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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
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.
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
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