The only problem is that a) some of these can be extremely expensive and b) coverage and data speeds can be very suspect at times.

I once used a BT Openzone connection in a hotel when my own Vodafone Dongle wouldn’t work. I ended up with a £50 bill as I didn’t check the small print – serves me right!

Dongles can be useful, but I find mine increasingly frustrating as more and more users come on board.

But there is an added problem too. What if you have a number of devices, but only want to pay for one contract? Or what if you have an iPad, didn’t take out a monthly data contract and suddenly decide you need internet access while on the move?

The MiFi mobile broadband device goes a long way to answering some of these questions. But what exactly is a MiFi?

A MiFi allows you to connect multiple devices to the internet while mobile and acts like your own portable Wi-Fi hotspot. Like other mobile broadband services you can use a MiFi on the go – plus, unlike normal dongles, you can use the MiFi to connect iPads, iPod Touches and other Wi-Fi devices to the net as well.

You can connect up to five different Wi-Fi enabled devices at once, which means it could work well if you have a team event in a location without Wi-Fi or need to set up a temporary office.

The maximum range is about 10-20m before the Wi-Fi signal gives up and it is probably a good idea to keep fairly close for maximum throughput.

There’s no need to load any software on your computer and the MiFi comes with a battery that lets you stay connected to the internet for up to five hours.

You can also charge the MiFi while you’re using it and an online dashboard allows you to manage your account, send and receive text messages and change settings for the Wi-Fi connection.

The MiFi is available from 3 and Vodafone. On a contract from 3 it costs £71.99 with 3GB credit pre-loaded on a PAYG basis, or from £39.99 with a capped, £15.99 a month 5Gb contract. If you opt for the 3 PAYG option a data top-up typically costs £10 for 1Gb and £15 for 3Gb, although the top up must be used within 30 days.

It is worth noting that the when used on the 3 network the MiFi is 3G only and doesn’t fall back to slower GPRS when there is no 3G available. Anyone with a Vodafone, O2 or T-Mobile dongle will probably know that in some parts of the country you can end up on GPRS most of the time.

The MiFi includes set-up instructions, a charger and a cable to connect it to your laptop, which is useful if its battery dies. If the battery is flat you can still connect it a PC and power it via the USB lead.

Once set up you are really at the mercy of your connection. If you have ever used a mobile dongle you will know that connections can vary from excellent to non-existent depending on the coverage in your area and the number of people using the network at the time.

A MiFi is probably OK for sending and receiving emails, plus a little bit of light web browsing, but I wouldn’t use it to download large files or watch movies. And if three or four of you are using it at once the throughout will drop accordingly.

Having said that, if you are in a location without Wi-Fi and need to connect to the net it could be a lifesaver.

At the time of writing the MiFi was only available for use on 3 and Vodafone, although you can buy unlocked versions from Ebay that will enable you to put a SIM card in from any network. According to one report 3 will also unlock a PAYG MiFi for £15.

In all then, the MiFI is the easiest way to get a non-contract iPad on the internet and will also allow you to create your own WiFi hotspot should you need one – but don’t expect 100% coverage or lightning download speeds.

Although there are other “office” packages around Microsoft Office is usually the one you find installed on PCs.

For Mac fans the latest incarnation, Microsoft Office 2011, has been eagerly awaited. But why “eagerly”?

Earlier versions of MS Word for Mac, with the best being Word 2004, mostly did what they said on the tin. In fact, there are still plenty of people soldiering on with Word 2004, despite its age. When it was replaced with Office 2008 many users found it buggy, prone to crashing and generally a step backwards.

Don’t just take my word for it (no pun intended). Office 2008 only received a three star rating on Amazon from its customers. It was the same story on the UK Apple online store where it failed to impress reviewers. My own experience was not too good either, with the software crashing on me quite frequently – I ended up going back to NeoOffice in sheer frustration, writing a whole book with it.

So Office 2011 has a lot to prove. But how does it shape up?

My first reaction was that it runs quicker than Microsoft Office 2008. When typing there is also now no lag between hitting a key and the character appearing – this was another “feature” of its predecessor at times.

