For the past month, David Blatner and I have been "stocking" our new InDesignSecrets.com blog (the one that hosts our podcast) with some useful articles. It's like moving into a new house and having to stock the pantry with staples. Once that's done then we just need to buy the weekly groceries.

Here are a few staples I've written that you might find useful — I think you can figure out the topic by the URL:
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Late last week, Adobe quietly released software updates for InDesign CS2 and InCopy CS2. According to the ReadMe file that accompanies the installation, the 4.03 update fixes a number of pesky anomalies and glitches in both programs, including ones involving incorrect font remapping, weird EPS output, unexplained slowdowns and unexpected quits.

I personally never opt to receive a company's e-mailed communications as HTML — I always choose the "Plain/Don't Know" option. It's not because I have a slow connection or I'm a Luddite, it's because my e-mail program, Eudora, completely sucks at interpreting HTML. It's a fantastic program in just about every other regard, so I continue to use it. I think of it as a wonderful husband who has one large, annoying flaw, like being an ex-felon, or even a White Sox fan.

Adobe staff members have been blogging merrily away for months now, I’ve cited some of their posts in previous issues:
http://blogs.adobe.com/blog-list.html

But whither Quark? Why haven’t they jumped on the bandwagon?

Why, they have, but quietly, on little cat-feet, and tentatively, like they’re not sure what a blog is for:
http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/seven/blog/

I’ve been monitoring this page since the first post went up in March, hoping at some point it’d really take off. Sometimes weeks will pass without a post, and I’m sure I’m going to get a 404 Not Found error when I mosey by for a visit. But nope, it’s still hanging on by its fingernails.

It feels like they’re so close to turning around their corporate culture, opening up communications with end-users, taking the leap into the Web 2.0 world, but they’re … just … not … quite … there yet.

If they’d allow comments — even moderated ones, like Adobe’s — you can be sure I’d be posting “that-a-boy, Quark!” comments to the entrepid writers, Marc Horne and Jonathan Ferman.

I know Marc’s a DesignGeek subscriber, so I’ll say it here: At-a-boy, Marc! Keep writing!