I'm Playing Again, This Time With OpenOffice.org

I've been playing, yet again. This time it's with OpenOffice.org and I have to tell you I'm loving it.

Just writing that my computer shook. My Microsoft Publisher program doesn't like that comment one bit. It's getting nervous thinking I'm about to abandon ship.

Hold on to your hats "Publisher" I'm just playing. You know I just LOVE to play and recommend things I find to my readers.

I think you all know how much I LOVE Microsoft Publisher as it has been able to handle everything I have needed over the years for my business, websites, and blogs.

However, not everyone has Publisher and since I started using Publisher back in the stone ages, well - a LOT of wonderful programs have come along that are very helpful to small business artists and crafters on the web. Including me. Well, one such program, that I have been playing with lately is OpenOffice.org.

According to OpenOffice.org: OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Unlike GoogleDocs.com, which I told you about in a previous post, you have to download the OpenOffice.org software to utilize it. So, I downloaded it and started to play. And, I kept playing, and playing and playing.

This program can create text documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Drawings, Databases, Formula's, and more. The drawing program saves your file with an OpenOffice.org extension (.ODG) so if you want it to be saved as a .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc. you have to export it. All of the programs have a separate export to .PDF link for creating .PDF documents.

I found EVERYTHING to be easy to understand and use. Within a few minutes I was able to utilize just about every program - almost as if I was an old hand at it.

If you want to create e-patterns, e-tutorials, e-articles, e-projects, e-printables, graphics, slideshows, etc. or just have some fun with your pictures and are looking to purchase software do yourself a favor and download the free OpenOffice.org suite first. You will not be disappointed.

I'm sorry Microsoft Publisher, but this is a GREAT suite of programs and I do like the drawing program. Just like Publisher it works with my Bamboo drawing pad and within a few seconds I was creating all sorts of shapes, sizes, circles, curves, etc. And, when I went to rotate them, well, the capabilities here are simply AMAZING. I may never stop playing with it.

With that statement my computer literally started sputtering. If I didn't know better I would think Publisher was "crying."

Not to worry Publisher I still LOVE, LOVE, LOVE you and while the capabilities of the OpenOffice.org drawing program are good it still can't replace you. I can do everything I need to do to create my e-patterns and e-books in one Publisher file. Creating e-patterns and e-books with OpenOffice.org would require using both the text document program and the drawing program. Plus, the drawing program doesn't seem to have the capability for a two-page spread, which Publisher does, and which is required for creating an e-pattern booklet cover.

With that statement I think my Publisher program just breathed a sigh of relief.

However, because I love to play I may create a few new things in OpenOffice.org just to get the real lay of the land.

Don't worry, Publisher, just because OpenOffice.org is the new kid on Linda's block it doesn't mean this "old gal" is going to give up her #1 best software program of all time. We've been through thick and thin together and I don't see any need to change that.

With that statement my Publisher program started crying - tears of joy!



Posted by Linda Walsh Originals- "Doll Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals E-Patterns - "Instant Download E-Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals Dolls - "Handmade Dolls & Crafts for Grown-up Girls!"

GoogleDocs For Creating and Displaying .PDF's

I've been playing again testing a few different avenues for small business crafters who have .PDF free e-patterns, e-tutorials, e-projects, and e-articles that they have created and want to display on their websites or blogs. I recently posted about Scribd.com which is a document hosting website in a Linda's Blog post entitled "I Decided To Try Scribd For Some Of My Free E-Books and E-Patterns." Today I experimented with GoogleDocs.com which is not only a document hosting website, but a document creations website.

Now you might be thinking that all hosting document hosting websites are the same.  Au contraire!

Not only can you upload .PDF's to GoogleDocs.com to obtain a linkable URL, but you can CREATE a document right on their website using a suite of office type programs. Their programs are free to use and do not require you to download anything to your computer and include documents creation, presentations, spreadsheets, forms, drawings, and tables. Each of these programs automatically store the items you are creating in your Google account. So, they are available to you everywhere.

If you've been a reader of my Linda's Blog for awhile you know that I LOVE Microsoft Publisher which is part of Microsoft Office. For me, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Publisher are still the best for me to use for my purposes, but GoogleDocs.com is a great way to get started if you want to create .PDF e-patterns, e-tutorials, e-projects, and e-articles and don't have Microsoft Office.

Yesterday I told you that I am very fortunate in that I have all of my free e-patterns and e-books on my own Linda Walsh Originals E-Pattern website. However, some of my small business artist and crafter friends don't have websites that are capable of housing their free e-patterns, e-tutorials, e-projects, etc. They want to share them on their blogs so, what do they do? Well, they use one of the many document sharing websites available and either provide a link on their blog or embed the code into their sidebar or post.

As mentioned GoogleDocs.com will not only upload already created .PDF's, but will let you create your own document. In creating them you can download your document as a .PDF to your own computer or you can PUBLISH your document online. If you create your own .PDF in another program and upload it to GoogleDoc.com you can only obtain a distinct URL that you can link to and which would  display your .PDF.

