Allan's FishNet

Beware of the YouTube

2010-01-02T23:45:00.002+02:00

YouTube has come up in these columns from time to time but, in keeping with my current theme of whether its possible to depend wholly on the Internet for one's entertainment, I thought I'd mention it again, and issue issue a warning.

For those who haven't yet encountered it, YouTube (www.youtube.com) is a video sharing site which allows anyone to upload video for the world to enjoy. The interesting YouTube blog (youtube-global.blogspot.com) gives a glimpse of how huge the site is.

Users are apparently adding to it at the rate of 20 hours of video every minute of every day. Throw into the mix a billion videos viewed every day by site visitors, and you have an entertainment phenomenon which is probably unparalleled in history.

There is all sorts of stuff available ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it doesn't take long to find stuff that interests you. The YouTube blog is a good starting point for looking for interesting things and, among much else, there is music of every description, shows, news, reviews and tutorials on a wide range of subjects.

I should probably warn you, however, that you need to be seriously careful when starting to use YouTube, because of its addictive nature. One example that happened to me recently was when I went along to look for a singer called Ivan Rebroff, who was referred to in an Internet radio program I listen to.

Once I got onto YouTube, I searched for Ivan and came up with a whole list of his recordings, including the JS Bach/Charles Gounod version of Ave Maria. I listened to it to get a sense of what he sounded like and it turns out that he had a really remarkable vocal range, from deep bass to soprano.

That was interesting enough, but what led to my undoing was the panel next to the video which lists other videos related to the one you're looking at. This panel is the work of the devil because it will invariably list other versions of the song you're looking at, and you'll start to wonder if those versions are better or worse.

In the list, I noticed a version of Ave Maria by Charlotte Church, so I clicked on it and looked at that but, in the list of related videos next to it, I saw several other versions. At that point, I said goodbye to productivity and, before I knew what I was doing, I had looked at versions of the song by Celtic Woman, Pavarotti, Deanna Durbin, Mario Lanza, and quite a few others.

By this stage, it was getting towards the middle of the night and mad thoughts were entering my head along the lines of: "Why don't I listen to every version of Ave Maria, so I can decide which is the best ever?".

Things didn't end there, unfortunately, because in the related videos list, I saw other songs by singers I had enjoyed, so I clicked on those too. By 3am, I was listening to German songstress Helene Fischer who I must say, has a helluva voice, even though I have no idea what she's singing about.

Anyway, back to Ave Maria, and the thought that I might like to listen to all the versions on YouTube to decide which I like the most. The YouTube search facility brings up 4100 mentions of the song, which is a problem, because I'll either have to listen to them all, or never know which is the best version.

So far, I'd have to vote for Mario Lanza as the best and, as the most interesting, one by Bobby McFerrin (Don't Worry, Be Happy) in which he does the orchestral bit with his voice, and gets his audience to do the vocals.

Like I say, YouTube should be used with caution.

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Links found

2009-12-21T23:42:00.002+02:00

I was checking my ISP site (axxess.co.za) and found a couple of links to my articles on the Independent Online site. Fame at last...
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Gift guide: 2009

2009-12-19T18:12:00.003+02:00

South African retailers and consumers are seeing eye-to-eye for a change, and are all hoping for a good Christmas this year. The retailers are hoping to sell lots of nice presents and the consumers are hoping that at least some of those being bought, will be coming their way.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been taking a good look around the Internet and a couple of things that I would not be sorry to find in my Christmas stockinghave caught my eye .

If someone liked me very much and money were absolutely no object, this kind of person would lash out on a Nikon D700 camera which, although not cheap at around R30,000 without a lens, is Nikon's least costly digital camera with a full frame sensor; one the same size as a piece of 35mm film. The Nikon D90 I already own, is a wonderful camera but the D700, with its larger sensor, provides very much better performance in low light conditions.

From the realm of pure fantasy, to some photographic gifts that I have the least a small chance of finding under the Christmas tree. My first choice would be the chunky Canon G11 compact camera at about R7000. It apparently offers extremely good picture quality and, with fewer megapixels than the previous model, hopefully signals the end of the megapixel race.

Sporting the same sensor as the G11, the even more compact Canon S90 apparently also offers great quality in an extremely neat and tidy 196-gram package. It will apparently be available in this country at something just over R5000 and has many features to delight the heart of even the most demanding photographer.

I see that there is a new Apple iPod Nano music player out, with 16 GB of memory, which sells for around R2500. The 40g player includes an FM radio and a video camera, which is capable of recording for 16 hours onto the iPod's memory.

I'm quite into nostalgia as far as music goes and my eye was caught by a box set of re-mastered Beatles CDs. There are apparently 16 CDs included in the set and it goes for around R1800; sounds as though it would be a great present.

I have cheated a bit on one of my choices this year, the Blackberry Curve 8250 mobile phone, which I have already bought for myself. I had been due for a phone upgrade for a more than a year and decided to take the plunge, when I saw that this new more compact Blackberry had become available and that you get unlimited e-mail downloads and web browsing for a mere R59 per month.

A full review will follow in due course but, so far, I'm very pleased with the phone and the Internet service which, although not very speedy, works fine. The amount you'll have to pay in for an 8250 will vary depending on the contract that you have, but in my example, which is a Top-up R200, I had to play in R700.

One of the most interesting items of news to come my way in the last year, was that Amazon.com is now selling its Kindle electronic reader to a worldwide audience, including us South Africans. The Kindle will set you back $259 plus shipping plus the applicable duty when it arrives in South Africa.

Once here, you'll be able to use it to buy and view any of the electronic books in stock at Amazon, plus a wide variety of other documents such as web pages, JPEG pictures, PDF files, and a whole lot more. It can apparently store on the order of 1500 books in its memory and you can read for up to a week, before having to recharge it.

The trick behind the Kindle is that it uses electronic ink technology for its display screen, which means that it only uses power when turning a page, and not while you're actually reading. The books are as expensive as printed ones and you have to send your documents to Amazon via e-mail for conversion before you can load them onto the Kindle, but it's still something I would like.

These are just a few of the things that have caught my eye in the run-up to the festive season and, if I'm lucky, one or two more might find their way in my direction.

Here's wishing that you and yours have a blessed and peaceful time over Christmas, and I'll catch up with you again next week.

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They're playing our iTunes

2009-12-15T10:08:00.003+02:00

Is it just me or are our already bad TV broadcasts getting even worse?

I've mentioned this before but, as a DSTV subscriber, the continual onslaught of repeat programming and house adverts, regurgitated several times every hour, are driving me to distraction. I try not to, but I can't help feeling slightly murderous when I tune in, to find that The Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers or Orange County Chopper is on. Again!
And, if DSTV is bad, the SABC is even worse.

Over the last couple of months I have again been wondering if it could be viable to rely solely on the Internet for one's entertainment needs. I've had the idea before but, at the price of Internet connectivity then, it didn't seem practical.

Recent developments, including the fact that Telkom is now allowing you more bandwidth for your buck, meant that I started thinking about it again.

