In this article I will lay out every way I’ve found to add watermarks to your images in an Aperture 2 workflow and will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each solution. The goal of this article is to give you a brief overview about the various ways you can add watermarks to your images so you can easily choose the best one for different needs. In short these are the possibilities:

1. The Aperture Way
1.1 MobileMe Albums
2. The External Editor Way
3. The Plug-In Way
3.1 Aperture BorderFX
3.2 Apple’s Borders & Titles Plug-In
4. Conclusion

1. The Aperture Way

Aperture has built-in support for watermarking your images on export. But you have to create a watermark image in a bitmap graphic editor like Photoshop, Pixelmator or Acorn before you can start adding watermarks. But I’ve written a detailed article about how to use this feature of Aperture back in May 2008 named HowTo: Use high-quality watermarks in your images with Aperture 2.1. In short, you have to create your watermark image first and then define it in a new export preset. In the end all images exported with this preset will have your defined watermark image on them. If you want to watermark your images the Aperture way be sure to check out my tutorial.

This way is perfect if you want to watermark a lot of images at once or if your copyright info doesn’t change often. And this works with Aperture’s Web Journal or Web Page feature if you add a watermark image to the export presets for that. Also this works with any other export plug-in in Aperture which utilizes the export presets, like the FlickrExport plug-in. You just have to create e.g. a flickr export preset, define your watermark image there and chose it inside of FlickrExport from the export preset dropdown list.

Update 10/31/2008: Another advantage is the system wide integration of this feature. E.g. you can use Aperture’s built-in watermark feature in combination with an Automator workflow. Just create your export preset with a watermark enabled in Aperture. In Automator you can drag the Export Versions action from the Photo section to your workflow and chose the export preset you’ve created.

But adding some lines of text to just one image or different text to different images can be rather complex cause you have to create lots of different watermark images and export presets.

1.1 MobileMe Albums

For whatever reason Apple decided to not use the export presets for MobileMe Albums so you can’t watermark your images published through MobileMe Albums with this built-in feature. The only way to achieve this is to add the watermark outside of Aperture and reimport this image or you use an edit plug-in for this where your watermark will be rendered on the image.

But you can still use the Web Export Presets with a watermark defined when publishing an Aperture Web Page or a Web Journal through MobilMe.

2. The External Editor Way

Because of Aperture’s workflow design you’re always free to open up your image in your favorite external editor from within Aperture and add your copyright information and more to your image. Just add your favorite image editor in the Aperture preferences under the Export tab and set the file format you want to have.

Now you can just right click or ctrl + click on every image to open the context menu and choose Edit With whereas the first entry will be your external editor set in the preferences. Aperture will automatically render your image creating a new file and opens that up. Just add a new text layer in your external editor, type in your preferred text and save the file from there. Aperture will update with the changes accordingly.

Using this method gives you the most flexibility since you can add everything to your image and come back with it in Aperture. And if you use Photoshop and choose to use psd as external editor file format you can easily add all your non-destructive layers in Photoshop an Aperture will live render those layers. Opening the psd file again from within Aperture will give you all the editable layers you created earlier.

But since Aperture always creates a psd or tiff file for that you will end up with rather large file sizes even if you just add two letters in your external editor.

3. The Plug-In Way

3.1 Aperture BorderFX

Aperture BorderFX is an export plug-in for Aperture written by Reinhard Uebel which was available long before Aperture 2. This plug-in allows you to add borders but also titles and even more to images as you export them. The plug-in is free but the author asks for donations. In short this plug-in gives you the ability to create your watermark (and also borders) inside of the Aperture environment. You set all your output preferences inside of the plug-in window so it doesn’t use the Aperture export presets.

But it has some powerful features in terms of watermarking: It can read out some IPTC fields to use the text as your copyright text, it is capable of saving presets and you can open several images at once in the plug-in window. So it works similar to Aperture’s built-in watermarking feature but gives you full control over the watermark look without leaving Aperture.

This plug-in gives you a lot of flexibility about your watermark look without firing up a graphical editor like Photoshop. Also you’re not leaving a non-destructive workflow with this plug-in since all the changes are just rendered on your exported images. With the combination of using the plug-in presets and the capability of opening several images at once with the plug-in you can have different watermarks on different images very quickly.

