by admin on February 28, 2012
If I had a penny for every time I’ve sent email attachments from my Mac to PC users, only to be told that the image arrived embedded rather than attached, I’d be able to give up the day job.
It doesn’t matter whether I check the ‘Send windows friendly attachments’ checkbox or not. And it doesn’t appear to be consistently a problem for all PC recipients.
I’ve often resorted to sending the files via an email download service such as yousendit.com
Today I thought I’d found the workaround: once you have attached the image to your email missive, right-click on the image and choose ‘view as icon’. The colourful image that Mail displays inline is replaced by a little downloadable image icon. And this, theoretically, is treated properly as an attachment by the PC user’s mail client. Not that intuitive and not very Apple-ish. Oh, and it doesn’t work. Or at least it didn’t work with a recent test sent to a friend using a PC.
I see there’s also a small plug-in application for Apple Mail that automates this and a number of other work-arounds available for the princely sum of $14.99 USD from Lokiware.
If anyone knows of a built in solution to the problem without resorting to third party applications do leave a comment below.
by admin on February 18, 2012
I know it’s February already, twelfth night has long gone and all the decorations are packed away for another year. But some things just hang around. And with good reason. Two of my favourite Xmas boxes from 2011 both came from ex Fine White Line staffers: Kevin Shaw and Janet Ameer. From Kevin and his team I received one of Stranger and Stranger’s highly collectable Christmas bottles – No.13 in a series and definitely lucky for some, myself included. According to the label, there were only 300 bottles produced in this initial run. It’s such a beautiful thing I haven’t wanted opened it and probably never will. (note to self: must find someone else who received a bottle and is less precious about the whole thing and prepared to let me taste the contents.)
The bottle came complete with it’s own sidewalk-ready brown paper bag covered in the small-space ads I remember from American comics of a certain era. All the ads had been carefully adapted for yuletide: space explorer guns to Vaporize unwanted Carol singers, shrunken heads as an alternative to boring traditional Xmas tree decorations, a cure for seasonal pimples and ugly blackheads, a mistletoe helmet and a miniature dog at almost no cost – just for Christmas of course, not for life – and a rubber duck-faced mask that apparently “fills the bill for Xmas party-time fun!”.
This mid-century quackery is reflected in nostrums from an even early age on the bottle label itself. Spirit No.13 is recommended for the ‘relief of superficial aches and pains due to exposure or exertion, toothaches and nervous stress’. GOOD FOR MAN OR BEAST. It can be taken internally or used as a liniment, rubbed directly onto the skin. It acts as an emergency firelighter and steriliser of wounds. On a more lyrical note the label also suggests that if you drink it, ‘…you will hear the voices of men and maidens singing the Harvest Home mingled with the laughter of children’.
Moonshine and snake oil mixed with vanilla and whipped cream.
The quality of all the work coming out of Stranger and Stranger is nothing short of inspiring. It was a joy having Kevin as part of the team at the Fine White Line and it’s equally wonderful to have him as a client now.
Janet’s offering was a much simpler affair but had me smiling from the moment I opened it – a salt cellar filled with sparkly red glitter – Seasonal Seasoning. And I’m still smiling now as I continue to find little sparkly bits nestling in amongst the keys of my lap-top almost two months later. That will teach me to open my post while I’m working.
