New, tips, and more
I found this on Lifehacker:
PortableApps Suite 1.0 stocks your USB drive, portable hard drive, or any other drive with a full complement of software, ready to run wherever you plug in.
This new version of the suite (which we’ve loved on in the past) includes the latest portable versions of Firefox, GAIM, OpenOffice, and other open-source gems.
Read the more about PortableApps Suite 1.0 at Lifehacker or directly at the PortableApps web site.
I read about this on the Office Tips and Hints Blog…
SchoolHistory.co.uk - online history lessons, revision, games, worksheets, quizzes and links.
In particular, as it mentions, the site has a games section with over 200 topics cover over 6,000 questions. Although the site is based in the UK, the questions would be appropriate for people around the world. Check it out!
Regular reader Pat send in a link to a list from PC World magazine with links to 101 software/Internet freebies. There are links to freeware utilties, web-based email, fun web sites, and more. Check it out!
From TechRepublic:
In addition to plenty of turkey, a record amount of spam will be served up this holiday season.
Mass e-mailers traditionally bump up their activity as the year winds down. But this year, the amount of junk messages could be unprecedented, companies that make spam-busting tools say. And senders of unsolicited ads are already celebrating the close of the harvest season and the approach of Christmas.
“Just as legitimate vendors began stocking their shelves with holiday decor and gifts before Halloween, spammers started sending spam messages tailored to the holiday gift-giving season earlier this year,” said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management at Barracuda Networks, a Mountain View, Calif., maker of security appliances.
In October, 63 billion junk messages were sent daily, on average, compared with 31 billion a year ago, according to data from IronPort Systems.
From Fortune (via CNN/Money):
Everything you buy online says a little bit about you. And if all those bits get put into one big trove of data about you and your tastes? Marketer’s heaven.
Last night I went to Best Buy and Future Shop to look for a combo DVD player / VCR. There were a bunch of people outside, but didn’t think anything of it. My sister works at Best Buy, and she was working and asked if I had seen the people waiting for the PlayStation 3. As I was leaving, paid more attention. There were probably 20 people or so huddled under blankets, some with plastic tarps and one group with a tent. There was a similar scene at Future Shop. The weather was quite cold and rainy, so it wasn’t a good night to be camping out.
My sister said they only had 12 PlayStation 3 packages, but they have over 40 of the Nintendo Wii that comes out on Sunday.
Last week I started my discussion on how to resize an image in Photoshop Elements 5. This week I will conclude that discussion.
The difference between the Pixel Dimensions section and Document Size section of the Image Size dialog box is that changes in the Pixel Dimension section will add or remove pixels from your image and changes in the Document Size section will not. Using the same example from last week, my current image dimensions are 1200 x 1161 pixels, or 16.667 ” x 16.126″ at 72 DPI. If I wanted to print this 8 inches wide, I would first turn off the Resample Image checkbox (which tells Photoshop to add or remove pictures, and disables the Pixel Dimensions section) and then change the value in the width text box in the Document Size section to 8. When I do this, the height will automatically changed to 7.74″ and the Resolution to 150 DPI. At this point, I have not added or removed any pixels (data) from the image so the integrity of the original image remains.150 DPI is a little on the low side for printing though. To keep the size of the image the same (8 x 7.74) but print to 300 DPI, turn the Resample Checkbox back on. Changing the Resolution from 150 to 300 will now keep the document size the same, but the Pixel Dimension of your image will now be 2400 x 2322.
When resampling an image, there are 5 resampling methods you can use, Nearest Neighbour, Bilinear, Bicubic, Bicubic Smoother and Bicubic Sharper. The last three are the ones used for photographs most often. I generally only use Bicubic in my photography, though I rarely change pixel dimensions unless I am posting my image to the web. Bicubic interpolation uses adjacent pixels up, down, left and right to determine what colour pixels to add or remove as part of the image resize process. It is suggested that scaling up large amounts to use Bicubic Smoother to help eliminate some of the jaggies introduced into the upscaled image and Bicubic Sharper when scaling down to account for the loss of detail that will occur as image data is removed during downscaling.
The Scale Styles option will scale styles such as layer styles, borders and drop shadows up or down as necessary when resizing the image. I never turn this option off. When resizing for the web, simply use the Pixel Dimension section of the dialog box as computers ignore resolution and display images based upon their physical pixel dimensions.
Ultimately, it is always best to start off with the largest file size you have. I have suggested in the past that you should always shoot on the highest resolution your camera can record. Doing so will eliminate much of the need to upscale your image for a large print, while still allowing your to easily downsize your image when needed. It is better to have to downsize and throw away data than try to add data to your image when you upsize the image. As it is, my 6.1 MP digital camera can produce a 12″ x 18″ image with a resolution of 170 DPI, or an 8″ x 12″ image with a resolution of 256 DPI, both a very acceptable range for normal viewing distances of images of those sizes.
Until next time, happy shooting.
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.
If you are looking for some ideas and samples of simple web sites, especially if you are just learning, then check out WebGFX.ch. They host hundreds of basic templates. You just browse the listings (with thumbnails) and when you find one you like, you click on it. A page loads showing that template. You then just use your browser to save the page. These are definitely not fancy, and as far as I can see use no CSS. But if you are looking for some ideas, this may be a good place to start.
I read about this at SearchEngineWatch:
The PCNames domain search engine does exactly what might be expected of it - it searches for domain names and returns results with details on their availability. It does this virtually instantaneously as well - when you being typing the engine offers details on .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us…
Once a search has been run it is then possible to get WHOIS information to research the site, or if a site is available for registration…
The benefits of the search engine are clear for those people who wish to register domain names. As a searcher the resource is also useful to quickly check not only to see if a domain is available or not, but to check on the ownership of the site - useful for authority checking, and as a quick way to locate a domain if you can’t remember if a recently visited site was a .com or a .org for example.
From TechRepublic:
As Republican politicians return this week to Washington for the waning days of their rule of Capitol Hill, technology lobbyists are frantically pressing for last-minute legislation before Democrats take over next year.
At issue are proposals including renewing a popular tax credit for research and development expenses and expanding the number of H1-B visas, which are temporary visas designed for skilled foreign workers. Many spending bills to fund the federal government through the next year have yet to be considered, and the final versions could include antipiracy measures and Web censorship requirements.
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