I have been giving it a go and I think that I have actually been using my PC more than my television set in recent times. I've mostly been listening to podcasts which are basically radio-type shows, and are available free all over the Internet.

I have found that many of them are conveniently collected together in the Apple iTunes store and, from there, you can use iTunes software to subscribe to, and download them for listening. As South Africans, we don't currently have access to the television shows, movies or songs that are available from the store, but there are a lot of free podcasts available.

I find that the iTunes software, available from www.apple.com, is a robust solution for subscribing to, and downloading podcasts. It tolerates slow and patchy Internet connections and, if it is ever unable to download a particular item, it will try again the next time you run it.

iTunes can also be used to copy the material you've downloaded to an iPod music player, so that you can listen to it on the go. I haven't got an iPod because of the ridiculous prices they go for here, so I can't comment on how quick or easy the process is.

My iPod-less state is about to change, however, because I happened to mention wanting one when I was last on the phone to the Australian branch of the family. My eldest niece generously offered to send me her old iPod Touch which, she said, still works perfectly, in spite of having been dropped into the toilet. The gizmo that lights up the screen is dead, apparently, but the unit is perfectly usable if there is plenty of daylight around.

I'm looking forward to being able listen to my various podcasts in the car and wherever. Among the ones I subscribe to are several from BBC radio including the Friday Night Comedy Podcast, a half-hour of comedy on topical issues, and the evergreen Desert Island Discs.

Some of the BBC radio shows are distributed in the form of podcasts but many more are available from the BBC Radio website itself, and you can listen to those with the site's built-in iPlayer. Copyright dictates that many shows are only be available for a week after being broadcast, but I find that's plenty of time to listen to my favourites.

I also subscribe to a selection of photography and science podcasts on iTunes and that keeps me pretty well entertained. It is such refreshing change to listen to things which appeal to my tastes; not an option when relying on South African broadcasters who really like reality shows and think that the 1990s are the dim and distant past.

As I say, I have been listening to a podcast or Internet radio program or two every day, and although I still haven't yet cancelled my DSTV subscription, I would do so like a shot if I had the option of just subscribing to a couple of decent sports and news channels.

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FxFoto

2009-12-12T17:07:00.002+02:00

This week's column is on photo-related Trisxape FxFoto and I have posted it on my my photo blog.

Here, and just for the hell of it, is a photo I took recently. Click here or on it to view the rest of my pictures on Flickr.com.

Ubuntu Part III

2009-12-06T23:22:00.003+02:00

Part I | Part II

I managed to install the free Ubuntu Linux operating system on my second computer with very little problem and, being very easy to get to know, it was getting high marks in my eyes.

It came with a wide selection of free software packages already installed including, as I was pleased to find, a very nice Mahjong game. I managed to use the built-in package manger to find and install a program called Wine, which lets you run many Windows programs on Linux.

The time for playing around was over, and I decided to put Ubuntu to the test to see if it could be a really viable replacement for the Windows XP I use every day. It recognised my HP D1360 printer as soon as I plugged it in, and I was able to print a document without any fuss at all.

I inserted a memory card from my camera into the attached card reader and the built-in image viewer woke up and offerered to download the pictures. All were downloaded but only the the jpeg images were displayed; the RAW ones were only visible as icons.

camera files icons were visble but the program was able to open the or develop the files.
I plugged in an audio CD and it played perfectly but the trouble started when I tried to play a DVD and the movie player flatly refused to play it. I also tried some online videos including some from YouTube, and nothing would play.

After a lot of digging around in the Help section, I discovered that the video formats are included on a list of what Ubuntu calls restricted formats. Ubuntu is free and it doesn't play those formats out-of-the-box for legal reasons, which I don't entirely understand.

There were full instructions about what to do to enable the restricted formats and, after fiddling for a looooong time, I managed to get DVDs to play but not, crucially, online video or sound streamed from the BBC Radio site. Why they couldn't have built a feature in to at least warn you if you try to play a restricted file, I don't know.

The second disappointment came when I tried to plug in my HP 4400c scanner and got absolutely zero response. After much digging through the help file on that, I discovered that, although most relatively modern scanners will work perfectly under Ubuntu, mine won't.

The lack of hardware drivers was alway Linux's Achilles Heel but it does seem that things are improving and that, if you have relatively new peripherals, they should be able to work under Ubuntu.

Overall, I was very impressed with Ubuntu and felt that it would make a perfectly usable system for most computer users, especially if they are starting with a new system, and only buy peripherals that are guaranteed to work with it.

The savings that can made by not having to buy an operating system and software can be considerable and may make the difference between being able to afford a PC and not.

I would say that that, for more advanced users who are likely to ask more their PCs, the decision of whether Ubuntu would be viable or not, will hinge on whether there is software available to do whatever they want to do.

Where Windows scores is that there are so many people around who can fix it and, although Ubuntu has some catching up to do, there is a growing body of people skilled in it. I don't see that there'd be any harm for most users in choosing Ubuntu when buying a new PC.

If I was equipping a business with PCs, I'd choose Unbuntu and the associated free office suite like a shot. On the other hand, I see little need for existing users to upgrade to it, if they've already got a legal copy of Windows and all the software they need; time enough to consider that the next time they need a new machine.

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Ubuntu Part II

2009-11-24T09:36:00.004+02:00

Part I | Part III

Last week, I wrote of my experiences installing the Ubuntu Linux operating system on my second computer.

The whole experience was pretty quick and painless and I was most impressed with how civilised and house-trained it is. The feeling you get is that the system is solid and reliable with very little unnecessary flashiness which, to my mind, just eats up computing resources and offers little benefit.

It is obvious that a lot of time and effort has gone into the design of the interface and it is laden with thoughtful little touches to make life easier. A nice feature is that it keeps an eye out for when you plug in a disc or memory stick, and displays it on your desktop as an icon, so that you can access it quickly when you need it.

My preliminary impression is that things happen pretty snappily under Ubuntu and that the oft-stated maxim that Linux will perform better than Windows on the same hardware, seems quite true. The machine boots up and is ready for work in a fraction over a minute compared to the three to four minutes that it takes my more powerful Windows XP-powered PC.

I have been switching between the new and the old machines quite a lot over the past few days and, in an aside, I'm continually amazed how the silent the old one, a Fujitsu Siemens, is when compared to the new one. Living with the new machine is like having a helicopter permanently taking off in the office, wheras you barely know the old computer is on.

I must see if anything can be done but, anyhow, back to Ubuntu, which is looking pretty promising but, strangely, will likely be harder for the experienced users to get grips with, if only because they will have to unlearn the habits of years.

There will be plenty of new software packages to learn and treasured old programs, whose idiosyncracies have been leaned over years will have to abandoned, when the expeienced user goes over to Linux.

Or maybe not.

I have discovered that there is a Linux program called Wine, which allows you to run Windows programs on Linux machines. From what I read on the Internet, many Windows programs will work just fine on Wine; reminding me of quite a few people I know!

