Running as a sport became popular in the 18th century – an era of innovation in all walks of life – and brought about the development of a lightweight shoe that could grip the ground with a leather upper and a wooden grooved sole. Plimsolls soon followed in the 1830s when the wooden soles made way for rubber. Spikes were not far behind, invented by Joseph William Foster, the founder of Reebok, in 1852.

The next big development was vulcanisation, allowing canvas shoes to be melded with rubber soles which revolutionised shoe manufacturing in the early 20th century. Adolf Dassler (founder of Adidas) differentiated between long-distance runners and sprinters for the first time in the 1920s and his shoes were the favourite of Olympians for decades to come.

Read the original article on E&T Magazine

So I resolved to call Apple’s United States technical support number. I have called this number before and have been refused technical support because one of the first questions they ask you use for your serial number. With this they can easily locate your details, if you’ve registered your item already with them, and your location.

So I decided a different strategy. I put on my best American accent and pretended to be a yank abroad – hoping that the technical support administrator would take pity on me and assist me anyway. It worked!

Was it really necessary for me to put on a really daft American accent? Is it going to be a requirement that we have a dialogue coach just so that we can get help when we want it? Surely a global company such Apple can easily create a 24 hour technical support line.

Therefore, the authorities tried him for forgery. Although initially convicted, the case was thrown out on appeal.

Yet with the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Governments are trying to do the same by conflating the moral panic surrounding counterfeit goods, such as alcohol, drugs and dangerously manufactured goods with piracy. Counterfeits can kill, but the only potential method where someone could lose their life through online piracy is if they showed a torrented version of Two Girls One Cup to their grandmother with a heart condition.

There is a genuine concern about counterfeit alcohol. My research published in E&T Magazine and picked up by The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Mirror clearly demonstrate that a trade agreement covering counterfeit is in dire need. But this agreement is tainted. Already there is widespread opposition by civil rights groups against ACTA.

This is likely to grow. I predict there will be widespread legal challenges brought in several jurisdictions. In the meantime, the international counterfeit trade will continue to sneak dangerous goods and components while the politicians ponder the legal arguments.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010404005755/www.kris-sangani.com/

Kind regards,

Kris.

Digital images now mean that all I have to do is put the jpeg or tiff file into a right folder on the company server for the design department. Unfortunately, too often, the digital images that are supplied are not ideal for the print media. Most image suppliers know that Web based publications require a different resolution than print, but can you be 100 percent certain about concepts of and relationship between file size, image canvas size and resolution?

The file size refers to the size in bytes – whether it is a jpeg, tiff or other format. Occasionally, I get the misconception that the larger the file size, the higher the resolution the image actually will be. Many times I have had to explain to a PR contact that their image was not usable only for them to snap, “But it was two megabytes!”

Whereas the actual size of an image might give you some inkling of the resolution or canvas size, there are a number of other factors affecting the size of the file – such as the compression level of the file or the amount of information in the actual file (interleaved, colour range, etc). Thus file size is the most unreliable factor in determining an image’s suitability.

A more reliable determinant is resolution which refers to the actual pixel density – and is usually expressed as dots per inch (dpi). For print, 300 dpi works best; and for the Web, 72 dpi is preferred. Unfortunately, the concept of resolution is often confused with the canvas size.

The canvas size refers to the dimensions (expressed in centimetres or inches) that an image will appear when printed on paper or on a computer screen. Therefore, if you have an image whose canvas size is approximately A4, but whose resolution is 72 dpi (ideal for the Web), it will be blocky or fuzzy when printed on paper at this size. If the same image had a resolution of 300 dpi, there would be approximately four times the pixels to cover the same area (because 72 goes into 300 4.16 times). Thus the final printed image would appear much smoother.

Therefore, as well as ensuring that the image has a 300 dpi print resolution, make sure it has a decent canvas size. There is no use supplying an image which has a 300 dpi when the dimensions are about the size of a postage stamp – as designers will not be able to scale up.

How to check images

The good news is that you won’t need expensive photo manipulation software to check to see if the images you are planning to supply to press are suitable. Microsoft Windows Paint program provides a very simple way to check images.

Firstly, open the Paint application, click on properties and you will have a dialogue box as illustrated in screenshot 1. In this example, the image resolution is 72 dpi and the pixel size is 1024 by 683.

Screenshot 1

If we toggle the image units option in our example to display the size in inches, you will get a display like screenshot 2 which tells you that the image is 14.22 by 9.49 inches. But because the resolution is 72 dpi, it will be unsuitable to be printed at this scale. As mentioned earlier, you would have to divide the measurements by a factor of four to get the size it will reproduce in print.

screenshot 2

Now you will be the most popular public relations professional who deals with the print media.