ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2007
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Welcome to the 456th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly of news highlights 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
On Monday my wallet was stolen (I'm not sure) so I'm going through the process of trying to get new copies of my IDs. What a pain! I was surprised that today I received one piece already. If only they'd all come in that fast.
I put a small pond in my back yard by our back patio last week. It looks great, but there is an animal that keeps eating my water hyacinths. Worse than that, in my vegetable garden this animal ate all 7 broccoli plants, all 4 cauliflower plants, and all 3 brussels sprouts plants. My neighbour is growing a lot of the same things I'm growing, and he hasn't had any problems. Why me?!
Lisa's birthday is this Saturday, so we're having a family dinner at our house. I've helped Andrew and Matthew get a gift together for her, and I think she'll love it. I just hope the boys can keep it a secret!
Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net
Cyberbullying really is that bad
Teenagers can be serious jerks. You don't need research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project on cyberbullying to know that. It's interesting to note however, that at the dawn of the 21st century, teenagers have effectively transferred their jerk skills from corporeal to virtual, launching torments once reserved for the lunchroom, school hallway and bus stop into cyberspace.
According to Pew's recently-released study, "About one third (32 percent) of all teenagers who use the Internet say they have been targets of a range of annoying and potentially menacing online activities." These youthful indiscretions include threatening messages, private online conversations shared with others and embarrassing photos and rumors posted for all the world to forward.
Your first girlfriend -- and the other things search engines store about you
What if there were a giant database that contained your hidden insecurities, embarrassing medical questions and the fact that you still think from time to time about your high school girlfriend? Well, such a data store does exist -- if you've ever plugged such private topics into a search engine.
The fact is, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search all record and retain in their vast data banks any term that you query, in addition to the date and time your query was processed, the IP address of your computer and a cookie-based unique ID that -- unless you delete it -- enables the search engine to continue to know if requests are coming from that particular computer, even if the connection changes...
The upshot: If someone were to ask one of these search engine companies to produce a list of IP addresses or cookie values that searched on a particular search term, they conceivably could. Or, conversely, given an IP address or cookie value, the search engine firm could produce a list of terms searched by the user of that address or cookie value.
Where are your high-tech manners?
Just because you live in a high-tech world doesn't mean your manners can sink to new lows when using your personal technology, experts say.
"No doubt there've always been stinkers from the start of time,"says Honore Ervin, co-author of "The Etiquette Grrls: Things You Need to Be Told" and "More Things You Need to Be Told."
"But all of these mobile, technological gadgets that are so prevalent now -- somehow [people] just get sucked into their own little world of their cell phones, iPods, wireless computers. They're not existing in a society and realizing that their actions affect anyone else."
A poll last year by Pew Research, The Associated Press and AOL (which, like CNN, is owned by Time Warner) found that 81 percent of the people they surveyed were irritated at least occasionally by loud and annoying cell phones in public places.
PCIN.net Update - Tips for panoramic stitching - Digital Photography Tip of the Week
Many of the software packages that come with digital camera's as well as a lot of the photo editing software applications have features that let you stitch a series of images together to create a panoramic shot.
There are a few steps you want to take before hand though to be sure you have some successful shots to work with. One of the most important steps you can take is to make sure that you have turn off your auto white balance on your camera. This will ensure each image in the series has the same colour tone. We have a poor ability to remember similar colours but a very good ability to distinguish them side by side. Shooting your images with the same white balance will help to ensure this.
Similar to this, if you can set a manual exposure for the entire series of images, this too will help to ensure seamless images. Finally, try to keep the camera perpendicular to the ground. The will ensure that you will not have to needlessly crop your final image later. Of course this process can become more technical including finding the nodal point of your camera/lens combination and using special tripod heads but that is not for this blog.
Until next time, happy shooting.
Leave a comment on 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:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Adobe Premier Elements 3.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/photoshopEL5_Premiere3.phpExpoDisc White Balance Filter Review
http://PCIN.net/help/hardware/expodisc.phpParagon Software Group Partition Manager 8.0 Professional Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/ppm8.phpUpdate 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
Updated Sysinternals utilities
I've mentioned Sysinternals a couple of times before. They make fantastic system utilities for Windows operating systems, and were recently acquired by Microsoft. On Monday, their blog posted that there is a new Active Directory utility, and 3 updates to other utilities. Most of the tools are particularly useful in an environment where there are many computers (since most of them will work on remote computers), but if you like to play around with your system and tweak settings or look more indepth at some settings, then you should definitely look into the Sysinternals utilities.
Family Craft Times
Michaels is a large arts & crafts store with hundreds of stores. One opened up in our city this Spring, and my wife was ecstatic. She was there a few days ago and picked up a flyer about their Family Craft Times newsletter. this is a monthly email newsletter where you get craft ideas to keep your kids busy as well as standard promotional information. If you are looking for things to do with your kids this summer, this would be a good place to start.
New Paragon Drive Copy 8.5
Paragon Software has released a new version of their Drive Copy software, version 8.5:
Paragon Software Group, the technological leader in innovative data security and data management technology, announces the release of Drive Copy 8.5 - the ideal software for real-time hard disk copy, personal data and applications migration, disk-to-disk backup, basic and advanced hard disk partitioning operations.
Paragon Drive Copy provides the user with simple and easy product that provides fast data migration, especially when upgrading from one hard drive to another. The exclusive One Button Copy Wizard makes the product easy-to-use even for novices. With this version of Drive Copy, users can now make a quick backup to an external USB or Firewire drive. Drive Copy allows the user to easily copy and backup individual partitions. Also new in this version is Paragon's exclusive Incremental Hard Disk Copy. This revolutionary new feature allows users to simply make incremental copies once the main copy has been created.
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 1998-2007, 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.
Support PCIN by visiting http://PCIN.net/donate.php