But you can’t see your changes made in the plug-in on the images in your library. But Reinhard stated in his blog he’s working on an edit plug-in based on the new Aperture 2.1 SDK where the changes will be rendered (destructively) in a psd file.

3.2 Apple’s Borders & Titles Plug-In

With the release of Aperture 2.1 and its Edit Plug-In architecture Apple also released some sample plug-ins which aren’t included in Aperture (just the Dodge & Burn plug-in is). But you can easily download it from Apple’s Developer Connection website without registration for free.

This is also something I’ve covered earlier in my blog with a short article:
Quick Tip: Borders & Titles Plug-In for Aperture.

The functionality of this plug-in is rather rudimentary but it’s indeed the quickest way if you just want to add some lines of text to one particular image. But adding the same text on several images can be very frustrating since you can’t open more than one image at a time inside the plug-in window. Also every time you fire up an image with this plug-in Aperture will create a psd file and after hitting save in the plug-in your changes will be rendered destructively on this psd file. So there’s no way to go back here without creating a new psd file and starting again.

4. Conclusion

So you see there are quite a few possibilities for adding watermarks in your Aperture workflow although the most comfortable solution, a brick in the adjustment panel for adding text or watermark images non-destructively isn’t there (yet?).

And, except for the export plug-ins, you will leave a non-destructive workflow since all your changes to the image are rendered in a psd or tiff file and any further adjustments in Aperture will also affect your watermark. Also there’s no way of going back with these solutions without creating a new psd file.

So to stay within a non-destructive workflow and to avoid unnecessary big file sizes you should try to use either Aperture’s built-in watermarking feature or Reinhard’s BorderFX plug-in in your workflow.

But if you want e.g. different text on just a few images you should try using the Edit plug-ins or your external editor. Also if you don’t care about big file sizes for rather minor changes you can use the Edit plug-ins for watermarking although you’ll slightly leave Aperture’s non-destructive workflow design with this. This by the way is the case with all the Edit plug-ins. But that’s another story…

And that’s it folks. I hope this article helps you finding the right method for watermarking your images in an Aperture workflow. Feel free to post in the comments about your experiences or any additions you have. Also don’t forget to spread the word about this article on your favorite social bookmarking site.

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Now just get your next coffee, sit back and enjoy this little showcase. Just click on the images to get to the icon sources. At the end of the article you’ll find links to some nice high quality coffee tutorials. And remember you will have more control over time itself if you reach your 100th cup of coffee.

The Finest Coffee Cups

Please note that these icons are the property of their respective owners and you should always consult their copyright notice first before using these icons.

Coffee Cup icons by Susumu Yoshida

A bunch of colorful cups of coffee.

CoffeeCon icon by Vegrafik

A hyperrealistic icon from Vegrafik

Coffee Cup Icon by kremalicious

In a fit of megalomania I declared my icon as incredible and included it here. Originally I’ve made the coffee cup for the donations button on kremalicious.com.

Coffee folders from Agua Icons by David Lanham

The one and only Mac OS X system replacement icon set has some coffee folders too.

Kaffe! icon from World of Aqua 3 icon set by Dave Brasgalla

Coffee in a metal cup. Sadly Dave didn’t updated his World of Aqua icon pack with bigger sizes so it’s just 128px.

Starbucks coffee icon by Rok Benedik

Coffee folders from the Maji sets by Jonas Rask

Also Jonas used coffee as the metaphor for the work folder (supposedly) and made clear he likes very big coffee cups.

Espresso icon by MacRabbit

Does this application need any introduction? Although not released yet the new web-coding application from MacRabbit drew a lot of attention. The icon is one of the reasons for that.

Coffee folders from the Pry system sets by Jonas Rask

Another folder-combined-with-coffee icon by Jonas.

Coffee icons from Office Space icon set by VisualPharm

A glass coffee cup which is wildly used on the web. Created for Windows so the icons are just 256px in size.

The Coffee Shop icon set by Alejandro Lopez & Sergio Ruiz

An icon set made in collaboration between Alejandro Lopez & Sergio Ruiz with icons related to a coffee shop.

Espresso icon by Iiro Jäppinen

Coffee Wallpaper by Michael Flarup

Not an icon but the coffee cup drawn in this wallpaper from Michael Flarup would make a good one. The detail of the cup is stunning.

Bean icon by Laurent Baumann

Bean is a free word processor for Mac OS X and Laurent Baumann included a nice coffee cup in the application icon for it.