Office 2011 doesn’t follow Apple’s modern Cocoa interface guidelines, which means that the menu bar configuration is non-standard and not very Mac-like at times.

But one big change is the “Ribbon” interface, which will be familiar to users of Office 2007 and 2010 Office for Windows. It is designed to make it easier for users to discover the features in each program. Another big change is the replacement of the previous email program, Entourage, with a brand-new Mac version of Outlook.

I am going to concentrate on Microsoft Word here as this is probably the program most people will use most. Apart from the Ribbon interface, which gives access to font characteristics, alignment and styles, another welcome edition is a total word count at the bottom of the screen.

Other than that it all looks very similar to Word 2008, complete with autocorrect, red spelling mistake warnings and green grammar suggestions.

New though is a full screen view, which is designed to remove distractions. This hides your desktop and all other open programs behind a black background. Only a single Formatting toolbar is visible, which scrolls off the top of the screen until you mouse over it. Hitting “Esc” takes you back to a normal view.

Word 2011 also now integrates with Microsoft Office Web Apps, which are stripped down versions of the Office applications that can be run in a web browser. This is Microsoft’s equivalent of Google Docs. Microsoft has also added support for its Windows Live SkyDrive and SharePoint 2010.

I haven’t even looked at Excel and PowerPoint – there isn’t enough space here to do them justice.

Be aware though – users of older Macs might not be able to run Office 2011. You need an Intel-based machine running at least Mac OSX 10.5.8. You’ll also need at least 1Gb of RAM.

So in conclusion, Office 2011 appears to run faster than Office 2008 and has a nicer interface. First impressions are that it is less buggy than its predecessor too.

Whether that warrants a £109.95 purchase (for the three-licence Home and Student edition) or £189.95 (for the one licence Home and Business edition with Outlook included) I’ll leave to you.

In terms of alternatives there is always the cheaper Apple iWork, which is excellent at only £71, but not inherently compatible with MS Office – you have to export documents in Word format. Many of my colleagues love iWork’s Pages application for its DTP capabilities, but for pure copy generation they fall back on MS Word. Opening PowerPoint presentations in Apple’s Keynote also used to change them dramatically, although this improved with iWork 08.

If you prefer free open source software NeoOffice for Mac seems to work faster than its OpenOffice.org cousin and will do 95% of anything you wish to throw at it.

But the system has a few more tricks up its sleeve. First, you can then go on to market your creation online, getting a free ISBN number and promoting your book on Amazon and Google Books automatically. Second, you can then offer the product as a digital download too.

I was first introduced to Lulu by a friend who had written a book about his worldwide exploits as a US diplomat. I was quite impressed with the result and thought that Lulu needed a closer look.

You can select any one of a number of book sizes up to A4, with a range of different bindings. You can also go for black only or full colour.

Having decided on the size you require and the binding you can then download a Microsoft Word template that has all the correct margins, footers and headers and automated page numbering set up.

It’s then a simple case of importing your text and/or images into MS Word. If you prefer to use another word processor or desk top publishing program no problem. As long as you can produce a PDF at the end of the project you are laughing.

For my test project I used the open source NeoOffice for the Mac (which is similar to OpenOffice). Working on the basis that if you can create a book with a free package you should be OK with a commercial one.

One complete, you create your PDF (following the instructions and help files found at lulu.com), making sure that you embed the fonts – this can be as easy as ticking a box marked “PDF/A-1A”.

Having gone online and selected a name for your book you then upload the PDF, which is converted into the required Lulu format in a few seconds.

You can then go to the front cover designer and select a design template. You then get an online design tool with drag and drop capabilities and a WYSIWYG font tool. If you have opted to have an ISBN number you have to add a supplied bar code on the back cover – this takes just a second to drag and drop into place.

If you are selling your product online Lulu requires you to request a proof copy to approve, which you pay for and will arrive in a few days. Once you have done that you are free to sell as many copies as you want. If you place the book in the Lulu marketplace anyone else can order copies and it can be found on Amazon and Google. As they are ordered the books are then printed on demand (POD) in one of the many Lulu print facilities around the world and despatched direct to the customer.

