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.
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.
This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the author
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