Have A Break icons by mat-u

Nice shiny coffee cups with a lot of detail in the reflections. Sadly just in 128px size maximum. Maybe you can persuade mat-u to update this icon with bigger sizes.

Java Application icons by Apple

Apple uses a nice coffee cup in their Java applications which can be found in the Utilities folder. Thanks to David for pointing this out.

Caffeine icon by Trevor Kay

Trevor Kay made the new icon for Caffeine. This application prevents your Mac from automatically going to sleep. Trevor also made some additional icons for Caffeine although the coffee cup looks pretty much the same as the one from Apple’s Java application icons.

Coffee and Tea icons by Kate England

Some comic style icons which deviate from the realism of all the other coffee icons. Sadly just available in 128px size.

Moon Coffee icon from Space: 1999 icon set by Dave Brasgalla

Dave made an icon set for the Iconfactory inspired by the classic sci-fi television series of the 70’s and included a Moon Coffee cup. Also just in 128px size.

Coffee Tutorials

Finally here’re some nice high quality tutorials for you to help you build your own coffee cup.

• Using Gradients to Make Light and Shadow - and a Coffee Cup!
  Collis from psdtuts made a nice tutorial with a similar perspective as found in my Coffee Cup Icon.
• Design A Coffee Mug Icon
  Photoshop tutorial by Andrew Houle for creating a coffee cup icon.
• Creating a Coffee Cup with Inkscape
  Peter Anglea with a nice vector tutorial using the open source vector app Inkscape.
• Amazing Photoshop Light Effect In 10 Steps
  Not an icon tutorial but Fabio Sasso achieves some awesome light effects combined with the coffee cup from the Office Space icon set.

Did you made or found another incredible coffee icon I’ve not mentioned here? Feel free to post them in the comments. Also don’t forget to spread the word about this article on digg, StumbleUpon or in any other form you like.

Article History

10/24/2008 - Update 1: added Apple’s Java application icons and included some tutorials.

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Google Chrome has a different UI-Design compared to other browsers especially regarding tabs. Google Chrome tabs will be on top of the address bar so every tab has its own address bar. Beside that every tab will run its own process to improve stability.

Using WebKit as its rendering engine, Google Chrome will have all the cool WebKit stuff included like CSS Gradients, CSS Masks and the CSS3 property text-shadow, which I’ve covered earlier in detail.

Google Chrome will be optimized for use with web applications and, instead of using WebKit’s new core JavaScript engine Squirrelfish, Google decided to use a new, multi-core processor optimized JavaScript virtual machine developed by the V8-team in Denmark.

More informations on the features leaked can be found in the Google Blogoscoped article or in the corresponding scanned comic.

Update: Google’s official blog was updated with informations about the new browser project. They say the first beta of Google Chrome will be released tomorrow just for Windows while versions for Mac OS X and Linux will follow soon.

Update 2: Google Chrome can now be downloaded for Windows from google.com/chrome. Google also posted a feature page for Chrome.

Update 3: Google Chrome seems to have problems with some of my transparent PNGs:

Update 4: There are some nice articles about various aspects of Chrome available in the web:

• Matt Cutts tries to prevent paranoia and explains when Google Chrome talk home.
• Gina from lifehacker.com dissects Google Chrome’s Full List of Special about: Pages.
• Google explains their priorities regarding different Platforms.
• The Chromium Developer Documentation is available too.
• And it seems Google cut out some features of WebKit like text-shadow.

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Be sure to subscribe to my RSS- or Atom-Feed so you won’t miss the next DeliciousLinks.

Photography

• Pound for pound & click for click: Article by Micah Walter answering what differs an Aperture Edit plug-in from the external editor
• Using Linux for Photography, where we stand: Deep analysis about the current state of photographic workflows with Linux
• 15 Spectacular Lightning Images
• Nikon D90 Reviews and Resources: The Canon folks had their 50D announced this week and the Nikon folks get the new Nikon D90 with movie capturing. Here’re some reviews and resources about it
• Obvious Street Photography TipsObvious, but nice to have them in this list by Susheel Chandradhas

Design

• Deafness and the User Experience: A List Apart article analyzing how to improve the user experience for deaf users
• MooTools Basic Tips for Web Designer (Lesson 1)
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• Most Desired WordPress Hacks: 11 Common Requests and Fixes
• WordPress Coda Clips Collection: Coda was recently updated with improved Clips functionality. Here’s a handy Coda Clips file with all Wordpress functions
• Campaigns to kill the web browser that just won’t die: Internet Explorer 6

If you enjoyed this little linklist be sure to subscribe to my RSS- or Atom-Feed so you won’t miss the next one.

