Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Helen Bradley
Former Chatham County DA Spencer Lawton, who prosecuted "Midnight" murder case, dies at 81
Spencer Lawton, Jr. is being remembered by colleagues and friends for his professionalism and integrity over his 28 years as Chatham County’s district attorney. Lawton, 81, died on Nov. 13 at home. He was elected district attorney in 1980 against a well-entrenched incumbent, Andrew Ryan, Jr. He prided himself in modernizing the management of the office and hiring outstanding lawyers. However, the most lasting mark Lawton made in Georgia was his championing of the crime victims’ rights movement.
Top 5 Desktop Publishing Tools for Small Business in 2021
Desktop publishing tools are common solutions for a wide variety of graphic design needs, including digital and print designs. You can use these applications to create marketing materials like newsletters, brochures, web pages, posters. Depending on the other applications you use and your graphic design skill set, the right tool may range in price and functionality. Consider your business needs while reviewing our lineup of the top desktop publishing tools for small businesses.
Best Excel Tools & Functions to Use in 2021
Powerful and complex, Microsoft Excel comes packed with so many tools that it’s often hard to know which tool can solve a particular problem. Ever feel like it’s easier to just keep doing things the slow way simply because it works? But you deserve better than that, so we’ve gathered five essential Excel tools that save you time and effort. If you’re not currently using them, it’s time to up your game.
How to Make Signs in Microsoft Word
If you’re already a Microsoft 365 subscriber, Word is an excellent application for creating your business’s signage. You can create signs that range from basic to intricate depending on your goals and needs. The best part? With Microsoft Word, you don’t have to be an expert graphic designer to create a professional-looking sign.
Opinion | Standing in solidarity during Pride Week
By Helen Bradley Dixon Challoner Tue., June 8, 2021timer3 min. read The International Day Against Homo/Bi/Transphobia is recognized annually on May 17. This date was selected to commemorate the removal of “homosexuality” from the list of mental disorders recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1990. The focus for the 2021 IDAHBT is the violence that 2SLGBTQ-plus people continue to experience in all areas of the world.
Bring Out the Artist in You with 56+ Hours of Easy-to-Follow Content on Drawing Skills for Both Traditional and Digital Mediums ft. Top-Rated Instructor Brent Eviston
In this basic approach to figure drawing, you'll learn techniques to systematically break down the various parts of the body into simpler shapes and understand how to work them into one figure. Following along with a professional artist, you'll gain insight into how the artwork and poses are created and understand how to create them yourself.
Maisonneuve | New Horizons
I cringe as the words leave my mouth, even though I’m not speaking to anyone other than myself, me in the mirror. Not even the mirror, actually, just the semi-reflective surface of the fridge door. I can only handle my own image in hazy form. It’s not like I haven’t tried. I’ve read the think pieces on decolonizing beauty, I’ve thumbed the self-care articles written by my peers, I’ve tried acupuncture and therapy and meditation. But all these supposed cures have only left me despising myself more.
Direct Transport delivers firefighting equipment to Silves Bombeiros
Home Community Direct Transport delivers firefighting equipment to Silves Bombeiros On Friday, February 14 – Valentine’s Day – Direct Transport certainly shared their love with the Bombeiros in Silves. They transported 10 pallets of much-needed equipment and uniforms which had been donated by the Hampshire fire and rescue services in the UK and delivered them to Silves free of charge. These pallets were made up of t-shirts, shoes, leggings, fleeces, tunics and much more.
Image Size and Resolution Explained for Print and Onscreen
A Post By: Helen Bradley One of the most confusing things for a new photographer is understanding image size, resolution, and printing. I’ll try and explain what these things mean, and how to make the best choices depending on what you want to do with your photos. Megapixels and photo size As a photographer you will already have confronted the term megapixel when you first purchased your camera.
