For a person who’s photo editing arsenal comprises of Microsoft Paint (Vista’s version which saves to JPEG by default, finally!) comes an online photo editor that allows you to rotate, crop, fix red eye in addition to sharpening and fixing the exposure of your photos; in addition to a few artistic special effects that didn’t impress me much.

At the present time Picnik can only integrate with Flickr (other services are to come). It allows you to upload photos from your computer; snap one right off your webcam, or just upload one off the web (using yahoo or flickr search).

The interface is intuitive and very easy to use, what was once this is now this. I’m not sure if that’s better but it was done in less than a minute (including the upload), very convenient for a guy who doesn’t want to spend time editing photos.  However, the lack of Vista search in the upload dialog box is irritating; as I rely on metadata rather than structured folders to search for stuff, needless to say it was tedious.

Give it a try at http://picnik.com/  seats are limited so hurry up.

Despite all the IT spending in the region some major news websites still do not offer RSS feeds to their readers; making it a hassle to track updates and forcing news junkies to visit their sites at least a couple of times.

This is where Page2RSS comes in handy. Page2RSS is a service that parses websites for changes at set intervals and creates an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.

While it’s not perfect, as it tracks all changes including banner ads! And doesn’t separate the changes into separate posts. It’s still much more convenient than browsing on to websites and checking if anything changed.

Give it a try at http://www.page2rss.com

I’ve been noticing this problem for quite a while. My contacts sign in with their Windows Messenger (the one built into Windows XP), sign out and then sign in with thir MSN Messenger and/or Live Messenger. I’ve been asked several times how to prevent this from happening I thought I’d publish it here.

This how to is for both the novice user, and the administrator that wishes to prevent employees from wasting time on IM (the Windows XP Pro version of this)

There are generally two ways to achieve this on any given version of windows. The easiest one is just installing service pack 1 and go to add/remove windows components and simply remove MSN messenger and that really really annoying MSN Explorer (although that’s not related).

The other way on Windows XP Professional and Domain Controllers if you have one (hey you can disable Windows Messenger for all network computers from one location ;))

1. Go to start menu
2. Select run
3. Type gpedit.msc (that’s the group policy editor)
4. Click on OK
5. Go to computer configuration
6. Select the administrative templates and expand it
7. Open up the Windows Components and Select Windows Messenger
8. Enable Both the “Do Not Allow Windows Messenger To Be Run” and “Do not automatically start Windows Messenger initially”
9. Close the group policy editor, and exit messenger if it’s still running

A group policy editor doesn’t exist on Windows XP Home Edition. So the only way to prevent it from kicking off other than uninstalling it (which is easier but doesn’t work if you don’t have SP1 or SP2 because your either too lazy, or don’t have an original copy of Windows) is to prevent Windows Messenger from signing in. You can do that by going to the options window of Windows Messenger and deselect “automatically sign me in….”

That is it! Windows Messenger won’t sign in before your Live Messenger anymore.

So you’re carrying your iPod Nano 24/7 and don’t want to lug an extra brick (that is your cellphone/pda), but need to have all your appointments, tasks, notes, and contacts?

Well there’s a software from Pocket Mac that sync’s your your Entourage (That’s the name of Microsoft Outlook on Mac) to your iPod. It allows you to sync your contacts, calendar, tasks, notes and unread email. The bad news is; it doesn’t notify you when you’re late for an appointment.

Still having your contact and shopping list on the go is quite useful. Oh, the software is available for both Mac & Windows. You get both versions when you buy one, and it works with any generation iPod

This simple Photoshop tutorial will cover how to turn a selection in a black and white digital photo into a colored area.Click on images to view details.

Last week, we looked at how to simply turn a colored digital image into black and white while maintaining colors in a specific selection. This week, we will be doing the opposite by simply turning a selection in a black and white photo into a colored selection.

We will start off with this black and white image of my cousin Jeeda (tip: you can easily turn a colored image into instant black and white by pressing “Shift+Ctrl+U”). I am going to attempt to color Jeeda while leaving the area around her intact, so first I will start by tracing every part of Jeeda that requires a different color (like skin, shirt, jeans, etc.).

Let’s start off with Jeeda’s skin, which should be beige-ish. Grab any of the selection tools (I would recommend the polygonal lasso tool, press L to select it), and start off by selecting Jeeda’s skin. After you have her face, neck and hands outlined, duplicate the selected area into a new layer via copy (Layer-> New-> Layer via Copy or press “Ctrl+J”.

Select the layer with the skin, bring up the Hue/Saturation window(Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation or press “Ctrl+U”). Check the “colorize” option in the Hue/Saturation window, and play with the adjustments until you get the desired color.

To capture more realilistic colors, you may use the Image-> djustments->Brightness/Contrast option after you colorize the selection.

After you achieve the desired color, go back to the background layer and select the other color areas and repeat the same step we did with the skin. Let’s now select the shirt and the socks, which I want to turn to pink, and repeat the same process

In the end, you should have various colored layers including eyes, shirt, and jeans, something like this:

The end result:

One of the biggest turn offs of using Blogger is the lack of categories. It’s one of the main reasons why I switched to Wordpress a week ago. Today, a week too late I must say, I discovered a few hacks to add categories to blogger. None of them is straight forward, but they provide the feature blogger needs desperately

• Use the tag-making bookmarklet written by Ted Ernst.
• Use pace_tua’s upgraded bookmarklet, which generates the same code, but pastes it automatically into the blogger “create post” link field and therefore includes it in your post without cutting & pasting. You’ll need to change your blog settings to show the link field.
• If you browse with Firefox. Install the greasemonkey extension, and then run a greasemonkey script that will modify the blogger create / edit post page to include a tag creator in the form. Then just type your tags as you type your post!! This method can be bookmarklet-free, because the script adds a bookmark to del.icio.us link to the blogger publish notification window.