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Edit for Aperture 1.35
The 12 module Aperture edit plug-in comes with improved interface and speed.

Aperture Assistant 1.0.62
Aperture Assistant now works with Aperture 2.1.1 and adds numerous optimizations and bugfixes. The thumbnails are now exported up 50-100% faster and the whole Aperture Assistant now launches twice as fast.

Tiffen Dfx Digital Filter Software 2.0
This version features exclusive multiple masking and layering capabilities without having to exit the plug-in, plus more than 1,000 new filters and effects and local language menu. The exclusive EZ Mask feature, one of seven mask types, allows users to easily create precise multiple masks with just a few quick strokes.

Hydra + Aperture PlugIn 1.6.1
The Aperture plug-in now checks for image size, IPTC tags and EXIF fields. The stand-alone version now supports choosing of 8/32-bit depth for tiff files. Also numerous fixes and improvements and it has now a german localisation.

Jade Aperture Plug-in 1.0.2
Fixes some minor bugs and has an improved interface with two save buttons: “Save Current” and “Save All & Close”

PTGui 8.0b8
Beta 8 of this panoramic photo stitching software fixes a crash when generating control points for circular fisheye images.

CoolIris 1.8 beta
Formerly known as PicLens CoolIris finally enables Safari 3.1 users to enjoy PicLens/CoolIris enabled websites.

SilverFast HDR STUDIO 6.6.r2
A minor update to SilverFasts software for High-Dynamic-Range images

SilverFast SE Plus 6.6r2
SilverFasts scanning application is now able to do batch scanning

PTLens 1.2
The lens distortion correction application was updated to 1.2 without any info on the changes.

RAW Developer 1.8
This major update adds support for numerous new cameras and introduces two new sliders for highlight recovery and shadow fine tuning.

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The EOS 50D comes with an CMOS APS-C sized sensor (crop factor 1.6) with 15.1 megapixels. Being Canons first DSLR with the new DIGIC 4 image processor the EOS 50D can burst 6.3 shots per second with improved image quality.

The “EOS Integrated Cleaning Systems” gets a new fluorine layer and now works in three steps to clean the sensor. With 35 metering zones and 9 cross type Autofocus zones the Autofocus specifications are the same as found in the EOS 40D.

The basic ISO range goes from 100 - 3200 while those values can be “boosted” to ISO 6400 and 12800. The integrated noise reduction can be adjusted in four grades. The LCD display is now 3 inches big with 920,000 pixels (VGA) with a Live View Mode.

The EOS 50D is prized at US$1399 (1299€) for just the body and it will be available as a kit with the EF 28-135 3.5-5.6 IS USM for US$1599.

If you’re interested in all the details and specifications have a look at Bob Atkins article about the official announcement of the EOS 50D.

Along with the EOS 50D Canon announced the EF-S 18-200 3.5-5.6 IS as a new lens. The lens is intended for use with an APS-C sized sensor and insists of 16 elements (UD-glass and aspherical lenses) arranged in 12 groups. As the name says the EF-S 18-200 3.5-5.6 IS comes with an image stabilizer but somehow misses an USM ring motor which is quite strange for a lens of a prize of US$699 (599€).

All the specifications for this new lens are available in an article by Bob Atkins too.

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Architect and Façade to the rescue: SlightlyPretentious announced its “Theming made easy”-application Architect is coming as a public beta next sunday (is it 08/31 or 09/07?) on Wednesday, September 3rd. Icon Designer Laurent Baumann already posted a new sweet application icon for this app a while ago and we can expect a nice and good looking solution for theming and customization in Leopard. Head over to the Screencast and see Architect and its UI in action.

While Architect will help you customizing Leopards UI and building themes out of your modifications, Façade (Laurent’s icon of it) will help you switch (and manage?) the themes. But currently there’s no word on the SlightlyPretentious website about this application.

Slightly Pretentious made Architect available as a public beta while claiming Façade will be coming in october. But Façade already has its own nice website.

