Webcam

A web camera (or webcam) is a real-time camera (usually, though not always, a video camera) whose images can be accessed using the World Wide Web, instant messaging, or a PC video calling application. The term webcam is also used to describe the low-resolution digital video cameras designed for such purposes, but which can also be used to record in a non-real-time fashion.

Web-accessible cameras typically involve a digital camera which uploads images to a web server, either continuously or at regular intervals. This may be achieved by a camera attached to a PC, or by dedicated hardware. Videoconferencing cameras typically take the form of a small camera connected directly to a PC. Analog cameras are also sometimes used (often of the sort used for closed-circuit television), connected to a video capture card and then directly or indirectly to the internet.

File Downloading Speed from Rapidshare Gets a Boost in India

Rapidshare [both rapidshare.com and rapidshare.de] are one the most visited sites in India according to Alexa India rankings. At the same time, a recent BSA report says that software piracy in India is as high as 72%.

Not sure if we can relate the two figures but Rapidshare does receive fairly significant traffic from India.

The good news for Rapidshare users in India is that they can download / upload data from Rapidshare at better speeds now since the file hosting service has added a new server in India itself (dl30vsnl.rapidshare.com)

Shyam Somanadh has the scoop. He adds that "users who are either on MTNL or Tata Indicom should see considerably faster speeds because of this". Here's the official announcement Rapidshare made few weeks ago:
Today we have integrated two new carriers in our network. Now you can download your files via VSNL and GlobalCrossing as well. We hope that you can download files even faster now.
Maybe it's time for other file hosting services like Megaupload and Megashare, who are also on the Alexa India list, to follow the footsteps of Rapidshare before they lose further ground.

How to Find Office 2003 Commands in the Office 2007 Ribbon

Wondering where your favorite Office 2003 menu and toolbar commands are located in the new Office 2007 Ribbon interface? Here's some help to get you started.

The Office Online team has created interactive Flash screencasts that show you the location of your favorite Office 2003 commands in the new interface of Microsoft Office 2007.

Once you download the Flash guide from MSFT website, run the executable. Now rest your mouse pointer over any Word 2003 menu or button to learn it's new location in Word 2007. You can even click the mouse to see the corresponding location in Word 2007 GUI.

These guides are also available for Powerpoint 2007 and Excel 2007. Watch the side-by-side comparison video clip above for a sample demo.

Downlaod HERE

Use Google Talk with Twitter - Spying Is Fun!

What are you doing ? Ask Twitter.

Twitter is a free service for telling your friends (or the whole world) what you're doing right now (and vice-versa). This product is from the same group that developed Blogger and Odeo.

And this service enjoys a huge fan following - Evan Williams, Anil Dash, Robert Scoble, Matthew Mullenweg, Leo Laporte, Niall Kennedy.. you name a person and chances are that he's already a Twitter addict.

Earlier, I was under the impression that to use twitter, one needs to send an SMS text message from a mobile phone number to get it published on the twitter website.

I was so wrong - you can use twitter directly with Gtalk without paying those international SMS sending charges.

Google Recommends Firefox, Mozilla Recommends Adblock Plus

Google and Mozilla are natural partners.

Google and Mozilla are natural partners.

Google pays users up to $1 for downloading FireFox [via AdSense referrals] and the Google engineers have even written some great extensions for FireFox like the Toolbar, Google Notebook, Browser Sync and Blogger Web Comments.

Google's revenue comes primarily from its advertising programmes and same is the case with Mozilla who earns few hundred millions every year when people surf using FireFox and click on advertisements displayed on search results pages.

At the same time, it's a well known fact that Windows hosts file and FireFox extensions like Adblock Plus are bad for the Google economy since the more people know about these workarounds, the fewer the ad impressions thereby translating into lower profits for the search company and the associated publishers.

Now this may surprise a lot of people - though Mozilla earns millions from advertising revenue indirectly, they have included Adblock Plus in their list of most recommended add-ons for FireFox for users to block "intrusive advertisements" on the web.

Aren't they risking the revenue stream of their search partners and their own with such recommendations ?


As the Firefox base increases and more people start blocking online advertisements, the 200kb Adblock installer will have the potential to hit the bottomline of search engines and even Mozilla pretty hard.

Extract Still Photographs from Wedding DVD Videos for Printing

There are tons of software for creating a slideshow DVD movie of your photographs but DI reader Pedro Almeida from Lisbon has a reverse requirement. He wants to extract still pictures from his Wedding video DVD for printing.

The professional wedding photographer who produced the photo DVD has the source images but he's probably charging lot of money for the service. Pedro writes:
The Wedding DVD was sold to me by a photographer and has cost me a great deal of money.

One of the DVD menu choices is to view all the wedding photos as a slideshow presentation. The photographer will take an additional charge of 3,5 euros for printing each photo.

Can we split this DVD photos presentation into separate image files like GIF or JPG. Then I will be able to print the photos myself and it would just cost me 0,5 euros each photo!!
Pedro, there are two solutions to your problem as explained here:

Solution A: - Play the DVD movie inside a media player and capture the scenes (or video frames) that you would like to print. A word of caution - normal screen capture commands like Print Screen won't work with capturing DVD videos and all you will get is a blank screen.

