Even as a designer, there are times when you have to speak before a group. This is especially true if you’re an individual freelancer.

Sometimes you need to pitch ideas for a project. You may be showing a design to a client for approval. Maybe you’re giving a speech to a group at a conference or other event.

What do you find to be the most difficult part of public speaking? [Take our poll]

I’ll Take Death, Please

“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

—Jerry Seinfeld

Most people are not born with the ability to comfortably speak in a public setting.

Even those who are good at communicating with others in casual social settings are not necessarily at ease speaking to a group in a formal setting.

So what can help you overcome stress when speaking in public?

How To Overcome Stress

The source of most of the anxiety that comes with public speaking comes from the fact that we sometimes focus too much on ourselves.

Here are 3 tips that can help you be more at ease speaking in front of a group.

1. Know Where You’re Headed

Photo credit: straymuse

You already know a lot about the subject you’re going to be talking about—otherwise, why would you be speaking to the group in the first place.

Yet a brief outline is a good idea when speaking in front of a group, just as a map is a good idea when taking a trip. An outline will keep you headed in the right direction.

Write down ahead of time your main points and a few supporting thoughts. Don’t write things word-for-word—just a few brief words to remind you.

When you know what you’re going to say, you’ll focus more on your audience and less on what you’ll say next. This will help you relax.

2. Help Your Listeners

Photo credit: Jeff Kubina

To conquer your stage fright, you need to focus on those to whom you’re talking—your audience.

If you’re speaking at a conference, for example, you’re wanting to be informative or motivate those in attendance to take some sort of action.

Instead of being overly concerned about what you’ll say, try to focus your mind on your objective—helping others.

Really, the majority of the time, at least one of your objectives is to help those listening in some way.

Even if you’re pitching an idea to a potential client that would result in income for you, you’re really offering to provide a service or product that will benefit them, their business, or their clients.

Instead of merely focusing on the financial benefits to you, concentrate on how what you’re saying will help them.

Stop selling to them—talk to them.

Showing concern for your listeners and having their interests in mind will help you to focus on them more, and on you less. You won’t be as self-conscious and your interest in them will show in your face and tone of voice.

3. Your Audience Is Nicer Than You Think

Photo credit: Jesper Rønn-Jensen

Your audience is probably not plotting your demise as you stand up to talk to them.

Most of them have had to speak in front of a group in the past, so they no doubt remember how stressful it is. They want you to succeed.

Also, remember that the reason you’re speaking to them in the first place is likely because you have something useful to convey; something valuable to share. Again, focus on that fact.

Keep these things in mind and you’ll be less self-conscious and more relaxed.

Just the Tip of the Iceburg

While overcoming stress and your nerves is an important part of being a good public speaker, it’s really just one aspect.

I’d like your feedback. What is the most difficult part of public speaking for you?

Take our poll

Here’s the claim code: DFGXTHDG96RW

Now, back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

I just had an unpleasant episode that really reminded me of the need to have some kind of encryption on your thumb drives.

I was leaving a friend’s house, got in my truck and drove home. I unloaded my pockets as usual and discovered–no thumb drive.

I did find the flash drive a few minutes later, by the curb outside my friend’s house. But the whole time I was looking, I was trying to do a mental inventory of what information was on that thumb drive.

Fortunately, I don’t store sensitive client information on my thumb drives. Yet, the idea of someone else finding the drive and being able to freely access the other info on the drive was not a pleasant one.

Lesson: Don’t put personal or client/work passwords or other sensitive data on a thumb drive. If for some reason you do have to have some of that information with you, make sure that information is encrypted.

To keep people from viewing your files if your thumb drive falls into the wrong hands, here are some tools, tutorials and products to help you encrypt your thumb drive.

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt (Win XP+/Mac OS X/Linux) is a free, open-source software that can encrypt an entire partition or storage device (like a USB drive).

Once encryption is set for a volume and then the volume is mounted, file encryption/decryption is done on-the-fly–meaning it’s automatic and transparent (ie not a pain in the rear).

Note: TrueCrypt does not currently (as of Oct 11, 2009) support Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. View a full list of TrueCrypt’s limitations.