I recommend the greasemonkey extension option as it’s the easiest, however feel free to experiment with the rest and let us know of the results.

Via Freshblog

Incase you’re still stuck in the stone age, YouTube is the flickr of online video sharing. You can pretty much find anything there. From home video non-sense to actual sitcom episodes. (Same applies for Google Videos). If you can’t get enough of those videos and want to take them with you on the go or just save them on your computer, this tutorial is for you.

The following tutorial assumes that you currently have Firefox browser, Greasemonkey Extensions and RivaFLV Encoder installed. RivaFLV Encoder is a freeware based on FFMPEG encoder and will allow you to convert the flash video files (FLV) used in YouTube to AVI or MPEG . You can make do without Firefox or Greasemonkey if you can locate the FLV file location in the page source and download it, Greasemonkey will make it easier, so we’ll let it do all the dirty work.

• Install the Google Video Getter and You Tube To Me GreaseMonkey Scripts by right clicking on them and selecting install user script.
• Navigate to the video page you wish to download. We’ll use “Coolest Toy Ever” for this tutorial.
• Once the page is loaded you should be able to see a redbar at the top of the page (you tube) with the words “Save As” to download Flash Video. Right-click on the link and select “Save as…” from the menu.
• In the save file window you will notice that the file is has a .php extention. You will need to change that from PHP to FLV. Then select save
• If you just want to watch the video as it is on your computer you can use the VLC video player. If you need to convert it open RivaFLV Encoder.
• Click the browse button in the input tab and locate the FLV file you just donwloaded.
• Click the browse button in the output tab and select the location you want to output to
• The output filename will have the extension FLV (afterall this is an FLV Encoder), just change that to AVI or MPG
• Adjust the video and audio properties to your liking and make sure you enable audio or you’ll end up with a mute video.
• Click the Encode button, and wait for FFMPEG to do it’s work.
• Now use iTunes to copy the resulting file onto your iPod. You may also use one of the mp4 converters freely available on downloads.com. If you want to copy the file to your PDA you can use Windows Movie Maker or Windows Media Player to do the conversion.

Notes:

• It’s possible that the .flv contains an audiocodec that will not be transcoded. A solution for that is to play the original .flv and record the audio with Audacity (for instance) and to mix that recording with the .avi or .mpg you get from Riva
• You might need DivX Codec to play the resulting avi file.

Screenshots of the Process:

Step One: Save the video file to your computer

Step Two: Use RivaFLV Encoder to convert the file

Based in Part on the work of Video Help

Digg It

This tutorial will cover how to simply turn a digital image into black and white while maintaing colors in a specific selection. Click on images to view details.

I’ve always loved this picture of my friend Sarah except as you can see, it’s not very presentable due to below-average digital photography equipment. the terribly plain and dowdy colors. It just looks- boring! So naturally, I hit Photoshop, my answer to all life’s problems… After some thought, I decided that I want the image to focus on Sarah, headline, “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” (a good Jack Johnson song).

First off, I selected Sarah and her chair using the pen tool (press P, draw selection around object, then press A, right click, select “Make Selection” and turn it into a selection path).

Right click on the selection and select “Select Inverse” to select the background image and leave Sarah and her chair intact. Now press Shift+Control+Z to desaturate the background then go to “Image” -> “Adjustments” -> “Brightness/Contrast” and increase the contrast.

Now that we have the background all darkened out, we need to set the focus on Sarah. Right click on the selection again and select “Select Inverse” to reselect Sarah and her chair. Now press Control+B and edit the colors to get the most out of them.

Finally, “Select Inverse” one last time and use the brush tool to add “weight” to Sarah and her chair by darkening and increasing the shadow beneath them (let’s not over do it though, eh?) The result should look like this:

Digg It

Yet Another Google Post!
How To: Setup Google on Mac OSX iChat
Several people have been complaining about not being able to get Talk to run on their iChat despite following Google’s setup guide step by step. Well apparently iChat doesn’t translate the IP for talk.google.com properly and connects to the website IP instead of the Jabber service. By using 216.239.37.125 as the server I was able to connect to Talk (Screenshot below)

How To: Run multiple instances of Google Talk
This might not be useful for all of you, but for those who keep two addresses; or like messing with their friends by claiming to be a hottie, starting multiple instances of Talk is quite easy. If you have a desktop shortcut for Google Talk, right-click on the icon, go to ‘Properties’, and find the ‘Target’ field. Add /nomutex to the end of the target string. See the screenshot below.

Now simply double click on the icon, and another Google Talk instance will fire up.

How To: Replace Google Talk’s Logo?
By using Resource Hacker, I was able to replace Google’s Logo with a different logo, or remove the logo all together (Not exactly legal).

How To: Find Chat History Location
Chat logs are stored here: C:\Documents and settings\[username]\local settings\application data\Google\GTalk\chatlogs

.. continued from a previous post.

Last night I was quite sure I was missing something, if a standard CD player can play Sony BMG’s copy-protected CDs, EAC should be able to retrieve the TOC and rip the disc, which means there should be a way to rip these CDs!

After successfully ripping the CD to MP3s on an Apple Machintosh, I got suspecious, it turns out the CD is just an enhanced CD with a program running to prevent EAC from ripping the CD, basically the First4Internet technology serves as a speed bump to deter the not-so-well-versed-computer-users

There are two ways to override the copy protection scheme, the first is to kill the process using task manager, the second is to disable autoplay on your CD drive.