As I’m sure you’ve experienced, spam (junk email) is a huge problem. If you have an email address than you’ve probably received junk. Most ISPs now try to run services on their mail server to stop this, but some always get through. If you get spam and want to report it yourself, a good place to start is with SpamCop:
SpamCop is the premier service for reporting spam. SpamCop determines the origin of unwanted email and reports it to the relevant Internet service providers. By reporting spam, you have a positive impact on the problem. Reporting unsolicited email also helps feed spam filtering systems, including, but not limited to, SpamCop’s own service.
You can report spam that you’ve received and SpamCop will contact the server administrator for you. It may be a tedious process, but every little bit helps. Check out SpamCop.net for more details.
I’m not a big novel reader, but if I find something good, I can’t put it down until I’m done. I’ve got a small collection of books that are on a couple of bookshelves in my house and I’ve never felt the need to catalog them. But if you have a lot of books, and you’d like to “meet” other with similar tastes, then LibraryThing may be for you. It is a service which catalogs your books and also adds some social networking features:
LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.
There is a free account (up to 200 books) and paid accounts. If this is your thing, then check out LibraryThing!
I saw this on Download Squad…
Media-Convert is a fairly impressive web service that will convert a file from one file format to another. That sounds pretty benign, but what’s impressive is how many formats it supports. There’s a good chance Media-Convert supports almost every document on you computer, including dozens of audio and video formats, a ton of common and obscure image formats, documents from Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, and others, compressed archives, and more.Media-Convert is a fairly impressive web service that will convert a file from one file format to another. That sounds pretty benign, but what’s impressive is how many formats it supports. There’s a good chance Media-Convert supports almost every document on you computer, including dozens of audio and video formats, a ton of common and obscure image formats, documents from Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, and others, compressed archives, and more.
I haven’t tried it, but it sounds very interesting. Check it out!
This week we had a guest speaker at my camera club speaking about photographing people. The first thing he said in his presentation was to have your camera ready at all times so that you don’t miss a shot. That was my tip last week.
This week I am going to talk a little about camera maintenance, specifically cleaning your lenses for optimal clarity..
Cleaning your lenses is an important part of digital photography when it comes to high image quality. A dirty lens may cause a decrease in clarity and possibly contrast in your image and can introduce spots that you have to try to digitally remove later.
The equipment used to clean lenses is pretty simple. A small blower brush will often remove small particles resting on the glass. Simply blow them off. Smudges and finger prints or water marks require a little more work. I use a ‘clean’ micro fiber lens cloth, available at camera stores and often also at places where you can buy prescription eyewear. Gently rub the lens element in circles to remove any marks that may be on the lens. If they are a little more stubborn, breathing on the lens softly will give the cloth a little moisture to help remove the marks. Try to avoid cleaning lenses too often or with chemical cleaners as camera optics are coated to help increase contrast, and it is possible to remove these coatings through cleaning. If you have an SLR with interchangeable lenses, also remember to examine the rear elements of your lenses to be sure they are clean as well. In the event that you do use a liquid lens cleaner, place a few drops on the lens cloth rather than directly on the lens.
To protect the lens you may choose to use a filter in front of the lens to protect the front lens element. A 1A (Skylight) or UV filter will have little to no effect on your images while keeping your front lens element cleaner.
Dirty equipment will yield dirty results. But it is also important not to go overboard. Be sure to keep things like dust and moisture out of your lenses to provide years of spectacular, trouble free photography
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.
Another good one from Download Squad:
If you’re like me… then you probably are a total sucker for any Netscape or digg post that claims to give you information about some super-secret registry tweak that will make your XP box faster. I know I’ve tried every one in the book, and I found the more that I tried them, the more that I needed them. Not because they worked, though. More often it was because my system seemed to grow slower and slower as I applied all of these tweaks.
Well it turns out that wasn’t my imagination, my system actually was slowing down. And the reason is that most of the supposed performance enhancing tweaks that you read about online at best do nothing, and at worst actually slow Windows down.
Download Squad then links to XP Myths. The site tries to help with various tips and answer whether they really do anything or not. Check it out!
Recent Comments