A Beginner’s Tutorial to TrueCrypt

Adding encryption to your entire USB thumb drive or just a portion (say a directory) is pretty simple.

TrueCrypt Security Precautions

Because of simplicity, the beginner’s tutorial skips some of the more in-depth security details, so it’s a good idea to take a look at the extra things you can do to keep your information even more safe.

What if the System You’re Using Your Thumb Drive With Doesn’t Have TrueCrypt Installed?

Since you’re going to most likely be using your USB with more than one computer, it doesn’t make since to install TrueCrypt on every system.

TrueCrypt fortunately lets you run in ‘portable mode‘–meaning you don’t have to have TrueCrypt installed on the system.

You can read more about portable mode and the various options you have on the TrueCrypt site.

Note: You will need to have admin privileges on the system (OS) you’re running under in order to run TrueCrypt in portable mode.

How to Create the Ultimate Encrypted Flash Drive

A New Morning has a great tutorial that walks you through how to use TrueCrypt specifically with a USB flash drive.

IronKey USB Drive

If you’re serious about security, IronKey is the USB thumb drive for you.

IronKey is a USB thumb drive with built-in 256-bit hardware encryption.

Since encryption is hardware-based, IronKey will also run on pretty much any operating system that will read a USB thumb drive–Windows 2000+, Mac OS 10.4 and Linux (2.6+ kernel).

Also, unlike software-based encryption solutions like TrueCrypt, you don’t have to have administrator rights on the system you’re using IronKey, and there’s no software to install.

It uses internet authentication as well to protect the information and site passwords you exchange when browsing the internet via a portable version of Firefox.

James Bond’s Thumb Drive

I could imagine James Bond using an IronKey–yes, it has self-destruct features built into it.

A stolen or lost drive can be remotely disabled, or a self-destruct can be initiated–erasing all information on the drive and/or physically destroying the drive.

IronKey Personal Demo Video

IronKey Enterprise Demo Video

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Thumb Drive Closer

Remember that if you put sensitive information on a thumb drive that it’s always possible that it’ll get lost or stolen. So make sure your thumb drive (or at least a directory within) is encrypted and secure.

Do you use anything else to secure your USB drives? Share in the comments.

Photo credits: USB Flash Drive by Stephen VanHorn, Abstract View of Data Storage and Abstract View of a Data Sequence by irabbiosi via Shutterstock.

It’s hard to believe that the Es Developed Blog has been alive and breathing for nearly a year now. This week will see the 100th blog post published, and we’d like your feedback on how we can improve.

The Blog focuses on topics that are of interest to web and graphic designers.

To keep things balanced, each week I publish 2 articles: Monday–web design, and Friday–graphic design.

Over the last year, I’ve seen the number of subscribers to the RSS feed steadily grow. I want to thank all those who subscribe–you’re part of what keeps me motivated to post each week.

I want to continue providing information that you find interesting and useful, so I need your input.

What Topics Interests You?

Please take a minute and tell me what type of posts you’d like to see here on the Es Developed Blog.

Note: The survey will close at the end of Monday, Sept 13, 2009.

Are You Interested in Graphic Design?

If you’re here mostly for the graphic design articles, check back this Friday for the graphic design survey.

Have you ever sent someone a unique gift, but then put it into a boring square/rectangular box?

Never again!

Stop being a victim of BBS (Boring Box Syndrome)—download a free vector packaging / box template and make your own specialty box.

Idee Montabili

Idee Montabili contains 36 free vector packaging templates available in EPS and PDF formats.

Just Like When You Were a Kid

Remember all those rockets and things you used to cut out of the back of cereal boxes and put together when you were a kid (insert tab A into slot B)?

Well, these vector templates are the same basic concept—only cooler.

Download the template, print it out, use it w/ some posterboard or thin cardboard and fold it to assemble your box.

Unlike the cereal box toys you use to put together, you might actually want to show these off when you’re done.

Imagine making your own:

• Happy Meal-type box
• Beer bottle carrier
• Heart-Shaped box
• A box shaped like a house
• Awesome cake box
• Wine package
• Shopping bag
• etc.

The Idee Montabili site is available in different languages as well:

• Italian
• English
• Spanish
• French

Go Have Some Fun!