My 5 Coolest Lightroom Commands
There is so much of Lightroom that’s not apparent when you first begin using it and that takes time to discover and explore. Here are my five coolest Lightroom techniques that you might want to add to your Lightroom toolkit. 1. Shortcuts There are a lot and lots of keystroke shortcuts in Lightroom, and it takes time to learn them all. It’s also harder still to find them so you can learn them all! That is unless you know this one keystroke shortcut.
Large Library Management with Lightroom and Daminion [for Advanced LR Users]
If you have Lightroom you might assume that you have all you need for managing your images. That may not be the case and many professional and keen amateur photographers benefit from combining Lightroom with the image management software Daminion. Daminion is an image management solution which helps you do large library management with Lightroom. You can think of it as being the rough equivalent of the Lightroom Library module operating on steroids.
Edit and Create on the Go with Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad
On Monday, Adobe launched its Photoshop Touch application for the iPad. This long sought after app runs on the iPad 2, and not on the iPad 1, and it requires that you have iOS 5 installed. The app costs $9.99 which is at the high end of the price range for photo-editing apps in general but Photoshop Touch seems to have got the feature set about right so most people will probably consider it worth the money.
Quantitative immunofluorescence microscopy of subcellular GLUT4 distribution in human skeletal muscle: effects of endurance and sprint interval training
Introduction Skeletal muscle is the primary site of insulin?mediated glucose uptake (Katz et al. 1983; Wasserman et al. 2011) and is therefore important in determining whole body glucose disposal rates. Glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) is the major glucose transporter isoform expressed in human skeletal muscle and is the primary insulin?responsive glucose transporter (Mueckler 1994).
FCA Annual Report: A Renewed Focus on Market Abuse
To view this article you need a PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader. If you can't read this PDF, you can view its text here. Go back to the PDF . Last week saw the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) annual public meeting and this follows the recent publication by the UK's principal financial services regulators (including the FCA) of their annual reports for the last year.
A Basic Guide to Making Training Videos
Making training videos requires preparation. First, establish a clear understanding of the video's purpose. What task will it explain or demonstrate? Choose a topic you can cover in less than 10 minutes—it's better to break up a big topic into multiple shorter videos than to jam everything into one epic production. Write a description of the video's goal, and then write the steps—in order—that the video needs to cover to achieve that goal. Afraid you won't remember what to say?
How to Use Templates to Improve Productivity
Do you find yourself creating the same document over and over again? Investing the time to create templates will not only save you from hours of repetitive work, it will boost your overall productivity. Many software programs include templates to help you streamline your workflow. But even if a program you use doesn't support templates, you can create custom solutions to get your work done more efficiently. Here are some ideas on how you can use templates in a variety of ways.
The Best Calendar Software for Small Business
If you don't use calendar software to manage your business while you're on the go, you run the risk of missing important events and meetings. While most mobile devices include a rudimentary calendaring app, you're better off upgrading to calendaring software that offers more features and flexibility to manage your busy work day and to We've collected five very different free calendar tools that demonstrate the range of calendar software available.
Small Business Project Management Software: A Look at ProjectLibre
Change happens in every business. Whether it's a move to a new office, a new product launch, or a total restructuring, careful planning is essential to execute changes smoothly. But why use project management software? While it's possible to manage a small project with an Excel worksheet, small business project management software is a smarter choice. It helps you identify all the required tasks, allocate those tasks to the right people, and make sure your people complete those tasks on time.
Best Small Business Collaboration Apps
1 of 5 Top Small Business Collaboration Tools Collaboration means different things to different people, and the definition can even change on a project-by-project basis. Some small businesses might view collaboration as the ability to share work with their clients. For others, collaboration might mean a way for internal teams to communicate easily. Small business collaboration might be as simple as a shared spreadsheet or as complex as a project-management tool.