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As always these desktop icons are free for you personal and non-commercial use. All other usage of this copyrighted material require my written permission.

The whole package includes 7 icons either packed in a nice tagged iContainer for use with Candybar or in Mac + Win + Linux compatible formats. If you have such an Icy Box case grab the icons from my Goodies page. Have fun!

Update: I’ve corrected the wrong perspective of the text and added 4 more icons to the set including 2 different versions for a Time Machine volume and 2 blank versions without text.

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So in this quick tutorial I will show you how to create an encrypted Aperture Vault by using Sparse Bundle Disk Images and by utilizing tools built into Mac OS X. All this can be done in two simple steps.

1. Create an encrypted disk image

First you have to create the encrypted disk image where the Aperture Vault will reside. So fire up Disk Utility from the Utilities folder inside your Applications folder or use Spotlight to open it.

Be sure there is no device or volume selected in the sidebar and click on the New Image icon in the toolbar. Set a file name of the disk image and the Volume Name (the name of the mounted disk image on your desktop). Change all the settings as seen in the following screenshot. Be sure to select sparse bundle disk image as the Image Format before changing the volume size. This way you can set a bigger volume size than your physical disk space available on your hard drive. After creation the disk image won’t be as big as you have set it with volume size. It will grow as you write files to it. For maximum security (but slower performance) select 256-bit AES encryption in the Encryption drop down menu:

Finally set the destination where you want to have the disk image created. To make it all mobile choose your mobile hard drive as destination. After clicking Create you will be asked to provide a password for encrypting the disk image. Be sure to click on the little key icon to use Mac OS X built in password generator. Generate a new extra long password. Type in your new password manually in the Verify field and be sure to check “Remember password in my keychain”. This is the only time you have to provide the password since it will be saved in your keychain after clicking OK.

Now your newly created sparse bundle disk image ahould be mounted on your desktop which is perfectly fine for the next step.

2. Create the Aperture Vault

Now go to Aperture, choose the Projects tab and click on the little gear wheel at the bottom of the sidebar and choose “Add Vault” from the opened menu.

In the opened dialogue select your mounted disk image under the devices section in your sidebar, give it a name and click Add.

The new Vault will be added to your Vault list and is now to ready to be updated.

Just click the little iSync-style arrow beside your Vault and the Vault be written to your encrypted disk image. When finished you can eject the disk image. It can now be mounted again just with the correct password which is stored in your keychain so won’t even recognize the encryption. Of course, when you try to mount this disk image on another mac you have to type in the password or import the entry from your keychain.

3. Conclusion

You see it’s pretty easy to use secure file encryption just for particular uses on a Mac. The disk image method also provides you with the ability to move the disk image file to another volume and mounting it from the new place without adding or changing the Aperture Vault inside Aperture.

Finally you can have more uses for encrypted disk images. As I’ve said in the introduction, my referenced Master images reside on my mobile hard drive too. And they are encrypted inside a sparse bundle disk image as well. So you get the idea that you can do a lot more with these encrypted disk images to quickly secure sensible data.

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Maperture 1.0.1
New plug-in for Aperture which lets you geotag your photos inside Aperture.

VueScan 8.4.82
Adds support for more scanners and improves infrared cleaning.

Aperture to Picasa Web Albums 1.4.2
This update adds support for exporting geotags, viewing album contents by double-clicking on an album cover and adds stability enhancements.

GalleryExport for Aperture 1.0.7b / GalleryExport for iPhoto 1.0.8b
Both new beta versions include stability and performance enhancements.

iMedia Browser 1.1.1
“Version 1.1.1 adds support for iPhoto events, multiple Aperture libraries, and the ability to manage custom folders in the source list. The application is now available in English, Danish, French, German, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese. There are also dozens of performance improvements and bugfixes in the release.”

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Be sure to subscribe to my RSS- or Atom-Feed so you won’t miss the next DeliciousLinks.