What’re you waiting for? Go download some free vector box templates, print them out and have some fun!

It finally seemed to be working, so I wanted to make just a couple quick edits to the ‘ol Es Developed theme. I went to the WP theme editor, made my changes, updated the file and yes… you guessed it—my connection died and all darnation broke loose.

My homepage wouldn’t load completely, there was suddenly a corrupted stylesheet and WordPress couldn’t find my theme and wouldn’t load the theme editor.

Of course, my connection was working just enough to see the garbled mess that was my site, but ironically too laggy to even access it via FTP and re-upload the files again.

But finally, 2 hours later, everything’s fixed. I think my ISP will be hearing about this (left a message on their voice mail 5 hours ago).

Let this be a lesson to you: Don’t let your internets die on you. Much badness will follow.

{ End caffine-enduced rant }

Article Update: The steps outlined below are for use with Thunderbird 2. A newer post for Thunderbird 3 users has been written more recently. Thunderbird 3 makes syncing with Gmail 100×’s easier than the method below.

I originally used the Gmail option in Thunderbird 2’s Account Wizard to set up my Gmail account (almost 2 years ago). Looking at my settings in Thunderbird, I noticed that my Gmail account was set up for POP3 and not syncing at all (due to some changes Google made in late November, 2008).

POP3 vs IMAP

With POP3, you only get 1-way syncing. IMAP, not POP3, is what you will need if you want 2-way syncing with your computer and your online Gmail account. We want our Gmail account to be up-to-date on both our web account and the Thunderbird account on our computer.

Why Thunderbird 2’s Gmail setting still uses POP3, I don’t know. Maybe there will be an update for this soon.

I use Gmail as 1 part of my backup plan for work files. Copies of my site’s DB backups are emailed (via a handy WordPress plugin) to my Gmail account. But I also wanted a local copy available on my hard drive.

Fortunately, a little searching did me good and I found the solution.

Syncing Gmail and Thunderbird (The Solution)

I’ve recorded some notes and a few extra steps to help you (especially if you’re making the switch in Thunderbird from POP3 to IMAP).

Note: Before doing the following steps, make a backup of your Thunderbird profile in case something glitchy happens in the process.

If you already have a Gmail account set up in Thunderbird, I would also make a separate, new Gmail account/folder in Thunderbird for the IMAP version. Make the following changes to that new account. You can delete the original (POP3) account in Thunderbird once you’re sure everything’s been copied over.

Setting Up IMAP in Gmail and Linking to Thunderbird

Now, setup your IMAP/Gmail:

1. First, make sure you have IMAP set up in Gmail: Enabling IMAP in Gmail
2. Then, set up IMAP access to Gmail in Thunderbird 2.0
3. Also change your account settings based on the recommended Thunderbird settings (see note below)
   

Important: In the Recommended Thunderbird settings (step 3 above), your Gmail subfolders may not show up immediately. This will make it impossible to set the destination folders properly.

If your Gmail account in Thunderbird does have subfolders already (see illustration), you can skip down to Moving Missed Emails.

However, if your Gmail subfolders don’t appear in Thunderbird and you can’t properly set your destination folders, try this:

1. I recommend not enabling the Check for new messages at startup (Tools > Account Settings in Thunderbird).
2. Close Thunderbird without checking your email and then restart Thunderbird.
3. If there are still no subfolders ([Gmail], Drafts, All Mail, Sent Mail, etc… see screenshot) under your newly created Gmail account, you may need to write a new message from your new account in Thunderbird and save as a draft.
4. You should then see a [Gmail] subfolder with the following subfolders under it: Drafts, All Mail, Sent Mail, Spam, and so forth. If still nothing shows, then just restart Thunderbird again.

Now you should be able to go back into your account settings for your new account in Thunderbird and set the destination folders (according to the recommended Thunderbird settings).

After I finished all the above steps, I went back in and enabled Check for new messages at startup.

1. Go to Tools > Account Settings in Thunderbird and choose your newly setup Gmail account.
2. Re-enable Check for new messages at startup.
3. Save your settings.

Depending on your settings, Thunderbird should have already downloaded and synced your former emails that were on your online Gmail account to your newly created Gmail account folder (it will show the progress in the status bar).

