink Manager! It’s a really neat little tool that converts all spot colors into full color equivalents. So if you design full color documents keep in mind to convert every color into full color mode! Below you’ll find an example of the Ink Manager with the right settings for a full color print.

Friday at work I was looking for an easy way to cut out an object in Photoshop. I was working on a newsletter and needed a quick way! Totally unexpected I ran in this tutorial. I immediately send it to my home mail address. It’s a very good and well explained tutorial and, even more important, you don’t need any 3D plug-ins for Photoshop. I just finished trying out the tutorial and I can tell you guys it will take a bit longer then expected. However the results will be astonishing.

This evening I was browsing the web (yep again) and found this great tutorial. It gave me a whole new meaning of the usage of Illustrator. I normally use it to design logo’s in vector after I created them in Photoshop (hm, maybe I should turn that procedure upside down).

It gave me a very arty impression.  I have the same type of artwork hanging on the wall only mine is really painted by an painter (logical isn’t it?). Of course I tried it out myself but found out it’s costing me way to much time to make this in a few minutes so this is also going into a state of delay.

The last few months I keep hearing about Mash Ups and what they can do. In short it’s just a page which uses technology from other web services and sort of combines them on one. Take Google Maps for example. Use this tool to show visitors where they can find your products or to show them news at the location it happened. This would be a nice mash up in my opinion.

Wikipedia shows a very nice explanation and links to up to date documentation. I Quote:

In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. The term Mashupimplies easy, fast integration, frequently done by access to open APIs and data sources to produce results data owners had no idea could be produced. An example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source.

Of course it goes a lot further then I stated above.  However for that you’ll need a lot of programming experience. And it will be hard to make a professional mash up. I know this is new to the web, but developing goes quickly and new mash ups are launching as we speak.