ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2006
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Welcome to the 417th 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.
Support PCIN at http://PCIN.net/donate.php
I hope that if you celebrated it, you had a nice Canadian Thanksgiving. I did! We had a great dinner on Sunday, and then leftovers on Tuesday. I love turkey. We even bought an extra turkey to have sometime between now and Christmas. There's no rule that says you cna only have it on holidays! :-)
I will be on vacation next week. We're not going anywhere special, but it'll be nice to be off. While I'm off, I expect that I'll get the Nero 7 Ultra Edition review finished. Chris is also working on a couple of reviews for his Digital Photography Tip of the Week. One is of ACDSee and the other is a white balance filter called ExpoDisc.
Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net
Geekspeak still baffles web users
According to research from Nielsen/NetRatings, people are buying cutting-edge technology but often don't understand the terms that describe what their device actually does.
So while 40% of online Britons receive news feeds, 67% did not know that the official term for this service was Really Simple Syndication.
Terms such as podcasting and wikis are still meaningless to many.
"In the relentless quest for the next big thing when it comes to new forms of digital consumption, there is a significant tendency for the industry to over-estimate consumer's knowledge and understanding of the seemingly limitless new terms and products out there," said Alex Burmaster, internet analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings.
A Gaggle of Google Wannabes
In the race for Web-search share, Ask.com is the tortoise. The search engine formerly known as Ask Jeeves still handles less than 6% of U.S. searches, though it's been in the industry since 1996, more than a year before front-runner Google. Google controls roughly 51% of searches, including queries conducted on Time Warner's AOL and News Corp.'s MySpace.
But IAC/Interactive's (IACI) Ask.com and other tortoise-like Web-search rivals are hoping they'll gain advantage in the long run by coming up with new, clever methods of searching for information on the Web, as Google ramps up efforts to expand beyond search.
A Challenge for Exterminators
On a whiteboard in a windowless Microsoft conference room here, an elegant curve drawn by a software-testing engineer captures both five years of frustration and more recent progress.
The principle behind the curve — that 80 percent of the consequences come from 20 percent of the causes — is rooted in a 19th-century observation about the distribution of wealth. But it also illustrates the challenge for the builders of the next generation of Windows and Office, the world’s largest-selling software packages.
As they scramble to get the programs to users by the end of the year, the equation is a simple one: making software reliable for most personal computer users is relatively easy; it is another matter, in a PC universe with tens of thousands of peripherals and software applications, to defeat the remaining bugs that cause significant problems for some users.
The effort to overhaul the Windows operating system, originally code-named Longhorn and since renamed Vista, was meant to offer a transformation to a new software foundation. But several ambitious initiatives failed to materialize in time, and the project started over from scratch three years ago. The result is more an evolutionary shift, focusing on visual modernization and ease of use.
Wired-weary youth seek face time
For some, it would be unthinkable — certain social suicide. But Gabe Henderson is finding freedom in a recent decision: He canceled his MySpace account.
No longer enthralled with the world of social networking, the 26-year-old graduate student pulled the plug after realizing that a lot of the online friends he accumulated were really just acquaintances. He's also phasing out his profile on Facebook, a popular social networking site that, like others, allows users to create profiles, swap message and share photos — all with the goal of expanding their circle of online friends.
YouTube: From gags to riches
Twenty months ago, a pair of twentysomething buddies founded a company above a California pizzeria that let people post their favourite video clips, ranging from stupid pet tricks to rotund Plasticine hippos that sing.
It was a wildly improbable business model, laced with the threat of copyright infringement lawsuits and stiff competition. But it worked.
YouTube Inc. agreed yesterday to be swallowed by Google Inc. for $1.65-billion (U.S.), a deal that may mark one of the fastest Internet growth stories since the tech heyday of the 1990s.
"It's nothing short of phenomenal," said Rick Broadhead, a Toronto-based technology author and analyst who believes video is the next big thing on the Internet. "They really did come out of nowhere and, very quickly, became a household name."
Some Common Photography Problems - Digital Photography Tip of the Week
I have discussed in the past some common problems people often experience with photography and how they can be corrected. Crooked photos, too much background in your images, red eye. When polling some co-workers about a topic they would like to know more about, these were all issues that came up.
