The relentlessly helpful blog

Digital 2016

On the 6th and 7th of June 2016, I attended Digital 2016 – a free conference organised by Innovation Point, which took place at the 5-star Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, South Wales.

This event offered a chance to meet some of the brightest digital talents in the local area and beyond, and to listen to a host of influential speakers from some of the biggest organisations in the world. With sessions hosted by BBC Click presenter Lara Lewington, Digital 2016 had been pencilled in to my calendar for months.

Here’s a bumper write-up of the sessions I attended over the 2 days. Ready? Let’s go.

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If you’ve read my post on why Dropbox rocks, you’ll already know that I’m a big fan of this popular file-syncing system. Although it’s generally pretty easy to understand and use, there’s one aspect of Dropbox that I often see people struggle with: using shared folders.

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Ready for 5 more quick Mac tips? John Espirian continues the #MicroMacTips series with some more useful nuggets of information.

1. Check which typefaces are in use on a website

If you browse the web with Google Chrome, it’s easy to check which typefaces are in use on any website you visit. Just check out my super-quick video:

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In this post, John Espirian looks at the increasing use of video to promote the services of editorial professionals.

As a freelance technical writer, I spend most of my time writing and editing content for my clients. No surprise there. But my specialty – care and repair for words – scarcely seems to be enough these days. Audiences no longer want to read walls of text (actually, they never did want that), and instead prefer more visual forms of communication.

And we’re not just talking about using pretty stock images or adding fancy infographics. No, no. Writers, editors and proofreaders are now starting to communicate with their audience via video. I already have some experience in the field, as I started dabbling with screencasting way back in 2012. I don’t think many other editorial professionals were particularly interested at the time, even though platforms for sharing video (e.g. YouTube and Vimeo) were already well established.

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In this post, John Espirian provides another instalment of MicroMacTips: quick and simple advice for using your Mac more effectively.

Did you enjoy parts 1 and 2 of this new MicroMacTips series? Here are 5 more tips to keep you going.

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In this post, John Espirian provides an introduction to the process of screencasting and to the tools used for the job.

As a freelance technical writer, I sometimes create short videos to help my clients’ audience understand how a service works. These ‘screencasts’ appeal to the growing proportion of users who are turned off by traditional written materials.

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In this post, John Espirian provides another instalment of MicroMacTips: quick and simple advice for using your Mac more efficiently.

I hope you enjoyed MicroMacTips part 1. Here are another 5 tips to speed up your day.

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In this post, John Espirian discusses the difficult decision of whether to display your telephone number on your website.

Call me – maybe

For prospective clients

I really do prefer email, so drop me a line at support *at* espirian.co.uk and we’ll go from there.

If you really need my phone number, look at the grid image below.

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I’m no typographer but I do like a nice typeface – and I appreciate it when people pronounce typeface names correctly. Hardly the most pressing matter you’ll ever encounter, but hey.

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In this post, John Espirian shares 5 quick and simple tips for Mac users. These ‘MicroMacTips’ should make your digital life a tiny bit more bearable.

I use all sorts of little tricks to boost my productivity. On their own, each of these wouldn’t be enough to justify its own blog post, so here are 5 quick and easy MicroMacTips to help you along.

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