I decided to try it out and found and installed it with the package manager. I then downloaded my favourite Windows image viewer Faststone, and installed it on the Ubuntu machine by right-clicking on the file, and selecting the Open with Wine Windows Program Loader option on the pop-up menu.

Faststone now appears as an option under the Wine section of the applications menu and seems to be working properly. I have also managed to use Steganos LockNote, which I use to keep a list of my many passwords, and that has also worked very well.

There is no telling if your favourite programs will run under Wine but, the online Linux community being what it is, someone out there is bound to have already tried to see if it will, and documented their experiences. If you can't find any information on the program you want to run, there is always the option of trying it out, and seeing what happens.

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Ubuntu Part I

2009-11-21T21:39:00.002+02:00

Part II | Part III

Over the last few months I have been promising myself that I'd have a go at installing Ubuntu, a version of the Linux operating system, on my spare computer.

The attraction behind Linux is that it is free, in stark contrast to Windows for example and, by repute, is more stable and powerful. I arbitrarily chose Ubuntu among the many variants on offer because it is the version of Linux supported by Mark Shuttleworth.

Ubuntu is apparently a modified and improved version of Debian Linux and, although its name is an African word for Humanity to others, one Internet wit defined it as a word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'.

Linux has had the reputation of being something that only geeks could successfully install and use but I had had some encounters with it, which convinced me that things had finally changed. And so last week, on a day when the omens were all good and the force was with me, I finally settled down to try it out.

The first thing I needed was a copy of Unbuntu on a disc and found that one can download it from www.ubuntu.com in the form of a disc image. It's a pretty hefty 715Mb in size but, once it was downloaded onto my main PC, I copied it onto a CD-ROM disc using Nero.

I then unplugged my main PC, connected the spare machine up to my monitor, mouse, keyboard and ADSL line, and slipped the Ubuntu disc into the CD-ROM drive. The machine booted up very quickly and, after a stern warning that the contents of the hard drive would be deleted if I continued, it asked me a few questions about my name and location, and then began the installation.

The process only took about 20 minutes and was entirely without any fuss or bother. The first thing it then did was to go onto the Internet and download the latest updates for itself.
When you install Ubuntu, you also get a full set of free programs including an office suite, graphics programs, CD burner, browser, e-mail client and calendar, movie player, games, and much, much else besides.

In fact, there is enough for all the needs of most computer users and, if that isn't enough, there is a very neat tool known as Synaptic Package Manager, which lets you search for, and install a huge variety of free software.

The Ubuntu interface is really excellent and there is no reason why the most phobic of computerphobes couldn't find their way around it. There is a menu bar along the top of the screen, which gives gives access to applications, places on the computer, such as the desktop or your documents folder, system admin functions, e-mail package, web browser, help, volume control, date and time, and options for logging off, restarting or switching the machine off.

A panel running along the bottom of the screen gives you one-click access to your desktop and houses buttons for each open window. The panel also houses the workspace switcher which gives you access to a very interesting feature of Ubuntu.

You can establish a number of workspaces for different purposes, such as e-mailing, web design or whatever have you, and switch betwwen these at will. The benefit is that it reduces onscreen clutter by only showing Windows relevant to the particular task at hand.

More impressions next week. Why not leave a comment by clicking the link below?
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Huge big photo fun

2009-11-13T22:29:00.004+02:00

This week I was planning to write about my experiences installing Linux on an old computer I have lying around.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't have made much of a story as my activities have been so far been confined to looking at the computer tower squatting on the floor of the spare room, acting as a bedside table, and thinking; 'Hmmmm!'.

So that'll have to wait for some time in the future but, talk about writing, I am really having a lot of success with the Dragon Dictate speech recognition software that I have mentioned before.

I had trained it to the peak of perfection when I toasted my hard drive, described in a previous column, and had to reinstall it. What has surprised me is the discovery that the fastest way for me to get these columns done is to write out what I have to say in long hand in about three scrawled A4 pages.

It seems that I think quicker with a pen in my hand than a keyboard. Keyboards had scarcely been invented when I was at school, but my ex-teachers will be surprised to hear that I can hold a pen and think at the same time.

Anyhow, I then spend about five or six minutes dictating to the computer and it takes about half an hour to transcribe the recording and for me to edit the result.

Dragon is really great and I'm even thinking of upgrading to the full version, which can import backed-up-user files. The version I have insists that you start from scratch if you ever have to reinstall it.

[There were also some paragraphs on photo website BigHugeLabs in my original column but I have archived them in my photo blog, so as not to have the story twice on the web.]
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Live performances

2009-11-08T13:15:00.002+02:00

By a strange quirk of coincidence, both items I'm going to discuss today come with the word Live in their names.

First off, is a neat little drawing program called Livebrush. It basically gives you a canvas and the ability to draw lines in an unlimited variety of styles and decorative flourishes. Every aspect of the brushstroke can be controlled via on-screen control palettes and each line is created on a new layer. You gradually build up your picture, layer by layer, until you've got what you want on canvas.

The basic Livebrush program is free but there is a paid version for $10, with extra features. Chief among these is the ability to stipulate a size for the canvas you are going to work on, and to export vector images.

I certainly had fun with Livebrush but it is the sort of program where you will need some artistic ability. Just as a fine watercolour brush would do me no good at all, Livebrush is not something that I'm likely to be able to use effectively.

On to other matters; I am very familiar with Google's online suite of applications including a word processor, spreadsheet, calendar and e-mail. I did take a look at the Microsoft offering some time ago but I thought I should revisit it, seeing that it is about to acquire a wordprocessor and spreadsheet as well.

The service goes under the generic title of Windows Live and presently consists of a photo storage and sharing facility, calendar, a group facility, and e-mail. One feature, which particularly caught my eye, is the free SkyDrive, which allows you to store 25 GB worth of files online.

I'm always keen to have copies of my vital files squirrelled away in more than one place, so I went ahead and signed up for a Windows Live account. The signup process didn't take long at all and I soon manage to access SkyDrive, and upload some files to it.

I then thought, seeing that everything had gone so smoothly, that I would give the Windows Live e-mail a try as well. I clicked on the mail link, and was a bit surprised when the system logged me out automatically, and asked me for my details again. I was a bit suspicious but pressed ahead anyway, hoping that the Windows live e-mail address would be grafted onto my existing account, rather than that a whole new one would be created.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite clever enough to realise that I already had an account, and created a new one, with the result that I am now two people on Windows Live. I could send rude messages to myself or, this is a very tempting option, I could just lose interest.

The jury is still out on that however, but things were not helped by the fact that, when I logged back into my previous account, I was presented with a SkyDrive belonging to No Name, with nothing in it.

My day was not improving!

Eventually, I managed to fix that particular problem by clicking on the link to my profile page and, from there, clicking the SkyDrive link. Both my files were still present and correct and so, for good measure, I also uploaded a couple of pictures.

That also worked smoothly and I was pleased to see that it allows you to send an e-mail link to friends and family so that they can view the pictures you've uploaded, without requiring them to go through the process of joining Windows Live as well.