So how much does this all cost? For my project, which was a reprint of an eye-witness account entitled “The Loss of the Titanic – its Story and Lessons” (ISBN 978-1-4461-8820-0 if you’re interested), I already had the raw text. Once designed it ran to 124 A5 pages plus the cover. The wholesale cost to me was £3.46 + P&P per copy and it took just a morning to design and publish. You can set the retail price to whatever you want.

For short-run internal communications projects, or even full-blown publishing on demand, Lulu is definitely worth a look.

Better Editorial and PR Photography

It looks at how you can use props to make your images come alive and shows you techniques for handling people shots, groups, portraits, event shots, presentations and much more.

It explains the pitfalls behind taking these types of photographs and shows you how to prepare for the photo shoot – before you even leave your office.

It also explains terms like megapixels, JPEG, RGB, CMYK, TIFF, Ni-mh and many more.

Inside the manual you will find tips on:

* How to prepare images for print and the net.

* How to embed caption information right inside your digital images using Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

* How to make sure your batteries don’t let you down half way through a shoot.

* How to take great informal portraits.

* How to work out how big you can use any digital image in print.

* And how to improve your image quality in just five seconds!

The manual can be bought for just $24.99 and downloaded in seconds using the Clickbank System.

See http://www.infotechcomms.co.uk/coursesphotography.htm

Better Editorial and PR Photography is written by Steve Nichols of InfoTech Communications, who has been taking photographs professionally for more than 25 years.

His editorial and PR photographic work has appeared in countless magazines and has taken him as far afield as Florida to cover Space Shuttle launches, Seattle to cover the design of a new Boeing supersonic airliner and to Singapore, Dubai and Abu Dhabi to photograph top airline executives.

He started by saying that we are going to see more people losing their jobs over the next two-three years (no surprise), so we will probably see more and more people becoming self employed and running businesses from home. So some of the following trends are going to be even more important.

Anyway, the trends are:

Better Broadband

Yes, I know you think we’ve got it already – but he means faster, cheaper networks wherever you are. That means more broadband in rural areas; better, faster mobile networks and ubiquitous Wi-Fi.

At the moment public Wi-Fi is there, but its a mixture of paid-for and free (if you can find it). He suggests that we need faster, cheaper data. As someone who travels a lot I agree. Trying to find reliable Wi-Fi at an affordable cost can be hard. Otherwise, like me, you can end up with paying £60 + VAT for two hours’ use in a hotel because your Vodafone dongle can’t find a network. Or face a £200 phone bill when you get back from Dubai.

So yes, let’s hear it for better broadband – wherever you are.

Cloud Computing

He also forecast the death of the PC. In future your iPhone, iPad or other tablet/device will access your data on a central server somewhere in the cloud. We are already seeing this with apps like Google Docs, but imagine your whole hard drive living in the cloud? He even sees your operating system being in the cloud as well. But for this to work we need better broadband – see point one!

Smarter Mobile Devices

Were getting there – the iPad is a start, but in five years you will be able to replace your whole office with a portable device. We’ll need better battery life, better Wi-Fi and, hey, cloud computing, but it will come. See how everything is interlinked?

Social Business Networks

LinkedIn is a start, but imagine a super LinkedIn where you never have to market face to face, never have to travel to give business pitches and have a virtual office environment where everyone only goes into the office twice a week. How will that affect society?

He did say that Social Business Networks will kill you r company if you don’t understand them. Four-five bad posts about your company and its products can easily undo years of careful marketing and PR. We are already well on the road to this scenario.

To be honest, this is nothing new. But it is food for thought

But how do you get the best out of it and what are the tricks of the trade?

The problem with hi-res images straight out of a camera is that they are just too big for the net. Typically, you need something about 250 – 350pixels wide, not the 3000-odd pixels that the average Nikon or Canon DSLR creates.

So what do you do? The first step is to make sure that you have a decent imaging program. While PCs come with PhotoEditor, in my opinion it is pretty useless at creating good images for the web. Far better is Adobe Photoshop Elements, which has about 80% of the functionality of full-blown Photoshop, but only costs around £65 for Mac or PC.

The main difference between Photoshop and Photoshop Elements is that the lesser version can’t convert the colour model from RGB to CMYK. That is, it can’t prepare images for print. But for web use you don’t need that anyway.

