From the Channel 9 website

TechFest 2010: Microsoft ICE - Image Composite Editor

Today I'd like to introduce you to another piece of new technology from Microsoft Research Labs – Image Composite Editor (ICE) with Multi-Image Fusion.  In the current version of ICE, it provides advanced features for panoramic stitching such as choosing the stitch’s orientation, custom projection, and selecting a 360 stitch’s mid-point, and this tool also integrates nicely as a plug-in into Windows Live Photo Gallery. Here we’ll show you some of the upcoming new features in ICE such as:

• Structured Panoramas
• Stitching Panoramas from Video
• Sharp Panoramas from Blurry Videos
• Creating Photographs from Videos
• Multi-Image Denoising and Sharpening using Lucky Imaging

Really nice video going through the research Microsoft is doing in Photo Editing and related to Photosynth 

A couple of finds from Cute Overload

One of the blogs in My Google Reader is the blog Cute Overload, they cute videos of cute pets usually doing cute things. And one last weeks posts have these mash-ups you have to watch, they are awesome. One video to tease you and go there, Vote for your fave smash-up

And this is a video with the Best of Knut the polar bear from Germany that became famous when he was reared by one of the zookeepers. Well the zookeeper has died this week. And it seems the bear was noticing something wrong the day he died. So sorry.

Keeping the regularity and a card

I will try to keep some posts regularly, so long as I don't have any other issues like the ones I'm going to be dealing with this week. My computer is starting to make the kind of scary noises that warn you there is something wrong and I'm not going to wait for tragedy to unfold and be left with very, very old backups.

The situation is the following: I use a laptop and even though I can do the maintenance of the computer in anything relating to software, I don't know and, lets be honest, don't have the guts to open a laptop and start the cleaning up inside it. Which means that as I have insurance and that is supposedly covered I will take the computer to them, I will try to see whether I can get more RAM (more is always better when you do image editing) and perhaps a better graphics card (again more is better). It's a really good computer but when I bought it, I wasn't thinking on doing anything like image editing so if I can I might get one or the other or the two at the same time. In short it's gonna take quite likely a week if not two (also they are never very specific with dates so fingers crossed). I will take the computer clean to them so they have nothing relating to software to check and just the cleaning inside, checking the fans, etc, and perhaps the upgrades. Technically something straightforward, but this is Ireland and they always say two weeks (which by the way the first time you hear it you actually BELIEVE in it) and then it's another two weeks and they keep repeating that. When in my country they say "mañana" you at least know the following day if things are ready or not and you can start the yelling and screaming, etc. But two weeks like it tends to be different and having to wait two weeks instead of wanting to yelled at them just want to negotiate for the release of your precious item. And worst they tend to get you unwarned.

Awful, let's not continue with that, the thought is simply too, much

Anyway to keep the regular feature I always wanted to have in the blog and to forget my computers issues, the weekly card. The template is Di Hickman's and you can find it in her Wednesday post, this is my take on her sketch.

You can click on the card to see a bigger one and to see the credits for the whole thing, but basically is Di Hickman's Wednesday template and the kit "Solitary Flute" by Irene V. Alexeeva. Wordart is a quote by Johnny Cash (Let people know you Love them. Get close. Stay close) made wordart by Bethany.

Actually I'm not sure about the opinion anyone would have of the card, but I'm actually quite pleased as I have used quite a lot of techniques and masks to get the final result. I needed to think a bit more than usual to get some effects, even though the underneath effect of the jewelled swirl might have needed more work not sure how well gotten the effect is. But all in all I think it's a nice card, at least I like it

Hopefully, I will be leaving the computer on Tuesday and I'll have it by next week, I'm not gonna wait two weeks before starting the "yelling and screaming" otherwise I might not see my computer for a whole month or more.

And that's all for today.

Scrapping and your Internet connection

Image via Wikipedia

So you are a scrapper, and you can't help the thrill of going freebie hunting. You might not help yourself downloading all those beautiful freebies you find around, or can't help but going to the shops and buying their great products. You might even find that sometimes online videos are better than TV, or just simply find tons of video tutorials you want to watch, download or both.

Ahh the thrills of a scrappers life, but then it's the pain, you have a cap in your Internet connection, either 10 Gb or Comcast 250 Gb or something else, and every now and then they throw their knife and cut your connection for the month. Evil things, they don't understand you and your hobbies and just think in themselves and not that new technique you so badly wanted to try but now, you have to wait until the end of the month or else pay the ransom.