However, if you create the document using GoogleDocs.com office suite you can PUBLISH it which creates an HTML version of your document that can then be embedded within your blog or website.

Since I already had created my own free e-patterns and e-books I decided to upload those and obtain distinct URL's that I could link to. If you'd like to see how my free e-patterns, e-books, and e-catalog look on GoogleDocs.com just click on the link you want below:

LW207 Hang-10 Bunny E-Pattern

LW188 Oh, My! It's So Late Santa E-Pattern

LW048 It's me Ginny E-Pattern

LW225 Marsh Me Snow E-Pattern

LW161 Punkin Ornaments Are We E-Pattern

LW236 Trio of Annies E-Pattern

HTEBFREE3 Linda's How-Do-I Series? How To Create Fast and Easy Cloth, Paper, and E-Printable Ornaments E-Book

HTBFREE2 Linda's How-Do-I Series? How To Host A Folksy Family and Friends Bridal Shower E-Book

HTEBFREE8 Lindas's How-Do-I Series? How To Make A Pinecone Wreath E-Book

HTEBFREE7 Lindas's How-Do-I Series? How To Make A Small Pinecone Tree E-Book

HTEBFREE4 Linda's How-Do-I Series? How To Make A Painted and Stenciled Terracotta Pot Decoration E-Book

HTEBFREE5 Lindas's How-Do-I Series? How To Make A Little Sachet Basket E-Book

HTEBFREE6 Lindas's How-Do-I Series? How To Make A Green Painted Pinecone Basket E-Book

HTEBFREE9 Linda's How-Do-I Series? How To Make A Fabric Covered Round Basket E-Book

LWOECatalog Linda Walsh Originals E-Catalog

I like how the GoogleDocs.com displays the .PDF with the separate pages showing as clickable icons in the left hand sidebar. You can search the document, zoom in or out, download it, print it, and make a copy of it. You can move from page to page via the sidebar or using the left and right arrows.

You can also view it one page at a time or two pages at a time like in the picture shown below:

As far as visibility is concerned you can share it as follows:

1) Public on the web - Anyone on the Internet can find and access. No sign-in required.
2) Anyone with the link - Anyone who has the link can access. No sign-in required.
3) Private - Only people explicitly granted permission can access. Sign-in required.

Using the office suite to create a .PDF takes a little getting used to, but you can create a document and then insert images into it. I think this works best for e-tutorials, e-projects, e-articles, and e-books as all their pages are generally letter size.

However, for e-patterns if you intend to create a two-page cover that can be turned sideways and folded to pattern size then you will have to create this in a separate picture program and then insert the image into your GoogleDocs.com document. GoogleDocs.com only accepts .jpeg, .gif, and .png image files so if you have created your pattern piece sheets as .bmp (to keep the size of your .pdf down) you'll have to convert them to .jpg before you could insert them into your document.

You can also use the suite to create a response form that users can fill out which you can email or embed into your website or blog.

I'm still partial to Publisher, but that's me. I'm old school and very loyal to programs that have worked wonderfully for me for years. However, I do like to play so the next time I'm in the mood to create another free e-book I'll give GoogleDocs.com another try.


Posted by Linda Walsh Originals- "Doll Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals E-Patterns - "Instant Download E-Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals Dolls - "Handmade Dolls & Crafts for Grown-up Girls!"

Do You Have A Viewable E-Catalog?

After finishing a 10-month long pattern revision project the first of October I was finally able to update my e-catalog and posted abut it on my Linda's Blog. In that post I told you that I had updated and created a new Linda Walsh Originals Print Pattern & E-Pattern Catalog and that you could download it from my Linda Walsh Originals E-Patterns website.

Well, the other day I decided to upload it to Googledocs.com to allow you to view it online. So, if you don't want to download my e-catalog you can easily view it HERE.

I like how the GoogleDocs.com displays my catalog with the separate pages showing as clickable icons in the left hand sidebar. You can also search my e-catalog, zoom in or out, download it, print it, and make a copy of it. You can move from page to page via the sidebar or using the left and right arrows.

You can also view it one page at a time or two pages at a time like in the pictures shown below:

I created my e-catalog and .PDF file with Microsoft Publisher and then uploaded my .PDF to GoogleDocs.com.  If you'd like to view my e-catalog please CLICK HERE.

So, what do you think?

Posted by Linda Walsh Originals- "Doll Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals E-Patterns - "Instant Download E-Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals Dolls - "Handmade Dolls & Crafts for Grown-up Girls!"

Scribd.com For .PDF Document Sharing

View my profile on  

The other day I decided to give Scribd.com a try for some of my free e-books and e-patterns.

I am very fortunate in that I have all of my free e-patterns and e-books on my own Linda Walsh Originals E-Pattern website.  However, some of my small business artist and crafter friends don't have websites that are capable of housing their free e-patterns, e-tutorials, e-projects, etc. They want to share them on their blogs so, what do they do?  Well, they use one of the many document sharing websites available and either provide a link on their blog or embed the code into their sidebar or post.

