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Issue 445 - April 25, 2007

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2007
==== 1505 Subscribers in 50 Countries ====

Welcome to the 445th 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

Contents

Opening Thoughts

Since the weather has been quite good the last week or so we've been able to start puttering around the yard. I've planted 19 Canna Lilies in small planters so they can be kept inside at night. They should be ready to plant outside by mid-May. We've done some clean-up in the perennial garden along the back of the house, and it looks like we'll have to cut the lawn soon. For the next few days it looks like the April showers will be here, but hopefully they will bring the May flowers (at least on my Canna Lilies).

This coming Sunday we're having a family dinner to celebrate Alisa's and Julia's birthdays who both had birthdays earlier in April. There were two families at Church that had babies this month, and one baby was born on Alisa's birthday, and the other was born on Julia's birthday. I wonder what the chances of that were...?

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

News Highlights

Bill Gates: No End to Tech Revolution

Technology will keep getting better and better rather than plateauing out, with the humble keyboard making way for speech recognition software as standard, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said on Thursday.
"I'm often asked, is the technology revolution going to reach an end? Is the improvement in the chips and the software, will that start to slow down as we reach some limits?" he told a forum in Beijing.
"The answer is?certainly in the decades ahead?we don't see any limits. We see in fact the power will just get better and better."

Read the Red Herring article...
Leave a comment...

Religious websites ape MySpace, YouTube

In the name of MySpace, YouTube and the holy Internet, amen.
A number of religious websites are aping the names and styles of some of the Web's most popular sites. Chief among them are GodTube.com, a video-sharing site for Christians, and MyChurch.org, a social networking realm.
The explosion of niche social networking sites that divvy up your personality into various identities has extended into religion with MyChurch.org. The site describes itself: "This is NOT 'MySpace for Christians,' this is MyChurch for EVERYONE."

Read the USA Today article...
Leave a comment...

Google's Only Foe: High Expectations

Google owns the Internet advertising business, generates gobs of cash and can keep competitors at bay simply by opening its checkbook.
None of this seems to impress Wall Street. Analysts expect the Web giant to post another quarter of go-go growth on Thursday afternoon: They are looking for the company to reports earnings per share of $3.27, up 42% from a year ago, and revenues of $2.5 billion, up 63%. And yet investors now treat the company as if it is stalling: After a breathtaking run, the company's share price has been bouncing between $450 and $500 all year.
So, what's a poor Internet advertising behemoth supposed to do to impress investors?

Read the Forbes article...
Leave a comment...

MySpace to test news service

News Corp.'s MySpace social network launched on Thursday a service that scours the Web for news stories and lets users rate them, aiming to attract more advertisers to the Rupert Murdoch-controlled company.
The service, called MySpace News, resembles a mix of Google's Google News, which collects stories and arranges them based on thematic similarities, and Digg.com, which displays stories suggested by its readers and displays them according to their popularity ranking, executives said.

Read the USA Today article...
Leave a comment...

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Digital Photography Tip of the Week

Keyword Tagging in Adobe Lightroom - Digital Photography Tip of the Week

Today's tip is another tip for Adobe Lightroom users.

The third tip that I wrote dealt with organizing your images. Today's tip is how Lightroom can help you with that.

Using the Library Module in Lightroom, tagging images with keywords could not be any easier. With your thumbnails visible, select an image or a series of images (hold down Shift when selecting all images between two selected images, or hold down control while selecting individual images that are not in order) and type keywords in the Keyword Tag box located in the right hand pane of the Library Module.

You can also add keywords buy selecting your images as above then clicking on any of the keywords listed in the Recent Keywords list. On top of the Recent Keywords, you can create you own list of up to nine keywords and save them as a custom set for future reference. Lightroom includes three of these keyword sets, Outdoor Photography, Portrait Photograph and Wedding Photography, but of course you can create your own for your specific photo needs. To change to any of these sets, or to one of your own, simply click the small down arrow just right of keyword set menu. This menu will then let you pick a keyword set, add or delete sets.

What good is tagging your images if you cannot use those tags to find your images later. Adobe has made this easy as well. To search for images using the keywords you have just created, expand the left hand pane if it is not already and then the Keyword Tags section of that pane.

You will see all of your keywords you have created along with a listing of the number of images tagged with each keyword. Selecting a keyword (or multiple keywords using Control and/or Shift) will then show in the image list all of the images belonging to your selected tags.

Properly labeling your images will make finding and sorting them easier for you, and the few seconds it takes to do this initially equates to a lot of saved time in the end.

Watch for my upcoming full review of Adobe Lightroom which is still on sale for a reduced rate of $197.99 US until the end of the month when the introductory price expires and the price increases to $299.99 US.

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.

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PCIN.net Site Update

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.php

ExpoDisc White Balance Filter Review
http://PCIN.net/help/hardware/expodisc.php

Paragon Software Group Partition Manager 8.0 Professional Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/ppm8.php

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

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Tips and Other Stuff

Image Assistant 3.0 - comfortable and quick image processing

Several weeks ago I received this press release from ExtraLabs Software:

The ExtraLabs Software company, a developer of software for creating RSS feeds, announced the new release of the Image Assistant graphic editor that has some new features improving the usability of the product. These new improvements take into account users' most urgent needs.

Image Assistant is a multifunctional and yet easy-to-use program for batch image processing. The main advantages of the product include the intuitive interface allowing you to resize images and automatically rename image files, generate HTML preview pages and also apply all kinds of text and graphic "watermarks" and filters to images (remove the red-eye effect, correct colors and much more).

The program can be used for quite a wide range of purposes, both at home and in office. With Image Assistant, any user - no matter how experienced - will be able to create an album of home photos, correct colors, protect image files with "watermarks".

I haven't tried the software, but I figured I'd pass along the information.

Leave a comment...

Paragon Software Launches New Version of NTFS for Linux

A few weeks ago I received this press release from Paragon Software Group about the latest version of NTFS for Linux:

Paragon Software Group, the technological leader in innovative data security and data management technology, announced that it has released Paragon NTFS for Linux 6.0, the latest in its family of software. The product's purpose is to provide reliable, rapid and transparent read/write access to NTFS volumes under Linux. Among the new improvements and features in this release are complete support for 64 bit CPU architecture, Windows Vista NTFS file system, the latest Linux kernel and also includes performance enhancements.

You can read the entire press release in PDF format on the Paragon web site.

Leave a comment...

All My Movies - cutting-edge tool for creating personal video collection

I recently received this press release from Bolide Software about All My Movies:

Bolide Software today announced a new release of its well-known solution All My Movies. Designed for Windows OS, this product allows users to easily and efficiently create and manage private video collections. All My Movies turns your idea of sorting and cataloging various data upside-down making it an extremely captivating task. Compared with its competitors, All My Movies possesses an unexampled feature suite such as support of various plug-ins, export into HTML, XLS, CHM, support of templates and enhanced database. One of the remarkable features of All My Movies is the possibility to import information from Internet databases (for example, IMDB) and the scanned data (covers and bar-codes) which brings considerable time-saving. Above all, All My Movies allows to take stock of lent discs, keep various bases for preview on PDA and implement full text search. Intuitive, user-friendly interface of the program developed in accordance with user-demands is fully customizable and supports a variety of skins.

You can learn more about All My Movies on the Bolide Software site.

Leave a comment...

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 1998-2007, Graham Wing. All rights reserved.

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