It sounds dramatic as I write it, and it is (I share your pain, my ISP wants to cap my connection to 10Gb and I stopped watching TV and now download my TV with Miro, as well as tons of tutorials to watch and maybe one day have the time to practice. ) Well what I'm going to write about won't solve the problem but you will at least have an idea of the amount of bandwidth you're using and how best to distribute it through the month so that at least you don't pay the fine, (Evil, Evil things), and have some kind of control with your connection. I'm talking about Bitmeter, a free application you can download from the Cnet website that will help you controlling your Internet connection and the caps you might have with your ISP.

Actually I will not only recommend you the program but the website as well. They are a terrific source of information for anything related to software and computers, and they also have a nice section dedicated to photography and digital photography software. So whether you think it's a good idea to download the program or not, take a look to the website and its photography section. I'm sure you will find it a terrific place and a keep it in your browser favourites.

They also have a nice newsletter CNET Photo and Video Weekly full of information and many others to choose from.

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What's a digiscrapping blog without layouts and cards?

Nothing actually, I was having a Buddhist moment and I was considering my little blog lost amongst millions of blogs in Internet. Honestly talking, a digital scrapbooking blog without layouts is nothing. So as well as talking about travels through the Net, a regular feature I always wanted to have in the blog (when I was considering to regularly write a blog) is going to be The Weekly Card layout.

Even though I do not have a blogroll, I actually have tons of scrapbooking blogs bookmarked in my Favourites in Firefox and in Google Reader. The last count of scrapbooking blogs in my Reader is 113 blogs. I think some people have stopped writing in some of the blogs, but we can make rough numbers of about 100 active blogs in my Reader. Obviously I don't have the time to go through them and that's when the Mark them all Read comes handy. Obviously because I don't only have Scrapbooking blogs in my Reader. Let's not talk about it, (addictive behaviour with Google Reader is very similar to the one you develop with Scrapbooking, ). Let's just say we'll talk about me and my Google Reader some other day.

Going back to the Weekly Card Layout issue and just one blog, one of the blogs I try to follow every now and then is Di Hickman's blog. She posts every week a Card template and she offers for free that template during that week. Also the template goes along with plenty of layouts from her creative team to inspire you and create something. Actually I think it's a terrific idea what she does, and as I don't have her flair to create a template, I will use hers. In fact I have created several cards with her templates and I think they come very handy to give to friends and family, it's a really nice detail with them or at least it looks to me that way.

Templates are the quickest way of creating a layout or a card, anything to be honest. They will save you all the agonising about whether the elements should be in there or that way. They give you a really nice base to start scrapping and you can either follow them exactly or use them as a guide or first idea and develop your layout from there. I honestly believe they are a MUST HAVE in any scrapbooking stash as well as elements or paper templates. It's great to have a nice kit to work with, but sometimes you really want something in a very specific way and having templates of different kind (layouts, cards, elements or papers) will help you to get your idea more exactly without having to design something. Not to speak of the time savings even if you know how to design what you want.

In any case, I love Di Hickman's cards and templates and I intend to show on a weekly basis my take on her weekly card template.

And without further ado my take on this week's card,

Credits for the materials used can be found following the link in the image. I have them listed in the caption area of each card in my Public Gallery in Picasa, where you can also see a bigger version of this card (just click on the photo to follow the link or the above one to get there).

I have also added a small widget in the sidebar with different cards I have in there and there will be appearing more cards in that slide show as I go adding more each week, hopefully.

I kinda like the bug and added it when I was finishing the layout and I think it's different. A different element from the normal elements you use in a card and it surely gives it a nice touch. Or at least I believe so.

Best wishes,

The digiworld and Social Media

Image by whiteafrican via Flickr

Once you start surfing the net sooner or later you will start hearing the TERM, it sounds some times like something extremely complicate but it's not, Social Media.

As I said before the first times I heard the term Social Media I thought it was like physics, something really complicated. It's complicated because of the environment it takes place, but in reality it's nothing more than social interaction in the web.

Because in the web you don't have eyes, or mouth and you don't see other people in the same way you see them in the street or in a daily basis, social media it's complicated. It's also complicated for another reason: it's been used, and hence it's more developed, in the business environment. Many companies and business are using it as an alternative to other traditional ways of interaction with customers or potential customers, employees, potential employees and other business. So there tends to be a lot of marketing around social media.

There are different opinions on whether it's a good idea to focus only in the marketing side when it refers to business social media, but that's something I might discuss some other time.

