Letter from Lynda  Hello again! This month, we’ve started adding bonus features to our Creative Inspirations documentaries, started an InDesign blog series, published a large selection of courses on business, education tools, and photography, and much more.
Proud fact: it took us nine years to create our first 1,000 courses, and four months to create 100 new courses this year. Even though we've never raised our prices, the value of a membership keeps growing as we continue to increase our production capacity to make this the most productive year ever! | More improvements to the site  Last month, we added a new area to the member home page that you see after you log in that shows your recent course history. A new, iterative improvement is that you can now click the x icon to remove a course from this list. Removing a course from this list will not affect your course progress or certificate of completion. | Stay up to date with access to the Online Training Library®! We are constantly adding new software training courses and inspirational documentaries to help reach your creative and career goals. 
New iPhone/iPad app version supports AirPlay; lyndaCampus
 A new version (1.4.0) of our iPhone/iPad app is now available at the App Store. Some highlights of this new version:
• Added iPhone and iPad app AirPlay support so you can watch lynda.com courses on your Apple TV. • Customized the iPad video player to support playing the previous and next movies in a course. • Updated the iPhone app search to auto-complete course names. To enable AirPlay, you will need a second-generation Apple TV with iOS 4.3 or later installed, and the iOS device and the Apple TV must be on the same local network. | Explore the current standards of banner ad design  Best Practices for Flash-based Banner Ads explains how to build eye-catching banner ads in Flash Professional to achieve design goals and satisfy search engines and site requirements. Author Anastasia McCune explains the current standards of banner ad design, and offers a series of best practices for technical development—including incorporating video—and details the necessary information to gather from clients and publishers in order to build an ad. Build sample banner ads along with Anastasia, from start to finish, and learn how to optimize assets and add interactivity. | Business skills and software courses Our latest business tools courses offer insights on how to run effective and efficient meetings, using advanced Gmail features, collaborating with Office 365, designing relational databases with FileMaker Pro, and setting up a home network.
|  In Effective Meetings, productivity expert Dave Crenshaw demonstrates a simple, usable framework to get the most from meetings. The course gives insight into how to effectively schedule, conduct, and follow up on meetings, including establishing ground rules for participants, reducing the length and number of meetings, and making sure everyone feels heard and appreciated. It also includes guidance on using one-on-one meetings to minimize workplace distractions and how to follow up on assignments to participants.
|  In Gmail for Power Users, Susan Cline shows how to personalize email, manage multiple accounts, and be more productive with Google’s email service. The course offers tips and tricks for customizing Gmail, working efficiently with shortcuts, taking advantage of labels, integrating with Calendar, Google Docs, and social media, and more.
|  Up and Running with Office 365 with David Rivers gets users going with Office 365, Microsoft’s new collaborative service that allows teams to email, collaborate on documents, share calendars, and have video calls and meetings in the cloud.
|  In Relational Database Design with FileMaker Pro, author Cris Ippolite shows how to translate aspects of the real world into the form and language of a relational database, using three practical data modeling examples. The course also demonstrates some advanced modeling techniques, such as filtering, scripting, and the use of portals.
|  In Small Office Networking to Connect, Share, and Print, Garrick Chow provides a collection of information and tips on how to create and maintain a network between two or more computers, whether they’re Macs, Windows PCs, or a combination of both. The course helps to determine what type of network is right for the home or office, how to share a single Internet connection between all computers, how to move files over the network, troubleshooting, and how to take advantage of shared network devices like printers and hard drives.
| Focus on photography One of our most popular and fastest-growing topics in the Online Training Library® is photography-from shooting skills to editing in Photoshop. Here are the latest:
|  Douglas Kirkland on Photography: Shooting with an 8x10 Camera is a love letter to the large-format Deardorff view camera, which shoots a negative measuring eight by ten inches. Douglas begins by showcasing a dozen portraits from his years working in large-format photography, featuring subjects ranging from celebrities such as Nicole Kidman to Australian Aborigines. Douglas shows how to achieve effects such as shallow depth of field, describes the printing potential that such a large negative permits, and much more.