So having installed Photoshop Elements what do we do?

First, open your hi-res image and use the cropping tool to crop what it is you want out of the image. Most people include way too much clutter around the images, which must be cropped tightly to maintain impact when used small.

Once you have cropped the image go to “Enhance >> Brightness and Contrast >> Levels”

This gives you a graphical illustration of the tones in the photograph, from the blackest black on the left to pure white on the right. A typical well-exposed image has a full range of tones, but you can see that our image is shifted to the left – the dark tones don’t come all the way over to the right.

But this is easily fixed – just click and drag the right-hand triangle under the graph and move it down to where the graph appears to finish. You now have a good spread of tones and the image is much brighter, but still not quite right.

But if we move the central triangle towards the left too, the image improves even more. The central triangle defines what is going to be the mid tone of the image.

The new graph may look a mess as we have effectively reduced the overall number of tones in the image, but as it is only for the net this is fine.

This is something you might need to practice with, but the levels are a powerful tool and much better than just using the Brightness and Contrast controls.

Now we need to reduce the size of the image. Go to “Image >> Resize>> Image Size” and change the width to 250pixels or whatever size you use. Make sure you have “Constrain Proportions” and “Resample Image” ticked.

The image is now at the right size for the net – zoom in until the image says it is at 100%. This is now the size it will appear in a web browser.

There is now one final thing to do. Images that have been downsized always look slightly fuzzy. We can sharpen them by going to “Filter >>Sharpen >> Unsharp Mask”.

Set the Radius to 1.5 pixels and the Threshold to 5 levels. Now set the amount to somewhere around 50 – 100. You can see the effect you are having by clicking on and off the “Preview” option.

Don’t overdo the sharpening. Once you are happy click OK.

Now all you have to do is go to “Save for web” and select JPEG, and a “Quality” level of “High” (about 60%). This will depend upon the image, but if in doubt make the image quality better rather than worse.

Now save your image. The end result will be a file of about 20K, which will load very quickly on a webpage or intranet site.

If you want to learn more about using Photoshop I can recommend a series of videos called “Learn Photoshop Now – in just two hours”.

Steve Nichols runs InfoTech Communications (www.infotechcomms.co.uk). InfoTech specialises in online communications and Steve has acted as consultant and trainer for many blue-chip companies including Aviva, AWG, Shell, BT, Standard Life, HBOS, BNFL, Accenture and Australia New Zealand Bank.

You know the problem. You need to get an important message across to employees and you have the corporate intranet at your disposal. But the trouble is, employees have so many demands on their time and attention. They have a group home page, their regional home page, a departmental home page, a divisional microsite, newsfeeds galore – and their real job to get on with too.

Here’s some tips:

1. Get to the point

Read any newspaper and you ill find that a good news story gets to the point quickly and succinctly. If you haven’t told the story in the first sentence of the first paragraph and preferably in about 20-25 words, you have failed.

If in doubt think of what you would say if someone asked you what the main point of your story was. You can virtually guarantee that the first sentence you utter would make a better opening paragraph than the usual waffle that companies seem to want to publish.

2. Keep it simple

Long-winded prose has no place on an intranet. Get to the point, tell people what they need to know and stop there. Back this up with a hyperlink to a longer more detailed story if need be or use Q&As which are much easier to read.

3. Use your headline

Many people give little thought to the use of headlines and summaries in online stories. In fact, these are more likely to be read than any story that has to clicked on to be read. For example, the headline “Important News” and the summary “Click here for important news” are utterly meaningless. The user has learned nothing and you have not given them enough information to decide whether to click further. Make sure your headline tells your reader something.

4. Use your headline and summary together

People often write these as an afterthought. But work the two together and you can impart a lot more information. The trick is to ensure that you don’t just repeat the headline information in the summary, but use the extra space to add something. For example, “Manchester Branch to close” as a headline is good, but if the summary then says “Universal Widget’s Manchester Branch is to close” you have just wasted space. Better to say “Cost-cutting exercise will see Leeds being the main branch in the North” has added more detail.

