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Computer and Technology April 19, 2007 |
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By Jack Bevis (Branch 116), CTG Secretary/Web Correspondent |
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"Creating Slide Shows - Continued" By Ken Haley (Branch 171) Ken Haley continued his January 18th presentation where he was unable (due to equipment malfunction) to show the actual videos and slide shows that he had prepared. He presented them today. He pointed out that the video clips were taken with a point and shoot camera. He compared conventional slide shows with those enhanced with use of pan and zoom. He says tell a story and showed one of the Great Wall of China. He demonstrated how to take a series of still photos of a picturesque German village, stitch them together, and pan them to produce a panorama. Using a photo of a young Chinese girl he demonstrated how he added captions, both written and audio. Finally he did a live production of a slide show panning and zooming in on a group of climbers on a snow covered Swiss mountain. "All About Scanning" By Phil Goff (Branch 116) Phil Goff, following Ken, opened his presentation by showing, as introduction to the subject of Resolution, a funny video of action on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. This was a low resolution 320 x 240 video. The first of 32 slides covered the requirements for scanning. The Gold standard for color prints is 300 pixels per inch. Nothing matters above that because the human eye does not detect the improvement. Higher resolutions are, however, necessary if the photo is to be enlarged. Phil presented tables showing this relationship. He went on to demonstrate scanner settings and some enhancements that are possible. He discussed OCR, Optical Character Recognition, software as a tool to use when scanning documents, newspaper articles etc. He also demonstrated how old, unreadable text could be processed so as to be able to decipher it. He finished up with a discussion of where to go to purchase a scanner and the admonition “If you don’t have one, go buy one.” During the intermission Phil joined John Peterson at a display table. Hardware was available for a hands-on look at two scanners. John’s machine was a high capacity scanner, a Canon “Canoscan”995 OF FB scanner. This is a $500 unit that can do twelve 35 mm slides at once in only 6 minutes. The differences were described between it and Phil’s regular capacity unit. "Q&A Session" By Dick Curry (Branch 171) In response to a recent question Dick discussed video conferencing. The questioner wanted to set up for a family party in one part of the country and be able to share it with other family members in another part of the country. The service is available. Skype is a well-known Internet phone service that can do it. The service is free. Of course you must have a microphone and web camera. Microsoft can also do it. What about email attachments that are garbled? Have them sent as word .doc documents. Dick noted that word 2007 has a new 4 digit extension that is not compatible with most prior versions. A reader is available for word 2003. There was a question about Word not being able to open a Microsoft Works document. Interestingly enough the two Microsoft programs are not compatible. A converter is available, however. Question: How do you like Iron Mountain and Carbonite backup services for daily backup? Dick thought that daily backup is overkill in most cases. He does recommend regular backups however. We had a complaint that the new version of Zone Alarm does non remember the” always allow” instruction. This is probably due to the tightening of security in recent software revisions. They require a decision by you on many simply things. Vista has the same complaints. There will probably be a patch to fix ZA. |