|  In Shooting with Wireless Flash: Studio Portraits, award-winning photographer Jim Sugar shows how to light and shoot a portrait with a dramatic look. He demonstrates a variety of inexpensive lighting tools-clamps, gels, and other light modifiers-to light the subject and the background. He also shows how to offer direction, pose the subject, and make him or her feel more comfortable.
|  In Organizing and Archiving Digital Photos , photographer Derrick Story teaches the concepts and techniques behind efficient photo management and backup, which becomes increasingly important as a photo collection grows. The course begins by showing how to transfer and organize photos by copying them from a memory card to a hard drive without using software. Derrick also discusses how to take advantage of the photo management features provided by programs such as Lightroom and Aperture, and the importance of adopting a smart backup and archival strategy.
|  Natalie Fobes: The Elements of Effective Photographs begins with an exploration of composition and the elements, such as leading lines and curves, that guide a viewer’s eye to the parts of the photo that are most important. It also details the role of color and light, describing basic color theory and showing how color contributes to the mood of a photo. Natalie also looks at movement and its role in still photography, and more.
|  Up and Running with Photoshop for Photography is a streamlined introduction to Photoshop specifically geared to photographers and enthusiasts. Deke McClelland shows how to enhance photos and transform them into stunning images in the shortest time possible. The course covers the basics of correcting, retouching, and cropping, as well as applying filters, building layered compositions, and creating seamless panoramas.
|  Transforming a Photo into a Painting with Photoshop teaches the process of interpreting a photograph into a painted result. Author John Derry uses the term “expressive interpretation” to describe this process. In this course, John shares his system of visual vocabularies while teaching how to transform the photographic elements of an image into an expressive painting. | Education tools essential training  In Moodle 2 Essential Training for Teachers, author Chris Mattia shows how this program works for teachers on three levels: disseminating information, creating a forum where ideas are exchanged, and assessing the progress of students. The course shows how to build course materials with Moodle’s HTML editor, post assignments, and use Moodle’s grade book to evaluate tests automatically and organize scores.
|  In Moodle 2 Essential Training for Students, Chris walks students step by step through a typical Moodle course and shows students how to post materials to a custom database, participate in a live chat with other students, and access and complete assignments online.
|  In Blackboard 9.x Essential Training for Students, Dr. Patrick Crispen shows how to get up and running on day one of class and start finding and logging into courses, submitting assignments and importing files, and taking tests. The course also shows how classmates and work groups can communicate in Blackboard with group assignments and email. | Introduction to Muse, a new web design tool from Adobe  Muse Beta Preview introduces Muse, a new software application from Adobe that makes creating HTML web sites as easy as designing print layouts. Author James Fritz shows how to build auto-generated site navigation-such as headers, footers, and menus-without writing code, and explains how to style text and place graphics from familiar Adobe tools like Photoshop and Fireworks. The course also covers integrating with Google Maps, YouTube, and Twitter and publishing a final site online. | Creative Inspirations series now include bonus features To give you an inside look into the Creative Inspirations documentaries, we’re launching an addition to the series: bonus features. After releasing the films on lynda.com, we often screen them for a theatre audience and bring the star of the documentary to the screening for an interview and Q&A with the audience. The topics they discuss are frequently derived from feedback we receive from our members.
 After the screening, Stefan G. Bucher answered audience questions during his interview with Terry Lee Stone.
This summer, lynda.com had a special screening of Stefan G. Bucher, Designer, Illustrator, and Writer in the Ahmanson Theatre at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. After the lights came up, Stefan came up on stage to enthusiastic applause to be interviewed by Terry Lee Stone, a writer and creative strategist who teaches the business of design at Art Center. This lively discussion (which included audience Q&A) covers a wide range of topics and brings us up to date on Stefan’s most recent endeavors. Highlights include Stefan’s thoughts on choosing projects and even what’s next for the monsters . As usual, Stefan brought along his sharp wit and wonderful sense of humor.