From time to time, I'll be returning to Windows Live, as I get more familiar with it and a number of associated downloadable applications that you can run on your desktop computer. I don't yet see anything compelling me to change from the services I've been using up till now, which include Gmail, Flickr, and Facebook, but that may change.

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A new Windows opens

2009-10-27T21:14:00.003+02:00

I see that there has been a study by the universities of Oxford and Oviedo about broadband Internet quality in various countries.

South Africa's broadband quality is apparently below the international average and considered to be below the level at which it is really practicable to run online applications in any useful way. South Korea has the fastest Internet, with an average speed of 21.85 Mbps and Lithuania, of all places, comes fourth with 13.5 Mbps.

I'm in danger of sounding like a stuck record, so I'll change subjects quickly to say Windows 7 has finally arrived and we'll see if it can rescue Microsoft's reputation which was damaged by the previous version of Windows, First.

I have had a chat with Colin Erasmus of Microsoft and it sounds as though the new Windows is all systems go, which is so far confirmed by the opinion of most online commentators.

Windows 7 is now being supplied on new computers and there will doubtless be many users contemplating an upgrade. Users of Vista will be able to plug in their upgrade discs, and their systems will be more or less automatically upgraded to Windows 7.

The bad news from my point of view, however, is that it is far more difficult for users of Windows XP to upgrade. I understand that it is possible to install Windows 7 to work in tandem with an existing XP installation, but it is quite a technical involved process.

The preferred solution is to start with a clean installation of Windows 7, but you will then have to reinstall all your software programs as well. I don't know if some clever person will find a way of upgrading Windows XP installation in such a way that all the software does not have to be reinstalled, but can only hope.

However you get there, the first step in upgrading an existing machine to Windows 7 will be to first check if the hardware and software is compatible. Microsoft provides a Windows 7 upgrade adviser and anyone considering upgrading should download that first, to see if there are any known problems to do with their hardware or software.

Once you have a machine running Windows 7, it will be sufficiently strange and new that there are going to be lots of questions. A really cool site that can probably answer most of these, is lifehacker.com.

They have page with links to all the stuff they know about Windows 7 including system requirements, new features, mastering the taskbar, jump lists, XP mode for running old software, and mouse and keyboard shortcuts.

Why not leave a comment by clicking the link below?

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Pernicious pricing policies

2009-10-19T22:27:00.004+02:00

Just what is it with this country that our prices on some things are so high?

Regular readers will know that I have referred to this once or twice in the past and what got me going this time, was the visit of an old friend, my oldest in fact, from Canada. He has made a life for himself and his family on Vancouver Island for the last decade and a half.

Our conversations wandered here, there and everywhere, over the course of four or five days, and I couldn't help building up a picture of his life over there with the significant other, the mother, and three active teenagers sharing a house. Like most other people in cold climates, they spend quite a lot of time indoors each year, and they rely partly on electronics to keep them amused.

Their leisure time is preoccupied with six television sets and four computers, all of which are fed by a fat cable which comes into the house, and provides umpteen TV channels and more Internet bandwidth than you could shake a stick at. My friend, in fact, doesn't know a how much bandwidth they all use, and he doesn't care.

Their cable TV and Internet package sets him back CA $130 a month, about R910. When you add to that the fact that local landline calls are totally free, and they can phone South Africa at 6-8 Canadian cents a minute, it is clear that this bandwidth-intensive family is paying less than it costs me, alone, for my television, telephone, and meagre bandwidth allowance.

The college-going teenager has a part-time job, and an Apple iPhone, which he quite easily pays for himself. My friend has a Blackberry with unlimited e-mail, 200 minutes of talk time during business hours, free calls in the evenings and at the weekends, and all for CA $60, R420, a month.

Most readers by now will be nodding their heads and agreeing what swine our service providers are. From experience, however, I know that there will be a percentage of you who are thinking something along the lines of: "Whining again! Doesn't he know that they have a bigger market than we do?"

Well, it turns out Canada has a population of 33 million people and, although we don't know exactly how many South Africans there are at this point, SA Statistics' best guess is that we are currently nearly 50 million.

So the naysayers can stick that in their pipes and smoke it! It's not a small market we've got, so much as one that accepts whatever is dished out to it, and a government that is no help at all.

My friend mentioned that the significant other had just taken delivery of a Mazda 3 motor vehicle and I wondered how our prices would compare with their Canadian ones. A quick look online (and you were wondering where the online bit would come in this week) revealed that a Mazda 3 2.0L. was being offered by a South African dealer at R242,300.

In stark contrast, on Vancouver Island, Pacific Mazda at 1060 Yates Street in Victoria, was offering the same vehicle at $15,995 Canadian dollars, or about R113,000. And if you really want to feel miserable, just take a look at their listing of used cars. How about a black Subaru Impreza 2008 model for CA $16,990, or about R120,000?

To sign out this week, I'll just repeat my opening question: 'Just what is it with this country?'

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Night at the Opera

2009-10-17T21:38:00.002+02:00

This week I've got a couple of items to cover and first up is an Internet browser which is new to me, at least.

It's called Opera and has been available for years, but I never bothered because it cost money in an era when other browsers were free. It has been very popular on mobile phones but I hadn't encountered it, not being a mobile Internetter.

I recently saw that a new version had been launched and, having a couple of minutes to kill, I went along to opera.com to have a look. Somewhere along the line, they stopped charging for what is a capable, good-looking piece of software.

The new version, Version 10, is not quite as minimalistic as Google's Chrome browser, but its interface is neat and clean and it looks very smart. It does the normal web browsing thing very well and has plenty of extras built-in, like a Bit-Torrent download capability, just for starters.

It also has a built-in notepad which you can use to take notes as you hop from one website to another, or which can be used for other purposes like keeping to-do lists, or whatever else takes your fancy. Opera allows you to install widgets (or small programs), of which there are a large selection, ranging from games to clocks, and much else besides.

Opera also includes a capable looking e-mail and news client which will operate with both POP3 and IMAP-based e-mail systems. The IMAP capability lets you to use it in conjunction with services such as Google's Gmail or indeed, with Operas own web-based e-mail system.

It has a feed reader, which will allow you to subscribe to websites that provide feeds, and keep you up to date when new material is added to any of the sites that you have subscribed to. Unusually, Opera has a voice control feature, which allows you to control the browser with the power of your voice alone, and it's certainly going to be interesting playing with that.

It has a feature which will remember your website passwords and fill them in, at a click of a button, whenever you visit a site requiring them. The feature will also streamline filling online forms by automatically entering personal details, such as e-mail and postal addresses, into web-based forms.

It's too early to say whether I'm going to make the switch to Opera, but my preliminary impression is that it is a very capable browser and more polished and complete than most of the other options.

I had hoped that talking about Opera would expand into an entire column but, seeing as I have some centimeters left to fill, I thought I would go into some interesting websites that you might possibly visit using Opera, or your favourite browser.

