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Issue 409 - August 16, 2006

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2006
==== 1579 Subscribers in 51 Countries ====

Welcome to the 409th 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

CONTENTS

Opening Thoughts

I had a great long weekend away with my family. The weather was beautiful and we had lots of fun. There was fishing, swimming, camp fires, hikes, and more. I wish I was independently wealthy so I could retire and live up there. Unfortunately I still have 20+ years to go!

Is it just me, or is all the buzz these days about some sort of entertainment device. Am I the only one who uses their computer for computing, and not for watching TV/movies or playing games? I just don't understand what all the fuss is about. Any thoughts?

Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net

The NEWS

Your Life as an Open Book

Privacy advocates and search industry watchers have long warned that the vast and valuable stores of data collected by search engine companies could be vulnerable to thieves, rogue employees, mishaps or even government subpoenas.
Four major search companies were served with government subpoenas for their search data last year, and now once again, privacy advocates can say, "We told you so."
AOL's misstep last week in briefly posting some 19 million Internet search queries made by more than 600,000 of its unwitting customers has reminded many Americans that their private searches - for solutions to debt or bunions or loneliness - are not entirely their own.
So, as one privacy group has asserted, is AOL's blunder likely to be the search industry's "Data Valdez," like the 1989 Exxon oil spill that became the rallying cry for the environmental movement?

Read the New York Times article...
Leave a comment...

Terabyte drive to debut later this year

If there's a storage fanatic in your family, a perfect gift could be coming for her or him toward the end of the year: 1-terabyte hard drives. Desktop hard drives holding 1 terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, of storage will likely debut in 2006, according to Bill Healy, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. These drives, which will have a 3.5-inch diameter, are expected to be incorporated into PCs and home servers.

Read the TechRepublic article...
Leave a comment...

Users still not wiping data from unwanted PCs

Research by BT, the University of Glamorgan in Wales and Edith Cowan University in Australia, has found that while 41% of the disks were unreadable, 20% contained sufficient information to identify individuals.
The research, based on the acquisition of 300 PCs from auctions, computer fairs and on-line purchases, also found that 5% of the machines held commercial information on organisations, and that 5% held "illicit data".

Read the ComputerWeekly.com article...
Leave a comment...

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Digital Photography Tip of the Week

Black and White from Colour Images - Part 2 - Digital Photography Tip of the Week

Last week I began my discussion of black and white digital photography. This week I will further that discussion by talking about the first two methods of converting your digital photographs to black and white, or more specifically, monochrome. For the sake of simplicity, I will use black and white in my text, but even traditional wet darkroom methods had ways of introducing a color tint or tone into an image, so monochrome is a better descriptor for the final images.

The two methods of black and white conversion I will discuss this week are desaturating the image and converting to grayscale.

Saturation refers to the intensity of the colour in your photograph. An image with bright colors have high saturation while image with pastel colors have low saturation. If you remove all the colour saturation in the image, you end up with a photo that looks like a black and white image.

To desaturate an image in Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 , from the menu choose Enhance => Adjust Color => Adjust Hue/Saturation (CTRL-U). Then, simply drag the saturation slider all the way to the left. The same shortcut works in Adobe Photoshop CS2 , but the menu location is different. In CS2, use Image => Adjustments => Hue/Saturation. However, in order to preserve image data, I prefer to create an adjustment layer using Layer => New Adjustment Layer => Hue Saturation. Again, simply slide the Saturation slider to the left. Using desaturation to remove the colour from a photograph affects the red, green and blue channels equally.

Converting to grayscale is a very simple process, but it changes the data in your image. If you are converting to grayscale, you probably don't need the color data anyway. When converting to grayscale, Photoshop places more emphasis on some channels than others, in the proportions of 30% Red, 59% Green and 11% Blue. This provides a more natural conversion of your photograph and more closely resembles what we expect to see.

dptotw-bwexamples.gif

The example above shows four colors in the first row, red, green, blue and yellow. All four have the same brightness (or luminance). The second row is the same four colors, only this time they have been desaturated. Because they are of the same brightness, once desaturated, they look the same. Finally, the third row is the same colors but this time they have been converted to grayscale. As you can see, There is an obvious difference.How do you know when to use which method. Using the desaturate creates a very flat image that is rarely, if ever, very impressive. Converting to grayscale is the obvious better choice. It should yield acceptable results, most of the time. Is the best choice? If you are using Adobe Photoshop Elements , it is. If you are using another program, such as Microsoft Digital Image Suite or Adobe Photoshop CS2 , there are still better ways.

Next week I will talk about using Channel Mixer to convert you colour photographs to black and white masterpieces.

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.

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PCIN.net UPDATE

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.php

Omega One Software Battery Pack Pro 2.1 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/bpp2.php

Makayama Interactive DVD to Pocket PC 3.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/dvd2ppc3.php

Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/elements40.php

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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF

50 Coolest Websites

How do we select our finalists? We evaluate hundreds of candidates - some suggested by readers, colleagues and friends, others discovered during countless hours of surfing. Many of this year's choices are shining examples of Web 2.0: next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips. Think we missed one? Send us your thoughts and we'll post a selection of your comments online. There's always next year.

Read the Time Magazine article...
Leave a comment...

eBay auctions in the news

King Nutter is a British site (I'm not sure what the name means) that tracks unusual eBay auctions. You can read about auctions that include buying a town, a 1993 school bus, Brokeback Mountain Pez dispensers, and a guy selling everything he owns. If you've got a few minutes to sell, then check it out.
Note that there are other areas to the site that I didn't visit so I don't know what they are like or what they contain.

Leave a comment...

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PCIN.net AFFILIATED SITES

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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DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF

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.

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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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