During the filming of the Creative Inspirations Mexopolis, Animation Studio, artist Jorge Gutierrez told us a compelling story about one of his most important influences as a child, MAD magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones. Not being able to speak English, Jorge fell in love with Sergio’s wordless cartoons and told his father that this is what he wanted to do when he grew up. As fate had it, Jorge’s father went to architecture school with Sergio. His father drove him from Tijuana to ComicCon in San Diego to have Sergio explain to the young Jorge the importance of attending college. And there the story begins. Twenty-three years had elapsed since they had seen each other, but we were able to arrange an emotional reunion at a quiet spot near lynda.com ’s studios. The bonus features can be found at the end of the table of contents on each documentary page. As bonus features are released, we’ll announce them on the blog, Facebook, and Twitter. | New InDesign Secrets series | In the biweekly InDesign Secrets series, InDesign gurus David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepción share hidden and sometimes surprising workflow tips that will make working in InDesign more efficient and fun. The series covers built-in timesaving features such as Quick Apply and auto-expanding text, but also little-known tricks, such as using the eyedropper to copy and paste character and paragraph text attributes and making accurate selections by selecting through or even into objects. If you are a frequent InDesign user and are interested in becoming more productive, we invite you to come back to lynda.com every other Thursday to watch the new videos we’ll publish to the InDesign Secrets and InDesign FX series. | Our mobile site is now in beta Last but not least, one hundred lynda.com members were chosen to try out the beta version of the lynda.com mobile web site. We’re already getting great feedback and can’t wait to show it to you soon!
Until next month, happy learning!
—Lynda | |
 Keep an eye on the site for these and many other helpful new courses coming to the Online Training Library® soon: - Creating Animated Characters in After Effects
- Scanning Techniques for Business and Home
- Douglas Kirkland on Photography: The Elements of Composition
- Google Calendar Essential Training
- Shooting with Wireless Flash: Outdoors at Twilight
- Mac OS X Lion Essential Training
- Game Character Creation in Maya
- Marian Bantjes, Graphic Artist
- Modo 501 Essential Training
- Revit Architecture: Family Editor
- C# Essential Training
- Mac OS X Lion Server Essential Training
- Installing Apache, MySQL and PHP
- Narrative Portraiture: On Location in New York with Rodney Smith
- CSS Fundamentals
- Migrating from Final Cut 7 to Premiere Pro CS5
- Outlook 2010: Time Management with Calendar and Tasks
- Creating Your First Online Portfolio with WordPress
- Joomla! 1.7: Programming and Packaging Extensions
| Testimonial of the month Saves me so much time
lynda.com ROCKS! It’s saving me so much time from scouring YouTube for tutorial videos!! YAY! I love all the tips and tricks from the instructors. And they make everything easy to understand. Adobe CS5 isn’t that daunting after all. Just wanted to express my gratitude. Thank you all at lynda.com!
—David B. Read more great feedback. | Tip of the month |  The Undo Send Lab gives you up to 30 seconds to retract a sent email. | | Retracting a message from Gmail for Power Users Have you ever sent an email message and, right after hitting Send, wished you hadn’t? With the Undo Send lab in Gmail, you can take those messages back. The Undo Send Lab gives you up to 30 seconds to undo a sent email. If you want to make use of this function, first go into your Labs, which you can get to under the gear icon in the upper right-hand side of your Gmail window. Scroll down and make sure you have the Undo Send Lab enabled. Then scroll back up and go to your General settings. In the Undo Send section, Enabled should be checked. Now that the Undo Send Lab is turned on, you can enable and disable the function from your General settings. You can also change the send cancellation period to between 5 and 30 seconds. Remember, though, that even though you have up to 30 seconds to retract a message, if you click away from the screen where the Undo link appears, you will lose the undo option. For it to work, you need to click on it before you click anywhere else in your mailbox. View sample movie from Gmail for Power Users. | |
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