Photography

• Black & White Cheatsheet For Photoshop: If you still use Photoshop for black and white conversion this is a handy cheat sheet for you
• Beijing Olympics Stadium: about 30 min. before Men’s 100m Final: Very cool interactive Flash panorama showing the press tribune before Men’s 100m final. Rob Galbraith has more facts about the panorama
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Design

• Blog layouts before they were big: A nice post from Marco about the old designs of some well known blogs
• 7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code: 7 very nice principles to think about
• Learn How To Develop For The iPhone: Everything you need to know to get started with web coding for the iPhone
• iPhone Safari Flick Navigation By Example: Nice example code so your users can flick through your site

Miscellaneous

• 30+ Ways to Create an Incredible Client Experience: Amazing post on Freelance Switch with tips send in by their users

If you enjoyed this little linklist be sure to subscribe to my RSS- or Atom-Feed so you won’t miss the next one.

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A while ago I’ve made a custom style for the blog on kremalicious.com and would like to share this style with you. The style is based on the colors used on kremalicious.com with a black background and light grey text on top of it. The links have the same blueish hover style as on my website:

Here’s how to apply the style for your blog preview in MarsEdit:

In MarsEdit main window right-click (or ctrl + click) in the sidebar on the blog where you want to have my style applied to and choose Edit Preview Template. The Preview Template editor should open where you can customize the style of the preview with the css instructions in the header.

Just copy and paste the following HTML and CSS into your Preview Template editor. If something goes wrong with the source formatting, I’ve also provided a txt file with the code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>#weblogName#: #title#</title>
<style>
body {margin: 0; background-color: #000;}

<div id="meta">
<b>url</b> : <a href="#url#">#url#</a><br />
<b>tags</b> : #tags#
</div>
<div id="credit">
The Kremalicious MarsEdit Style<br />
<a href="http://www.kremalicious.com">www.kremalicious.com</a>
</div>
</div> <-- end content -->
</body>
</html>

Now click on Save Changes in the lower right corner of the window and there you have it.

Of course you are free to alter the style provided by me to fit your needs. If you have any additions to my provided code feel free to post them in the comments.

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The results are just as amazing as they are with the Photoshop plug-in. But the Aperture plug-in uses a streamlined interface which differs from the photoshop version. But the functionality is the same.

You can download a trial version of Noise Ninja for Aperture (images are watermarked with a grid pattern when you save them) and give it a try. The Noise Ninja plug-in for Aperture is available as a part of the Pro Bundle (US$ 79.95) which includes the Photoshop and the Aperture plug-in. If you have an existing Pro Bundle license you can upgrade it for US$ 20 to include the Aperture plug-in license.

Interested in more Aperture plug-ins? Just have a look at my article First overview: Aperture 2.1 adjustment plugins have arrived to get an overview about what’s available at the moment or browse my blog by the Aperture plug-in tag. Additionally you can have a look at the brand new Apple website for all the Aperture plug-ins and ressources.

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As you may know there’s a huge Internet censorship going on in China. Contrary to promises made by chinese authorities and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) this Internet censorship is active during the Olympic Games even in the international media centre. And the IOC shares the current ideas of censorship in China.

And as in every political system with totalitarian elements there’s a good chance you will meet some angry lackeys if you’re going to report about topics the chinese authorities don’t want you to report. But more important they will threat your sources if their identity gets revealed. So if you want to report about the water shortage in the villages around Beijing, the massive air pollution in Beijing or about all the forced resettlements going on in China you should consider some security precautions to protect you and your sources.Especially there’s two things to do here: First you have to use technologies to circumvent firewalls. Second is to secure your connections and your communication to protect you and your sources.

And remember that you have to protect your Computer before arriving in China because websites like the Tor project are blocked in China.

Circumvent China’s great firewall and secure your connections

The easiest way to get around the firewall is to install Tor, Psiphon or Proxify to fog your IP address and your location. A better way would be using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection or an SSL tunnel. This way all of your internet connections are secure and encrypted. If you’re working for a bigger news agency there’s a good chance they have its own VPN and you can connect securely to that as well. Just ask your IT department for how to achieve this.

Secure your Communication

After you have secured your connection data you have to make sure your communication is secure as well to protect you and your sources.

E-Mail

If you use mails be sure to encrypt everything, your logins with SSL/TLS and the mails itself either with GPG/PGP or certificates.

Skype

Just don’t download Skype while being in China! If you want to use Skype be sure to download it outside of China. But remember that it’s not possible to secure your Skype chats and calls because they can’t be encrypted.

Chat

Here you should use encryption as well. Members of .Mac/MobileMe can have encrypted chats with iChat. For all the others there’s Off-The-Record Messaging (OTR) which can be used with every chat protocol out there.

