R.E.D.
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This year's PPA event took place on the 8-9 May in the
Grosvenor House Hotel. It was a busy and eventful two days for
the R.E.D. team, giving Louise and Jules their first taste of
manning a stand. We attended several of the free seminars and
Jules and Nicola heard Tony Blair give his speech. Overall, the
only drawback was having to set-up our stand on the Sunday after
our R.E.D. night out (see back page). The event tries to bring together all aspects of the publishing industry and the Exhibition area was an example of this with stands taken by companies offering Web services, Printers, Mailing Houses, Software Providers, Audit Bureau's (BPA International) etc. The Exhibition was on two floors and was showing approximately 80 different stands including free seminar and advice areas such as: · The Small Publishers' Advisory Centre was a first for the PPA show and offered a dedicated area for one-to-one sessions with publishing experts · The Training and Development Feature was set up to provide an update on training and recruitment for companies · The Virtual Office was a look at how to implement remote and flexible working to meet the increasing demands of consumers for constant access that can no longer be provided by 9-5 days. Tony Blair, who was the PPA's special guest speaker carried on the theme of facing change in the publishing industry, during a televised speech given on the second day of the event. The conference was closed with the "Magazines & B2B Awards for Editorial Publishing Excellence" on Tuesday evening. |
and of course we'll be exhibiting at The Total Publishing show,21-22
June Earls Court. on Stand number 658. For details contact www.totalpublishing.co.uk,
telephone: 0870 7511 468 or fax: 0870 7511 255 - hope to see you
there.
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FREE
Information and Advice for Smaller Publishers
A free book (SPAC-PAC) has been put together by the Small Publishers
Advisory Council, which contains useful information on all aspects
of publishing including distribution, legal issues, IT support
and people management. For more information or copies please contact:
Jill Simmons at 020 7407 4166 or Jill.simmons@ppa.co.uk
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The
FIRST R.E.D. Windows Subscriptions and Mailorder system went LIVE
in April
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New
Reader Enquiry Report
A new Reader Enquiry report has been created that analyses responses
(circles) by the Country of the Responders and selected Address
Demographics (e.g. Job Function or Type of Organization) for either
an issue or a single advert. If you would like to use this report
please let us know and we can send you the program update that
switches it on.
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Typical
System Requirement for Running R.E.D. Windows Software
Guidelines for the successful running of R.E.D. Windows database
software for those who are considering converting from the DOS
program to the Windows program are now available.
In general, R.E.D. Windows software will run on any relatively
modern Windows computer. Please remember that Windows software
places a higher demand on the hardware and so performance may
drop as you convert from DOS to Windows unless the hardware is
upgraded.
It is not advised to run database software on heavily used networks
or co-resident with server-based software such as e-mail or intranet
software, where performance may drop. If this is an issue then
we advise exceeding the file-server specifications notes or setting
up a dedicated data server.
In all computer networks it is essential to have a simple working
backup system and in order to provide the best support we strongly
advise our clients to install a CD recorder, or similar, to be
used to send data copies to R.E.D. on request.
Staff should be trained in the basic use of computers and should
be familiar with the backup procedures!
Please contact us at R.E.D. if you require more information and
full specification guidelines.
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This issues anagram is "Is exit
near choice bone's FNND?"
The winner of last issues anagram was Christine from IDS and the
answer was Easter Eggs.
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JOLLY
THINGS
People on Purpose
Recently the R.E.D. team attended a six week course called 'People
on Purpose'. The course is designed to make us as a team, more
aware of the targets we want to meet, and how to tackle them in
the most efficient way or effectively 'be on purpose'. We have
all now successfully completed the course and are putting our
new found skills into practice every day!
Congratulations to Clare from the LRB who has recently had a baby
girl and Kerry from CRU who has had a boy.
Bowled Over R.E.D. recently had our Xmas night out (yes in May
- avoiding the millennium rush) as this was the first night when
we were all free. It was a fun evening and it was good to see
Emma again.
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J.B.s'
Hot Tips: Quick Backups
It is a good idea to learn how to make a quick disk-to-disk backup
of any data (including R.E.D. databases) just before trying something
new, giving an untrained user access to your system, applying
program updates or running an option, or options, that make wholesale
changes to data.
The easiest way to do this is to copy the database(s) to another
set of folders on the File Server or to a 'local' drive of a workstation,
(assuming, of course, that there is sufficient free disk space!).
Then, if there is a requirement to restore database(s), it is
simply a matter of using the copy made just recently.
The system backup that should be made every night on your behalf,
(usually on tape), becomes out of date the moment a user changes
one field of one record in one data table! Unless you are happy
to re-do all the work that has been done since the previous night's
backup was made, a separate, up-to-the-minute, copy of the database(s)
must be made.
Note also that copying databases to and from disks is, usually,
considerably simpler than restoring from tape(s)!
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Situations
Vacant
Circulations Manager required by Miller Freeman to work in their
Chiswick office. The circulations manager will be responsible
for the circulations on 5 trade & technical magazines, plus 2
product cards and will supervise 3 members of staff. The job requires
a good knowledge of RED software and experience of preparing audits.
Please contact Jane Feast, HR Manager on 020 8309 3972 for more
details.
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Calling all stamps!
Emma (Scheck) would like to say thanks to all those who are still
saving stamps for her. She is still collecting them for charity,
so if you have any spare used stamps (especially foreign ones!)
then send them to us and we'll pass them on.
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Diary
Dates
APE (Advice to Publishers and Editors) 2000 will be held at Novatel,
Hammersmith on Thursday 23rd November 2000. It consists of a small
exhibition and seminars - such as Going Global, Successful Magazine
Design and Web Sites that work. For details contact APE Exhibition
Organisers, The Arcade Chambers, The Arcade, Aldershot, Hampshire,
GU11 1EE. Tel: 01252 357004, Fax: 01252 357001, email:ape@nwh.co.uk,
or www.apeexhibition.com
BPA university - training and education, there are a range of
courses on offer such as Circulation Management, Advertising Sales
and Buying and Interactive Media. For details contact BPA International,
Nightingale House, 1-7 Fulham High Street, London, SW6 3JH. Tel:
020 7598 3090, or Fax: 020 7598 3092.
PPA Magazine Subscriptions 2000 Conference and Awards will be
held at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London on 7 November 2000
Charlotte Bradley Tel: 020 7400 7540.
and of course we'll be exhibiting at The Total Publishing show,21-22
June Earls Court . on Stand number 658. For details contact www.totalpublishing.co.uk,
telephone: 0870 7511 468 or fax: 0870 7511 255 - hope to see you
there.
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Technical
Stuff: Team Source
We have recently upgraded our software development tools at R.E.D.
and one of the goodies is called team source.
In a team of software developers, like REDs', some sort of mechanism
needs to be in place to ensure each developer uses the most up-to-date
resources and source code. In addition each developer needs to
be able to modify and test code without causing problems for other
developers.
TeamSource allows us to edit, delete, and create files without
tripping each other up. These changes can then be propagated to
the whole team once testing has been carried out.
The upshot is that we can produce more reliable software more
quickly. We have better control of who does what and actually
ends up in the program upgrades that we send out.
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