5. Get your timing right.

Find out the best time to publish information onto the intranet. If your news is important there is no point burying it in the middle of three lesser stories. Why not leave it an hour and then publish your main story. That way it will stand out. Core times for maximum readership are likely to be in 09:30-11.00 period, but not on Mondays or Fridays or just before/after a public holiday.

6. Use Questions and Answers

Sometimes a long, rambling story that contains the information people need is just too much to wade through. If you can, break down the story into meaningful questions and answers – the ubiquitous Q&As. The important thing is to ensure that the questions are ones that people would really ask.

7. Use Summaries

At the head of the article, use five or so bulleted points that sums up the content below. That way, the reader can get the gist of the feature without having to read the whole thing. If they then wish to dig deeper they can.

8. Prioritise your articles

It is human nature to read the top story first. So make sure that if you need to publish three or so stories that the most important one is placed at the top of the pile. Make sure it stays there for a good five hours or so for maximum effect. Depending on how your intranet is laid out, make sure it doesn’t go disappear further down the list and so needs the user to scroll – the modern day equivalent of being “below the fold”.

9. Use reminders or pointers
Send an e-mail out once a week that summarises the main news that has appeared. You just need to show the headline and the URL. Better still have a clickable web link. You can order the stories to suit your particular needs and the weight you place behind each story.

10. Highlight important stories with blobs or colour.
Nothing makes important stories stand out more than having a red blob or some other image attached to them. You can make up an “Urgent” image and include that if you like. Don’t overdo it though or people will switch off.

Steve Nichols’ TechNotes blog is at http://www.infotechcomms.co.uk/blog and is described as a regular ramble that tries to demystify technology and help people get to grips with new-fangled gizmos, such as the internet, streaming audio/video, DTP and digital imaging. Steve is a technology journalist and consultant and runs “Writing for the Web” and “Better Photography” training courses.

Think of the iPad as a giant version of the iPhone and you will be on the right track. Measuring

9.56 inches (242.8 mm) wide by 7.47 inches (189.7 mm) deep and 0.5 inch (13.4 mm) thick it weighs in at 1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) for the Wi-Fi only model and 1.6 pounds (0.73 kg) for the Wi-Fi + 3G model.

Prices range from £429 for the 16Gb Wi-Fi iPad to £699 for the 32Gb Wi-Fi and 3G model.

The Wi-Fi and 3G model enables you to connect to the internet via its built-in mobile data connection, but for this you will need to pay for a monthly data plan, typically about £15 for 3Gb per month. This would be enough to browse the internet for about 90 hours or send 1,950 emails.

If you don’t opt for the 3G version you will have to hunt down Wi-Fi hotspots or use your own connection. Incidentally, finding a free Wi-Fi connection isn’t as easy as it used to be, but they still have them in McDonald’s, in Apple Stores and in most Starbucks (but you now have to buy a Starbucks card first). If you’re looking for a free Wi-Fi hotspot try http://www.hotspot-locations.com/ or http://free-hotspot.com

Anyway, back to the iPad. My first impression was that it is actually quite heavy. You only really notice this after you have been holding it for a while, but given that you really have to hold it at an optimum viewing angle it does become quite noticeable. On the plus side the screen is excellent. It may only pack a 9.7 inch diagonal (246.4 mm) screen that displays 1024 x 768 pixels, but it is better than most netbooks I have used. The fact that the operating system is designed to lose as many menus as possible also helps, giving you a large viewing area.

Just like an iPod or iPhone, the centrally-placed Home button does most of the work for you. This enables you to get back to the main menu and select which program you wish to run. Everything else is done using the touch-sensitive screen. This works very well indeed once you get used to the various “gestures” you can use, including flicking from page to page and “double tapping” to zoom in and out, “tapping and holding” for more options and “pinching” to zoom.

Rotating the iPad through 90 degrees also automatically turns the display from portrait to landscape.

A virtual keyboard springs up when you need to type and it is actually very good. There is no tactile feedback, but I found it relatively easy to type on although I wouldn’t want to write a novel on it.

You can use a normal keyboard with the iPad by buying the £55 keyboard and dock accessory. I also recommend you buy a dedicated case to stop if getting scratched – Apple does one that folds into a stand for £30.

