ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2007
==== 1458Subscribers in 49 Countries ====
Welcome to the 455th 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
Chris is back now and it seems like he had a nice honeymoon. Surprisingly he didn't take his good camera with him. He did have a couple of smaller cameras with him, so we may see some pictures later. Since Chris is back, he is back to providing a weekly Digital Photography Tip.
Matthew just turned 3 and we had a nice family party for him. Andrew turns 5 at the end of the month, and he's having his first birthday party with friends, so he's very excited. Speaking of Andrew, he finished Junior Kindergarten last week. We're pretty sure he passed (phew!) :-)
So now Lisa has to find a way to entertain the two boys all summer while she's "great with child". She's a great mom, so I'm sure she'll have all sorts of great things to do. They have season passes to Marineland, so I'm sure they'll go there several times.
I hope everyone had a happy Canada Day and Independence Day!
Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net
Curious gadget fans smash, dissect iPhones
It took Apple Inc. more than six months to build the iPhone but curious gadget fanatics needed only minutes to tear one apart.
Within hours of the first iPhones going on sale Friday, enthusiasts scrambled to be the first to discover what makes the devices tick, posting photos and videos of disassembled phones on the Internet.
The information is more than just academic. Apple keeps a tight grip on information about parts suppliers so "tear downs of its products are closely watched by investors keen to figure out how to place their bets.
Why We Click
Money is the motivation for scam-spam. The motivation for clicking on it is far less straightforward, and none of us is immune.
"It's not like certain people are going to be nailed by spam all the time. Or that there are certain motivations that will just [always] trigger people [who respond] to spam scams. It's really the interplay between personality and motivation, emotion-all sorts of things," said Dr. James Blascovich, professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara and co-director of the university's Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior.
"It's a little more complex, but not much different from the complex interplay of psychological factors that get people to succumb to any sort of scam." ...
McAfee, of Santa Clara, Calif., throws around figures like these: If half of the population in the United States (about 150 million people) use e-mail on a daily basis, and if only half of them (75 million) are gullible, and only 1 percent (750,000) buy into scam-spam on a given day, and if those victims were to cough up a mere $20 per scam, the potential market amounts to $15 million a day, or $105 million per week, or nearly $5.5 billion per year in just the United States.
NASA missions may Twitter from the moon
NASA astronauts "twittering" from the moon?
It's not such a far-fetched idea, considering the space agency's current push to partner with Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and save itself from turning into a dinosaur in the Internet age. Some executives at the struggling NASA believe that if the agency can adopt Web technologies like Twitter - a social network for broadcasting thoughts online or via text message - then kids and the general public will be more connected to space exploration and inspired to learn about science.
"How can NASA become hip?" NASA CoLab Project Manager Robert Schingler asked here Tuesday at NASA's Ames Research Center. "For me, it's allowing other individuals (and companies) to participate in the program."
Strobist.com - Lighting information for everyone - Digital Photography Tip of the Week
I would like to thank everyone for their patience over the past little while when I was getting married. I know that the tips had stopped, but hopefully the reviews Graham included in the newsletter were beneficial. I had very little activity on my own website in that time as well and have resumed regular postings their as well.
In past tips I have spoken about the quality of light and how the relative size of your light source affects the quality of light. I have also talked about using on camera flashes.
There is another website that I follow very closely that offers a wealth of information on lighting, and more specifically, lighting with small strobes or external on camera flashes. David Hobby is the creator of Strobist and is also a professional photographer. He has more than 600 articles and postings on his website all about lighting your subject with small, inexpensive off camera flash units. Last summer he ran a series called Lighting 101: Lighting Boot Camp and is currently running Lighting 102. His work and examples can even help photographers with point and shoot cameras and just a few controls on their cameras.
He makes this stuff easy.
I encourage everyone to visit his site, read through his article, read Lighting 101 and follow Lighting 102. Do the exercises. They will make you a better photographer.
Until next time, happy shooting.
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
This blog is G Rated
Mingle2 has a tool that they say will "rate" your blog, similar to the way movies are rated. It scans the posts and looks for objectionable words. It obviously isn't perfect (one of my sites was warned about using the word "dead"), but it's still kind of a fun tool. You can enter any blog URL (and any URL for that matter) and determine their "rating".
Televison History
I came across this interesting web site the other day that has a lot of information about the history of television
One of the greatest 20th century inventions.
Learn about the history of TV-set design, development and marketing.
Once you are inside a major time period, you will find photographs of television sets from around the world, year-by-year links to important facts, magazine covers and advertising. See examples of the world's first television sets, up to and including HDTV models.
They have some great pictures of very old televisions, as well as a lot of trivia type information.
14 Personalized Homepages Compared, Feature by Feature
I've seen this mentioned in a couple of places, but Mashable has an article that compares 14 different personalized home pages. The homepages are:
- Netvibes
- Pageflakes
- iGoogle
- MyYahoo
- yourminis
- WebWag
- Schmedley
- Eskobo
- Windows Live
- Favoor
- Gritwire
- Inbox
- Protopage
- It'sAStart
I haven't heard of a bunch of these, but I'll probably check them out now that I've read a bit about them.
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