Have you ever tried to set a single Ruler Guide across a two-page spread in InDesign– and been frustrated in the effort?  A Ruler Guide that extends across a spread is called a Spread Guide. To create one, set the view so you can see the Pasteboard and then drag the guide out across the pasteboard instead of across the printable area. Viola–it extends all the way across the spread. If you are zoomed in, hold the Ctrl key while you drag.

To place a copy of a Ruler Guide or Spread Guide on other pages, point to the guide and right-click when you see the cursor change. In the right-click menu, choose Copy. On following pages, from the Menu bar, choose Edit, and Paste in Place.

Remember also that you can only see Ruler and Spread Guides in Normal view.

Here’s how to create a Photoshop Droplet:

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-create-droplets-in-photoshop-cs6.html

For more complex chores, you can also create Photoshop Actions and run them on batches of files.

First, create an Action:

http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/post-processing-articles/100-free-photoshop-actions-and-how-to-make-your-own/ (This set of instructions includes some free predefined actions for optional download)

Then, run your action on a batch of files:

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-batch-process-actions-in-photoshop-cs6.html

A contact sheet is a grid of thumbnail images that may be used for a lot of things: yearbooks, calendars–anything in which you would like to post a thematic group of pictures. Adobe offers this automated function in some of its Creative Suite applications and in Lightroom.

In InDesign, creating a contact sheet is an easy process.

1. From the Menu bar, choose File, then Place.
2. Select multiple images by Ctrl-clicking or Shift-clicking. If you want to include captions with your images, check Create Static Captions.
   
3. Click Open.
4. On the InDesign page, start dragging. You will see a grid forming as you drag.
   - Press the arrow keys to set the number of rows and columns you want.
   - To change the spacing between frames, press Page Up or Page Down or hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) while pressing the arrow keys.
   You will see a preview result of your keypresses onscreen as you work.
5. Release the mouse button to place the grid of images.
6. At this point, you can replace captions and resize at will.

You can watch how to to do it here:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-and-your-voice/creating-your-personal-brand-episode-creating-a-slide-presentation/

And you can check out all the features with written step-by-step how-to’s here:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using/WS328f5ee33f08f77d1e63e3d120f2667a4c-7ffe.html

Users can join your conference in three ways: using point-to-point videoconference equipment (such as that found in conference rooms); using UniCom with an optional web cam; and by calling in via telephone. All methods may be used simultaneously in a conference.

For instructions and more information, see:

http://kb.iu.edu/data/ause.html

There are myriad ways to remove red eye from a photograph.

First, see how to use the Red Eye tool in Photoshop:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-get-rid-of-red-eye-in-photoshop-cs6.html

While this technique works, I tend to use methods other than the Red Eye tool because a) it can result in overkill, and b) the tool actually changes existing pixels– and I almost always use nondestructive editing in Photoshop. On the rare occasions that I use the Red Eye tool, I first select the pupils and copy them to a new layer before using the tool.

If this tool is unsatisfactory–as in the case of animals–here are some other ways to remove red eye:

• You can use the regular Brush tool with a Color blend mode. Make sure that the foreground/background colors are set to the default black/white. (To set default with a keyboard shortcut, press the D key.)

• To keep it nondestructive, I would advise a modified approach to the same Blend Mode process above: add a new layer and set its blend mode to Color, then use the brush in normal mode on the new layer. Again, foreground/background colors must be set to default.

• You can use the Color Replacement tool with a black foreground.  This tool is in the Brush tool family; press and hold Brush to activate it. Note that the higher Tolerance settings in the Options panel will result in stronger effects.

What about animals? The Photoshop Red Eye tool responds to only the color of reflections in human eyes–so that particular tool won’t work on animals. Following is a terrific article that includes animals plus a couple of other methods–including the Sponge tool, which is one of my favorites.

• Other ways to fix red eye: http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=988  .
  This article offers a terrific way to achieve luminous eyes, too!

Without the Internet, your computer is a typewriter at best and a paperweight at worst.  You need to protect this amazing asset, but how?  You need to be on the network to figure out how to protect yourself from the network.  What do you do?  You need to Get Connected.

Get Connected 2012 in its 14th year of providing excellent security, automated troubleshooting, and adding convenient IT tools to the desktops of Students, Faculty and Staff of Indiana University.

For years, as part of safeguarding the security of your computer, Get Connected has ensured your operating system has been fully patched and updated with the latest service packs, an antivirus client if you didn’t have one installed, and some form of anti-spyware, but did you know that it also does much more than that?

The 2012 version of Get Connected provides support for the latest Operation Systems: Windows 8 and OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), as well as supporting Windows 7, Vista, and XP. But, this year, it packs something new under the hood.

New to the 2012 version is the ability to register network cards with IU’s network via “off-campus” mode.  This gives new students, faculty, and staff the ability to pre-register all of computer’s network cards prior to the machine being brought onto campus.

It installs helpful tools like the UITS Printer finder to allow you to easily print to any UITS lab printer on campus.  Are you low on hard disk space, but you’d love to install the entire Adobe Creative Suite if you had the free space?  Get Connect also provides the necessary browser plugins to IUanyWare, Indiana University’s cloud-based software deployment environment.

Even further advances have been made to the 2012 version of Get Connected to support Faculty and Staff.  The new advanced customization and reporting features allows IT Professionals in Schools and Departments to automate the software install process tailored to the specific needs of their users.