Moving Missed Emails to New Gmail Folder

If you’re missing some recent emails that are in Thunderbird but not on your online account (like I was because of my former POP3 settings), here’s what you do:

1. Go to your old Gmail account folder in Thunderbird and select all the affected email.
2. Then right-click and choose Move To > [and select the Inbox of your new Gmail account].

Depending on how many files you’re moving, it may take some time to sync everything up. After it’s completed, your online Gmail account and your Gmail account in Thunderbird should all be syncing.

Cleaning Up

Once you’re sure that all the emails you need are copied to your new Thunderbird Gmail account, you can safely remove the old Gmail account; leaving your brand new, sparkling IMAP-enabled account.

Syncing With Other Email Clients

The same basic formula for syncing Gmail to Thunderbird should also work whether you’re using Outlook, Apple Mail, etc. Your settings may be different depending on your email client though, so use the IMAP help in Google Gmail Troubleshooting and choose the desktop client you use.

Troubleshooting > IMAP (For a list of all the topics under IMAP troubleshooting)

I hope this helps you. If you have any questions or comments, drop me a line or leave a comment below.

Even though this blog is relatively new, there have been many great web and graphic design-related posts in the last few months of 2008. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and look at just a few (21, actually) of the topics we’ve covered.

Tutorials

• DIY Online Incremental Backups
• BlogDesk Part 1: Publishing Posts to WordPress
• BlogDesk Part 2: Posting to ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine

I’ve written several posts about ExpressionEngine. Here are a few of the most popular.

• Javascript Templates in EE: Speeding Up Page Loads
• Easier Editing in ExpressionEngine and WordPress
• Learn ExpressionEngine in 2 Days

WordPress

Within minutes of WordPress 2.7 being released on WordPress.org, there was the WordPress 2.7 Upgrade Checklist. This contains tips on upgrading your site, including making sure your plugins and themes are compatible with the newest version of WordPress.

Online Tools and Services

We’ve reviewed and highlighted several online services and websites that make your job as a web or graphic designer much easier.

• Automatic, Painless Backups With Mozy
• Free Icon Search Tools
• 4 Royalty-Free Photo Search Engines
• 5 Free Online Photoshop Alternatives
• Free Online Billing and Invoicing—Curdbee
• Manage Multiple Email Accounts With Zenbe

Web Design Code

• Don’t Remove Visual Cues For Links
• Quick and Dirty: CSS Shorthand Tips
• Quick and Dirty: Lightning Fast Page Setup
• Quick and Dirty: Optimizing PHP (For Fun and Profit)

Graphic-Related Posts

• 12 + Mega Icon Sets For Designers
• OpenX Admin Icon Set
• 10 More Free Icon Sets
• Inspiration: Retro Clothing Labels

More to Come in 2009

These are just a few of the great posts that have been featured here on the blog and there’s more to come in 2009.

This blog is updated 2 times a week—on Mondays and Fridays/Saturdays. The Monday posts deal with web design-related topics and things of interest to web designers. The posts at the end of the week usually deal with graphic design topics.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to the RSS feed so you won’t miss a single post.

Keyboard shortcuts are vital for navigating and performing various actions quickly, and are very helpful for designers when working on projects. Firefox has a keyboard shortcut for just about everything.

Unfortunately, finding and remembering them all can be difficult. Also, shortcuts differ slightly between Windows, Macs and Linux versions of Firefox.

Firefox Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts

Fortunately, AccessFirefox.org—a site dedicated to showcasing accessibility tools and features in Mozilla Firefox—has a great list of Firefox keyboard and mouse shortcuts. You can filter shortcuts by operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux) or view them all at once.

Accesskeys Keyboard Shortcuts

Some websites use accesskeys to allow people with disabilities to access site navigation links by keyboard. This is a requirement for most sites in the UK.

View our list of keyboard shortcuts for activating accesskeys in all major browsers and OS’s. This list contains the keyboard shortcuts to activate accesskeys in Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome, Konquerer and Epiphany in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (Ubuntu).