I have already covered how to straighten a crooked photo in a previous tip. Of course, it is always better to get things correct when you take the picture, but if not, you can still correct the image in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements or any other image editing program you may use.
The issue of too much background in a photo is a common one, partially caused by the photographer, but not always entirely. In my tip about moving in close to your subject, I explained how filling your frame can improve your images. Unfortunately, many optical viewfinders in cameras do not offer 100% coverage, that is, they do not show everything that will be recorded on your image. Some may only show as little at 80% of what will be recorded on your photo. So filling your frame on a camera may not be enough to completely fill your photo with your subject. A little cropping on the computer is all that is necessary to correct that though.
I talked only briefly about red-eye when discussing the use of external flash units. You can still minimize red eye when using an on board flash by using the camera's red eye reduction mode. This will either create a few bursts of the flash prior to taking the photo or turn on an secondary lamp, again, prior to taking the photo. Both methods accomplish the same thing, forced the subject's pupils to shrink, lessening the change (not eliminating it) of red eye. Another option to ask your subject to look at a bright light for a short second before take the photo, again to accomplish the same shrinking of the pupil.
I was also asked about white spots that appear in some digital photos. These are most likely caused by dust in the air near the lens when the photo is taken. The size of the sensor in many digital camera's is quite small and one of the side effects of this small sensor size is an increase in depth of field. The small white specs you may see in your photographs are really the light of the flash illuminating dust in the air. The relative distance to the lens and sensor, brightness of the light due to the proximity to the flash, and increased depth of field of the smaller sensor size all contribute to these particles being reproduced on film. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do to delaminate this issue other than clean your photos up using an image editing program.
I hope the topics I covered today remind you of a few of the basic things you can do to improve your photography. If you have a problem you are not sure about, please leave a comment
Until next week, happy shooting.
Leave a comment about this week's Digital Photography Tip of the Week.
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 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.
Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:
Update PCIN.net home page with "Top 10 Most Popular..." features
http://PCIN.net/Microsoft Digital Image Suite Plus Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/msdimagesuiteplus.phpOmega One Software Battery Pack Pro 2.1 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/bpp2.phpMakayama Interactive DVD to Pocket PC 3.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/dvd2ppc3.phpAdobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/elements40.php
Media-Convert: Web-based converter for most everything
I saw this on Download Squad...
Media-Convert is a fairly impressive web service that will convert a file from one file format to another. That sounds pretty benign, but what's impressive is how many formats it supports. There's a good chance Media-Convert supports almost every document on you computer, including dozens of audio and video formats, a ton of common and obscure image formats, documents from Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, and others, compressed archives, and more.Media-Convert is a fairly impressive web service that will convert a file from one file format to another. That sounds pretty benign, but what's impressive is how many formats it supports. There's a good chance Media-Convert supports almost every document on you computer, including dozens of audio and video formats, a ton of common and obscure image formats, documents from Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, and others, compressed archives, and more.
I haven't tried it, but it sounds very interesting. Check it out!
LibraryThing
I'm not a big novel reader, but if I find something good, I can't put it down until I'm done. I've got a small collection of books that are on a couple of bookshelves in my house and I've never felt the need to catalog them. But if you have a lot of books, and you'd like to "meet" other with similar tastes, then LibraryThing may be for you. It is a service which catalogs your books and also adds some social networking features:
LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.
There is a free account (up to 200 books) and paid accounts. If this is your thing, then check out LibraryThing!
SpamCop.net - Beware of cheap imitations
As I'm sure you've experienced, spam (junk email) is a huge problem. If you have an email address than you've probably received junk. Most ISPs now try to run services on their mail server to stop this, but some always get through. If you get spam and want to report it yourself, a good place to start is with SpamCop:
SpamCop is the premier service for reporting spam. SpamCop determines the origin of unwanted email and reports it to the relevant Internet service providers. By reporting spam, you have a positive impact on the problem. Reporting unsolicited email also helps feed spam filtering systems, including, but not limited to, SpamCop's own service.
You can report spam that you've received and SpamCop will contact the server administrator for you. It may be a tedious process, but every little bit helps. Check out SpamCop.net for more details.
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:
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 1998-2006, Graham Wing. All rights reserved.
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