Author Archives: James Lamb

About James Lamb

James Lamb has a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from London University, worked for over 20 years as a senior IT technician and team leader, much of that time for dealing rooms of international banks, and became a full-time, professional indexer in 2004.

DropBox

Posted on February 7, 2010 by James Lamb

A great, free utility which I came across recently is DropBox.com. It is an offsite, online, secure backup and synchronization facility, but that makes it sound far too complicated. In fact it is a folder on your desktop which you … Continue reading →

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Posted in backups, SIdelights (SI newsletter) | Tagged | 1 Comment

Google Calendar

Posted on February 7, 2010 by James Lamb

Another free utility, which I now use all the time, is Google Calendar. There are many calendar programs around, but this one is well designed, easy to use and has great calendar sharing facilities.

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Posted in SIdelights (SI newsletter), time management | Tagged | Leave a comment

Including email addresses on Web pages

Posted on January 27, 2010 by James Lamb

Not unreasonably, if you have a web-site you will want to include your email address so that potential clients can contact you. Unfortunately, if you have your email address in plain view on a webpage without encrypting it in any … Continue reading →

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Posted in client communications, email, SIdelights (SI newsletter), web presence | Tagged | 2 Comments

Printing A3 PDFs

Posted on January 20, 2010 by James Lamb

Printing two-page spread Occasionally clients send PDF proofs in which the pages are in double-page spreads, with two A4 pages on each PDF page. Printing them with only an A4 printer can be a problem. If it were only one … Continue reading →

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Set up your own Domain

Posted on November 3, 2009 by James Lamb

Why would you want a domain? Many indexers will think that if they don’t have a website, then they don’t need a domain but actually having a domain has serious advantages for client communications.

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Posted in client communications, SIdelights (SI newsletter), web presence | 1 Comment

Recovering old versions of files

Posted on August 29, 2009 by James Lamb

There is only one thing more annoying than deleting a file accidentally, and that is overwriting it – for example, accidentally deleting the content and then saving. At least, with deleting, the Recycle Bin saves us sometimes. Well, with windows … Continue reading →

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Someone has accessed my hotmail address book

Posted on August 28, 2009 by James Lamb

Photo by ogimogi H. asked: Someone/thing has accessed my hotmail address book and appears to have sent messages out under my name (advertising some electronics website).  I noticed as I received one myself and a number of ‘undeliverable’ messages. There … Continue reading →

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Posted in Not published elsewhere, technology | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Using the Twitter Search Box

Posted on August 23, 2009 by James Lamb

On the right of the Twitter home screen is a Search box which lets you search the tweets. If used correctly it can help you find work opportunities. Indexers have a particular problem. Searching for indexing will find thousands of … Continue reading →

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Handling PDFS

Posted on August 9, 2009 by James Lamb

The topic today is PDFs and there is probably something for everyone here, whether you aren’t sure how to handle them or why you would want to, or whether you have Acrobat Pro and think that is all you need.

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Posted in indexing, PDFs, SIdelights (SI newsletter) | Tagged , | 4 Comments