The first one, courtesy of Sky News, was an ongoing auction on eBay (ebay.co.uk) in which one million frozen mixed fruit pies were being sold off to the highest bidder. The 1,090,000 pies, occupying 130 pallets and needing five articulated trucks to carry them, had then received 208 bids, with the highest being for £125,300. Bidders were warned that the winner would have to come and fetch their pies.

And I thought I had seen everything!

The other site worth visiting is detouch.org which shows off the work of a variety of beauty retouchers, who take pictures of already attractive women and manipulate them to make the models look better; or just different, it might be argued. The site has a very nifty Java application built into it, which allows you to select from a stack of options and shows you pictures before and after retouching.

I have to say that I was amazed at some of the examples shown, which range from skin smoothing, whitening of teeth, brightening of eyes and the elimination of stray wisps of hair, to much more elaborate retouches. Eyebrows are shaped, excess poundage is removed, certain features are plumped-up, and even dramatic shadows and makeup are added.

It certainly gives you a new perspective on the beauty and fashion shots that feature so often in popular magazines. Those ladies are definitely not as perfect as they might seem.

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How to buy a computer

2009-10-07T00:34:00.002+02:00

There have been a couple of questions from readers in the past few weeks about buying computers, and I thought it might be useful to try and provide some sort of advice in this column.

It is not surprising to find people are nervous about doing the wrong thing when asked to choose between products containing so many components of differing sizes, speeds, and model numbers.

Potential buyers are often concerned that the computer they choose may not be up to the task that it is being bought for. The other common fear is that, knowing nothing about the speeds and capacities of the various components, they might be paying for technology or capacity they don't need.

The good news is that the entry-level PC these days is more than good enough for most computing tasks. These include office work, fiddling with digital photography, doing e-mail, surfing the web, and playing less involved games.

The entry-level PC will be quite fine these for those pursuits although I would recommend paying for extra memory, so that the machine has at least 2Gb of RAM. These machines will most likely not have separate network and video cards, but have them built-into their motherboards, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Choosing a computer does get a bit more complex when you are buying them to engage in activities, such as video editing, high-end gaming, and advanced image manipulation, which need more computer resources to be really viable.

The advice I gave to a reader who wanted to buy a gaming computer for his son was to take a look at a couple of the games his son was going to play. Programs, including games and video editing packages, will always have a listing of the minimum requirements they need to run and, very often, a suggested configuration as well.

It seems that most of the monitors available today are LCD screens and I don't know all that much about them. It seems to be that screens with higher contrast ratios and lower response times are better.

I'd say the thing to do is to take a careful look at difference between the cheaper and more expensive models, and don't get seduced into buying an inferior screen, simply because it's larger.

Choosing a laptop, or notebook, sounds quite hard too, but it's also a matter of buying a machine to suit what you're going to do with it. At the most basic, you have the so-called Netbooks, which would be fine for web surfing, a bit of wordprocessing, or sending e-mail.

These normally have smaller screens but make up for that with a greater battery life and enhanced portability. You have to decide if you can live with the smaller screen and keyboard.

As with their desktop cousins, the entry-level notebooks will be fine for just about any task and you really only need something better if you've got a special requirement. I would want at least 2Gb of RAM and a wireless networking facility built-into any machine I bought.

As far as operating systems go, I personally would not choose to buy any machine with Microsoft Vista on it at this stage. Windows 7 is due out very soon and I would insist on a free upgrade to that, or I wouldn't buy. I'd also definitely consider using a Linux variant, like Ubuntu, if I could get Linux versions of all the software I intended to use.

The only really hard thing about buying a computer, to my mind, is choosing who to buy it from. The ideal is to buy from someone you trust to provide unbiased advice and the technical support you'll need, and that's really a matter of individual choice.

One hint I'll give is that the glib-sounding person you found in the newspaper, with only a mobile number listed, is probably not the right one to choose. Of course, if you have a favourite guru, the choice will be easy for you.

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Exploring the Commons

2009-09-30T00:25:00.004+02:00

One of the few pleasures left in life, now that the sugar, fat and salt have been denied to me, is photography. [ I may have mentioned this before ;-) ]

When I can't actually be out taking pictures, I am very often to be found looking at them, and one of my most frequent online destinations is the photo sharing site Flickr.com. It's where I display my personal pictures and regularly check in to see what friends and contacts have been up to.

This column is not about us individual photographers however, but about organisations who are using the site to post their pictures. Quite by chance, I came across pictures posted by the U.S. Army Materiel Command, which included the greatest inventions of 2008, and showcased the XM-153 Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/armymaterielcommand/ / CC BY 2.0

I challenge any man to see this thing and not have visions of setting one up to cover the approaches to his house, and using it to blow away the baddies as they come sneaking up the driveway. Anyhow, my interest was aroused, and I went looking for other organisations using Flickr to host their pictures.

There is no direct way of searching for these, but I did find quite a few including the US Marines, who post a variety of current pictures. Another is the media section of the NATO International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) and, although I should be getting used to the Internet by now, I still find it incredible viewing pictures taken the day before in a war zone halfway across the world.

Moving away from organisations for just for a moment, I also discovered that one can find collections of pictures on Flickr on just about any topic, by entering a key word into the search box. I managed to find pictures on such diverse subjects as Camp Bastion, Hurricane Katrina, the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Centre on 9/11, and the London Eye.

But back to the topic, I was surprised to find that there are a number of heritage institutions using it to post sections of their photograph collections online. These include the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute, the Imperial War Museum, and an apparently growing number of others.

They have a dual motive in posting their pictures to be viewed by a wider audience. The first is to share their pictures, which such institutions like to do, and the second reason is that the viewers might know more about the pictures than the institutions themselves, and contribute this knowledge.

Visitors to the site, seeing anything they recognise in a picture, are asked to add a tag, or keyword, to the picture and, if appropriate, some information in the form of a comment. This area of Flickr is known as The Commons and a note at the bottom of the contents page says it all; "Any Flickr member is able to add tags or comment on these collections. If you're a dork about it, shame on you. This is for the good of humanity, dude!!"

One amusing thing I found in the Library of Congress collection is a colour picture of a couple of people hanging out backstage at the Vermont State Fair in 1941. Off to one side, there is a young boy kneeling with his back to the camera.

There is speculation in the notes on the picture about what he might have been up to. One commenter said he was probably playing with matches, because he looked like her twin brother had looked, as he set fire to their mother's trailer home.

The pictures in the Commons are displayed on condition that there are no known copyright restrictions on them. They may be in the public domain, the copyright holder may have decided not to enforce copyright, or it may be unknown if there is a copyright holder.

I'm no legal expert, but I interpret this to mean that you are broadly safe to use the pictures for your personal purposes, but you might find trouble if you started selling posters, and the copyright holder suddenly appeared.

I had meant to do this column on a completely different subject, but when I sat down to do my Internet research, I was distracted for hours by all the interesting pictures I found in the Commons. They covered all manner of subjects ranging from a group of workers in an Australian cake shop in the 1930s, to a glamorous picture of a woman, apparently used in a cigarette advert.

