The Zazzle forums are circulating this lively customer review by Kiwiberrylicious (Mariah) of her search for on-line make your own card resources. She describes in detail how she ended up at Zazzle and what she wanted to be able to do. I was really touched by how persistent and earnest she was about being able to make just the right thing for her mom. Her enthusiasm is really contagious!
My favorite line: I don’t need 10 cards! I’ve got one Mom!
Formats Archives: Video
How to add images to posts on the Zazzle forums
Have you tried posting a linked image in the Zazzle forums in the past few days? You probably noticed that the three options changed to two. There’s no more link to images!
Is this an image protection move? I have no idea.
Thanks to friends on the ZUG, a friendly and helpful Zazzle-related forum, it was easy to figure out how to link images in the forums with this change.
So I made a little video. Sorry, I think I was losing my voice here, but you’ll see that it’s still easy, just different.
So, if you want to learn (or re-learn) how to add images to posts on the Zazzle forums, take 5 minutes and watch!
Iain McGilchrist: The Divided Brain (A TED Talk)
TED talks are as snackable and delicious as cupcakes, aren’t they?
If you’re here, you are likely interested in the junctures of left and right: creativity and rationality, art and commerce, and (perhaps) the neuroscience behind the divided brain theories. Perhaps even in the meeting of frosting and cake!
TED Talk: The Divided Brain
I enjoy hearing new points of view and information (that’s the right half of my brain scanning) and learning more about the world and how we operate within it. All that focus is my left hemisphere. My frontal lobe is now trying to tell me I’ve watched enough TED today, but I can’t resist sharing this many-layered presentation, The Divided Brain, by Iain McGilchrist about our brain hemispheres and the latest theories on how they work.
According to his bio on TED,
Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and writer. Before he came to medicine, he was a literary scholar — and his work on the brain is shaped by a deep questioning of the role of art and culture. As his official bio puts it: “He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise — the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains.”
His deep background in Western culture is evidenced in this talk and wonderfully illustrated by RSA. If you haven’t watch them “cartooning” a presentation before, you’re in for a treat. You may want to stop the video and read the details in several places.
Do we live in a world that has become unbalanced in favor of the left brain while the living, breathing, real right brain has lost its place? What does that mean to art and artists and creatives of all types? Will all future creativity be directed towards video games for the left brain?
If you find this yummy TED “cupcake” of interest, you may want to check out the whole cake! See Iain McGilchrist’s book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
Download your Zazzle product images 75x faster to more quickly create custom advertising
Do you create custom category folders to show off your Zazzle products? Or use your product images on Facebook, a blog or another social media site? Or to create Zazzle advertising banners for your site or blog? Or showcase your designs on your Zazzle store header? To showcase your products effectively, you need to show them!
But you may be doing what I’ve done in the past: taking various size screenshots of all the desired product images and then placing them into Photoshop (or other graphics software). The screenshots all have useful names like this does:
Screen shot 2012-02-14 at 1.06.32 AM
Another – better – way is to download as many as 75 product images simultaneously where Zazzle assigns the product name to each image for you. What a time and trouble saver!
To see how this works and examples of instances where you would use the images, check out this video. And please excuse the wayward mouse pointer – I just got it and we’re getting used to each other!
If your image turns ugly when you upload it, check the color space!
Brain Connectiveness
Perhaps if I had a name as long as this, I wouldn’t find so many scientific words impossibly long: Vilayanur Ramachandran. He goes by the much easier name Rama and similarly can take complicated subject and make it accessible and compellingly interesting to the rest of us.
Tonight I enjoyed watching his 2007 TED Talk: A journey to the center of your mind. If you’re interested in how brains work and a connection between brain wiring and creativity, you may enjoy it also!
He talks about brain damage and surprising connections within the brain, finishing with a remarkable insight into creative brains! Equally fascinating is a quest to resolve phantom limb pain with boxes and mirrors.