Phone/Mobile

Reporters Without Borders advise to use different SIM cards especially if you’re going to contact “sensitive” people.

Secure your Computer and physical data

Even without any data or other communication going on with your computer there are some critical things to remember in terms of security.

Especially encrypting sensible data on your computer is always a good thing to do. On the Mac you can just activate FileVault. On Windows Vista you can activate Bitlocker and on Linux you can use TrueCrypt (which can be used on Mac and Windows too). This way sensible data (your contact lists!) are encrypted and can only be recovered with the appropriate password.

Another good hint is to use an EFI or BIOS password which has to be entered when you start your computer. But this alone won’t protect you that much because your hard drive can easily be removed and accessed. But if the hard drive is encrypted too you have relatively great security against chinese authorities.

If you want to know more about how to protect you and your sources be sure to check out these great resources:

Advice for foreign journalists covering human rights situation during Beijing Games (Reporters Without Borders)

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents (Reporters Without Borders)

Reporters’ Guide to China (Foreign Correspondents Club of China)

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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
Lightroom is now a native 64-bit app on Mac and Windows. John Nack has some highlights from this update and Tom Hogarty has every new feature and improvement.

Adobe Camera RAW 4.5
Along with Lightroom 2 a new version of Camera RAW was released which providesthe same rendering obtained in Lightroom 2.

Apple iPhoto 7.1.4
“Also addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues”. Beside that this update contains new holiday greeting card and postcard themes for use with Apple print products

Photoshop Automator Actions v3.7
Ben Long updated his Photoshop actions for Automator compatible with Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3

Pixelmator 1.2.2
New features include a live gradient tools and you can draw a straight or 45° line with shift. Beside that many improvements and bug corrections are included. The release notes with all new features and improvements are available here.

GalleryExport for iPhoto and Aperture 1.0.7b
Both updates for Aperture and iPhoto just include bug fixes.

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Be sure to subscribe to my RSS- or Atom-Feed so you won’t miss the next DeliciousLinks.

Photography

• Aperture Screencast 1: Designing a Postcard with Custom Layouts: Derrick Story shares some parts from Lynda’s Aperture 2 Essential Training which he recordered
• Aperture Screencast 2: Spot Removal with the Retouch Tool
• Aperture Screencast 3: Working with the Basic Levels Adjustments
• Aperture Screencast 4: Introduction to Lift and Stamp
• Night photography tips (part 1): Nice quick tips for shooting at night

Design

• Ultimate multi-column liquid layouts: Really a kick ass starting point for creating a liquid layout. You can watch the examples here.
• Carousel.us: A JavaScript 3D carousel. Can be used either with prototype.js and scriptaculous.js or mootools.js
• CSS Hackz Series: Targeting and Filtering Internet Explorer 7: Perishable Press really covered everything for targeting IE 7
• How to Generate Perfect WordPress Title Tags: Another amazing article from Perishable which covers everything about Wordpress title tags

Miscellaneous

• Linux: the fallacy of choice: This article’s a bit polemic but it has some good points about the current state of Linux
• 16×16-px Game In Your Address Bar: “Defender Of The Favicon”: Just amazing! (Won’t work with Safari though)

If you enjoyed this little linklist be sure to subscribe to my RSS- or Atom-Feed so you won’t miss the next one.

Related Posts

• Delicious Links for the week 34&35/2008
• Delicious Links for the week 32&33/2008
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• 4 More Icons: Niépce’s Camera Obscura v1.1

I’ve searched for a simple way of disabling those feeds, plugins etc. stuff the Wordpress Dashboard tries to fill but it seems you can’t disable these from the backend. But there’s a quick way for doing this which involves editing your /wp-admin/index-extra.php and uncomment some lines there. This will leave your Dashboard intact while it stops Wordpress from connecting to various sources to screw your blog up when you just want to quickly write something.
So open your /wp-admin/index-extra.php file. It should look like this:

<?php
require_once('admin.php');
require( 'includes/dashboard.php' );
require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
@header('Content-Type: ' . get_option('html_type') . '; charset=' . get_option('blog_charset'));
switch ( $_GET['jax'] ) {
case 'incominglinks' :
wp_dashboard_incoming_links_output();
break;
case 'devnews' :
wp_dashboard_rss_output( 'dashboard_primary' );
break;
case 'planetnews' :
wp_dashboard_secondary_output();
break;
case 'plugins' :
wp_dashboard_plugins_output();
break;
}
?>

