You've seen the dreaded demon-eye effect that occurs when the camera flash bounces off the eye of a person or pet. An otherwise amazing picture can be ruined by this. Technically, this is called red-eye & is caused when the pupil of your subject's eye is wide open & the light from the camera's flash reflects off the subjects retina. In people, the color ends up red; in pets, the color is often green. Plenty of picture editing programs include a red-eye correction filter, but this may not permit your photograph subject to appear "normal. These filters also do not work on the green effect produced in a pet's eyes. Picture stores sell pens that are used to clear up red-eye, but again they are not always natural-looking & do not work on the green. The best thing is to prevent the demon-eye effect from the beginning. It is rare to discover a digital camera that does not come with a red-eye reduction feature. This feature can be turned off or on. It is best left on in all circumstances other than direct sunlight. The red-eye reduction feature works by flashing a short burst of light at your subject before you snap the picture. This burst of light causes the subject's pupil to close & makes it less likely for the camera's flash to reflect off the retina. This in turn reduces the chance of red-eye. It also helps to direct the flash of your camera so it does not directly hit your subject's eyes. Bouncing the flash off a nearby wall or other object will soften its effect & reduce the chances of this undesirable disease. Between bouncing the flash & using your digital camera's red-eye reduction feature, your tiny angel, whether human or animal, will have eyes that don't glow.
A few months back I listed five reasons I thought Linux Mint is a better choice than Ubuntu for a Linux distro. Today I would like to add another reason to that list. With the recent releases of Ubuntu 10.04 and Linux Mint 9 we see something that I feel really makes Linux Mint out shine Ubuntu (yet again):
Community input counts.
Now while Ubuntu has a fantastic support community apparently community input on over all design does not matter. Do I think it is right? Not really, but it's their product so Shuttlesworth/Canonical has every right to make executive decisions such as these.
The creators of Linux Mint show a very different mentality when it comes to community input and the design of their Linux distro. In fact it is not uncommon to see popular suggestions that occur in their user forums to become a part of the next Mint release.
A recent example of this would be the Mint software installer. Built from scratch the Mint software installer was designed to be a better tool than Ubuntu's old Add/Remove programs for users to install software from. Then the Ubuntu Software Center released and put the Mint manager to shame. With Mint 9 the Mint Software manager has again been rebuilt from scratch to feature the best qualities from the old software manager, gnome app-install, and the Ubuntu software center.
Now what is the big deal about a distro making improvements to itself in a new release? It is the fact that the creators took to heart what their users where telling them when making this improvement. For some of you this may not be a big deal, but personally I enjoy using a distro where my opinion counts.
During the time when this blog has been mistakenly labeled as a hack site by Chitika and Adsense, I did a search in Google seeing what sites are linking to this blog site. Interestingly I found out that from ThreatExpert that there are malwares that blocks raymond.cc using hosts file and redirects it to 127.0.0.1. [...]
While using NoVirusThanks online service to scan a suspicious file today, I discovered a new service developed by NoVirusThanks Company called URLVoid which was recently launched two days ago (21 May 2010). Many of us should have already heard about VirusTotal, NoVirusThanks, Jotti, VirusChief, Filterbit which allows anyone to upload a suspicious file to have [...]
"Google TV brings everything you love about the web to your television"
INTRODUCING GOOGLE TV
Transcript of the Google TV video:
"Back when there were only a few networks, watching TV was pretty simple. You turned on the TV, and if you didn't like what was playing, you changed the channel. But these days, TV can be pretty complicated. Figuring out what you want to watch is hard enough, and that's only the beginning. Once you've chosen a program, you have to figure out when it's playing, and which of hundreds of channels it's on. It's like you have to change your schedule to fit your TV's schedule. In fact, many of us end up watching videos on the web, because it is easier to find things that you want. I mean think about it, more and more of our favorite shows and videos are showing up online these days, and you can get to them really easily, whenever you want, just by typing in what you're looking for."
"The problem is, these smaller screens don't really compare to our home entertainment systems. Which leads us to a pretty big question: If the web is so smart, and our TVs are so fun to watch, why do we have to choose? Why can't they work together?
"Well, now they can. Introducing Google TV. Google TV brings everything you love about the web to your television. Some new TVs will come with it built-in, or you can get a separate box for the TV you already own. Either way, the way it works is very simple. Right on your TV screen, you simply type in what you're looking for...anything you're looking for, and Google TV will find it."
"It's basically an entertainment hub that searches all of your channels, recorded shows, YouTube, and other web sites. If you find something you like, you can add it to your home screen where you will always see your favorite channels, shows, websites, even music playlists and photo albums. That way, you can get to things really quick. And with a full web browser, you get unlimited access to the entire Internet, so you can do stuff like browse photos or update your status. And that's just scratching the surface."
"By opening up your TV to all of the improvements and innovation that the web has to offer, Google TV will make your TV smarter and easier to use. So you'll be able to spend a lot less time finding what you want, and a lot more time watching what you want."
Google TV is a new experience made for television that combines the TV you know and love with the freedom and power of the Internet. Watch an overview video below, sign up for updates, and learn more about how to develop for Google TV.
"Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more."
SOMEWHAT RELATED I wonder what the user interface will be for navigating around Google TV. This just might be the opportunity for a next-gen universal remote control to emerge. I hope so, because I've had usability issues with the current state of my remote controls and my DVR + HDTV viewing experiences.
FYI: A few of my previous posts related to remote controls, web-browsing on HD TV's, and so on:
