If you want to really show your clients you appreciate them,  then one of the best ways is sending out a personal card with their image on the front and a personal message. I was hoping I could achieve this by using senoutcards.com but when i was checking out sendoutcards.com i was shock at just how confusing and expensive of a process they had. With their smallest package starting at $99 and the one you really want starting at $298, overpriced is an understatement. If all you want to do is send a handful of personal thank you cards in the mail every once and while to your clients, then take a look at http://www.notesbymail.com/. With the prepaid price being $1.99 a card, I think you'll agree they are more reasonable. Its simple to sign up and order. Some may think that sendoutcards offer more but who really needs all that extra stuff they offer? I don't, and I think most photographers will find that they don't either. Still in all fairness, if you order a lot of cards then senoutcards.com may come out less expensive, so you should really look at both sites and see which is more suited for you , but for me I'm going with notesbymail.com and not looking back.

PS. I've had correspondence with Ken Edwards (president and CEO) of notesbymail and he is making a custom back for me with my business logo and coupon code for their site rather than the default backing of the notesbymail logo. You can always upload you logo to other places on the card but being able to add this to the back makes things have a more personal thank you. He said that if more people contact him with interest in doing this he can automate the process. I say go for it, they have a great service and I think the more professionals that express interest in them,  the more they will be able to offer professionals.

I don’t have pocket wizards I’m a skyport guy, but I like to be able to trigger my light meter all from one hand. I know it’s possible to just keep an extra skyport transmitter on hand and fire it when i need to trigger the flash but I like to be able to have my other hand free to block a light or balance myself on a latter. I noticed that on the sekonic L-558 meter that there was a nice empty slot when you take out the Pocket Wizard module. So I order an extra battery cover from sekonic and cut a hole in it and stuck a Skyport transmitter on it. It’s not pretty but it works and it still fits back into the carrying case. Also one should note you lose the weather seal you had before. One way to get it back would be to take some electrical tape around the edges or use a silicone sealant to stick it on permanently. I decided not to go the non permanent route because you never know when you might need a spare transmitter. Another alternative would be to use an adapter that would screw into the 1/4 socket and then attach your transmitter to that. It would stick out bad but it would accomplish the same thing by letting you trigger the lights with one hand.

Below are some images that show the modification with some notes. I recommend a dremel cutting tool it worked great for this project. The L-558 is no longer offered but you can find great deals on it on ebay. This mod might work for the new L-778 but I don't have one to confirm with. Happy cutting and comments are welcome.

I came across the interesting interactive manual of the Blackberry Storm. I'll probably be getting this phone since iphone is an AT&T only item. This looks like it will be the first real threat to the iphone. Only one thing really bugs me about these phones is why they don't include flash support. It’s nothing short of pure stupidity to not include flash support.  Nokia phones have flash support so why can't others?

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I came across this podcast by podcast by accident and it’s the best I’ve every listen too. It’s very informative and funny. Plus, they have an excellent website full of information and prizes you can win. There hasn't been a podcast yet that I have listened to that I haven’t learned something new or made me remember something I had forgotten. Keep up the good work TWIP.

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Chirs Orwig has a great post talking about the great features of Photoshop CS4. Personally "Performance and Navigation"and "Content Aware Scaling" are two of the big ones for me. When you really think about it, everyone wants to to get things done faster. Why else do we all spend thousands of dollars trying to get the fastest PC or MAC we can? I only hope that the pricing is more reasonable this time around than the last time. The cost of upgrades is getting a little ridicules. No matter what though, Photoshop CS4 looks like a winner and I can't wait for it to start shipping.

Chris Orwig's Photoshop CS4 Post

Firefox is the best web browsers available today and its FREE! The new version 3 is coming out soon and Firefox is trying to break a world record so join in and help out be making a pledge to download the Firefox 3 browser on launch day. Lets get rid of Internet Explorer and let Microsoft know that we wont settle for their second rate web browser anymore. Firefox is the future of web browsing.

Ten reasons to choose Firefox 3 over your obsolete browser

Safer browsing

• 1 - Proven security track record, with more frequent, transparent updates, so that you use a safer browser
• 2 - malware protection to be protected against unwanted downloads such as viruses and trojan horses