In any case, any digiscrapper sooner or later will start going to forums and joining a community of digiscrappers, as I have made myself and you will be having interactions with other people: in plain English you will start sharing thoughts and layouts and talking with other people about your hobbies or digiscrapping or something else. The problem is that you will also sooner or later start hearing about websites and services and how great they are, and you might even give them a go and see what's all the fuss about.

One thing it's taking me quite some time to learn is how I can use all those services to actually get the best experience of social media, at least for my entertainment and just in case anyone might find this useful these are some videos from a channel in YouTube that really explain things in quite plain language. The first one is below and the link to the channel is below the video. You might find them interesting and subscribe to them in YouTube.

Common Craft - Explanations in Plain English

The reason why I write this is that it has taking me some time to actually understand the whole concept and also to learn how best to use all that, and of course to get the best of it. And I realise it's been one of the reasons for me starting and leaving the blog, we'll leave aside the personal issues. You really need to learn how to use all this as it's not the same way of interacting with people in real life. But you can get a great experience once you learn to navigate and know some basis. Anyway it was the same way when you were growing up and starting to interact with people and you made mistakes or didn't know how to deal with some stuff.

I'm not sure whether this will be of use to anyone but this is one of the things I will be writing in the blog about as it actually helps me to understand better what I'm learning about the issue. So this will be part of the things related to the digiworld I will be talking about.

To end this another video of the same people about, of course, blogging

Blogs in plain English

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Beginnings, beginnings, .....

It's been quite a while since the last time I wrote something about scrapbooking. It's been several months since I actually did something in the digiworld, things got in the way.

Never managed to keep with the old blog, it was a great beginning though. So without further ado, we will begin again. Perhaps this time would be different, it's not like I'm risking anything or losing anything for trying.

Well the rules for me in digiworld, not only in digiscrapworld.

• Trying to post regularly at least twice weekly,
• A feature post
• Findings in Internet

The blog would be dedicated to digiscrapping, that means software and related issues. For things not related to my "hobby", I have another blog and anyway at this stage is in Spanish, not sure how much I want it to be public, as I really like what I write there but not sure about the way of presenting the blog to other people.

Now a better presentation, hi I'm olga9999 I'm a digiscrapper and suffer from all the addictive behaviour that goes with it. In my defence this is legal so no problem, but you kinda feel a bit guilty and ashamed of the kind of behaviours related to the "thing", long hours in the computer, hunting for freebies, scrapping until late at night because you completely forgot to look at the clock, etc. Let's not talk about things that anyone that could read this already knows.

I could add to the last paragraph, that my weapon of choice is Gimp. Yes I'm also an open source software girl. I use lots of open source and free programs in my computer, in fact my relationship with Windows is walking towards a full blown divorce. I knew that was going to happen for sometime, but I never thought it was going to be so soon. You know once you start playing with the computer and learning more and more things you want to get things your own way and I actually have a great opinion of Windows and Microsoft but you grow up and want things differently and windows it's great for people that don't want, for whatever reason, change things to much, everything is done for you. But I just simply want more. I just so wanted to make a PDF a couple of weeks ago, and it was so difficult to do that in Office or looking for an alternative which meant installing a program and not having that much control with the result. So I was left with trying OpenOffice as an alternative. Downloaded the Beta, and God 30 minutes with it I knew Office was out and OpenOffice was in.

It feels like cheating, it feels like you are in a relation and each one is starting to go in different ways. But it's not that I don't like Windows or Microsoft products, I'm still using as OS XP and have Live Writer and the Media Player and the basic stuff  that comes with having the OS. And I'm so grateful that I learnt to use computers and starting in Internet with Windows. But like I said before, this is a relationship with us going in different directions. Sooner or later the OS will be a Linux one more than likely and then it will be a full blown divorce.

So long as Windows and Microsoft don't get mad at me, this might be the first civilised break up in my life as I do intend to be still friends. Honestly I think Windows is a great operating system and great for some people.

That pretty much defines my style as scrapbooker, I keep trying new things as much as I can and I like to try stuff and see what you find out there. I sometimes want to bang my head against the wall when trying some new stuff, but keep trying, although with mixed results.

New techniques scrapbooking, trying my hand at designing my own stuff and taking a look at what others do either scrapping or designing, and navigating Internet. That's the blog about. And some other stuff about what the digiworld is in Internet. As there is no clear plan yet, a bunch of things mixed altogether.

I hope this IS a beginning with a continuation.