Scribus and Geogad MP3 Rentals
Saturday, February 10th, 2007Open source is a great movement. Some would say that it evolves from the 1960’s with the hippies and their love of communal sharing. I tend to think that it is more a result of psychology of engineers and scientists. This type of people value knowledge and solving problems to help others. Coincidentally, it also gives the smart, geeky people a chance to be heroes, albeit geeky heroes. To such people, getting a chance to work hard with other smart, like-minded people over a brand new, cutting edge tool that will help people and show how clever they are is a type of heaven.
One great example of a great open source program that is a huge help is Scribus. It is similar to Adobe Acrobat Pro in that you can create complicated documents that can then be printed at professional printers. Once again, the open source community has made the world a better place. With Scribus I can layout posters and brochures exactly how I want them. It would cost me days of time and thousand of dollars to hire a professional to accomplish the same thing.
For those of you trying to make due with Microsoft Publisher, good luck. To me, MS Publisher seems to be purposely flawed. The files that result cannot be used directly by professional printers. Many will change you at least $20 or more to convert the file to a format that they can use.
If you are like me and go from MS Publisher to Scribus, be patient with yourself. The programs are as different from each other as a toy car is from a racecar. It may take you a couple of days to sort out Scribus. But if you create many docs to be printed, it is worth the time.
My most recent use of Scribus was to create posters and brochures to advertise a new product of Geogad, an MP3 rental program in San Francisco for travelers who don’t have MP3 players or who forgot to load the Geogad tours onto their players before they arrived.
Geogad is collaborating with the California Welcome Center at Pier 39 to rent MP3 players that have all of Geogad’s San Francisco tours already preloaded. You can rent the player at Pier 39 and tour all of Fisherman’s Wharf. Then you can hop on the MUNI F-line with consists of historic renovated streetcars and travel down to the San Francisco Ferry Building. You can then play Geogad’s tour of the Ferry Building area on your MP3 player. Geogad’s Ferry Building tour ends at the foot of Market Street, which is where Geogad’s tour of Market Street begins. You can then walk Geogad’s tour of Market Street. If you still have energy at the end of this tour, you can take the next Geogad tour. Geogad’s tour of Union Square starts at Hallidie Plaza, which is where the last tour stop for the Market Street tour ends. Geogad’s tour of Union Square takes you on a quick tour of the Union Square area and ends at the gates of Chinatown, which is a great place for inexpensive souvenirs and fresh delicious Asian food.
To reserve an MP3 player or for more questions, call the California Welcome Center at (415) 981-1280.
Technorati tags: Scribus, printing, Microsoft Publisher, Open Source
