Centre for Social Justice -» Community

Nov 13, 2014 - Facebook tips, tricks and answers

Here's a page with over 80 tips, tricks and answers to common issues dealing with the popular socialmedia website Facebook. It covers such issues as: blocking game invitations, adding security, avoiding hoaxes, disable auto-play etc...

Plus one of my tips... when creating an event, you should have a JPEG ready with the following canvas size 784 x 295 pixels. And remember that the bottom 60 pixels will be covered by the title of the event.

www.ricksdailytips.com/top-20-facebook-tips

Oct 16, 2014 - Video rendering -- best practices

Many individuals and organizations are video-recording their events and sharing on their blogs and social media. Here are some best-practices suggestions from YouTube:

* Container: .MP4; other supported formats are: .MOV, .AVI, .WMV, .FLV, WebM, OGV
* Audio Codec: AAC-LC; Channels: Stereo or Stereo + 5.1; Sample rate 96 khz or 48 khz
* Video Codec: H.264; Progressive scan (no interlacing); Variable bitrate.
* Frame rates: should match the source material. For example, content shot in 24 fps should be encoded and uploaded at 24 fps.

You should render a short 1-minute clip to see how it compares to the original, and how it will be displayed on YouTube. If you have a quad-core, remember to use all the encoder code chanels - this will greatly increase the rendering speed.

There are many video editing/rendering programs to choose from. A good free and open source video editor for Linux, Mac OS and FreeBSD is Kdenlive.

Oct 9, 2014 - Sign-in and Sign-out

Many people use social media websites to share news and check out what their friends and family are doing. All social media websites require a login to enter the website. When you leave the social media website without logging-out, you will be followed on the internet and see targeted advertizing aimed especially at your profile. If you don't want to be followed, remember to log out.

If you've forgotten to log out from, for example Facebook, go to the "Security" tab, and then sessions:
www.facebook.com/settings?tab=security&section=sessions

This will show you all your connections and whether they are active. Similar settings for other commercial, social media websites.

A good example of a non-commercial, community-run, social media is joindiaspora.com.

Sep 18, 2014 - PDF Split and Merge

PDF Split and Merge (PDFsam) is an easy-to-use tool with graphical and command line interfaces to split, merge, mix, and rotate your PDF documents. Originally developed to help users perform a simple split and merge on PDF documents, it now provides a comprehensive set of features.

Features:
* Merge PDF documents together
* Split PDF documents specifying the page number
* Split PDF documents specifying the level of bookmarks
* Rotate PDF documents
* Mix two PDF documents taking pages alternately
* Visually compose your PDF dragging pages from other PDF
* Works with all operating systems.

www.pdfsam.org | sourceforge.net | A free program for creating PDFs is available at www.pdfforge.org

Sep 11, 2014 - Fonts for beginners

Fonts (or typefaces) have come a long from the original bitmapped versions. There are two main types of fonts - computer-screen fonts (usually bitmap or more commonly TrueType fonts (TTF)) and printer fonts (usually PostScript (PS)). For most users today, the standard font format has become the TrueType font - they are compatible with all types of computer screens and printers, and they look smooth at any size. Essentially, TTF fonts are mathematical formulas defining a Bezier curve (see picture on right).

As for the look of the font face, there are three main categories. The main visual difference is whether the typeface has a serif or without serif (sans-serif):
* usually headline fonts are sans-serif like Arial, Helvetica
* body text fonts usually use a serif like Times-Roman
* the third category is a catch-all for all the special decorative fonts and symbols or dingbats

There are many free and non-free commercial fonts available on the internet. Once you download it, these fonts must be installed on your computer. Two words of caution -- too many fonts might slow down your computer, so one should only install a few basic fonts. Also, be aware that once these fonts are installed on your computer, you can use them as much as you like, but it is conceivable that when you share your documents, the person you share it with will not have the same fonts, and a substitution will occur which can radically change the look of your document. This is where PDF documents are preferred for sharing - just remember to embed the fonts into the PDF.

More information:
* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font
* A vague beginners guide to fonts
* Typefaces: An Animated Infographic Guide

Jun 5, 2014 - Web images

There are two main types of images for the web - vector and raster (or bitmap). Vector images generally are used for logos that feature lines, and bitmaps are used for all other images, pictures and photos.

According to WikiPedia, vector graphics use geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygons -- all of which are based on mathematical expressions -- to represent images in computer graphics. And since they are based on mathematical expressions, these images can be scaled to any size and keep their clarity. Some common programs for creating and editing vector graphics include: Adobe Illiustrator, Corel Draw and InkScape. The common file formats are AI, PS (postscript) and SVG (scalable vector graphic).

According to WikiPedia, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a dot matrix data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color. Upscaling a bitmap image tends to lose clarity and looks "pixelated," unless the PPI (pixels-per-inch) is high. Generally, a computer image is 72ppi. Some common programs for creating and editing bitmap graphics include: Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint and Gimp.

Raster image file formats fall into four main categories: BMP, GIF, PNG and JPEG.

BMP is the oldest format and is generally not used because it does not use compression. GIF is a little more modern, which uses compression but it has a small color palette. GIFs can also be animated. PNG is an improved version of GIF, with a better palette and image resolution, but does not support animation. JPEG is the standard format for modern pictures. It features lossy compression. One of the advantages of PNG over JPEG is that PNG can have a transparent background.

The above explanation covers mainly computer images which use the standard RGB (red-green-blue) color scheme. The print industry generally uses the CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) color scheme. Remember to reduce computer images to 72ppi, especially when uploading to social media, but keep original images at a high resolution for printing.