Essential Small Business File Sharing Solutions
DropboxDropbox not only allows you to sync documents across devices, it also lets you share them with other people. The free, basic account gets you 2 GB of storage. If you need more storage, Dropbox Pro provides 1 TB (1,000 GB) for $9.99 per month. You can upload files to your Dropbox storage via a Web browser, or you can install Dropbox as a folder on your computer and save files to your Dropbox folder. Dropbox syncs those files to the cloud when you connect to the Internet.
5 Apps for Creating Digital Marketing Collateral
lets you create great-looking collages quickly and easily. Visit FotoJet and click on theoption for either theor. You can select from hundreds of different collage designs. Even better, your projects will look like you produced them using high end software—not a free online tool. The collages are easy to create; select the collage style you want, click on the template container where you want to place an image, and click the desired image. You can upload photos from your computer or from Facebook.
5 Lightroom Develop Module Secrets Revealed
When you’re new to Lightroom, some features of the program aren’t immediately apparent, or easily discoverable. In this article I’ll introduce you to five Lightroom Develop module secrets that will help you get more out of photo editing in Lightroom. #1 Smarter Virtual Copies Often when you’re working in Lightroom you’ll edit an image to look one way, and then decide you’d like to try to edit it in a different way – without losing your work.
11 Small Businesses Budgeting Tips
Small business owners are no strangers to cash flow problems. Money is notoriously tight, and conserving wherever possible could mean the difference between staying in business and joining the 50 percent of small businesses that go out of business within five years of opening their doors (PDF). While many small business owners have a budget, most don't know how to maximize this resource.
You Suck at PowerPoint. Here's Why
Variety is not always the spice of life. If every slide in your presentation looks different, you'll achieve visual variety, but you'll also overwhelm your audience and risk confusing your message. Presentations look best when all the slides share a single, cohesive look. That's why PowerPoint ships with predesigned themes. Smart PowerPoint designers choose one theme and use it for the entire presentation.
How well do you know the Lightroom interface? Take this quiz and find out
When you’re new to Lightroom there are lots of things about the Lightroom interface that contribute to its steep learning curve. Most Lightroom users can tell you a story or two of being caught by items appearing, or disappearing, without warning. With experience these are minor inconveniences, but when you are new to Lightroom, they can be overwhelming. So, just how much do you know about the Lightroom interface?
Ask These 5 Questions Before You Take Venture Money
As a business owner, you may soon face a difficult decision: does it make sense for you to accept venture capital? While this may be the dream for some small business entrepreneurs (think Shark Tank), others are hesitant to forge this type of investor relationship. Whether you're all-for venture capital (VC) investment, entirely against it, or somewhere in between; keeping an open mind lets you compare your options and make a confident decision.
You Need These 7 Small Business Security Tips
As a small business owner, you've invested a huge chunk of your time, money, and energy to make your business work. Do you really want to risk losing it all simply because your employees failed to use basic security measures? Small businesses often fail because of security breaches that put their data at risk. When small businesses suffer a business data loss from a cyber-attack, 60 percent of them shut down.
5 Essential Steps to Launch a Startup
You've been busy working hard on your startup; building the team, fine-tuning the product, rounding up investors, or looking for office space. But in addition to all that, there are still essential tasks you need to do before you can flip the launch switch and open your business to the public. The old saying "If you build it they will come" is rubbish. If you're not already a "unicorn" with buckets of cash at your disposal, you need to do a ton of work in what I call the pre-launch phase.
Outsourcing Security: What Small Businesses Need to Know
One question that small businesses often grapple with, especially in the early days of their development, is whether or not to outsource at least some aspect of their security. There are many instances when outsourcing computer, data, and network security makes sense: As a result, forecasters predict that the booming managed security service provider (MSSP) industry will grow from $8 billion in 2015 to $30 billion by 2020. So does outside security help make sense for you? Possibly.