On the previous version of this site, I used accesskeys for the main site navigation. However, because of no clear standards and the chance of interference with browser shortcuts, I decided not to include them in the current version.

Leave us a comment and tell us what Firefox keyboard shortcuts you use the most.

Previously, I wrote a post about Mozy—a fantastic online backup service for Windows and Mac users. Currently, they’re running a promotion: Sign up for their free plan and start using Mozy before Dec 1, and get 2.5GB of storage—that’s an extra 512MB of space free.

If you haven’t already, you’ve only got about 5 days left (midnight Sunday) to get your extra 512MB. After Sunday, you can still use the link above to get extra storage space, but you’ll only get an extra 256MB.

While gathering a list of great online image editors, I stumbled across something unexpected—an easy to read user agreement.

Aviary had updated their terms of use and so I was prompted to accept the revision. As I was scanning the agreement, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had a built-in Legalese-to-English translator. Let me explain.

Legal Summary

Aviary’s Terms of Use page had all the normal legal wording of any other user agreement out there. But off to the right, beside each section or paragraph, there was a brief summary of what was contained in the corresponding section. Better still, the summary sounded like it was written by a human.

Aviary’s Terms of Use includes a summary that is easy to understand.

The thing that amazed me was that I actually read the entire user agreement (the summary, that is). By the time I was done reading, which didn’t take long, I felt like I knew what was going on.

Why Important?

It would be interesting to know exactly how many terms and conditions, user agreements and privacy policies the average person has to accept over the course of their life. But how many have you actually read?

Seeing how much information we hand over to a company in exchange for their products and services, you would think everyone would be reading every single line. But it just isn’t so. The wording and sheer amount of words makes it difficult for even the most diligent person to get past more than a couple paragraphs.

Why Are User Agreements (EULA) So Hard To Read?

Lawyers.

No. Actually, I think the fault lies a bit on both sides—end users (consumers) and companies and their legal departments.

Most people scan. I’m a scanner. My friend’s a scanner, and his wife is as well. Most people get a bit lazy for whatever reason when it comes to reading; especially boring legal documents. There’s just no way to scan and understand most user agreements, so people give up and end up not reading any of it. After a while, they get conditioned so that when they see a EULA, they just click Accept.

On the other hand, you have companies wanting to limit their liability. To an extent that’s certainly understandable. Sometimes though, I think they don’t actually want you to read the entire agreement and so they word things in a way that’s detailed, yet still ambiguous.

You also read reports of companies engaging in some shady practices, but hiding behind their user agreement; saying, “It was in the user agreement! They knew about it.”

Regardless of who shares most of the blame, people really should read EULA’s and privacy policies before accepting them, and websites and companies should make it easier for them to do so.

A Step In the Right Direction

I’m not sure if Aviary is breaking new ground here or not, but I think their take on making legal documents simple to read and understand is a step in the right direction. I would love to see more websites and companies provide human-readable documents.

What do you think? Have you seen other examples of easy to understand user agreements or privacy policies? Drop us a comment.

In order to provide posts on both web design and graphic design, I plan to publish 2 posts each week—1 on Mondays geared more toward web design and more technical subjects, and another on Friday/Saturday that is geared toward more general topics such as icons, photography, graphic design and sites I’ve found useful for designers.

I’ve already covered topics such as:

• ExpressionEngine
• Aptana
• Icon Sets
• Photo Search Engines
• Online Backups

What I’d like from you is some input. Use the contact form or add a comment and tell me what topics you’d like covered on this site.

I started building websites in 1995 – back in high school when there weren’t really any blogs yet.

It was a simpler time – Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer had no version numbers trailing their names. A time when cellphones weighed as much as a car battery and were twice as big.

But now I feel it’s time to start sharing some of my thoughts and a modicum of wisdom. So I now join the noble ranks of webloggerdom here in the 21 century.

The theme of this weblog is to share interesting (hopefully) and useful (again, hopefully) web and graphic design-related nuggets of goodness with you.

I will try to post at least once a month something I’ve found useful, be it:

• HTML and CSS coding tricks
• ExpressionEngine and WordPress-related topics
• Graphic resources and goodies
• Links to interesting websites

So subscribe to the RSS feed, stay up-to-date and enjoy!