Global Editable Map for a Publication

Customer Question: We need a Global Editable Maps for our Publication
We are producing an academic journal for our organization. We produce two issues a year in A4 format. We are considering a new cover for the journal and one possibility is to use your Pacific Global projection, in colour. We might need to edit it slightly, though this is difficult to tell until I see it in larger format. What I need to know at this stage is what would it cost to purchase the rights to use this image twice a year as our cover. And would you need an acknowledgement, maybe inside the front cover?
Thank you for your help

MFD Answer: Hi, thank you for looking at our products and for your question. Our editable maps are royalty free and once you purchase them you can use them on your projects with out any additional costs. We have versions of our maps in Adobe Illustrator that can be customized as you need. If you don't have Illustrator many folks use our Powerpoint versions and save them as jpg files and then they can be converted to .tif for print. I would recommend using the eps
illustrator versions for your print work, you will get a sharper crisper image.

Please check out http://www.mapsfordesign.com for the map.
Hope this help, contact me if you have questions

bruce jones

World Map with Names for a Presentation

Customer Question: I need a world map with names for a presentation?
I need a world map, mentioning the country names, of which I can given the countries a certain colour. The countries must be visible (readable) on a projection screen. It must be re-usable. I need to install the programme now on my private pc and later switch
the programme to my business pc. Which of your world maps would that be? Please let me know which map will work

MFD Answer: Hi, thank you for visiting, I would use our World Mercator PowerPoint map, it is easy to color, each country is an individual element that can be customized, it has the country names and you can do all the projection stuff using PowerPoint. Powerpoint files are easy to move around and that program is pretty much available anywhere.

Here is the link to the map I am recommending, the price is $49.95
http://www.mapsfordesign.com/shop/product.php?
productid=16457&cat=252&page=1

Any questions please contact me
bruce

US and Canada Map

Customer Question: Can I buy a US and Canada Map?
Can I purchase a digital map from you that includes the US with Alaska and Hawaii, and the Southern provinces of Canada?

MFD Answer: Thank you for visiting our site and for your question. At
www.MapsforDesign.com we sell individual maps and have a nice combo US
and Canada map for your project. Each element is individual and can be
customized, you could just delete the provinces that you don't need.
Below is a link to the map.

http://www.mapsfordesign.com/shop/product.php?
productid=16170&cat=249&page=1

If you have a question on this please let me know

thank you, bruce

How To Video for Applying CS3 InDesign Transparency

How to Video on using CS3 Indesign’s Opacity Effect Feature, or what used to be called Transparency. This feature allows the background graphic to show through a solid colored box that lays on top of it. This is a great way to keep the continuity of the cover and tie all of the elements together. It is also a great way to highlight the type without it getting lost in a complex graphic like one of our maps.

For the graphic we used one of our Royalty Free World Vintage Maps from our Antique Historical Clip Art Maps Collection. On top of that was a colored box with some type on top of that. By setting the opacity of the box to 70% we can see a shadow of the map below.

The effects feature is located in the Window pull down Menu. We left the main pop-up setting at Normal. Opacity is just to the right. Select the solid box first and then apply the screening by sliding the slide bar to the left or typing in a number. Experiment until you like the effect. Works with type also if you select it with the pointer tool.

To learn more on the collection visit: http://www.antiquehistoricalmaps.com.

Putting PowerPoint Presentations on the Web

And a Software I use a Lot, Screenflow
We have been running this series of excellent posts by Rebecca Leaman on getting your PowerPoint presentation up on the web. Another way that I have been using lately if you are on a new Mac is to use the new Screenflow software.

Screenflow allows you to record the screen plus adding in a video track of yourself. Great to adding commentary and a personal touch to your presentations. Screenflow also allows you to edit out parts you don't want, very helpful. I have been using it to record How to Videos for my software that I do in PowerPoint. Once complete you can then save them as .mov files and load them up onto Youtube and other video hosting platforms. Once there they can be linked to your blog or website.

Screenflow is made by Varasoftware. www.varasoftware.com/products/screenflow/

World Map Showing Historical Trade Routes

Customer Question: I need to customize a world map to show historical trade routes?
I need to draw some line-routes over a map of the world to depict a sailing vessel's trip. I'd like to do it in colors to depict the different locations in different years. Will your Easy To Use
CD-DVD-ROM program work for me?

MFD Answer: Thank you for visiting our site and for your question. The basic answer is yes, but you will need some kind of graphics program to do the customizing in. What we sell are editable clip art maps in either PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator, we also have jpg ones. All of
your customizing would be done in either of those programs. You could also use CorelDraw instead of Illustrator. You can also work in PhotoShop with the jpg maps but you don't have quite as much flexibility because they are bitmaps instead of objects.

Our maps are fully editable, each state or country is an object that can be changed, the customizing is done in the other programs. The maps can be colored any way that you like, and both PowerPoint and Illustrator have a lot of tools and options to do this..

We have several different views of the world in different projections, including maps with individual editable countries.

thank you for visiting, please contact me if you have additional questions, bruce jones

Are Your EPS Maps Editable in CS3?

Question: Are your eps maps fully editable in CS3? We need a full state
map where we can colorize and name the counties...only certain counties
will be in color...others will be black and white.

Answer: Our eps maps are in an older version of Illustrator so they can
apply to as wide a range of Illustrator versions as they can. They open
just fine in CS3, just hit the UPDATE button to keep the type fully
functioning. We have nice state map by county that would work for your
project. We have lots of free samples on the website that you can
download and test for your project.

thank you for your question

thank you, bruce

Part 4: 4 Ways to Put a PowerPoint Presentation on Your Web Site

by Rebecca Leaman from http://www.wildapricot.com

If your organization makes PowerPoint slideshows for special events, meetings and conferences, you've probably put a lot of time and effort into creating each one. Why not get extra mileage from those PowerPoint presentations by putting them onto your website or blog for others to see?

Here are four different ways to share PowerPoint files on the Web:

Flash it!

In fact, OpenOffice even offers to export your presentation as a Flash (SWF) format. I've just tested this on three presentations created in PowerPoint, and it worked flawlessly for two of them; the third one seemed to get stalled partway through the conversion and had to be done over. The file conversion process is very quick, fortunately.

Other free tools to convert PowerPoint presentations to Flash include iSpring Free, authorPOINT Lite, Speechi Light, to name a few — as well as a host of good commercial programs, many of which will give you a free trial period.

Accuracy of the PPT-to-SWF conversion will vary from program to program, depending in part on the complexity of your presentation. You may need to try a few tools in order to find the one that works best for your purposes and budget. Or get around any tricky conversion issues with free screen recording software like CamStudio — record your PowerPoint presentation as you play it back on your own computer screen (even add an audio commentary to the slideshow, if you want).

Some visual blog editors will have a toolbar button for uploading video, but showing a Flash movie on your website is most often as easy as uploading your SWF file to your web space and using a few lines of object / embed code to embed the file on your page.

To learn more click here