Now just uncomment the lines so it looks like this (every line with two leading // is uncommented and therefore inactive):

<?php
require_once('admin.php');
require( 'includes/dashboard.php' );
// require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
@header('Content-Type: ' . get_option('html_type') . '; charset=' . get_option('blog_charset'));
// switch ( $_GET['jax'] ) {
//
// case 'incominglinks' :
// wp_dashboard_incoming_links_output();
// break;
//
// case 'devnews' :
// wp_dashboard_rss_output( 'dashboard_primary' );
// break;
//
// case 'planetnews' :
// wp_dashboard_secondary_output();
// break;
//
// case 'plugins' :
// wp_dashboard_plugins_output();
// break;
//
// }
?>

And that’s it. Save the file on your server, log in to your Wordpress backend and you should see your Dashboard with everything intact. It just won’t search for incoming links and all those other RSS sources anymore.

Remember that every update of Wordpress will overwrite this file.

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You can get a 15-day trial from Nik’s website. It can be purchased through Nik’s online store for US$199.95.

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How does it work?

When the website detects an iPhone or iPod Touch it will automatically switch to another freshly created theme which is absolutely seamless to the user. This detection is done by the wonderful slim iPhone Wordpress plug-in from ContentRobot which was slightly modified by me.

The theme itself makes heavy use of the -webkit-border-radius css option to display all the round corners. That’s why there are just four images at work in the whole theme which makes it load in no time even on EDGE connections. And because just the theme is switching all the content remain the same so you don’t have just a shortened mobile version of this website.

Beside that I’ve used some special html and css properties which are essential for the iPhone:

The Viewport

While Safari on iPhone will display all websites just fine it can happen that the initial viewport is too big so the text is too small to read. By setting a viewport meta tag you can exactly define the viewable dimensions of your website. Apple has some nice examples for understanding the importance of setting the Viewport in iPhone optimized websites.

The viewport can be larger or smaller than the visible area but I wanted my content to exactly fit the width of the iPhone and the goal was to make the text legible on first load. So here’s what I use for kremalicious{iPhone}:

<meta name="Viewport" content="maximum-scale=1.6,width=device-width" >

This code will let the user scale the content up to 1.6 times to the default view and the default width of the content is set to the width of the (iPhone) device.

Tap Color

There’s neither an active nor a hover state for links on the iPhone which makes sense on a touch interface although it would be much easier to just use a:active for the tap highlighting. Safari on the iPhone uses a special webkit property for that:

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(234,234,234,0.5);

Home Screen Icon

I’ve used a 147×147px icon so the icon looks crisp and sharp on the iPhone screen (because it’s a 160dpi screen). You really should use a bigger size than Apple’s recommendation in their iPhone HIG. You have to provide a png icon without rounded corners and without the highlight shine since the iPhone will render that automatically on the icon. The icon has to be named apple-touch-icon.png and gets automatically detected when put in the root of your website. Additionally you can tell the iPhone the place where the icon is with this link tag in your head section:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/i/apple-touch-icon.png" />

And finally many thanks to cschock for continuously testing my code voodoo soup even at late hours.

Resources for you to do the same and even more

• iWPhone by ContentRobot: The plug-in I use for kremalicious{iPhone}. It detects an iPhone or iPod Touch and switches to another simple theme. You can easily adjust the plugin to point it to your own theme.
• WPTouch - Wordpress iPhonified: If you don’t want to digg into html, css and iPhone specific properties this plug-in will help you. Once activated it automatically switches to an iPhone like theme with lots of eyecandy. You can customize some colors and a lot of different icons all from the Wordpress admin panel
• Tutorial: Building a website for the iPhone: Amazing tutorial for changing content based on the orientation of the iPhone or iPod Touch. Just browse their website with your iPhone or iPod Touch to see it in action.
• iPhone Native Looking Skin: Sort of a template based on css and javascript which simulates the iPhone UI. (Final look)
• Touching and Gesturing on the iPhone: Build your websites with some touch gesture features! Here’s the javascript code for it.

THE Apple resources for iPhone & Web Content

• Safari Web Content Guide for iPhone
• iPhone Human Interface Guidelines for Web Applications
• iPhone Human Interface Guidelines (free developer account required)

_

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