ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2005
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Welcome to the 371st issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly of news and tips. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there will be something for you. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!
You can reach me at editor@pcin.net with any suggestions or comments.
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Support PCIN at http://PCIN.net/donate.php
I've finished the review of ActiveEarth. Read the Tips and Other Stuff section below for more info. Chris will have the Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 review done for next week. Please take the time to to rate the reviews when you are finished reading them.
I've added a few more images this week to the tips section. All of the images in the newsletter are loaded over the web, so the size of the email is still fairly small. If you are connected to the Internet, then the images will load. I won't be having a lot of images in the newsletter. It's just that this week each tip had a logo or screenshot.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net
'Literary' texts no more?
"Romeo, Romeo -- wher4 Rt thou Romeo?"
It could be the future of Shakespeare.
Dot mobile, a British mobile phone service aimed at students, says it plans to condense classic works of literature into SMS text messages. The company claims the service will be a valuable resource for studying for exams.
Academic purists will be horrified. Hamlet's famous query, "To be or not to be, that is the question," becomes "2b? Nt2b? ???"
Tech firms focus on TV
Ever since Edward R. Murrow and Ed Sullivan were doing their thing in black and white, the living room television has been the centerpiece of home entertainment.
Then, somewhere along the way, a lot of folks in the high-tech industry got it into their heads that families should gather around the PC to watch their favorite TV programs.
Guess what? The tube still rules. So it's little surprise that the tech industry, led in a most unlikely way by computer networking giant Cisco Systems, is looking to the TV to finally, once and for all, get out of the home office and into the living room.
Video Games Are Their Major, So Don't Call Them Slackers
"So you have these four basic types that occupy the environment: the Achiever, the Explorer, the Socializer and the Killer."
Nick Fortugno, the 30-year-old teacher, turned away from the whiteboard and faced the 14 undergraduate and master's-level students in his Thursday seminar. "Killers act like predators, and like any ecosystem, if you increase the number of killers and facilitate them, you decrease the number of achievers and socializers."
A forestry class on the ecology of the African savannah? No. A psychology course on the ways of the grade-school playground? Closer, but not quite.
Rather, in his video game design seminar at Parsons the New School for Design in Greenwich Village, Mr. Fortugno was recently explaining the basic taxonomy of players in online role-playing games like World of Warcraft or Lineage, games that millions of people around the world play every day.
BitTorrent creator in deal with Hollywood
In a deal aimed at reducing illegal Internet traffic in pirated films, Hollywood reached an agreement Tuesday with the creator of the popular file-sharing software BitTorrent.
The agreement requires 30-year-old software designer Bram Cohen to prevent his Web site, bittorrent.com, from locating pirated versions of popular movies, effectively frustrating people who search for illegal copies of films.
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Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:
Norris Family Industry ActiveEarth 2.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/activeearth2.phpParagon Partition Manager 7 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/ppm7.phpDiFolders Software BlogJet 1.5 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/blogjet15.phpVMware Inc. VMware Workstation 4.5 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/vmware45.phpPCIN.net Update Blog
http://PCIN.net/update/
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Holiday Photo Gifts
Last week I discussed flash use in digital photography. This week I will discuss some of the many ways you can use your digital photographs this coming Christmas.The photographs you make may be printed, put in an album and emailed to friends. But what else can you do with them. With Christmas coming up, it is a good time to explore that. Most of the labs using a digital processor can now add fancy borders and messages to your print. With those, they usually offer calendars and greeting cards featuring your images. Why not give someone a coffee mug with one of your photos printed on it. Mouse pads, pillows and even blankets with you photo can be purchased as well.
If you are doing you own printing at home, you can purchase greeting card paper to make your own holiday cards or iron on transfers to make your own photographic T-shirts. Custom CD and DVD covers, personalized gift tags can be made at home as well. Canvas and silk papers can be purchased for an art look to your photos (would make a nice gift) as well as magnetic and adhesive papers for fridge magnets or home-made bumper stickers. Scrapbooking has become a very popular hobby, so why not make your own scrapbook pages?
Looking for something a little more unique? Why not have a coffee table photo book created. There are several companies on the web that offer this service. Try photoworks.com, shutterfly.com or kodakgallery.com, though I have not tried any of these yet myself.
There are endless possibilities to what you can do with your photos, all you need is a little creativity.
Next week I will summarize my review of Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.
Comment on this week's Digital Photography Tip of the Week at http://www.pcin.net/update/index.php/2005/11/16/digital_photography_tip_of_the_week_exte
The digital photography tip of the week is written by the PCIN Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Chris is a long time photographer and is currently the vice-president of the Niagara Falls Camera Club. You can see more of his photography at his Photo of the Day website.
If you have a tip to send Chris, or a question about digital photography he can address in the newsletter, send it to chris@pcin.net.
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ActiveEarth 2.0 Software Review
As the world becomes one big marketplace, it becomes increasingly more important to understand things as simple as time zones and business hours around the world. One of the first reviews I ever did was for a product called ActiveEarth by Logos Systems Research. They have since moved on to other software, but one of the original programmers got the rights to the software and has updated it. I recently had the opportunity to review ActiveEarth 2.0 by Norris Family Industry.
Avoid searching in ZIP files in Windows XP
I've been doing some cleaning on my system, and I've been looking for files that are over a certain size. I kept having ZIP files appearing, along with the files that are inside them. Windows XP has some native ability to see inside ZIP files. But when you are searching, having a ZIP file along with the files that are inside it is kind of redundant. I did a quick search on Google for Don't search in zip files windows xp. The 9th result was from the MVPS.org website and an article called Prevent Windows XP from searching inside ZIP and CAB files, without breaking Windows XP's native ZIP / CAB support. It mentions a little utility called NoFindInsideZip. There is nothing to install. You just run the executable and you can choose to search inside ZIP and CAB files or not. Very handy!
The Digital Photography Weblog
Chris does a great job with his Digital Photography Tip of the Week. He also has a Photo of the Day that you can see on his own site. But there are lots of other resources out there.
A good one is the The Digital Photography Weblog. This is part of the Weblogs Inc. network. It covers digital cameras, useful websites, books, and more.
Check it out at http://digitalphotography.weblogsinc.com/
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Both of us have other sites other than PCIN.net. These are all sites that we are actively involved in (they aren't client sites). Don't forget to check them out from time to time for updates:
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PCIN is brought to you by Graham Wing. The opinions expressed are those of the Editor, Graham Wing and the Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Graham Wing and Chris Empey accept no responsibility for the results obtained from trying the tips in this newsletter.
Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Chris Empey can be reached at chris@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2005, Graham Wing. All rights reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.
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