And, if you don’t get distracted by something like that, you have no soul.

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Weebling a web

2009-09-21T22:18:00.002+02:00

Websites are potentially very useful for a whole host of purposes, which might include advertising a business, posting pictures from your holiday, or any one of a great number of other things.

Creating a website has, in the past, demanded a fair degree of expertise from the user but there are more and more tools being developed, which anyone can use to build a websites. We have had a look at a few of these in the past editions of this column, but a new and very clever service recently came to my attention.

It goes by the somewhat odd name of Weebly, but as I was to find, it's a capable web development and hosting service. Like many other such services on the web, the basic Weebly package is free, and you are only asked to pay if you have the need for more advanced features.

When you go along to weebly.com, you go through a very brief signup procedure during which you also create your first website. Once the signup is complete, and that only takes a very few minutes, you get taken to the front page of your website which is blank.

Running along the top of the screen are tabs which you can select to change the settings of, or add things to the site. The default tab is the Elements one, which allows you to add elements to your page by dragging and dropping them.

These include titles, paragraph text with a picture, paragraph text without a picture, a two column layout, photo gallery, a YouTube video, and many more.

In building a typical web page, for example, you would drag a title element onto the page, click on it, and type into the space provided. Assuming you then wanted to add a picture to the page, you would drag a picture element onto the page, select a picture from your computer, and click the upload button. Building a page is really a lot easier than it sounds, and certainly takes less time than it would take to read this.

You can also choose a template for your website from a huge list of options, ranging from businesslike to fun. There is also a section which allows you to add more pages to your website, or re-arrange existing ones.

Finally, there is a big orange Publish button which you would click once you've built the site to your satisfaction, and it will be visible thereafter to the entire world. The site can have an address like http://yoursite.weebly.com, you can apply a domain name that you've already registered, or Weebly can register one for you for a nominal fee.

I was very impressed with the Weebly product and I'm sure that that it would be a very viable way of building a website with features including a very decent blog, a photo gallery, a contact form, an online poll, which will allow you to get your site visitors to vote on issues, or even a forum, which you can set up to allow visitors to the site to chat amongst themselves.

It also allows users to easily add an e-commerce facility to their sites, to sell goods and services, but it probably won't come as any surprise to know that an online payment processing feature is not easily available to South African users. That limitation aside, however, Weebly is really a first class product.

Added after print version of article appeared: I have heard from Weebly co-founder Dan Veltri (don't you love folk who return e-mails??) in answer to a question I posed on how you would accomodate your e-mail if you registered a domain with Weebly. It turns out that they offer integration with Google Apps, which means that you use can Gmail and the Google online applications for your business along with your Weebly website.

As far as e-commerce goes, Dan pointed out that accepting online payments is built-into Weebly with the choice of Google Checkout or or Paypal. Neither of these currently offers South African customers the option of receiving payments (you can use them to make payments) but South Africans can embed other payment options into their websites using the Custom HTML element provided by Weebly.

In short, Weebly has done its part and it's the fact Google & PayPal won't deal with us, and the fact that our local providers set their prices too high to make it viable to do e-commerce on a small scale, that is really BLOODY ANNOYING !!!

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A flipping good news site

2009-09-19T23:53:00.002+02:00

One of the most vexing questions that faces online publishers these days is just how to make the Internet pay.

Internet users are notoriously resistant to paying for content and there are only a few publications worldwide, which have managed to get their users to do so. The publishers have all more or less been forced to establish an online presence, where users can access some or all of their content, and rely on advertising to make it pay.

In the medium to long-term future, Google has plans to provide a platform whereby publishers will be able to charge small amounts for users wanting to read their material. The theory is that web users would be prepared to pay a small amount to read published news and views. So far, it has been impossible to collect very small amounts of money from lots people, because finance charges are prohibitive.

All that's in the future, if it ever happens at all, but Google recently launched a new site which is intended to help content publishers (and Google) make a profit from their content. The new service is called Google Fast Flip and presents news from participating publishers on one easy-to-navigate page, and shares the advertising revenue with the publishers.

I went along to the site at fastflip.googlelabs.com and found that here are more than 40 publishers who have signed-up to the service, and whose stories are displayed on the site. These are displayed in the form of thumbnail pictures of the story page on the publisher's own website.

The stories are grouped by section, topic, publication, and can also be ranked in order of Most Recent, Most Viewed or Most Recommended. You can click on any story that interests you and you are then shown an enlarged picture of the page containing the story. The pictures are large enough so that you can read a couple of paragraphs, to get a sense of whether you want to read any more.

On the page is a link to the publisher's website, where you can read the whole story if you want to, and a couple of adverts. Google is hoping that, while you're viewing the page on Fast Flip, you'll click on one or more adverts. Every time you do, Google's cash register will go 'ka-ching' and the advertiser will have to pay up, because you've looked at their advert.

Just as a supermarket collects consumer goods together to make shopping quicker and more convenient, Google is acting as a news aggregator and making it quicker and more convenient to get your news online.

Content publishers have so far tended to get very hot under the collar at the thought of their content appearing on other websites, even if in abbreviated form. This is why I think that Google model, where they are paid a share of revenues, is going down much better.

Fast Flip is a very interesting idea and it certainly does make it easy you for you to see at a glance what's happening in the world, and to get up to date quickly on whatever topic happens to take your fancy.

I think that it is going to be a very useful tool and, even though it offers mainly American publications at the moment, I'm sure we'll soon see more international ones joining in.

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Cool special effects

2009-09-12T10:34:00.002+02:00

This column contained a review of the free virtualStudio image editor and virtualPhotographer special effects plug-in. I have posted the article, a screen shot and a sample on my photographic blog, and you're more than welcome to drop by there for a visit.

Some sort of wally

2009-09-06T00:32:00.004+02:00

Insomnia is not one of my problems, but I sometimes do lie awake at night and think deep thoughts.

One of the most puzzling issues which occupies my time is the question of where the tendency for South African service to be so shockingly bad came from. It seems that we are a nation that just accepts whatever we are given and, although we may moan about it in private, we let the culprits get away with it.

I had an example last week, where I finally decided to renew cellphone contract, close to a year after it had elapsed. This was on a Monday, and everything went smoothly until the phone had been chosen and the final papers signed.

Then the assistant went and ruined everything by saying that he would put in the order the following day, and that I could probably expect to get my new handset and speakerphone by the Friday. Probably.

This store was selling a product that it didn't have in stock and, in it's don't-give-a-damn business model, was only prepared place an order the following day. Maybe I'm unreasonable, but shouldn't the aim have been to fill my order as promptly as possible, not to make me fit in with whatever schedule they deem acceptable?

I regularly deal with a store in New York where I can more or less count on getting the goods in my hand, a week after order. Five days (probably) to get stuff from Johannesburg is just unacceptable to me.

