OK, it wasn’t a huge list to start with but never the less you’ve got to be happy with that. I am!

So how did it happen, bearing in mind that it didn’t cost me a cent?

No big secret really, it was a giveaway. I signed up, contributed a gift and the optins followed.

At the moment there are a ton of giveaways on the go. Ordinarily you’d think that they’d be full of the same old stuff. It’s true that some of the same products pop up in all of them, mine will.

I’m going to make the most of this while I can because as everyone knows if you want to really make it on the internet, business wise, you need a list! Although everyone kept saying that, it took a long time for it sink in with me but the last couple of months have proved it’s true beyond any doubt. You need a list!

It goes a little further than that though, in that having a list is how you reach the people you are trying to help.

This is really the subject for another post but briefly your list is the group of people you are trying to help, not just bleed money out of. You make money when you help others with what they want or need. No deep philosophy there, it’s just the way the World works.

So back to the giveaways. As I said there are a lot on the go and I really recommend you get into them. I’ve listed a few that I have checked out and they have a good variety of good products on offer. There’s software, ebooks, templates, graphics, videos….all sorts of stuff.

I want you to be able to take part as a contributor. For that you need a product. It doesn’t have to be your own, anything that you have giveaway rights for can be used.

It’s better if you have your own for obvious reasons. You won’t be competing with someone else with the same product. It’s not hard to do that, rework a PLR product it’s really not that hard and shouldn’t take that long. Open Office is free and you can open word documents in it and output them as PDF’s.

Turn a PLR PDF into a slide show, make the slide show into a video and give that away. It will definitely be yours and unique. Again Open Office has a Powerpoint type app that creates slideshows. You can get a free copy of Camtasia 3 here. It’s not the latest version but it works fine. In fact it’s the version I’m still using.

Anyway, here are the giveaways:

Back To Basics Giveaway

I really like this one. It’s being run by Scott Case and Scott has stipulated that all products for the giveaway have to be less than six months old. So no chance of it being full of old rehashed stuff. Last I heard there were over 200 products. It starts on the 6th April.

100% Giveaway

Another great givaway. This one runs until 20th April. The link above will take you to the contributors signup if you just want to join to get free stuff go here.

Easter Giveaway

Some really good packages in here too. This is open until the 21st April. Again if you want to sign up as a contributor use the link above, otherwise you can just join here.

I’ll leave it at those for now. Try and join as a contributor, with a unique product if you can. It really is a great way to increase your subscribers.

By default all the ‘Utility’ windows, what was the Toolbox, layers and Brushes,Patterns etc dialogues, are on top by default. So any image window that is larger than the gap between them is behind these dialogues ergo you don’t see all of your image. I really hate that!

You can fix it though. Go into Edit->Preferences and then Window Management. In the ‘Hint for the toolbox:’ and ‘Hint for other docks:’ drop downs select ‘Keep Above’ and then OK.

You’ll be told you need to restart Gimp for the changes to take effect and once you do your image window will be the one on top when it’s active.

Now that, I like.

The Toolbox menu has gone and with it the Xtns menu! It took me a little while but I’ve found the inhabitants of the X’d Xtns menu and File menu.

‘Buttons’, ‘Logos’, ‘Patterns’ and ‘Web page themes’ live under ‘Create’ in the File menu in the empty image window that opens on startup. Also in there are what used to exist under the Toolbox File menu ‘Acquire’ entry, namely  ’Paste as New’ now ‘From Clipboard’, ‘Scanner/Camera’ and ‘Screen Shot’.

Other entries from the Toolbox menus have been scattered around. Sticking with the File menu ‘Preferences’, ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ and ‘Units’ are now in the Edit menu of the afore mentioned empty image window. Also in here is the Xtns menu ‘Module Manager’ now just called ‘Modules’.

‘Script Fu’ from the Xtns menu now resides at the bottom of the Filters menu. The last two items from the Xtns menu ‘Plug-in Browser’ and ‘Procedure Browser’ have eloped to the Help menu.

The Dialogs menu that used to exist on image windows has been replaced by the Windows menu and has an added ‘Recently Closed Docks’ entry which is basically a Dialog history.

One major addition to this version is GEGL the Generic Graphical Library which is a programming library under development for image processing applications. It is mainly developed to bring support for images with more than 8 bits per color channel to GIMP. It has been partially implemented in GIMP 2.6.

You can check out the release notes for 2.6 here.

A lot of the changes in 2.6 are in the engine room with the only obvious ones being the change to the user interface, brought about, apparently, by many users complaints.

Personally, I can’t imagine what complaints could have led to this change in the layout. The only obvious advantage is that in Windows it now only takes up one slot on the taskbar and clicking on it will restore all windows and dialogs whereas before you needed to do them individually and Gimp could fill the taskbar all on it’s own.

When I first looked at this latest version I have to admit to having a minor panic attack when I saw the Toolbox menus gone! Checking the release notes confirmed my worst fears, it had been taken away. What I found to be disappointing was that no one had taken the trouble to tell us poor schmucks where all the contents had gone to!

I did quite a bit of searching around forums, user groups etc to see what the story was, nothing! Admittedly it didn’t take too long to find them all again in the new version but to my way of thinking if you are going to change something like that it’s just good user support to document it. Isn’t that a sign of the times? Don’t get me started on that one, a topic for a grump session!

As yet, I believe the latest version of Help is the 2.4 version so you won’t find it in there.

I haven’t yet used this version enough to be able to comment on the other improvements so I’ll have to leave that for another day. One thing I did do though, was to install this version in a seperate location so that I retained my familiar version 2.4(security blanket). I suggest you do the same, at least initially. All your shortcuts, Start menu etc will be overwritten with the new one, just means you have to make a shortcut to the previous version.

Well, that’s my take on it so far. I would be really interested to hear what your thoughts are on it and also your thoughts on my thoughts so, please, feel free to leave a comment.