Learn more about Get Connected when Chief designer, Brent Moberly, presents these new features and much more during Indiana University’s Statewide IT Conference in Bloomington on September 24-25, 2012.

Get Connected is just one of the many ways that the staff of University Information Technology Services fulfill our mission and commitment to keeping your technology current, safe, and always productive.

For more information, see our Knowledge Base article:
At IU, what is Get Connected and how do I use it?

•    $160,000 recently bought a piece of controversial DC Comics memorabilia
•    The oldest human fossils found we know of are about 160,000 years old
•    An annual salary of $160,000 works out to about $80/hour

I’m a Bloomington townie, so the statistic that really brought it home for me was the 2010 census population in Bloomington of about 80,000 people. So, the number of IU accounts with stale credentials was about twice the population of Bloomington. That’s a huge pile!  And some of that bread is *really* moldy…

At IU, passphrases were introduced in October of 2006 (see Passwords and passphrases for details). After six years and several awareness campaigns (requesting users to voluntarily update), there were still approximately 81,761 IU accounts that had not been changed. Faced with the growing pile of evidence, UITS recognized that folks at IU apparently needed stronger incentive to clean up that pile and announced that passphrases older than 2 years would start to expire during the fall, 2012 semester. In order to prevent a massive lockout event, passphrases will initially expire in batches of a few hundred each week, starting with the oldest credentials first. So, what does this mean for you?

As your expiration date draws near, the Central Authentication Service (aka: “CAS”) will display a warning asking if you would like to change your passphrase before it expires. If you set a new passphrase before your expiration date, your access will continue without interruption.

Example of CAS “upcoming expiration” warning

If you do not set a new passphrase then, on your expiration date, CAS will begin showing you an error screen indicating that you must change your passphrase before you can continue:

Example of CAS expired passphrase error message

Once you start seeing that error,  you will not be able to access university resources such as OneStart, Oncourse, and countless others until you set a new passphrase. However, you will retain the ability to log in to ADS-joined workstations and the site https://passphrase.iu.edu/ so that you can set a new passphrase.

UITS began communicating this plan to the support community in August, 2012. The IT Professionals across the state quickly responded and, by the first week of September, through departmental events and individual meetings, had whittled the 160,000 down by more than 25%. In other words, in the span of a few weeks, the IT Pros guided the equivalent of about ½ the population of Bloomington through the process of updating their passphrases. Kudos is due to all the departmental support providers who made so much progress in such a short amount of time! Thanks to their effort many folks will sail through the semester without any further concern about stale or expired credentials.

However, there are a few holdouts who are saying: Why does this matter? Is the time & effort really worth the benefit? I *like* my old 8-character password, why can’t I keep it? These are fair and prudent questions. So, I set out to find some answers – here are some of them:

I started with Scott Wilson, from the IU University Information Security Office. Scott published a blog post about the project a while back. His post links out to an excellent video about the benefits of passphrases over passwords. Additionally, Scott explains that, with normal use, passphrases simply lose their effectiveness over time.

Additionally, expiring passphrases limits the window of opportunity for someone to take advantage of unauthorized access. Not every hacker wants to immediately do something noticeable to your account(s). Perhaps they would rather quietly send spam through your account and use your network credentials to hide their own identity while they try out the latest hacking tool set or visit a few disreputable or malicious websites or forums.

Sometimes, unauthorized access is not due to a hacker breaking in to an account; more common scenarios reported to IU’s University Information Security Office involve former roommates/classmates/romantic partners. We have probably all shared a computer at some time, and almost all browsers and operating systems “helpfully” store login information. Of course those near & dear to us wouldn’t abuse that stored access. But, a year or so down the road (when you no longer see much of each other, or perhaps you’ve had a falling out) some disenchanted “former friendly” might just give in to curiosity and take a peek at your current inbox, or (if the falling out still stings a little) they might make sure to use your credentials for IU Secure when they launch their next illegal torrent session.

One of the more compelling reasons I heard is that the Feds say we need to. There are a lot of folks at IU who have access to institutional data and, in some cases, to sensitive data. Many of those same folks are also using passphrases that are several years old. According to the Safeguards Rule of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act, institutions are responsible for protecting their customers’ data. “Controlling access to sensitive information by requiring employees to use ‘strong’ passwords that must be changed on a regular basis” is a FTC recommendation for meeting the institutional legal obligation under the Safeguards Rule. In other words, under federal law, stale credentials are a legal liability for IU, as well as a personal legal liability for the associated account holders … this could mean you. There are additional federal and state laws that require specific IT security measures. The IU University Information Security Office has collected links to some of them at http://protect.iu.edu/cybersecurity/data/laws if you are curious.

Finally, to skate on the edge of paranoia just a bit…  Ever notice how iOS displays each character of your passphrase for a few seconds as you type it? Ever have a “tinfoil moment” in which you *almost* convinced yourself that the guy in line behind you (or perhaps some ubiquitous security camera) just watched you type that password on your iPhone? You probably (very reasonably) wrote that moment off to overdeveloped paranoia… didn’t you?

I’m not suggesting we all ought to be losing sleep over what security cameras might see on an iPhone and you won’t see me protecting my innermost thoughts with tinfoil either. But, as an IU alum and a current IU employee, I can appreciate that IU is forcing folks to be responsible about potential access to my data.  And, in my mind, a few minutes of my time every couple of years is a small price to pay towards making sure I’m treating everyone’s IU data as carefully as I would want them to treat my own.

it2go – The IT Training Podcast

it2go Episode 23 – The IT Training Conference Part 2