How To Get Free Photoshop and Illustrator?
Posted March 20, 2009 by Mister Knowitall

Category: Building Web Sites Software

I’d really like to do some professional graphics, but I need pro tools and I’m broke. Can you tell me how to get free Photoshop software or free Illustrator software?

Over the years, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator have become industry standards among graphics professionals. The way to get Photoshop for free or get Illustrator for free would be to try to download a cracked Photoshop or a cracked Illustrator off a peer-to-peer file sharing network or via bittorrent, but when you do that, you take huge risks of getting other software you don’t want installed along with them. On top of that, it’s illegal and can carry penalties if you’re caught.

The thing many people don’t know is there are programs that are being given away that make it almost like you’re getting Photoshop for free.

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Do I Have Freedom Of Speech On The Internet?
Posted August 16, 2008 by Mister Knowitall

Category: Building Web Sites

I posted a comment to a blog the other day. Today I went back and it was gone. I e-mailed the guy who owns the blog and he told me he deleted it. What’s up with that? His blog is in the U.S. and I’m an American, so isn’t that a violation of my First Amendment rights?

Too many people think that freedom of speech means they have the right to say whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, and everyone else has to allow it. Nope. It primarily means you can’t get arrested for what you say… most of the time. Read the rest of this article »

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How Do I Run JavaScripts On My WordPress Blog?
Posted August 3, 2008 by Mister Knowitall

Category: Building Web Sites Free Scripts Web Scripts

Every time I try to cut and paste some JavaScript from a tutorial site or free script site into my blog, it never works. I’ve tried this with a few different JavaScripts, so it would be a huge coincidence if they were all broken. I figure I’ve got to be doing something wrong. But what is it?

Generally the problem is that you’re entering the JavaScript into your blog editor which treats it like text, not like code. Your blog editor is adding HTML like line break tags and paragraph opening and closing tags after various lines within the JavaScript. You won’t see them when you edit your blog post within the blog software, but if you use the “view source” for the actual blog page seen by the public, you’ll see these. Read the rest of this article »

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What Is DRM And Do I Need It?
Posted August 1, 2008 by Mister Knowitall

Category: Audio Digital Music Software

Ted from Eagle Rock writes: Recently, my kids have been talking about DRM and how bad it is. I don’t want to look tragically uncool by asking them these questions. What is DRM? Is it on my computer? If it is, can I get rid of it or do I need it?

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It’s basically a catch-all category for software that controls how you use and/or copy other software or files. It runs the gamut from Windows Genuine Advantage, which checks to make sure you’re not running a pirated copy of Windows, to the mechanisms used in some music files to try and make sure that only the person who bought the file plays it. Read the rest of this article »

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What Is “Open Source” Software?
Posted by Mister Knowitall

Category: Software

K. in Pasco writes: I keep hearing about open source software. Is it better than regular software? How is it different?

There are basically two types of software: open source and closed source (with some grey areas in between).

With open source, when you buy or are given the software, you also get the source code or instructions on how to download the source code. This allows you to read the underlying programming instructions of the computer program(s) in the package and make changes if you want/need to. The Linux and Free BSD operating systems are open source. Read the rest of this article »

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What Is MySQL and Why Do I Need It?
Posted July 24, 2008 by Mister Knowitall

Category: Building Web Sites

Yankl writes: I keep hearing about My Sequel. Is this like My Space? Do I need it? And if I need it, why?

Yankl, MySQL (officially pronounced “”My Ess Que Ell”, but also as “My Sequel” by some of us old-timers) is basically the #1 open source database server in the world. It powers a lot of database driven web-sites like the one you’re reading right now. It also powers Google. Read the rest of this article »

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SEO Enhanced Wordpress Theme: CSS Magic SEO
Posted July 22, 2008 by Mister Knowitall

Category: Building Web Sites

Move your content to the top of the page for better SEO with this neat CSS theme.

One thing I’ve found as I’ve researched SEO is that a number of people claim (1, 2, 3) search engine algorithms look at your page from the top down, giving a higher weighting to the content at the top in determining what your page is about and what keywords are important in it. Read the rest of this article »

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Broken Theme Previews in WordPress 2.6
Posted by Mister Knowitall

Category: Building Web Sites

I created a theme for WordPress, but in 2.6 the theme previews window is empty when I select it. Why is it doing that? Read the rest of this article »

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