Archive for April, 2007

Microsoft Live Maps is a satellite mapping application in direct competition with Google Maps and a few others. Microsoft just added a large amount of photo images taken from planes. It produces 3.8 tera-bytes of additional data. But this mostly means more details and some of the images are taken at a slightly slanted angle that helps you recognize the buildings, for example.

On a Friday afternoon like today, in the office, you said that you would kill yourself if you were invited in yet another meeting. Unfortunately, the boss invited you to another meeting in 5 minutes. To be true to our word, you have 5 minutes to kill yourself.

This is the task assigned to you in this tim-waster of a game. Isn’t it nice for a Friday 13th?

Favicon’s are those little icon files that you place at the root of your web site. They display in Internet Explorer along with your bookmarks, in Opera and Firefox on the address bar near to the address of the site you visit.

When you want to produce a favicon for your web site, you probably do not want to loose a lot of time. I selected a small free software that takes a few simple graphics and transforms them in a small icon (it tells you the best choice of size and colors for a true favicon):

Simple and to the point. Exactly what you need in such a case.

The Unidentified Flying Raw (UFRaw) is a utility to read and manipulate raw images from digital cameras. It can be used on its own or as a Gimp plug-in. It reads raw images using Dave Coffin’s excellent raw conversion utility - DCRaw. UFRaw supports basic color management using Little CMS, allowing the user to apply color profiles. For Nikon users UFRaw has the advantage that it can read the camera’s tone curves. Even if you don’t own a Nikon, you can still apply a Nikon curve to your images.

A Personal Data Assistant (PDA) like my Sony Clié (I did not update it lately, ain’t I), a Palm Tungsten E2 or a Palm Z22 includes a sensitive zone at the bottom of the screen where you can write with a stylus. But depending on your use (for example if you are an adept of Graffiti), you take the risk of simply wearing the zone. In some extreme case, it can go to tearing the surface of the glass that is actually made of a very thin plastic film.

If you get to that point, this is catastrophy and living nightmare: Damages will only increase with time and you may have to go and visit your prefered electronics store for a replacement. Practically, even going to that dramatic end, the normal everyday’s use will become more and more annoying.

Worst, this can happen faster than you’d expect if a small common incident happens depsite all your attention: If a hard micro-dust get stuck under the end of the stylus, it will scratch the glass surface in a split second.

Hre comes THE TIP to protect your PDA against nearly all the attacks and agressions: Scotch(R) Magic(MC) 811. You may not know this product from 3M. It appears like a traditonal scotch tape but it has three very interesting characteristics (very interesting for us, at least):

• The glue is of the same type as the one found on the back of Post-It(R) Notes and that made their success: You can glue and unglue it at will.
• The surfaceof the tape is translucent and slightly rough like paper (or tracing paper for those who know it).
• The width of the tape is nearly exactly identical to the height of the sensitive zone of the PDA.

Consequence: If you cut a small piece of this Scotch(R) Magic(MC) 811 and stick it onto the sensitive zone of your PDA, you will protect it. As the tape is very thin, you do not loose sensitivity at the stylus. As it is removable, you can VERY easily change it when ever you want to (if it is greasy, damaged, stained, etc.) Since its surface is very similar to paper, the stylus contact is less slippery/tacky and you get get the additional pleasure of feeling like you’re writing on paper when writing onto your Palm.

A very simple idea. And dirt cheap.

I’ve been telling often (too often?) that you should replace your Microsoft Office with the cheap (free!) and powerful OpenOffice desktop suite. But some of my readers wanted to know about other replacement solutions for PC applications running under MS-Windows.

Here are my “Open source alternatives to popular PC software“:

Don’t ask for an alternative to PhotoShop; For me, there is none. Adobe still has an impressively good product.

You can also check the external web site I presented here some weeks ago: The Linux Equivalent project that provides alternatives running under GNU/Linux (about the same list as for Windows, but not always).

This week, I observed a weird tendency (random concentration?) on the information channels I check on the Internet: I saw an increasing number of news about ways to optimize parts of your trips and travels.

• Trippish: Take weather into account to plan your trips.
• Farecast: Choose the best time to buy an airplane ticket in order to get it at the best possible price (using statistical methods, and with a refund-the-difference commitment)
• BizMile: Compute your business miles (for IRS appreciation and with valid IRS report output)

Everybody is moving around more than ever, or is it merely that you are all thinking about your next vacations?

Per Lothe is a photography artist that really knows how to put colour in landscapes. What is best than waiting for the right light to make his model greater.

http://www.lothen.com/

…as is shown on this map:

The Roumazeilles.net visitors come from every corner of the world.

Imaging Resource is a web site with a low rate of publication, but its reviews are of the highest quality. Today, they publish a review of the Pentax K10D D-SLR (including anti-shake, dust reduction, 10MP, weather-proof body).

A leopard I shot last year in Kenya

In the coming 15 days, I will be travelling in South Africa. The updates to the web site will not stop (it’s marvellous what a little bit of software automation can do!) but don’t count on my active participation (I will not be on line from the African bush of Natural Parks and I will be certainly more interested in leopards than in the Internet).

See you soon.

When you start fighting for the highest possible resolution in digital cameras, you usually count in mega-pixels. METIS Systems goes further: 4 giga-pixels in a single camera. The Digital Macro Camera 1015/C [PDF] is able to photograph 12 square meters at non-interpolated 254 ppi. (100 pixel per square millimeter).

This is a tool to make photographic reproductions of the highest possible quality and, contrary to what has been done by others, this is not a technique to stitch hundreds of images but a dynamic scanning directly included in the camera.

Italy seems to be the right place to do high-definition images these days.