The one thing that really stands out on the iPad is its battery life. Expect to get around 10 hours of normal use or eight-nine hours if you use the 3G connection. As with all rechargeable batteries these figures will likely reduce over time.

Out of the box the iPad comes with the Safari web browser, Mail, Calendar and Contacts. It can also handle photographs, videos and music. Note that Safari on the iPad can’t display Flash content, which can be pain on some websites. If you want to add more functionality you then buy more “apps” via the Apple iStore. There are thousands of these, but the first one you should buy for just £5.99 is Pages. This is a cut-down version of the Mac word processor and is pretty essential if you are a communicator. Calling Pages a word processor is actually selling it short – it is really a very good DTP program, although why you would want to desk top publish on a tablet computer I don’t know/

You can share the documents you create in Pages. Attach them to an e-mail as Pages files for Mac, Microsoft Word files, or PDF documents. This is the easiest way to get the documents out, otherwise you have to export them via iTunes. One thing, Pages doesn’t a word count feature – tut tut!

If you want some other business apps look at Numbers (spreadsheets) and Keynote (presentations) for just £5.99 each.

A word of caution on Keynote – I have found that it doesn’t integrate well with PowerPoint. The files can’t be transferred seamlessly between the two. If you give presentations stick to either Keynote or PowerPoint, but don’t try and use both.

You CAN display your presentations direct from the iPad, but you will need a £25 dock to VGA adaptor connector.

So that’s a very quick look at the iPad, but is it a useful tool or a toy? The answer to that question really depends on how you use a computer. If you regularly carry a laptop around the iPad could replace it. But if you type a lot then you may miss the physical keyboard. Yes, you can buy the optional external keyboard, but would you be better off with a laptop or netbook anyway?

The other downside is the cost. You really have to budget on spending at least £100 on accessories and apps. Also, you can’t plug a USB 3G dongle into it so if you want mobile internet you are going to have to opt for the 3G version.

The price point then becomes similar to an Apple Macbook, but a whole lot more than a basic Windows netbook. Ultimately, that 10-hour battery life might swing it.

The one that instantly sprang to mind (as it has given me grief in the past) is how to handle foreign characters on your PC or Mac. Once you know how it isn’t so bad, but if you are stuck for how to key å or é then this guide might be useful to you.

Looking at PCs first, I’ll assumed that you are using a UK keyboard. If you are using a foreign keyboard then a different technique applies.

The simplest and quickest way to get characters on a PC is to use the “Alt + number” technique. To do this, hold the Alt button down and then enter the relevant four digit code. For example, “alt + 0224” gives an accented à, while “alt + 0232” gives an accented è. The only problem with this method is that you need to remember the right code. The best thing to do it download a sheet of them from the internet and clip it to your noticeboard so that it is always handy.

You can find a list of the codes at http://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm.

This technique will cover most of the accented characters you need in French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese and German.

If you require other characters, such as Arabic then another method is to go to Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Character Map. From there you can select a font, pick the character you need and copy it. You then go back to your word processing program and paste it into place. I found that selecting Arial lets you choose Arabic characters and Verdana gave me Slavic characters, but you have to play with it to find what you want.

There are other methods you can use, including installing other languages, but the ones above are probably the simplest. If you are looking for a quick and easy way to an accented à or è, just try pressing and holding Alt Gr and then the character. That seems to work quite well.

The process on an Apple Macintosh is totally different, but not overcomplicated.

If you require a simple accent then the process is to use the Option key and then a modifier key to get the accent you require. For example:

Acute (ó Ó) Option+E, and then the vowel

Circumflex (ô Ô) Option+I, and then the vowel

Grave (ò Ò) Option+`, and then the vowel

Tilde (õ Õ) Option+N, and then the vowel (Only works with “n,N,o,O,a,A”)

Umlaut (ö Ö) Option+U, and then the vowel

This isn’t too bad as you only have to remember five different characters to get all the accented characters you probably need.

If you want to get other characters, such as Hachecks, Breves, Polish Ogoneks and Hungarian Double Acutes you’ll need to delve a little deeper.

If you are working with a Unicode aware application such as Microsoft Office you can activate the US Extended keyboard and use the additional accent codes.

