June 10, 2008

Youtube’s latest feature – Annotations

As soon as Youtube updated the look of their embedded player for all ( it was optional before ), it has added an amazing feature which screams “Youtube is the king of online video!”. This might seem like a big statement to some who like Veoh, Hulu, Dailymotion and other websites more. But the fact that you can now add speech bubbles, spotlights and notes to any video you upload to Youtube keeps it above the rest.

Youtube Annotations is the newest and most innovative feature so far that I’ve seen in online video sharing websites as it brings a whole new dimension of interactivity to your videos. As a matter of fact, it does for online videos, what subtitles have done for DVDs. The process of adding annotations to your videos isn’t difficult either. It involves you uploading the video of your choice, or selecting one of your already uploaded videos. On the video page, you’ll see a new portion under the embed code area. Click the Add Annotations button, and you’ll be taken to the Annotations editor, which is built like a movie editor software would be, only it’s much simpler and easier to use. Instead of a separate timeline as with desktop applications, it allows you to work on the seek bar of your Youtube video and use that as a timeline. You can click either of the 3 options ( Add Speech Bubble, Add Note, Add Spotlight ). All these options are very useful as with speech bubbles, you can make comic style bubbles which can make it very interesting depending on the video. With notes, you can just add a note on any portion of the video ( it can also be used as subtitles, only problem being that the background isn’t transparent). And spotlight can highlight an area on the video, but wont show any text unless you hover on that portion. You can even use links ( although the links are limited to Youtube’s only for now) in your text.
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Sysinternals Suite

buy propecia online color=”#001073″>Sysinternals Suite

The Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools. This file contains the individual troubleshooting tools and help files. It does not contain non-troubleshooting tools like the BSOD Screen Saver or NotMyFault.

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Urban Dictionary

Urban Dictionary

This site is not necessarily for everyone, as it is describing slang, but I found it, because I heard a song on the radio talking about showing someone your grill and had no idea what it meant.

Meanings of grill:

buy propecia online usa align=”justify”>1.) Teeth
2.) A gold/diamond plate that is molded for your teeth. It is decorated with diamonds and/or gold. Usually worn by rappers, Nelly, Paul Wall, Mike Jones and many others.

I was highly confused, so I had to find somewhere to look it up and I found this site. I think this site is also handy for monitoring the slang coming out of your children’s mouths. My mom wouldn’t let us use slang around the house. We always had to speak perfect English. This is what comes of having a teacher for a mom. I am extremely grateful that she did, because It made me better able to communicate.

There are several ways to surf this site. The easiest way is to type in the word you want to define in the dictionary, like I did. Put in the term you want to define and click the search button.

Or, you can go through alphabetically, A-Z, and browse slang words by letter. Or you can click Random at the very end of the A to Z listing and get a random word. There are also random listings that change on the main page.

I wouldn’t want my children using a lot of this terminology, that is for sure. Another warning that I just noticed: some of the examples do have profanity in them, so I wouldn’t recommend showing this site to kids.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/

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Focal Length and Magnification Factors

When people talk about lenses, they talk about focal length. This is basically a measurement that will help you determine how far your zoom can "reach" or how much of that great scenery your wide angle lens will encompass.

For those who wonder how it's figured out, it's the distance from the "optical center" of the lens to the point where it is focused when set to infinity. (No, we're not talking luxury cars here. Setting a lens' focus to "infinity" simply means to focus a lens at its furthest distance). Don't worry, you don't need to know or understand any of that to figure out how this works! 🙂

Here's the practical application: the smaller the focal length of a lens, the more it can "see" and the more "stuff" you can get in the photo. Small focal length lenses are commonly referred to as "wide angle" lenses.

On the other hand, the higher the number, the less the lens is able to "see" and the closer your subject looks. These are usually referred to as "long" or "telephoto" lenses.

Back when 35mm cameras ruled the roost and digicams were only cute "toys," focal length made it easy to compare one lens to another. If it was a 28mm lens, it was a wide angle lens. If it was a 300mm, it was a telephoto lens. It was simple because the size of a 35mm negative was the same from camera to camera. A 50mm lens on one camera "picked up" the same scene as a 50mm lens on a different camera

Now that digicams are taking over, the game has changed. This is because of the size difference with the various image sensors out there.

You see, a smaller sensor doesn't "see" as much of the scene as a larger sensor does. In essence, it's cropping in, which is called the magnification factor. Since sensor sizes range all over the board, the image you get with a 28mm setting on one camera will probably look completely different on another.

Note: In the photos above, although the lens sees the exact same thing, the camera with the red sensor captures more of the scene than the camera with the blue sensor. Both were taken with a 28mm lens, but the results are very different.

Fortunately, a lot of manufactures are starting to give the 35mm equivalent ranges when they discuss their equipment. So, instead of saying a camera has a 7mm/28m lens, they give you the 35mm equivalent of 28mm/112mm.

So, if you see a camera that has 35mm equivalent focal lengths listed, here's a chart to help you decide if you have enough lens.

35mm Lens Chart:

12-20 – Ultra Wide Angle

24-35 – Wide Angle

40-80 – Normal lens

90-135 – Short Telephoto

150-250 – Medium Telephotos

buy propecia no prescription align=”justify”>300+ – Longer Telephotos

Okay, if you're shooting with a regular digicam, that's about all you need to know. However, if you have a digital SLR (you can take the lenses on and off), you'll want to read on.

Most digital SLRs do not have a full frame sensor. This means there is a magnification factor with any given lens. Normally, this is around 1.5, so we'll use that for our example. Check your owner's manual for the exact number.

Anyhow, here's what happens with this magnification factor. Let's say you have a 200mm lens. If your camera has a mag factor of 1.5x, that means you take the focal length of the lens (200) and multiply it by 1.5. In this case, your 200mm is now equivalent to a 300mm. Cool!

Now the bad news. If you like taking wide angle shots, this works against you. For example, that 24mm lens you liked so much on your 35mm camera now looks like a 36mm lens (gasp!) In order to get back to 24, you'd need to fork over lots of dead presidents for a 16mm lens! That pain you just felt was from your wallet.

So, if you're into long lenses, you'll probably like the magnification factor. If not, you may need to start stitching images together. Short of that, most manufacturers now have special "digital only" lenses that don't cost as much as the standard 35mm equipment (won't work on it properly either). They aren't necessarily cheap, but it may be worth looking into.

Oh, there are cameras that have a full frame CMOS sensor, so there is no magnification factor. Unfortunately, they sell for $7,000+ so it's probably cheaper to buy some new lenses. 🙂

Geez, I talk too much! Happy shooting!

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