Given a little sympathy and understanding, and agreement that perhaps the way things are done is not ideal, I might well have left the order stand and not done anything about it. As it was, the assistant could not begin to understand why I might be annoyed, and clearly believed me to be some sort of wally.

Anyhow, I made him tear up the new contract, and I'll stick with my el-cheapo handset, with no camera, no colour screen, and whose battery lasts more than a week. Most people would probably not have gone to that length to make their point but, if there were more consumers like me, there wouldn't be service like that.

The print version of this column mentioned the program Polardroid

Building digital castles

2009-08-30T19:52:00.002+02:00

Last time I wrote about the Zoho suite of online applications which are freely available for personal use.

In the article, I remarked how unusual it was to see their users' support forum where the vast majority of users' questions had been answered by Zoho staff. This is in stark contrast to many other software forums, put up by the website owner instead of going to the expense of hiring real support staff.

Things got even more unusual when I put up the article onto my blog archive and, within a couple of hours or so, received a thank-you note from Arvind at Zoho. Among other things, he said he hoped that we in South Africa soon got cheap and fast Internet connections, like the ones they have in India and the East, that would make using online applications really viable here.

On that subject, it seems I wasn't wrong about the likely effect that the arrival of the Seacom undersea cable would have on our Internet connection speeds and bandwidth costs. My prediction was that it would have little or no effect and, even though the cable has been running for a month, there hasn't been a rush of ISPs cutting their prices.

Surprisingly, the only development in that direction has come from the evil empire itself, which is now allowing users a slightly larger bandwidth allowance each month; in my case, 5 GB instead of 3Gb. [Added after the column went to print: If they can give us 5Gb for the price of 3Gb, and still make a profit, it only proves what we've been saying all along; that we have been exploited. Makes you wonder how much more they could cut prices...]

Anyway, to the subject of this week's column which is far more cheerful, being a free software program that can take you back all the way to your childhood and keep you entertained for many hours. I'm talking of Lego Digital Designer, which you can download from the Lego.com site, and which you can use to build all manner of fantastic models without moving out from behind your computer.

I have a long history with Lego, having played with it in my extreme youth, and created all manner of things, including an unsuccessful Easter Bunny trap. In later years, while visiting friends in Denmark, we drove across the whole country to visit Legoland, only to find it was closed for the winter.

Damn! At least I saw the North Sea.

Anyway, once the program is installed and running, you are taken to start screen. You have the option of choosing a partly-built model, like a racing car, and completing it from the selection of bricks on offer, or you can start from scratch, and build whatever takes your fancy.

There is a wide selection of bricks to choose from and all you have to do is drag the one you want from the stack, rotate it appropriately with the arrow keys, and then drop it in the place where you want it.

Using Digital Designer is just like playing with the real thing, except that the bricks don't all have tooth marks on them, caused by trying to separate ones which are stuck together too firmly.

The program is very easy to use and, once you've got the controls figured out, you're up and running, and building whatever fantastic creation occurs to you. The graphics are great and you can rotate and view your model from any angle, even from below.

Digital Designer does have a serious business purpose, from Lego's point of view, because it will tell you at any time how much the bricks that you've used would cost, and once your creation is complete, it will allow you to order those bricks online, so that you can rebuild your model in the real world.

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Going to the online office

2009-08-22T11:58:00.002+02:00

It was pointed out to me recently by a chirping reader that I had been devoting a lot of attention to image and photography-related to topics in the last little while.

In the interests of providing broad-based coverage, this week I've got news of a rather spiffy online service called Zoho. It's a suite of online applications that you can use, either as an individual, or as part of a business, and is similar in many ways, to other offerings such as Google Apps.

I went along to www.zoho.com to see what it was all about, and the first surprise came when it didn't insist that I create an account for myself, but let me sign on using my Google account. It will also let Yahoo account holders sign on, and get to work right away.

Whether you create a new account, or sign in with an existing one, you will end up at your personal page where you will be able to access all of the online applications that are available. These include e-mail, a wordprocessing package, a spreadsheet package, a presentation program, a calendar, a notebook, and a task list.

For the business user, there is a customer relationship management, or CRM, program, an online meeting program, an invoicing program, and even a program which can be used for vetting applicants for a job.

Zoho has an astonishing range of programs and add-ons that the individual can use for free, and you get 1GB of free storage space to play with. For business use, the price is not high for access to most of the applications, with 20 users plus 50 GB of online storage costing $50 a month, and 200 GB of space for only $30 more per month.

There are additional charges for the use of the more heavyweight programs, such as the CRM, database and project management package, for business purpose. Even these charges are not high and compare very favourably with the cost of buying an office suite and additional softwarevfor all your users.

I found that it is easy to navigate your way around the available applications which are listed on the left-hand side of the screen. One of the most useful that I found was that desktop, or dashboard, which displays your new messages, a list of documents, your outstanding tasks, and your calendar, all in one easy-to-view screen.

I didn't have the time to try out all the applications in the Zoho stable but I did take Zoho Writer out for a spin, and found it to be a very capable word processor. It has all the usual features including tables, bullets, indenting, and all the rest of it. There is a reasonable choice of fonts included with it, and it looks very easy to store documents, and find them later.

My conclusions should not be seen as definitive at this stage, but it does look as thoughZoho would be a viable tool for private single users and groups in business. On the plus side, it does seem very capable and complete and it has the benefit of being free for individuals, and reasonably priced for business.

It is hosted on the Internet, which has the plus that your data is stored well away from any disasters which might overtake your PC or network in the home or office, but there is the negative that we're in South Africa. Whether our Internet connections are reliable and cheap enough for a business to use Zoho for all its day-to-day computing needs, is a matter only the business can decide.

The other slight negative is that Zoho's help feature and explanatory text is not quite as clear as it might be. I occasionally found it difficult to find the information I was looking for and there were a couple of things referred to in the help, that I still couldn't see how to do. It is also clear that some of it has been done by persons whose first language is not English.

This slight drawback will probably be compensated for by the support forums which you can use to get answers. Many other Web services have forums where you find that questions go unanswered but, with Zoho, I can't say that I found any questions which were not answered and resolved to the satisfaction of the user.

At the moment, I am not that tempted to move all my e-mail and few online documents over to Zoho from Google, if only because you get more free storage space with the Google Gmail offering. On the other hand, if I were running a business and decided that hosting my software and data on the Internet was viable, I would give Zoho a very close look.

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Making photo books

2009-08-10T16:50:00.005+02:00

This article making photo books was written, as usual, for my Sunday Tribune column. I have decided not to publish it here, but on my new photo blog because its strongly photographic in subject. You're more than welcome to drop by to read that and other photographic articles I've written.

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Gotta publish

2009-08-04T23:53:00.002+02:00

Gene Kelly sang Gotta Dance in the immortal musical Singin' In The Rain.

I know how he must have felt because I often get the feeling that I Gotta Publish something. I have published a book, various websites, these columns and yet, it seems, that is not enough for me. For some time now, I've been having the urge to do a Blog on photography even though I've done my best to resist by reminding myself that the last thing I need is more time spent in front of the computer.