Read our previous guide on on how to screen capture scenes from DVD movies.

Solution B: - The second solution involves ripping the slideshow DVD into AVI or WMV files and then using a video extractor software to convert that ripped video into still photographs.

Use a DVD backup software like DVDx to convert your Wedding DVD vob files into AVI format. Then download AVCutty to extract picture frames from this AVI video.

AVCutty is smart and can automatically detect the scene changes in video files. Open the extracted photographs in an software like Picasa and select the ones that you like to print. Burn them onto a CD from Picasa and just walk into your nearest photo printing shop.

And yes, all the software mentioned above are absolutely free. The quality of extracted images may not match that of original pictures but they would still be good enough.

Download Vista SideBar with Gadgets for Windows XP

The Windows Sidebar and Gadgets feature introduced with Windows Vista is much like the widgets of Mac OS 10 or the deskbar included with Google Desktop Search or even Konfabulator which is part of Yahoo! now.

You can have gadgets for calendar, sticky notes, clock, weather, music player or a running slideshow of your favorite photos and lot more.

Want to run Vista Sidebar on XP ?

Though the sleek Windows Vista Sidebar is an integrated feature of Vista and not available as a separate product, thoosje.com has released a similar sidebar for Windows XP that looks and works just like the Vista Sidebar. And it's free of course.

Thoosje's Vista Sidebar is also part of the Vista Transformation Pack that is quite a popular package for making your XP machine look like Windows Vista.

Download Here

Adobe Media Player - Flash Video Player That Video Makers Would Love

Adobe Media Player, a desktop software like iTunes or Windows Media Player, will probably change the way we watch and download web videos and video podcasts. The software will be available for free on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Think of Adobe Media Player as a marriage of the best features offered by Apple iTunes, Democracy Player and Adobe Bridge.

What can Adobe Media Player achieve ?

With Adobe Media Player, it becomes possible to download streaming Flash Video flv content offline without any third-party hacks, subscribe to Video RSS feeds (aka video podcasts) and organize digital media content stored on your local hard drive with tags, ratings and playlists.

The black contemporary interface of Adobe Media Player looks clean n intuitive and may have drawn inspiration from Adobe Bridge, another popular tool from Adobeplex for organizing digital photographs.

Why Adobe Media Player is bad news for Apple ?

Though Apple revolutionized the podcasting industry with iTunes and iPods, Adobe Media Player definitely has the potential to beat Apple at their own game and one very strong reason in support of this argument is video podcasts monetization.

Adobe will offer content producers an opportunity to monetize podcasts with pre-roll ads and the media player will also track and report viewer statistics (using cookies) back to the actual publisher. [Viewers though have the option to opt-out]

At a time when most video podcast publishers are struggling to make money from their content, this new offering from Adobe will be like a dream come true. Therefore, content producers are more likely to advocate the use of Adobe Media Player among their audience than iTunes - the more people download and watch content inside Adobe Player, the more the advertising revenue for the publisher.

What's in for consumers ?

Adobe Media Player can download and play video podcasts with FLV enclosures (in addition to the Quicktime mov). Due to better compression codecs, FLV files are relatively smaller in size than MOV formats which will bring down the size of the video podcast enclosures and the files will download faster on computers that have a slow internet connection.

Adobe will also include DRM like features inside Adobe Media Player that allows content publishers to restrict copying.

Adobe Media Player has all the right ingredients to catch on with the internet audience provided the software is light-weight and not a memory hog like iTunes.

Adobe Media Player is more of a threat to the marketshare of Apple iTunes / Quicktime and Democracy Player than Real Player or Windows Media Player. It's also a bold step by Adobe to make Flash Video (flv) as the standard for distributing video podcasts replacing Apple Quicktime (mov).

Download Adobe Media Player PR, Adobe Labs

Update: To download Adobe Media Player, you may have to wait until end of 2007.

Watch Videos, Picture Slideshows on a Wrist Watch

You can think of this Epoq wrist watch as a combination of Video iPod and the Digital Photo frame. It can play video podcasts, MP3 music and still images.

And it has enough memory (2 GB) to store your picture or audio-video collection. Oops, it also has an FM radio and an inbuilt voice recorder.

Everything within the reach of your hand. Weighing around 66g, this Epoq watch sells for $170. The OLED screen helps you watch the videos or pictures from various angles.

Environment

Most modern technological processes produce unwanted by-products in addition to the desired products, known as industrial waste or pollution. Whilst most material waste can be reused in other industrial processes, many forms are released into the environment, with negative environmental side effects, such as pollution and lack of sustainability. Different social and political systems establish different balances between the value they place on additional goods versus the disvalues of waste products and pollution. Some technologies are designed specifically with the environment in mind, but most are designed first for economic or ergonomic effects. Historically, the value of a clean environment and more efficient productive processes has been the result of an increase in the wealth of society, because once people are able to provide for their basic needs, they are able to focus on less-tangible goods such as clean air and water.

The effects of technology on the environment are both obvious and subtle. The more obvious effects include the depletion of non-renewable natural resources (such as petroleum, coal, ores), and the added pollution of air, water, and land. The more subtle effects include debates over long-term effects (e.g., global warming, deforestation, natural habitat destruction, coastal wetland loss.)