The following URLs will show you how to use the “Live Trace” feature in Adobe Illustrator.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/illustrator/ss/sflivetrace.htm

http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/pdfs/creating_vector_content.p...

When you’re using a piece of software, or an online website, the programmers make a lot of assumptions about how people will be using the software, or about how users interact with the real world. Case in point: both Google Calendar and Apple’s iCal program assume that any meeting you’re going to enter into your calendar is one hour long, but in reality you may only need ten minutes. If you just accept the default in this case you may think you’re booked in for longer than necessary and miss the opportunity to do something else during this period, which may be a waste of your time and a drag on your efficiency. There are a number of little things you can do to prevent defaults from interfering with your life:

- Google calender and iCal have a default time window of 1 hour – create shorter meetings to make more efficient use of your time.

- Don’t let email become a time sink: check email every hour instead of every 5 minutes so that you don’t feel like you always have to be reacting to whatever trivial email comes into your inbox…even if your reaction is simply to delete.

- If you’re on a Mac, turn off the dock so it’s not always distracting you with notifications and other applications clamouring for your attention.

- Make yourself selectively visible online - it may be tempting to keep instant messaging programs running all the time, but it means you can be distracted by whoever sees that you’re online. If you’re running a program like Addium you can make yourself invisible to everyone but very specific people.

- Make sure you change your privacy settings on online sites like Facebook: defaults may open up more of your life than you’re comfortable with. Scale back on how much information you’re making available so people aren’t able to use it to eat up your time.

Conscious Internationalization Using Technology - bridging cultures and crossing borders for mutual benefit - why we are in china (despite human rights abuses etc.,) why open source is great for narrowing the digital divide in developing countries and why knowledge sharing is a critical tool of diplomacy. Open business uses the best aspects of globalism (giving hyper-local vendors access to global markets with minimal middle-intervention) without the class degradation and “shock therapy” of globalization.

1 - Spreading open source culture in China encourages communication which is healthy way to bring reform and share ideas.

2 - Open source software will empower emerging entrepreneurs with a tool to contribute to, and profit from - resulting in positive globalism rather than exploitive globalization.

3 - Shanghai and China is growing in leaps and bounds and its fun to be a participate in - new buildings, the future is now, economy in transition, awakening the slumbering giant of human potential

4 - Drupalcamp in Shanghai, Barcamps in Beijing and Shanghai, China Access 2008 are examples of community driven (rather than corp driven) events which bridge cultural gaps and share knowledge for mutual benefit.

5 - Logistically speaking, Raincity visited multiple times, making friends and contacts each time and now have an office and staff allowing us to work around the clock and add increased services.