This method works for OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. To activate the Extended Keyboard, go to the Apple menu and open Systems Preferences. Click the Language and Text icon on the first row of the Systems Preferences panel. Click the Input Sources tab and check that the US Extended keyboard you want is activated.

Now to switch keyboards, open a software application such as your word processor, spreadsheet or any other program in which you need to enter text. On the upper right portion of the screen, click on the keyboard selector (it may be a small British flag) and select the American flag Extended Keyboard (American Flag with a small U at the bottom).

Once you have done that you now have access to a host of characters. Go to http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codemacext.html to find a comprehensive list, but as a taster you can get Polish Ogoneks with Option + M and then the vowel (eg ą), or Macrons with Option + A and then the vowel (eg ā).

If you want other foreign characters the easiest way is to enable the relevant keyboard for the language you require using the technique above. Then, just select the keyboard viewer using the same drop down and you can see what characters you get using the option and other modifier keys. I found that by selecting the Spanish keyboard and the character viewer I was able to get the Spanish ¿ and ? characters very easily.

Well I hope that has been useful. If you are doing a lot of foreign character work it is almost worth buying the relevant keyboard, otherwise the methods listed above will get you going.

The lazy way of putting it on the net or intranet is just to FTP the file to a server and provide a link to it. I say lazy as whether or not it can be played will depend on what media software your listener has on their computer.

A better, and more presentable, way of offering up an MP3 audio file is to include a piece of player software on your web site.

That way, you get a far more presentable rendition of your audio, complete with a player icon, pause, stop and fast forward buttons, plus a time counter.

An example of this in action can be seen on the page devoted to TJ Larkin with whom I recorded an interview at the 2008 CiB Conference. Just search for “TJ Larkin” on the IoIC website (www.ioic.org.uk).

This was done by installing the Dewplayer software (http://www.alsacreations.fr/dewplayer-en) on the server. Don’t panic – it is just a case of copying a few files and then making sure that you put the right code into the link to the MP3 file.

If that all seems a bit too much and you don’t have a pet techie, another way is to use an external hosting company and then link to them. An example of this is Humyo.com, which we use for the Arabian Aerospace Podcast – see www.arabianaerospace.aero

You simply upload your MP3 file, make it publicly available and then embed the code that the site gives you into your web page. Humyo has a free service, which is supported by their advertisements or you can pay a small fee every month for an ad-free player.

Now, if you want to make your MP3 recording into a full-blown iTunes-compatible Podcast you’ll need to do a bit more work.

First, you’ll need to store the MP3 files on a publicly-accessible web server. It doesn’t have to be too fancy, but you must be able to give a ful URL to the MP3 file.

Next, you have to create what is known as an XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) file, which iTunes can use to locate your audio. The full title for this is an XML-based RSS Podcast Feed file. This file will also contain information about you, what sort of category the podcast should be in, how long the podcast is and whether or not iTunes needs to display an image with your podcast entry.

You can handcode this XML file if you really feel like being a masochist, or you can use a program to generate the XML file for you. Two worth looking at are Feed for All (www.FeedForAll.com) and Podcast Blaster (http://www.podcastblaster.com/podcast-feed/).

Once you have the file(s) and the RSS feed on the server you are then ready to submit your podcast to iTunes for approval. But first you should test it to make sure it works. There are also numerous RSS feed “testers” on the net that make sure that your feed is correct and up to Apple’s standards. I use the one at http://beta.feedvalidator.org/

Once you are happy you can submit to iTunes. Start the iTunes software (you will need an iTunes account), go to the iTunes store, click on podcasts and look for the “Submit a Podcast” link.

All iTunes needs to know is the url to your RSS file. If all is well within a couple of days you should get confirmation that your podcast has been accepted and people will be able to find it on iTunes.

Then, once they “subscribe” to your podcast it will automatically be downloaded every time they start iTunes and be transferred to their iPod every time they sync. Note you don’t have to have an iPod to use iTunes – you can listen to the content on your desk computer.

If you add a new episode you just upload the new MP3 file, update the RSS feed file and the rest is automatic. So there you are – professional podcast production in just three easy monthly instalments!