One of these document sharing websites is Scribd.  I've been thinking about Scribd for a little while now and haven't had the chance to test it out until today. If you don't know what Scribd is it is the fastest growing social reading and publishing company on the web today.

Here's what they say about themselves on their "About" page:

Scribd is the world’s largest social reading and publishing company. We've made it easy to share and discover entertaining, informative and original written content across the web and mobile devices. Our vision is to liberate the written word, to connect people with the information and ideas that matter most to them.

And, here's what they offer for quick facts:

Scribd. \skribbed\ the world’s largest social reading and publishing company
Stats
>75 million readers every month
>20 million embeds
>1 billion pages converted to HTML5
Tens of millions of documents published
Millions of Readcasts every month

So, why was I interested in Scribd? Well, I thought it might be a good place to test some of my free e-books and e-patterns, and could potentially be a website I might be interested in selling of some of my e-products on in the future.

The former I could do right away. The latter requires more research on my part as to what the best website is for that and researching each websites terms & conditions are.  I want to make sure I pick the right website for supplementing the selling my e-products.  For now, the "freebies" are fine for Scribd.

So, I set-up a Linda Walsh (Linda Walsh Originals) account and profile page. If you'd like to see my profile page just click on the icon at the beginning of this post or CLICK HERE.

Scribd allows you to post documents in the following formats: You can upload documents in the following formats: Adobe PDF (.pdf), Adobe PostScript (.ps), Microsoft Word (.doc/ .docx), Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt/.pps/.pptx), Microsoft Excel (.xls/.xlsx), OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw), OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi), OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc), All OpenDocument formats, Plain text (.txt), and Rich text format (.rtf).

Upload is very easy. You just select the file you want and then follow the prompts. You can make you documents public or private. In the case of the latter, they can only be viewed if you've given someone the URL.

Documents can be viewed on Scribd in Float mode, or they can be downloaded and printed, can be downloaded to a mobile device, or added to a collection. Documents can also be shared (i.e. readcast) on Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, or embedded within a website or blog.

The Float mode viewer displays a pop-up control bar on the bottom of your window that allows you to scroll through the document page by page, zoom in or out, convert to full screen mode, search the document, add a comment, embed/share, add to a collection and download. You can also "readcast" your document which is basically sharing it with your friends across multiple social networks.

You can embed your document in a website or blog utilizing the HTML coding they provide and it would look like the following:

How to Make a Little Sachet Basket

According to Wikipedia the technology used for this is: Scribd uses iPaper which is a rich document format similar to PDF built for the web, which allows users to embed documents into a web page.[27] iPaper was built with Adobe Flash, allowing it to be viewed the same across different operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) without conversion, as long as the reader has Flash installed (although Scribd has announced non-Flash support for the iPhone).[28] All major document types can be formatted into iPaper including Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenDocument documents, OpenOffice.org XML documents, and PostScript files.


All iPaper documents are hosted on Scribd. Scribd allows published documents to either be private or open to the larger Scribd community. The iPaper document viewer is also embeddable in any website or blog, making it simple to embed documents in their original layout regardless of file format.

Scribd iPaper requires that Flash cookies are enabled, which is the default setting in Flash.[29] If the requirements are not met, there is no message; the white or gray display area is simply blank.


If you don't want to embed your document you can just provide a link that would display the document in full screen mode for easy reading. Here's the link for the document above: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/70100063?access_key=key-1fjo1x20uz80b7ctbszx

You could add the above link to the sidebar of your blog to provide your blog readers with a way of seeing and downloading your free e-product.  Or, you could embed the code directly into a post or, in the case of Blogger.com, onto one of the ten tab pages they offer per blog.

In Scribd you basically have bookshelves where you can store your uploaded documents, store other Scribd docs you like in collections, or store the readcasts you are sharing with your friends.

You can also set-up a profile page with information on yourself, links to your website, etc.

Plus, Scribd maintains pretty detailed statistics for you on your documents, such as: recent activity by document, by region, by jeywork, by referrer, embeds, readcast, etc.

Pretty cool, huh?

There are lots of document sharing websites out there like:

Box.net

Docstoc.com

Docs.google.com

Issuu.com

Slideshare.net

MediaFire.com

FileDropper.com

RapidShare.com

DropBox.com

DocShare.com

Esnips.com

wePapers.com 

I was impressed with how quick and easy Scribd was to learn and navigate.   Depending on what you have to share, if you are a small business artist and crafter on the web and you want to share some of your free documents you might want to consider using Scribd or any of the websites shown above.

I'm going to check my stats on Scribd in a few days to see how many views and downloads there have been. Hopefully there will be lots and lots.

I only uploaded two of my free e-books. If they seem to be getting a lot of viewing maybe I'll upload some more. We'll see.

If you'd like to see my profile on Scribd and the documents I've uploaded there please CLICK HERE.  If  you like what you see please FOLLOW ME.  Just click the green button next to my name at the top of the page.


Posted by Linda Walsh Originals- "Doll Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals E-Patterns - "Instant Download E-Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals Dolls - "Handmade Dolls & Crafts for Grown-up Girls!"