Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

I have something like 20 or more websites open in browser that I want to be able to review or recommend. I haven’t got time so I will link them here, tag on delicious and clip into socialmedian as appropriate.

Here goes.

Microsoft

• Windows Live One Care for Server. Free trial. Works on Server 2008 Standard 64 bit, SBS 2008 Standard and Premium.
• File Dialogs – adding My Places in the File Open and File Save As dialog boxes. Quickly find frequently used locations on your PC or network.
• Adding signatures to email in Windows Live Hotmail
• Plugins – Flickr for Live Writer, Flickr for Outlook, Flickr for Word. Zemanta for Windows Live Writer. Hat tip to Sarah Perez from Channel 10 for this. (see our Geek Girl profile on Sarah)
• Another from Sarah is the Circle Dock Application launcher. Go straight to Circle Dock.
• How to share large files without attaching them to email
• Bulk convert old documents to new Office 2007 format from Digital Inspiration. I will be trialing this with a set of copied documents to test the results.

I finally got around to building a new banner for my website.

Spy Journal 1.0 didn't have a banner - except for orange and text.

Spy Journal 2.0 had customised banners for each of the personal, tech, excel and blog websites. Actually they were the same banner but some CSS allowed different colours to show as a margin on each banner.

So yesterday I used some photoshop skillz and put together the banner thats here now. Do you like it? Is it an improvement on previous ones? Let me know what you think.

Interested in a memory card for your camera that wirelessly uploads your photos to the computer? If so than check out the Eye-Fi Card.

The 2GB Eye-Fi Card looks like your basic SD card on the outside, but it's got Wi-Fi technology hidden inside. When your Eye-Fi-Card-equipped camera is powered on and in-range of your Wi-Fi connection, the card communicates with Eye-Fi's server and your network, then uploads your photos. Your computer doesn't even have to be turned on. All images are saved on Eye-Fi's server until they're successfully loaded onto your system. If your computer is powered on, your image thumbnails will pop up on the lower-right side of your screen as they're uploaded. And you don't have to do a thing.

Rich Legg is a photographer from Utah. He recently announced a photo shopping contest on his site. i was lucky quick enough to be selected as one of the 5 to submit results.

I have posted my two separate entries to this site and also to my photo archive and the technical and artistic reasons behind my edits are listed below.

Here's my reasoning and technical data
I looked at the photo and it seemed to be a pretty candid shot snapped mid action, but when I thought about it from the perspective of the couple, there was obviously going to be some memories associated with the event. It was obviously a staged candid shot. The railway tracks and the way they were dressed and walking holding hands suggested that a photographer had set this shot up for them – maybe as a anniversary special photo occasion or something. So while wild fantasies of photo shopping an old fashioned steam train in behind them to make them look as if they were in danger crossed my mind (in fact I even found some suitable photos) I didn't attempt this. Instead I reasoned that the couple would be interested in framing this photo on their wall as a memory of this event or time in their lives. So I created two different looks and borders that would lend themselves to printing on canvas or photo paper and framing with a nice frame.
Technical
Shot 1 – the sepia image. First I tightened the shot by cropping substantially. I then copied this onto a larger white canvas to create a large margin. I then changed the image to black and white using a gradient adjustment layer and then added a colour adjustment layer of sepia. I then created a slightly larger selection in the background and filled this with black to give the old time real photo look of the black edges and sepia tone. I then added the text at the bottom. This would look good in an old wooden frame – probably 2-3 inches in width in an old fashioned style.
Shot 2 – the soft edges. Once again I tightened the shot by cropping the extraneous material. I then create a border inside the edge and feathered this by 170 pixels. I then selected the inverse and deleted to create the soft edges. This would look good on a matt photo paper and framed in a thin metal frame, gold or maybe silver.

Yahoo has recently released new uploader software that allows you to organise upload pictures to your Flickr account right from the desktop. You can easily add titles, tags, set privacy options or arrange your pictures in Flickr sets while staying offline. It even allows you to add more jobs to the queue while processing another bath of photographs. Pretty impressive!