That didn't work and I soon started considering how, rather than whether, to go ahead with it. My usual blogging platform it is a Blogger, where these articles are kept in an archive and, while I've got nothing against it, I was starting to think that it is a little less professional than I would like.

One blogging service that crops up often nowadays is WordPress which offers anyone free blogs at www.wordpress.com. You get 3GB of storage space for, which will hold a whole lot of words, and you can upgrade that for a nominal amount.

The sign-on process is very quick and once you have an account, you can go ahead and create a blog which will end up like end up having an address like allanphoto.wordpress.com, to pick a random example. There are a large number of layouts (or themes) to choose from to give your blog the look and feel that you want.

You also get integrated statistics which tell you exactly how many people are viewing your blog, a list of people linking to your blog, and you get can import existing blogs from other locations, including from Blogger.

One very handy feature that WordPress has is static web pages which can be linked from your blog's header or sidebar, and which don't change as you update the blog's pages. This feature fixes one of the great lacks that I found in Blogger, which is that everything is filed in date order and there is no direct way of keeping pages, such as a biography for example, near the front.

The key to using WordPress is the dashboard which is an admin page that allows you to view all the information to do with your blog. It is where you create and edit pages and blog posts, change the appearance of the blog, choose a new theme, and much else besides.

I had a quick look through the list of templates that are available and picked out a very clean and uncluttered black-and-white layout, which suited me perfectly. That particular theme allows you to add a picture to the header section of your page which I did very easily because it told me exactly what size to make it.

I found the WordPress interface to be really smooth and easy to use and I had a professional-looking blog site up and running in a short while. The first post took an additional couple of minutes using some text I had created and a picture from my online Flickr account.

The interface for creating and editing posts and pages is like a basic word processor which you use to enter text, apply formatting or insert pictures, video clips, or whatever. Pictures can either be uploaded from your computer and stored in your web space or you use pictures stored elsewhere on the Internet, such as in Flickr.

WordPress is a very easy but powerful publishing tool which would be ideal for keeping a day-to-day blog, or a much bigger website. I don't intend to remove my current blogs from Blogger, but I must say that I very much prefer the features and power of WordPress.

Highly recommended!

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Fun with panoramas

2009-07-28T22:53:00.005+02:00

More of my panoramas here.

Doing full justice to a beautiful scene or the interior of a building is often quite difficult with normal cameras because their relatively narrow field of view make it impossible to fit everything in at once.

The answer, of course, is to shoot the view in sections and to join these up together later. In the bad old days of film, we would get jumbo prints and cut them up and, with glue and a great deal of sweat and patience, you could come up with a picture that at least that showed the whole scene that had attracted you in the first place.

Now that we have digital photography and software programs that can join many pictures up into one, I decided to experiment with shooting some panoramas. I used a number of different programs, including one given away free with Canon cameras, and Photoshop.

I started getting pretty decent results but there were occasions the programs would fall over and just refuse to join, or stitch, the pictures I had taken. Then, in an online forum somewhere, I came across mention a program called AutoStitch which, it was claimed, made the process of creating panoramas so much easier.

I went along to the website www.autostitch.com and found that the program is a technology demo created by Matthew Brown and David Lowe at the University of British Columbia in Canada. It is free to download but is only available for Windows computers.

AutoStitch is only just over a megabyte in size and, to be quite frank, I wasn't expecting all that much from it after I unzipped it into a folder and started it running. To say that the interface has no bells and whistles is to put it mildly but, as I discovered, it has all the essentials.

You start by selecting the pictures that are going to go into making up your panorama and it puts those images together and shows you a low resolution preview of what it's done. If you like the result, you can go into the settings menu and increase the resolution of the panorama that it's going to create.

The first set of pictures I fed into it were taken from the pier in front of Ushaka Marine World in Durban and showed the work going on at the new North Pier and the remnants of Vetch's Pier, made visible by the very low tide. Photoshop had already flatly refused to stitch these pictures together but AutoStitch had no problem, and produced a very nearly perfect result.

The only real fault was that it missed out a child playing soccer on the beach and, instead, produced a little blurry patch where he had been. I was even more impressed to find out that AutoStitch could not only cope with joining up a single row of images, shot from left to right, but that it could also join up more than one row of pictures, or even a vertical panorama.

I was very impressed with AutoStitch and I will certainly be using it in the future. The free demo version is only available for Windows computers but its' technology has been licensed to a number of commercial software producers and there are versions that will run on Apple computers and Linux-based machines.

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Social networking on the Internet

2009-07-20T23:39:00.004+02:00

I have been on the Internet for a long time and have used it time out of number as source of information and entertainment.

I never quite got the social networking aspect of it until fairly recently. The light began to dawn when I started to play an active role on photo sharing website Flickr.com.

I had been a member of Flickr for quite some time and was using it to display some of my photographs but hadn't taken it much further than that. Things changed when I managed to persuade some fellow members of Hillcrest Camera Club to get Flickr accounts and we soon began sharing pictures online.

The system is cleverly set up to display new pictures, which have been uploaded by your contacts, on your home page and I found that wasn't at all long before Flickr was my first stop on the Internet each morning, and quite often, the last one at night.

It is very interesting, after having gone on a photo outing, to get back home and then, over the next couple of days, to begin to see the pictures taken by other members of the club appearing in our Flickr group. The next thing we discovered was that there was another group on Flickr, called the Durban Flickr Meet Up, who were about to have an outing of their own to the beachfront.

A number of Hillcrest members went along on that outing, had a wonderful time and, instantly, our circle of local photographers expanded. We have since been on a joint outing to the Moses Mabhida Stadium, and there are many more in the pipeline.

I then got to hear of local photo magazine Pix's website which also allows you to network with other like-minded photographers. It turned out that they also had a Durban and KZN Group, who were just getting organised, and about to start organising their own photo outings.

The social highlight, so far, was last weekend's Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk on 18 July, when over 30,000 photographers in many cities around the world went on a Photowalk. There were 50 Durban photographers and we had a very successful walk, starting at dawn, from Wilson's Wharf to the Bat Centre, and back.

For security reasons, the SAPS weren't keen to see us photographers busily recording views around the bay but they soon threw their hands up in despair when confronted with the impossibility of controlling 50 leather-stetsoned people out having fun. We should have had some I-AM-NOT-A-TERRORIST signs but, as it was, I have had my picture taken playing the Lying Down Game (see here and here), which is gaining popularity all over the Internet.

Social networking is working for me so far and I'd recommend it. As with most things in life, however, one does have to be a bit careful about what one gets up to.

If you are a teenage girl, for example, it would most likely be unwise to run away to South America with someone you meet on the Internet. This person doesn't love you and you will end up working in bordello, wherever you happen to end up.

I've even been doing a bit of Facebooking lately, but I must confess that one thing I still don't get is micro-blogging site Twitter, and I doubt if I ever will. It's probably a bit like Tom Waits music in that regard; not a taste I'm likely to acquire.

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