New, tips, and more
From ABC News:
From on-demand video services that were overly demanding, to underwhelming operating-system updates, 2007 was full of disappointments. We surveyed the landscape and polled some old friends to come up with the 15 products, companies, and industries that left the most sour taste in our mouths. From last to first, here’s our list of the year’s biggest losers. Read ‘em and weep.
I originally heard about this on the Kim Komando radio show in early December. Price Protectr is a service that monitors prices on items that you’ve purchased to help you get the difference back from the store you purchased it at:
There are lots of stores out there that offer price protection policies — when the price drops on an item you’ve purchased, they’ll refund you the difference. But there’s a catch… it’s up to you to watch prices.
Price Protectr makes it simple to keep track of your purchases and get your money back. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s free and easy money. How often do you get that offer?
From the New York Times:
Netscape Navigator, the world’s first commercial Web browser and the starting point of the Internet boom, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1 after a 13-year run.
Its current caretakers, Time Warner’s AOL, decided to end further development and technical support to focus on developing the company as an advertising business. Netscape’s use dwindled with Microsoft’s entry into the browser business in the 1990s, and Netscape all but faded away after the birth of its open-source cousin, Firefox.
From itWorldCanada:
Information technology is keeping pace with all the frantic action happening on the court in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
In a game where play is fast and furious, the league is leveraging an array of technologies, including portable touch-screen computing, wireless sensing and quick-reacting statisticians to following the bouncing ball as its being played in 30 NBA arenas.
It’s all about accurately accounting for all the numbers as points scored, rebounds, assists and fouls are continually logged as it all happens.
It’s creating a veritable mountain of statistical information that’s being used by coaches, league officials and teams to assess player and team performance. The statistics are also offered up to fans that can’t seem to get enough of the number crunching action.
In year’s past, I’ve seen lots of postings and links to various year-end lists. For some reason this year I haven’t seen so many. In fact, the only highly publicized one I’ve seen is the Google Zeitgeist 2007. They have a section of their site where they show stats throughout the year, but then they have their full year-end listing:
We’re bidding adieu to 2007 with a look back at the breaking news, the big events and the must-have gadgets that captivated us this year (give or take a few weeks; we compile this list by early December). To get a glimpse of what’s been on our collective consciousness, we mined billions of search queries to discover what sorts of things rose to the top. We encourage you to check out our findings to see if you, too, reflect the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times.
As the title indicates, this is a list from the New York Times of 1001 appetizers you can make in 20 minutes or less:
You want good food at a holiday cocktail party and you want to impress people? You don’t want a caterer, you refuse to heat up frozen food, and you want to show that your expertise extends beyond buying perfectly ripe hunks of cheese and juicy olives? Then think about doing some cooking.
Here is a collection of party foods that are as easy to eat as they are to make. Each can be produced in 20 minutes or less.
From the Globe and Mail:
Britain’s 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, considered an icon of traditionalism, launched her own special Royal Channel on YouTube Sunday.
The Queen will use the popular video-sharing Web site to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message, which she first delivered live to the nation and its colonies on Dec. 25, 1957.
Buckingham Palace also began posting archive and recent footage of the Queen and other royals on the channel Sunday, with plans to add new clips regularly.
From ars technica:
Younger gamers looking to con a Wii out of parents this year by selling them on the physical benefits of “active” gaming, it’s time to dream up a new strategy. A UK study entitled “Energy expenditure in adolescents playing new generation computer games” reveals that a round of Wii Sports doesn’t work the body nearly as hard as proper exercise. While it expends more energy than “idle” gaming with a controller, the difference is negligible.
From CNN:
First-year medical students are some of the biggest hypochondriacs around. Bombarded with information about every disease under the sun, they start to imagine they have them all. In their minds, every mole is skin cancer. A nosebleed is surely a sign of a tumor. Headache? Must be skyrocketing blood pressure.
“People get terribly anxious,” says Dr. Arthur Barsky, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “One woman who came to see me was convinced she had melanoma. She brought in 20 pages of color photos of various skin lesions, trying to figure out which one looked most like hers.”
And now, because of the Internet, we can all be first-year medical students.
For the past few years, I have created a small wall calendar for friends an family. I have used 13 images, one for each month and one for the cover. I created the calendar pages in Photoshop including such customizations as birthdays and anniversaries, printed them first 6×4 (6×8 calendar) and later 7×5 (7×10 calendar), then had them bound by a local copy store. I realize I have a certain amount of bias but I do feel they have been a nice gift.
This year I have created a small, full year, calendar, 4×6, with a single photo and all 12 months of the calendar year. I downloaded a calendar template from the web, then customized the calendar with my name and web site address then laminated the calendar to a magnet. I am sending these calendars to new clients as a small thank you and a year long reminder of my services. For my existing clients, I have customized their calendar with a photo from one of their sessions over the previous year.
Use of your photos does not have stop with a picture in a frame. Local labs and online printing services offer a very expansive range of products to use with your photographs, though you do not always have pay a lot for them. A little bit of time on your own and you can have a few nice products to pass around to your friends and family.
This is my last tip for 2007. I wish everyone a happy Christmas and holiday season. If you happen to receive any new photo goodies over the next little while, remember to read the manual… there is a wealth of information included in that little book.
Until next time, happy shooting.
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