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Issue 452 - June 13, 2007

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2007
==== 1459 Subscribers in 49 Countries ====

Welcome to the 452nd 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

Our trip to the Toronto Zoo on Saturday was great. The weather was beautiful and I took some good pictures. I don't have an up on the family site yet, but when I do I'll post a link.

There are lots of things happening within the next week. The biggest event it Chris' wedding. He's getting married on Saturday, and then he'll be gone on his honeymoon. Congratulations Chris!

My sister is having a garage sale at my house on Saturday. As I mentioned previously, she's moving to Alberta with a car loaded with stuff, and the rest needs to be sold. Hopefully it all sells.

Lastly, on Tuesday Lisa is having a 3D ultrasound done. We're excited to see the baby and we're even able to get a video!

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

News Highlights

Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play

Presleigh Montemayor often gets home after a long day and spends some time with her family. Then she logs onto the Internet, leaving the real world and joining a virtual one. But the digital utopia of Second Life is not for her. Presleigh, who is 9 years old, prefers a Web site called Cartoon Doll Emporium.
Dress up dolls include Beyoncé Knowles, from Stardoll, and Rudolph Giuliani, from Cartoon Doll Emporium.
The site lets her chat with her friends and dress up virtual dolls, by placing blouses, hair styles and accessories on them. It beats playing with regular Barbies, said Presleigh, who lives near Dallas.
"With Barbie, if you want clothes, it costs money," she said. "You can do it on the Internet for free."

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

YouTube to test video ID software

Internet video site YouTube is to test a new video fingerprinting technology to address copyright concerns.
The software will identify unique attributes in video clips and could be used to prevent copyrighted clips from being uploaded without permission.
YouTube executive Chris Maxcy told news agency Reuters that the tool would be tested in a month's time.
Breach of copyright has been an ongoing issue for the Google-owned video sharing site.

Read the BBC News article...
Leave a comment...

Are Google's moves creeping you out?

One lazy afternoon, Maer Israel and a colleague ducked out of work to have a double espresso at a nearby cafe in San Francisco.
Several weeks later, the information technology manager at the French American International School was alerted that a picture of him sitting at the cafe could be found on Google's online map as part of the search giant's new street-level photo view.
"The HR manager ran into me in the hallway, and she pulled me aside and...said, 'Do you know that there are cameras everywhere?'" Israel recounted. "Of course, I was a little freaked out because it's the HR person telling me that we got busted having a coffee next door...My mother is surprised I haven't been fired."
Google's recently unveiled Street View stunned many with its photos of the unsuspecting, from a man climbing a front gate to another walking out of a strip club, but it's hardly the first time the company has compiled a massive database of material that some would want to remain private. Indeed, Google has for years been storing every Web search and analyzing the topics of Gmail so it can serve customers with related advertisements.
But now that Google is serving up images from the sky with Google Earth, creating street-level images with Street View and tracking customer behavior in cyberspace, some are starting to ask: how much is enough?

Read the ZDNet News article...
Leave a comment...

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Digital Photography Tip of the Week

The Best of the Digital Photography Tip of the Week

Last week I reviewed Chris' instructions on the Orton Effect. This week I want to remind you of Chris' instructions on Black and White Photography. He shared 4 different ways to convert your colour photographs to black and white:

As one commenter posted after the last part, "Just a quick thank you note for writing four great articles. I have followed each step and have learnt a lot more about more about the process that takes place after the shutter has done its job."

You can view all of Chris' previous tips by visiting the Digital Photography Tips category.

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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

Moleskinsoft Clone Remover 2.3

I received this press release the other day from Moleskinsoft:

Moleskinsoft today announces the release of version 2.3 of Moleskinsoft Clone Remover - an efficient utility designed to search for various duplicate files in your PC and delete unnecessary file copies. Moleskinsoft Clone Remover 2.3 finds duplicate files of different types, including music (mp3), image files, ZIP and RAR archives and others. The utility allows you to save time and efforts looking for similar files and deleting them. It will also help to free extra space on your PC and make it work faster. Recently one of the users of Moleskinsoft Clone Remover has informed us, that he managed to delete 150 GB of duplicate files! Isn't that cool, or what?

Version 2.3 further expands the functionality of Moleskinsoft Clone Remover allowing user to discover and delete files of different types simultaneously, "all in one", applying different methods of search for each type of files. Basically, Moleskinsoft Clone Remover employs five different ways to find duplicate files. First, the utility can find similar files with different names using search by content. For example, a file containing your photo may have different names and be located both in the "C:My picturesphotographies"
and "D:Temporary files" folders. Then, search by mp3 tag is used for finding duplicate music files. This method is based on the fact that any mp3 file contains different information about the track. The utility compares tracks by artist, name, album, year, comment and genre. It can also compare several tags at a time. Search by properties method lets user find duplicate files by name and/or size. When the search for duplicate files is finished, the program will show a list of found files that can be deleted immediately. To make sure that the result is correct, it is possible to open the found files with some other program or view them with a built-in viewer. Besides that, duplicate pictures can be found with similar images method. It means that similar images are such images (jpg, bmp, png, psd and others) that differ in resolution. Or, they may have the same size, but one of the images has a small caption and the other does not. At last, Moleskinsoft Clone Remover searches for files with a zero size.

I haven't tried the software, but it sounds promising. You can read more about Clone Remove and download a trial from the Moleskinsoft site.

Leave a comment...

TestDisk - powerful cross-platform disk recovery tool

test_disk_logo.gif

I heard about this on Download Squad...

The nightmare scenario: your computer won't boot. The drive seems healthy otherwise; you can access it when booting from another drive, but for some reason your drive absolutely refuses to boot. Take heart, it's possible that it can be fixed by TestDisk, a very powerful cross-platform partition recovery tool.

I haven't tried it yet, but I wanted to pass the information along. You can read more about on the Download Squad site or on the CG Security site.

Note: CG Security is the maker of the PhotoRec software that Chris mentioned last summer.

Leave a comment...

Everything you want to know about Google PageRank

If you have a web site, then you want to be listed high in a search engine. Google uses a formula called PageRank that determines the quality of a page (and thus its ranking) based on the quality of the links that point to it. The formula seemed to be remarkable effective, and that's why everyone uses Google. I'm sure that there are many other factors, but people have become obsessed with understanding PageRank with the hope that they will be able to increase their ranking.

Smashing Magazine has a lengthy article that tries to bring all of the known information together, with supporting links to sources and tools.

Everybody is using it, but (almost) nobody really knows how it works. Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web. With billions of existing pages and millions of pages generated every day, the search issue in the Web is more complex than you probably think it is. PageRank, only one of hundreds of factors used by Google to determine best search results, helps to keep our search clean and efficient. But how is it actually done? How does Google PageRank work, which factors do have an impact on it and which don't? And what do we really know about PageRank?

If you are into this sort of thing, you should definitely check it out.

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 1998-2007, Graham Wing. All rights reserved.

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