Your Microsoft Word Skills Suck
Today just about everyone uses a word processor, but not everyone knows how to use one effectively. If you use Microsoft Word without understanding some basic concepts, it's painfully obvious to everyone else. Even worse, you're wasting time—yours and theirs. If your Word repertoire includes any of these five behaviors, it's time to stop committing them right now. We'll show you how. Rookie Word users rely the spacebar way too much.
10 Holiday Content Marketing Tips for B2B Companies
The holiday season rapidly approaches and, for some businesses, it's a crucial time for increasing sales and achieving revenue goals. But if you're a B2B business owner, ways to embrace the holiday season may not be so apparent. Unlike retailers who can deck their storefronts with holiday décor, you have limited options when it comes to leveraging the holiday season. Still, that doesn't mean you should let your content marketing strategy hibernate for the holidays.
Startup Trends: Subscription Box Services
Startups come in all shapes and sizes, but their success rate is always low. More than 80 percent of all startups fail, according to Forbes, and many factors contribute to this poor success rate, including deficient planning, imperfect business ideas, and limited capital in the market. Some startups fail miserably, like Zillionears, a platform that let artists release songs with a dynamic pricing system. The price dropped each time a fan shared the word about an artist's music.
Yes, I work in an abortion clinic and the Bible-quoting, murderer-shouting mob will never stop us protecting vulnerable women
A protester is walking up the path towards me. She is carrying a cross made with sticks tied onto her umbrella and is chanting Bible verses. When she is right in my face she screams 'MURDERER' but I'm not scared. It is more annoying than anything. I have got a million and one things to do, and she is upsetting women in the clinic and putting the staff on edge. Working in an abortion clinic certainly wasn't the career I dreamed about when I was a schoolgirl.
4 Small Business Tablets Compared
Apple's oversized($799 and up), due in early November, leverages iOS 9's new Split View mode, 4GB of memory, and what promises to be a fast processor, among other features, to justify the 'Pro' in its name. Coupled with Apple's optional new Pencil stylus ($99) and Smart Keyboard ($169), both of which work only with the iPad Pro (as of now), Apple hopes the iPad Pro will lure graphics professionals, filmmakers, CAD/CAM designers, and Microsoft Office users.
Free Image Management Software for Small Business
When you have images filed haphazardly on your computer, you waste time looking for the right image when you need it. Photo-organizing software helps you catalog and manage your images more effectively. We look at five free photo-management applications that can help you organize—or restore order to—your image collection.In this roundup we concentrate on organizing images rather than fixing them. Photo-management software helps you find and organize the images you have on your computer.
What to Do When the Bank Says 'No' to Your Startup
While most small businesses run to the bank when they need a new line of credit or working capital, it's not always as simple as setting up a meeting and getting a pile of cash. In the wake of the recession, many banks still hesitate to give small businesses money. If that happens to you, what's your next move? Well, the good news is that you have plenty of alternative strategies to secure financing for your small business.
5 Excel Tools You Need Right Now
Powerful and complex, Microsoft Excel comes packed with so many tools that it's often hard to know which tool can solve a particular problem. Ever feel like it's easier to just keep doing things the slow way simply because it works? But you deserve better than that, so we've gathered five essential Excel tools that save you time and effort. If you're not currently using them, it's time to up your game.
Small Business Case Study: Why Move to Cloud Computing?
Frustration is a powerful motivator. It drives us to make the changes necessary to move our businesses forward. But some changes require up-to-date technology to power the business. My company, DPR Group, Inc., a full-service public relations, marketing and communications agency, was stuck in a technology rut that stymied our productivity and limited our growth. Our frustration culminated just before we broke free of the break-fix model of managed services and leaped ahead with cloud computing.
7 Tips for Small Business Startup Success
If you're looking to start your own company, you're probably well aware of the rather daunting statistics for launching a successful small business. According to the SBA Office of Advocacy, "About half of all new establishments survive five years or more and about one-third survive 10 years or more." The outlook for startups isn't rosy, and of the ones that do manage to survive, most of them don't make it big.
How to Make Animated GIFs
WEBINAR: On-Demand Desktop-as-a-Service Designed for Any Cloud ? Nutanix Frame Animated GIFs, which were hugely popular in the late '90s, went out of fashion for many years. Now they're suddenly new again, and the Internet is full of them. Today's GIFs tend to be animated photographs rather than the smiley faces of yesteryear, but the basics remain unchanged.
How Safe is Your Business?
Data security is a huge and growing issue for every company, regardless of its size. But it's hard to drive home the importance of securing data…yawn, right? However, the ramifications became clear to millions of people with last year's nude celebrity photo leak. Say "nude celebrity" and suddenly you have everyone's attention. It appears there's been a crack in the case.
Your Excel Skills Suck
Millions of people use Excel—arguably one of the most-used workplace applications—every day. Unfortunately not everyone receives formal Excel training, and many people pick it up simply by being forced to use it on the job. If you picked up your Excel skills on the fly, the last thing you want to do is advertise your lack of knowledge. We'll show you five typical Excel behaviors that tell the world your Excel skills suck. And because we're not heartless, we'll show you how to avoid them.
CRM for Small Personal Service Companies
A lot of people still think customer relationship management (CRM) software is only something used by the sales department at large corporations. Those people base this perception on the first generation of clunky, expensive, enterprise CRM systems that don't represent the lightweight options available today. Thanks to a growing segment of affordable, cloud-based CRM platforms, businesses of every size can store contacts, manage administrative tasks, and strengthen their stake in the market.
How to Add Features to Microsoft Office with Office Apps
Apps are a popular way for developers to add functionality to software programs. In both Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 365, you can download and install apps created by third-party developers to extend the productivity suites' usefulness. Some apps work only in one program—such as Excel—while others operate across multiple programs. Why might you want to add apps to Office? Consider this: Word 2013 doesn't ship with a dictionary (what the heck, Microsoft?).
4 Types of Web Traffic Every Small Business Needs
Your website serves as a gateway to your business. The more people that see your brand online, the more potential customers you stand to gain. Logically, if you can find a way to increase the amount of traffic to your site, you'll enjoy a greater number of eventual customers and transactions. Unfortunately, increasing website traffic isn't always as simple as it sounds. There isn't any one trick or tactic that suddenly funnels more people to your site.
8 Shortcuts to Get Your Business Up and Running Quickly
Launching a new business is as difficult as it is worthwhile. But as an entrepreneur, you can take steps to grease the gears and lessen the burden of the monumental task in front of you. By choosing the right hardware, the right software and the right strategies, you can avoid some of the heavy lifting that is required to start a business. Here are eight tips to getting a head start on your start-up.
Slideshows
We look at four free Microsoft Excel alternatives and show why you can easily keep any of these spreadsheet apps in... Read More >>
4 Free Excel Alternatives
The second cloud application in this round up is. Some of the Zoho small business apps are free and others require payment. Once you've signed in for a free account, select Zoho Sheet to launch the free spreadsheet tool. In Zoho, all the applications are separate, so there is no dashboard style interface that gives you access to everything. In this way, Zoho operates similarly to Excel and unlike Google Docs.
Remote Access Tools or How to Be In Two Places at Once
Even though mobile devices can do almost anything, there will still be times when you need to access your home or office computer from a remote location. You might need access to your files or to perform some type of maintenance. Either way, the right remote access tools can help you connect to and operate a computer in your office as if you were sitting right in front of it. They vary in ease of use, features and cost, but we've collected five of the best for your consideration.
6 Ways to Improve Small Business Data Security
High-profile data breaches at major retailers and banks have brought data security a top-of-mind concern for organizations of all sizes these days. However, while the big companies garner the biggest news headlines, startups and the small businesses—those with typically newer and less hardened security infrastructure and few if any security specialists on staff—often make easier targets. The downside of not establishing proper data security measures is significant.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Helen
Contact Helen, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack