iPhone is a hot topic for news journals, people who love it and everyone and people who dream about it. The most important factor to make it much popular is the 3 in 1 functionality it’s having. It can be used as a Mobile phone with attractive, interactive features including the touch screen, an iPod with a widescreen and a device with huge facilities to browse internet. It is designed and marketed by Apple Inc and was released in 2007. The iPhone has become an eye catcher of the people all around the world. With all those it provides a camera and multimedia management system in built with it.
Current Camera Of iPhone
The current version of the iPhone has a 3.0 Megapixels camera in it. With the Auto focus and Tap to focus options, it gives better performances to the user. The video recording performances are also better. It gives a quality video output with 30 frames per second.
Image Management In iPhone
Although the other phones have better quality cameras, they do not provide a better image management system like in iPhone. The iPhone image management system provides facility to manage image galleries according to the subject and may other filtering factors. The competition in the world market today does not looking for the better product, It always needs the best. iPhone provides iTunes to share images from MAC or photoshop album on the PC. Through this synchronization, iPhone became more user friendly for the people who love it.
Next iPhone
The Apple Inc. wishes to release their next version of the iPhone in this June. Although they tried to hide the specifications and technological stuffs from public, some things were exposed to the public recently. According to that information, people can think of an 80GB device with iPhone 4G phone.
Next iPhone’s Camera
The next iPhone will be equipied with a 5Megapixel camera and that make it a shining sophisticated mobile device in 2010 WWDC event where they plan to release it on next June. The device will have a larger lens than the previous versions and a LED flash light will be there to add light in night or indoor moods. The most important thing is that the internal hardware will be ‘Apple’ specific. The Omnivison’s CMOS image sensors will provide a high accuracy and the quality output.
Camera Applications
BestCamera
The iPhone is looking to make their features from better to best. There is software that allows users to name BestCamera to allow users to do whatever they like to do with images. The next iPhone users are waiting for something new and improved other than what they have seen so far. The user friendly image gallery is one of the most attractive facts that anyone like to see. The user can scroll through the touch screen and add the image effect he needs from the number of available effects. The next iPhone may include more effects and more interactive options. It is said that Adobe Photoshop is the best and easiest software to manage and edit pictures for general users. A person who has used the BestCamera software might think twice before making that statement. The image editing and managing can be easily done through this software. The users expect much better BestCamera software to manage images better than ever.
Snapture
This software gives user a special feature to rotate the phone but not to get the image rotated. Snapture allows the user to take images by tapping anywhere of the screen. In most of the cameras user has to click on a specific button to get a shot. But with this software it makes easy to the user. The volume level zoom control while taking images is another special facility provided by this software. Snapture Premium allows the quick view enhancement. The user can take several snapshots at the same time and check each and every image with just one click. It enables the possibility to delete the rest of images while keeping the one the user wants with. It allows a special feature of making the images of several color modes available in a strip in the left side.
Camera Genius
This enables user to have a non-optical zoom. This gives a clear image without any distortion in it. Sound capture facility enables capturing the images in the place where can get the maximum sound. Different types of guides and timer facilities give user an interactive and special ability to enjoy photography.
Colorsplash
This is a great image management application which was introduced with editing the colors of images. The user can add or edit colors of an image with just a one click.
Future Of iPhone’s Camera And Applications
There are several types of application for the iPhone with various unbelievable features. Although it has come up with several types of sophisticated apps, there will be better in near future. A noise sensor zoom facility will be something new that people can expect. Think of a party, the camera will be auto zoomed to the place where people dancing and singing. Most of the iPhone users are not that good at photography. So the users will be able to take much accurate images with this facility. A run time stop caption will be another great invention. The camera can be improved with the large number of frames per second in it. But think of an application that counts the position in 2 several times and allowing the median to guess the final image. This will be a great invention for any kind of a camera. But for the iPhone users, this will be something special.
No Camera iPhones?
Having a camera is good for someone. But, it may be a reason for someone to not to use an iPhone. Think of people who are working in security zones. So Apple may think of introducing a phone without a camera in the future. Think of a person who works in google, that person will not be able to use the iPhone because of its camera.
References
Inc., A. (2010). iPhone. Retrieved 05 10, 2010, from Apple Inc.: http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
Mokey, N. (2010, 01 26). Best iPhone Apps. Retrieved 05 11, 2010, from Digital Trends: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/the-best-iphone-apps/
Search engines are the ones that help you to find what you want on internet in a high accurate manner. They display the results as a list in a particular order that shows most favorable once at the top of the list. In order to do that they use automated web crawling engines generally called as Spiders or Bots. They crawl through the sites all over the internet and keep a index of their markup in their data structure. Once a user submit a search query with a specific set of keywords, search engine give a result containing links to related pages according to priority defined by their algorithm. The Web developers have to pay attention on making the site they design in the top of rankings. That’s where those Search Engine Optimization techniques come to the picture. It can be dividing in to main two categories which are on page optimizing and off page optimizing.
On-Page Optimizing
What Are Keywords?
Keywords are queries you type in when you search on any search engine. In general, people call a collection of words also as “keyword” instead of telling ‘keywords’. When doing the on page keyword optimization, the developers have to consider mainly on 3 factors. They are:
Keyword Density: Too much keyword usage in your site make the search engine feels you as a spammer. The less amount of usage let the search engine ignore your site. So it is recommended to use at least three times and not more than 5 percent of the content text on your page.
Keyword Variation: The developer can use several variations of the keywords such as plurals, misspellings or changing the order of the available keywords. Misspellings may make the page look not that professional. But it works as an optimization technique.
Keyword Similarity: Providing similar keywords such like ‘single’ for ‘one’ is a good optimization technique that can catch search engine’s eye on your site.
Domain
There is no doubt that keyword rich domain names perform much better in the search engine rankings than the domains without keywords in the domain. The difference cannot be seen that much as each site has its own way of doing optimizing. If you compare one site having keyword in its domain and other not having keyword in domain, you will definitely find a difference after a few months you have host the site.
URL
Having a URL that includes the keyword alone does not help, but it helps when other sites link to another. A lot of people link to others by their URL, thus the anchor text will use the keyword.
Title Tags
Many developers use their site name as the title of the page. It is true that it displays that in the title bar of the browser. But, it is a very easy and efficient way to present keywords rather than displaying site name. Optimized title tags give several advantages on applying SEO to the sites.
The phrase you were looking for and the title tag both are same. So search results will be highlighted.
Increase rankings on search engines.
Helps engines distinguish between pages that might look similar.
Meta Tags
Using Meta-tags are very common thing that developers use. For example;
Header Tags
The header tags only do not catch the user’s attention on the page. It is a great way to let the search engines know what is the subject of your page is. If there is a need to control the size of those tags, you can easily use CSS for that. It is a bad practice that some developers use CSS to control font size other than using the header tags. Any webpage should include single H1 tag and the hierarchy of H2 and H3 tags.
Bold, Italic And Oblique Tags
The same scenario which I described earlier applies to the Bold, Italic and Oblique tags also as they let the search engine have much more attention on them. If the keywords of the websites are shown in using those tags, it will be a great way to do the optimization.
Remove Duplicate Content
In some cases, the duplicate content may cause pages to be filtered at the time of serving of results by search engines. It cannot be guaranteed that this page will be shown and this page will not. Sometimes the content will be removed from the index also.
Off-Page Optimizing
As it says in the name, Off-Page SEO techniques are not applied inside the particular website. Developers can apply them in some other websites. Some of the most popular techniques are listed as follows.
Create Back Links
There are a number of ways to get create back links.Submiting articles to article directories (such as ezinearticles), and adding the site’s URL to web directories, pay per click and social sites will be effective.
Social Bookmarking
This is much inexpensive than having advertisements, because most of the Social sites provide free service of letting people to have links. Even they charge, the fare is reasonable. Search engines travel around the websites through the links available. Google Robot is the link traveler of the Google search engine. When providing the links to the sites even in advertisements or some other publications, it is good to look to use keywords as the available anchor text.
What Is Google Page Rank
The Page Rank is patented process of Google. This is a good method that overcame the early days search engine ranking that were based only on the content and the Meta tags of the page. Google gives every page a numerical value between 1- 10. This numerical value is called the Google Page Rank of that site and that is updated once in a 3 months. After seeing the accuracy of Google, other search engines also added a page ranking mechanism to their search algorithm.
How To Get Page Ranking In To The website?
The best and easiest way to get the page ranking to a website is to get a link from a highly ranked page. For example getting a link from a page with the rank of 5 can make your site rank as 4 if the site is trusted and if it has less amounts of links like that. It is not that worth getting links from low ranking pages. A page can be ranked 0 if it is punished by Google.
Nofollow Flags
In some of the pages like Facebook and MySpace they have added nofollow flags. After adding a nofollow flag, those back link won’t add any page rank for the target page, in other words it’s not a ‘vote’.
Search Engine Optimization Tools
There are several SEO tools that can be used to optimize the web site easily. There are categorized on each task as follows.
Keyword Discovery
There are several keyword discovery tools that tell us on what topic do people mostly search on the web. You can find them mostly free.
Google Adwords.
Trellian Keyword Discovery
AdCenter keyword Group Detection
Keyword Volume
It shows how many people monthly search for that keyword.
Google Adwords External Tool
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
Backlink Tracker
They help to find how many links available for the site from the other sites and how many links available in your site.
Site Explorer
Digitalpoint’s Keyword Ranking
Benefits
There are number of benefits of applying SEO to the websites. It can be commercial or social. Most important thing is that designers do not need to pay continuously.
Perspective
Targeted Traffic
Increase Visibility
High ROI
Long Term Positioning
Cost-Effective
Summary
Search engine techniques do not remain same for months. They changes. Some of the very basic techniques of optimizing are listed below. Mostly the Search Engine Optimizers’ task is to build the traffic and give a higher rank to the web site. Sometimes what they do is not acceptable as good by the search engines. Then the search engines make changes in their algorithms or their techniques. Therefore this is like a battle between search engines and the Optimizers. So the most important thing is to be updated.
References
Google Optimization. (n.d.). Retrieved 04 03, 2010, from SEO Chat: http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/
SEO for beginers. (n.d.). Retrieved from TIZAG: http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/
SEO Questions and Answers. (n.d.). Retrieved 05 03, 2010, from SEO Forums: http://seoforums.org/seo-questions-answers/
Edgware SEO Company | MiddleSex SEO Company. (2009, December). Retrieved May 2010, from seoarena.wordpress.com: http://seoarena.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/search-engine-optimization.jpg
MySQL Workbench is a tool to design, develop and administrate SQL database as a replacement for former MySQL GUI tools buddle. It provides comprehensive set of features including MySQL instance control, entity relationship diagrams, privileges control and reverse engineering of a current live database.Most importantly you can have all the above features under one hood un-like previous MqSQL GUI tool bundle. And as always you can freely download this software without any cost regardless of the fact that MySQL tools are now developing by Oracle Corporation.
Getting Started
Installation
If you don’t have MySQL server installed, download it from here and install it. If you have WAMP server installed its already contain MySQL server. Once you make sure that MySQL server is installed and properly configured you can proceed with the installation of MySQL workbench. Download the setup file from here and simply follow the steps in installation process. In addition to that you can uninstall if you have any previous versions of MySQL GUI tool since MySQL workbench going to provide same and better service than those. Finally you can start MySQL workbench and open its main user interface.
Configuration
As the first step you should connect MySQL workbench with MySQL server. In order to do that follow the path Main menu -> Database -> Manage Connections. In there you can start new connection and provide the required parameters including Hostname, port, username and password of your installed MySQL server. Finally test connection, if its giving message “Connect parameters are correct” you are done. If not you have to check whether the parameters are correct and matching with MySQL server configuration.
Features
Graphical Data Modeling
This is one of the most important features in MySQL Workbench which was not there in previous versions of MySQL GUI tools. In order to start a new Entity relationship diagram you should go to the section “EER Diagrams” in the main GUI. There you can add diagram and start designing. Same as all the other tools you can add an entity, relationships, choose cardinality etc. The highlighted features in this tool are once you add an entity it automatically adds the primary key named as ID + entity name. You can easily develop relationships and foreign key management is automated. Most importantly if you add a Many to many relationship it will automatically adds an associate table to simplify the relationship. Once you double click the entity you can enter its specification. There you can easily add columns with data types, assign indexes, assign foreign key actions on update and on delete etc. In addition to these general features it provides advance features including role management and Partitioning to improve the performance of the databases. Finally you can create the physical data base by following the path Database -> Forward engineer. Once you do that, it will automatically create the physical database as you designed in ERD.
Reverse Engineering
This is providing feature to reverse engineer currently existing database and get the ERD out of that which is a very useful feature. In order to do that you must follow the path Database -> reverser engineer. In there you can select currently deployed data bases. You can select one of them and get the ERD out of it. Most importantly you can alter the design and recreate the data base using this tool.
Other Features
In addition to above features it provides MySQL instance control, scrip executing and various other MySQL operations. One of the most highlighted features here is Plug-in support. There are various Plug-ins provided to extend the features of MySQL workbench. In addition to that as always there is a good supporting community to back up this software, provide solutions, share knowledge and further development.
Disadvantages
Though this is very sophisticated GUI tool for MySQL databases there are some minor disadvantages as well. Mainly compared to other Database designing tools including Visual Paradigm, MySQL work bench provides limited facilities to design ERDs. The way it creates relationship is not that user friendly and the designer has made many clicks to get it done. In addition to that there is no way to reverse engineer a SQL script. If the developer can only reverse engineer a live database. Finally some times it’s giving a error on close in windows 7.
Releases
The current stable release of MySQL workbench is 5.1.18. In addition to that there is beta releases, latest one is 5.2.20 beta 10. According to their change log you may notice they are in very active development process in order to release a new stable version. All the releases are free and provides cross platform compatibility.
I think this is the GUI tools which all the SQL developers were waiting to use. It provides solutions to almost all the problems which were there is previous GUI tools. Most importantly it saves lots of time and money in the database design and development. Actually this great tool completes the MySQL server like never before.
References
Handelman, M. (2009, September). MySQL Workbench Functions On Snow Leopard. Retrieved May 2010, from infosecurity.us: https://infosecurity.us/?p=10916
Notes Of Genius is an online magazine dedicated to publish latest Technological achievements and future trends in cutting edge Technologies. NOG was founded on 1st January 2010 but had gained a great deal of popularity in a short time among readers of all kinds.
The main objective of the magazine is to create awareness about latest Technological developments among Technical and Non-technical readers. Therefore the articles are presented in a simple yet comprehensive way providing accurate information that can be easily grasped by readers of any level of technical competency.
The magazine addresses many areas where drastic technological improvements have been made such as computing, transportation, gaming etc. It also provides a platform for emerging writers to express their view points about the Technological evolution in any of the above mentioned areas.
Content
Content of the magazine is categorized under 10 main segments. The category under the name Headlines consist of a brief overview if the latest articles featured in the magazine. Software, Hardware, Internet, Games and Transportation categories contain reviews and experiences of the writers related to those areas. The Technology category is dedicated for emerging Technologies whereas articles related to possible future technological advancements and new ideas will be featured under Future Trends and Research. The Tutorials category consists of a series of tutorials related to different types of technologies. And the articles that do not fit in to any of the above categories are featured under Notes.
Contributors
The NOG team involves a team of skilled writers to publish articles and tutorials where as the editorial team looks in to the moderation of articles prior to publishing as well as the management of comments and other notes.
The readers too are given the opportunity to contribute with their articles and express their comments on the already published articles.
Web site performance optimization is the process of using various tools and techniques to reduce the size of web pages in order to minimize the load time, utilizing the bandwidth. This is one of the most critical success factors of any web site or application. There are so many technologies introduced to optimize the web application in the development time including AJAX. This article will give you an introduction to optimize your web page even with lesser technical skills, using simple tools without altering its basic architecture.
Getting Started
Before you proceed you have to prepare the development environment. First you have to setup the tool required and identify the skills required to the process.
Tools
You will be using the latest version of Mozilla Firefox browser and YSlow add-on installed on it. Before you install YSlow you have to install Firebug add-on on Firefox. YSlow is an add-on for Firefox developed by Yahoo which can be used to identify the performance level of the web pages.
Knowledge And Skills
In order to optimize the performance of your page you have to have basic knowledge of HTML, JAVAScrip and CSS. But in this process you don’t have to alter any code which already written, yet you will have to re-structure them.
Analyze
As the first step you have to identify the current state of your web site. For that open your web page in Firefox and click the YSlow icon at the right bottom of the browser window. It will pop up another window and there you can click the “Grade” button. (Choose rule sets according to your web site) Once you click, it will display the performance grade of your web site along with the overall performance score. Furthermore down the window, it will display grade for each sub-section. In addition to that there will be another tab displaying the size of each component of your web page and another tab for statistics including caching state and HTTP requests. This will give you a basic over all idea about the current state of your web site and where the performance hits are. After that you can solve the identified problems one by one.
Below section will explain the step by step process of optimizing a web page.
Performance Optimization Process
Optimize Page Content
Page content plays a big role when it comes to the performance. Pages with smaller file size will have the maximum performance. Therefore your main goal should be to make it smaller as possible. Any web page will have two main contents, which are hypermedia and text including HTML CSS and JS.
Hypermedia: Basic rule is reducing the size as much as possible. Especially for images you can reduce the resolution and use a compression like JPEG. Avoid using HTML sizing for images. If you need to optimize the performance in a greater scale you can use image Sprite. It will minimize the HTTP request for the external images.
HTML/CSS/JS: In the development time of the web page the HTML codes must be highly readable. Therefore developers keep spaces, comments, line breaks and indentation to increase the readability. But when it comes to the run time they will be a performance hit because it will increase the file size. In order to reduce the size those unnecessary characters should be removed. For that there are various HTML compressors out there. If you need to compress many HTML files at a time, you can use HTML Compress 5.5 PC application. In addition to that there are various online HTML compressors as well. You will observe, after the compression HTML, CSS and JS files are formed in to one single line or very fewer lines in the source code. At the same time you will be able to observe this will reduce the file size by around 10%. This process generally called as minifying the code.
Optimize External CSS/JS
If you have so many external JS and CSS files linked to the web page they need to pack in one single file for each type. This will reduce number of HTTP request for the external resources. Pack all the JS to one file and add the link in the bottom of the web page. Do the same for CSS and link them at the top of web page.
Now you have reduced the size of Hypermedia, HTML, CSS and JS. In addition to that you have minimized the amount of external HTTP requests as well.
Compression
After minimizing the size of hypermedia, HTML, CSS and JS codes by restructuring them, you can enforce compression to further reduce the size of them. This can be enabled by your web server. Once you enable the compression (in most cases its GZip) web server will compress the page before seeding it to the user over HTTP. GZip compression can reduce the file size in greater ratio, more than 75%. This will improve the performance of web page drastically and will be help full to utilize the bandwidth of the web server as well.
Before Compression
After Compression
By pasting below code in . htaccess file you can enable GZip in your web server.
If you don’t have access to .htaccess file you can use this code in every .php page header.
Caching
Finally you can enable caching support from your web server. Once you enable caching your browser will store most of the common content in your web page locally. Due to that browser can load that content without calling the web Server and this will save the bandwidth and reduce the HTTP request drastically.
You can control the caching by pasting below code in the .htaccess file in your web server.
Now you have completed the process of optimizing your web page. You may run the YSlow test again and feel the improvement of the performance.
Tip: WordPress users can use wpCompressor and wp-minify plug-ins to enforce GZip compression and reduce external CSS and JS calls without much effort.
References
How To Optimize Your Site With GZIP Compression. (2007, April). Retrieved April 2010, from betterexplained.com: http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-optimize-your-site-with-gzip-compression/
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended is an industry leading, powerful graphics editing & designing software for pixel based images. Having developed by Adobe Systems, the software was initially released in 1990. After the 7th version, the product was renamed as “CS – Creative Suite”. The latest version is “CS4 Extended” which was released in April, 2009. CS4 & CS4 Extended versions came with various features such as, content-aware scaling, fluid canvas rotation, auto-blending, enhanced raw image processing, better printing capabilities and many more. But the most significant feature is the support it provides for working with 3D objects. In addition, these two versions are the first to introduce 64bit processing support, which results in better memory usage than in 32bit versions. The next version, CS5 is scheduled to be released in April 2010 for Photoshop as well as for the other Adobe CS software such as Flash, Dreamweaver, Premier Pro, etc. As revealed by Adobe, this new version of Photoshop is equipped with great features such as content-aware filling, image re-composition & completion, patch-match, etc. In this tutorial Photoshop CS4 Extended version for Microsoft Windows will be explained. However, if you’re unable to use this version due to any reason, you can use an older CS version including the 7th one. Although you may not be able to do all the things that can be done with the newer versions, you can still use the most of the recent versions to get your work done. And even if you are not a PS* fan, you’ll still find this to be useful, since similar kind of products are intended come with similar features up to some extent.
*Both terms “Photoshop” & “Ps” will be used interchangeably throughout the article.
Getting Started
What do you want to do?
First of all, you must find the answer to this question because how effectively you can use PS will be decided depending on your requirement. More specifically, you should clarify whether you need PS to work with or not. For an example, if you have to work with a lot of shapes, lines, illustrations & such things (which are called vector graphics), then you may use Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw or Inkscape etc. rather than Photoshop. (Inkscape is a good open source alternative for vector graphics.) This is because those applications are designed specifically to work with vector graphics whereas Photoshop is not so. Photoshop is basically appropriate to design & edit pixel based images.
Does it suit my work?
Think of the range of the work you need to get done. If you just want to do relatively simple things, you can use Microsoft Paint or an open source alternative such as GIMP rather than going for PS. Because, you must consider whether you would use a simple &/or easily reachable software or a highly expensive product (though powerful) such as Photoshop to create a simple birthday card (at the time I’m writing this, the retail price of Photoshop CS4 Extended version is US$999).
It’s just a tool
This is a very important thing that you must keep in mind, when working with Photoshop (this is applicable to any technology you would use, indeed). Though it’s a nice piece of software, in the end the output will depend on your talent. Hence, you must try to put some degree of creativity in to your work.
Installation
Currently, Photoshop supports only Microsoft Windows & Apple Mac OS X platforms. Following are some of the minimum requirements for the installation of PhotoshopCS4 Extended version on the windows platform, as recommended by Adobe.
Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or later
1.8GHz or faster processor
512MB of Ram (1GB recommended)
1GB free hard-disk space for the installation & additional space required during the installation.
1024×768 (1280×800 recommended) display with 16-bit video card
If your computer has a multi-core processor, you will feel better. From my personal experience, it’s better to have at least 1GB of memory, if you’re going to work with a lot of effects & higher resolutions. For the program files (including the additional software), it takes only about half of the required disk space. The rest is taken up during the installation process. It will be better if you have a larger monitor (at least 17”), since there is enough space & higher resolution that will be helpful to improve the quality.
Preparation
Before start working in Photoshop, we may do two things.
Identify the workspace
Setting up the preferences
Identify the workspace
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended – Screenshot
After the installation, open the application and you will see a similar interface as shown above. Here is a little introduction to the environment, in which you’re going to work.
*If you have uninstalled CS4 Extended version before, you might see that, there is an option in the un-installation process as “Remove Application Preferences”. Before uninstalling, if you had customized the PS preferences, workspace & other settings, & if you didn’t check that option to remove the preferences at the un-installation, you might get a little different workspace than the default view shown above.
Application Bar
Though it has a new look, it contains some of the already known, common features. Therefore it makes reaching those tools from a single location easier.
Workspace Switcher
This is a new useful feature. It automatically & very quickly modifies the workspace according to the user’s choice. This includes options such as, “Basic, Advanced 3D, Video, Web” & more. As the name implies, when the user selects one of those options, the PS workspace is automatically changes according to the selected option. Mostly, these modifications are done regarding the palettes (by default, placed at the right). For an example, if you choose “Typography”, the workspace will be modified by showing up the palettes such as Character, Paragraph & Styles, which allow you to do modification to the text in your documents such as change the font attributes, setup the alignments & apply various effects. If you have worked with any older version of PS, probably you might have faced the problem of reaching the necessary palettes & other tools to get your work done. For example, if we had to paint something & the Brush palette is closed or not popped up, then in the old way, we will have to choose it from the Window menu or take it in to the front to be visible. Since this new enhanced feature offers us almost all the necessary tools that are needed to do a specific task, we don’t have to repeatedly go looking for it & get bored. Also, there is an option at the end of this menu as “Save Workspace”. This allows us to save the workspace we customized as desired. This may increase the ease of using the software further. Choose different options & observe the changes happen in the environment & their features. The default workspace is “Essential”. So for now, you may leave it as it is.
Main Menu
As you might have seen in most application software, PS has a main menu bar which includes menus for almost all the tools we need to work with. As usual, there are shortcut keys to most of them.
Options Bar
As you can see in the above screen shot, the option bar is placed by default below the main menu bar. As the name implies, this area includes the options related to the tool you have currently selected. Choose several tools from the tools palette. You may notice that, some options are unique & some options are common for several tools.
Tools Palette
This includes various tools to work in PS which we use very often at work. There are single tools & grouped tools. You can identify the grouped tools by a little triangle at the lower right corner of those tools. To see & choose the hidden tools of the grouped tools, right click on the tool. Then you’ll be able to view the related sub tools.
Other Palettes
Except the Tools palette, the rest of the palettes are usually placed or to be placed at the right side. While we use the tools in the tools palette to do various tasks such as drawing, painting, cutting & typing, the rest of the palettes include a lot of options to make adjustments to those work.
The Document Window
His window consists of the working area with some other features such as the zoom level, document size etc. at the bottom. We can have our opened documents docked in one window in a tabbed manner or undock them as we desire.
Setting up the Preferences
Here, we’re going to look in to some configurations in PS CS4 Extended, & modify them as necessary. Setting up the configuration to meet our needs will make it easier efficient to use the software once we’ve started working.
First, open Photoshop & choose Edit > Preferences > General from the main menu (Ctrl + K). Now, you must have got the dialogue window as below.
Preferences Dialogue Window – General Tab
I feel it’s better to introduce some options displayed here, which might be useful to you so that you can adjust them as you need. Here are some options appear in the “General tab”.
Auto-Update Open Documents
Assume that, you need to work on the same image in both PS & some other application (GIMP for an example) at the same time. When you did some changes to the image in GIMP & saved them, you may have to close & re-open the same image in PS to see those changes. But, if you enable this option, you won’t need to do so. Meaning, when you saved some changes to the image in GIMP, you just have to come back (focus) to PS. You’ll see that, the changes you made in GIMP are updated in the same image without having to re-open. So, this is a really useful option, if you have to work on the same image in two places at the same time. By default, this option is disabled (not checked) in PS CS4 Extended version.
Zoom with Scroll Wheel
Check this option if you need to zoom using the scroll wheel of the mouse. I think this is the easiest to way to do so. If you enable this option, you won’t be able to scroll the window up & down using the scroll wheel as it is in the normal way. Hence to do it, you must hold down the Alt key while you’re scrolling using the wheel. If you want to get an even zoom ratio, you may also hold down the Shit key (as well as Alt) while you’re zooming in or out using the scroll wheel. But, if you use the zoom tool in the tools palette, you will always get an even value for zooming. This option is also disabled by default.
Zoom Clicked Point to Center
Not checked by default. When this option is checked, whenever you click on some location of an image to zoom, that point becomes the center of the view. This is useful when you have to zoom in to a large value because, without this option you might have to scroll to the required location since it might be not appeared in the viewable area.
History Log
Assume that, you did a really good work but you forgot how you did it when you want to do it again. If it’s a simple work, then you may find it out easily. But, it’s not that easy when it comes to a lot of drawings, text, effects, etc. as you’ll have to spend a lot of time & effort to find how you did it. This option is very useful in a context like that. Check the option, & then you’ll be allowed to choose one of three options. If you just want to store the editing details for your own purpose, just select the option called “Text File”. If you’re selecting that option for the first time, you will be asked for a location to save the file. Under the History Log, there is another option called “Edit Log Items”. By default the “Sessions Only” option is selected. It just stores the details of opening & closing of PS & each file with date, time details. If you select the second option called “Concise”, the session details & the data appearing in the “History palette” will be saved. The last option “Detailed” allows saving all of the previously mentioned details as well as the details appearing in the “Actions palette”. This option is useful to you, if you need to track the complete history.
A History Log File (With Detailed tracking)
Now, select the Performance tab from the left side and the Preference options will be displayed. There are some important configurations that directly reflect the effect at work.
Preferences Dialog Window – Performance Tab
Memory Usage
Here you can see the available free RAM capacity from the total RAM capacity installed in your computer. “Ideal Range” is the suggested RAM capacity to assign to Photoshop by itself. Percentagewise it is usually around 70%. You can assign the suggested value of RAM or a value decided by yourself using the “Let Photoshop Use” text box or by dragging the slider. This is a critical setting. It’s better, if you assign at least 50% of the available RAM. When you’re working with a lot of images &/or with higher resolutions you will be required more memory. Anyway, it’s not a good idea to assign the entire available RAM to PS.
History & Cache
“History States” is to specify a number of history states to appear in the History palette, that can be used later to go back to some points of your working. “Cache Levels” helps to speed up the redraw of images with higher resolutions. The default value is 4. To disable caching, select the value 1. However, don’t disable this option. A value less than 4 is suited to work with lot of layers but with a small number of pixels. A higher value is good to work with large documents, but with fewer layers.
Scratch Disks
Works like the virtual memory of an operating system. When there is no enough RAM memory to work, it will free some memory from the specified drive/s &/or from the partition/s. PS detects the internal disk partitions & list them here as you can specify them. Usually the disk partition, on which the operating system is installed, is selected as the primary scratch disk by PS automatically. You might not able deactivate it from the list, but you can assign another partition as you desire. Adobe recommends implementing the scratch disks in a different drive/partition than the one, where the operating system uses the free disk space as its virtual memory. This is because if the operating system’s virtual memory uses the free disk space, where both virtual memory & the PS scratch disk are at one place, then if there is no sufficient free disk space to be allocated by the PS scratch disks, it will affect the performance PS critically. If you get the error message from PS as “The scratch disk is full”, then you will have to free some disk space by deleting PS temporary files. You may find them named in a format as “~PST####.tmp”, where “####” is a number. If you don’t want to free the disk space manually, you can use “Windows Disk Cleanup” or similar tool to do so.
GPU Settings
CS4 & CS4 Extended versions include this feature. GPU means the “Graphics Processing Unit” of the graphics display card installed in your computer. GPU improves the screen redraw instead of using the main processor of the computer for that. “Screen redraw” means, redisplay something on the screen. This is required when some modifications are made to the current drawing of the screen. The support of GPU for OpenGL (v 2.0), 126MB of RAM & Shader Model 3.0. Otherwise, this option might have disabled. This feature is useful to work smoothly while zooming, rotating & working with 3D objects in CS4 Extended version, etc. These preferences might be very useful to anyone, who is going to work with Photoshop CS4 Extended version. Except Other than these, you can find more options in the preferences. You can check them out by yourself if you want. This article focuses only on some configurations, which are critical to the performance.
So, this is your time. Check these out & you’ll be ready to get started. Whenever you want to set the default settings (such as preferences, workspace, etc) hold down the Ctrl, Alt & Shift keys as soon as you open the PS. This must be done before the initialization process at the startup. If you did it correctly, you will be asked to delete the current Photoshop settings file. Click “Yes”. Then the software will opened with default settings configured.
References
(2010, April). Retrieved from adobe.com: http://www.adobe.com
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iPhone OS 4.0 will be released for iPhone 3GS and third generation iPods later this summer. The new OS 4.0 upgrade will be available for iPad this fall. It has packed around 100 new features for iPhone 3GS something like multitasking, ability to create folders, better mail client, iBook and iAd. But, not all features are compatible with all devices like multitasking is not available for iPhone 3G and earlier iPod touch versions.
New Features in OS 4.0
Multitasking
iPhone’s multitasking solution allow several third party apps to run in the background while the user working with another application. It is handled with a simple task switcher by double click the home button. When click the home button, it will show a list of currently running applications. You have to select the application and it will switch to it. The system gives preferences to running tasks and less preferences to others as needed. It allows the user to pause some applications, while enabling some special service to allow some types of tasks such as answering calls or playing music on the background. Apple has listed seven kinds of services that will give the user the kind of multitasking without choking the system
Background Audio: This can be done apps like Pandora, where user can listen to music while doing another task.
Voice over IP – VoIP: Before multitasking implemented, VoIP applications were limited as they were not active all the time to receive incoming calls
Background Location: There are two kinds of applications—turn-by-turn direction GPS applications like TomTom would run this service in the background to tracks where you are, while you are working on another app, and social networking application like Loopt.
Push notifications: This was already a background task, but it has been expanded in OS 4.0.
Local notifications: These notifications are generated by the iPhone applications and can be sent between the applications. If something important happened in background, a notification will popup whatever the app you are using at the time. This is an effective way of keep tracking between the applications.
Task completion: This will allow applications to finish the tasks started before switching to another application. It pops up an alert when the app task is done, even when you are using some other apps
Fast app switching: This will allow currently running applications to available instantly rather than start them up each time. All the application can now be frozen in full, so when you reopen them, they are restored exactly to the previous state.
iBook
The iBook, which was only available for Apple’s iPad, is now available for iPhone, now you can take your books with you wherever you go as oppose to iPad. iBook now available for iPod Touch as well. Currently it is only available in United States only as it has some complexity of geographic distribution deals with publishers.
iAd
iAd, Apple’s newest interactive advertisement platform. According to Jobs, it offers ‘interaction and emotions’ which is middle of where web ads and TV ads to the app users. Those ads are going to be served without leaving the current app you are working on, and then you can close the ad at any time and return to the app where you left it. It offers variety of interactive options like sounds and video clips and games within the advertisement. According to Jobs, one ad every three minutes would lead to 1 billion ad impression per day over Apple’s 100 million devices. Apple will host the ads and developers will receive 60% of iAd revenue. The iAd is based on HTML5.
New Mail App
Unified inbox with multiple email exchange accounts with fast inbox switching with a few taps. It allows users to open attachments using specific applications. Organized by thread and groups together messages by date.
Application Folders
For better organizing, OS 4.0 has a folder feature. Now, user can create folders according to App Store category, and users can rename it as well.
Game Center
Apple’s going to start a centralized gaming service such as Xbox Live to connect players online and the scores can be viewed anyone on the network. This service will be available by the end of this year.
Bluetooth Keyboard Support
This is another feature taken from the iPad. Now, iPhone 4.0 support Bluetooth Keyboard.
Custom Backgrounds
Now you can choose different backgrounds for your iPhone 4 and not just for the lockscreen
Enterprise Features
Better data protection: Encrypted emails and PIN coded attachments
Mobile device management: Lets IT managers to deploy iPhone and manage them remotely
Wireless app distribution. Companies can push out custom apps over the air instead of relying on iTunes sync.
Support for multiple exchange accounts
Support for Exchange server 2010
SSL VPN support from Juniper and Cisco
Disadvantages
There are many hardware compatibility issues when migrating to iPhone OS 4.0. You cannot have multitasking features in your iPhone 3G and if you want to have that experience, you have to buy a new iPhone with OS 4.0. Even in 3GS model, it does not have a front camera yet, so you cannot take video calls nor do video chat though it is a multimedia phone. These features are mandatory and people are expecting them on upcoming editions. iPhone OS 4.0 does not support Java. There are number of free Java applications available all over the net but you cannot use them. They have HTML5 as an alternative for Flash. This might be a good idea but you cannot watch flash videos or browse flash sites. Only few sites support HTML5 Currently such as YouTube.
Competitors
While Apple is trying to implement the multitasking, the windows mobile has implemented it years ago. From the services and enterprise level, Windows mobile is in a leading level around the globe. There are no free things in Apple, if you want a book, you have to buy it from iBook, and for music, you need pay and download it from iTunes. But in windows mobile, there are large number of sites and lot of applications available for free. People love Apple, because of its multimedia features, and it has a great support for gaming. But the future of the Apple’s stability is depends on what are the enterprise level services it offers, how much it supports for free and open source software, and how much its applications support world wide. Most of its features limited to United States. Even though it has many wonderful features, not everyone can get benefit out of them.
After all, there is a question mark in my mind. Will iPhone OS 4.0 be able beat its competitors even with these upgrades?
References
(2010, April). Retrieved April 2010, from media.techworld.com: http://media.techworld.com/cmsdata/products/3219758/iPhone%20OS%204.jpg
Iiphone OS 40 All The New Features. (2010, April). Retrieved April 2010, from Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/5512635/iphone-os-40-all-the-new-features
iPhone OS 4.0: Multitasking arrives (live blog). (2010, April). Retrieved April 2010, from Cnet: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20001876-37.html
New iphone os 4 features. (2010, April). Retrieved April 2010, from The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/08/new-iphone-os-4-features_n_530401.html#s79663
OpenID is a decentralized standard identity system for authenticating users with the same identity on different web based services. It is like an internationally accepted driver’s license for web. You can use a single username and password all over the web instead of maintaining number of logins. OpenID simply eliminates the need for number of logins on internet. OpenID identity is actually not…
OpenID is a decentralized standard identity system for authenticating users with the same identity on different web based services. It is like an internationally accepted driver’s license for web. You can use a single username and password all over the web instead of maintaining number of logins. OpenID simply eliminates the need for number of logins on internet.
OpenID identity is actually not a username and password system. Technically, they are URLs. Something likes this,
http://claimid.com/username
http://username.myopenid.com
http://me.yahoo.com/username
You have to give your credentials to the OpenID provider website, and the provider is responsible to notify the other sites that you are who you claim to be. After you have claimed the authentication and authorization, you can use the website as a registered logged in user. Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect are some examples of OpenID. The main difference in the OpenID is a single company does not control it. There are number of companies you can choose to obtain an OpenID.
To use the OpenID credentials, the website should have the OpenID login feature, and if you can find the OpenID logo somewhere on the webpage, you can use your OpenID to login. This form then connects with the OpenID client library.
Behind The Scene
There are two parties involved in an OpenID transaction, Consumer and Provider. A Consumer (also called a Relying Party) is an OpenID enabled web site. A Provider plays the role as a registrar. It allows users to create and manage OpenID URLs and accounts, and authenticates the user to Consumers. This is an open source framwork service, and anyone can be a Consumer or a Provider without any cost of licensing fees. You can find a large number of web applications allow users to log in using the OpenID credentials and number of sites have become the service Providers all over the web.
When a user tries to log into a Consumer site using OpenID, the Consumer site contacts the Provider to verify the user’s credentials. The user may be redirected to the Provider and asked to sign in using Provider password. When its done successfully, the user will automatically redirected to the Consumer site with granted access as a registered user.
Getting Started With OpenID
To use OpenID, you should have an OpenID account with one of the many providers on the web. If you have an account with Google, Yahoo, AOL, LiveJernal, Blogger, Flickr, MySpace or any other common big name OpenID providers, then you already have an OpenID. If you want, you can have an OpenID account with some dedicated OpenID providers, such as MyOpenID or ClaimID. This is called as ‘home base’. Even if you choose any of the services, you’ll get a unique URL that you can use around the web.
Getting Used To OpenID
The main confusion of using OpenID is, it is not a normal username and password but it is usually a URL something looks like this: http://username.providername.com.
To log into an OpenID enabled Consumer site
Find the OpenID logo somewhere on the web page
Paste your OpenID URL in the provided text field and press Enter
You’ll be asked to sign into you account back at your ‘home base’. You have to provide the username and the password to the ‘home base’ account.
At last, you will have to provide some of your basic details like your name and profile picture.
That is all. No need to register, no need to confirm.
Benefit Of OpenID For Different Level Of Internet Users
General Internet User
Convenient online experience: Do not have to memorize a number of username and password for different sites
Security: If you could find a secure OpenID provider, the phishing attack surface is reduced.
E-Commerce And OpenID Consumers.
Being an OpenID consumer, they can give a simple user registration to the users. This will give a major attractiveness for website.
With the user’s approval, the OpenID let know more about the visitors to the consumers to target their market
Can be prevent from identity theft, as the login information can be retrieved from OpenID
OpenID is not a perfect solution for a normal user, until he’s getting used to it, and to prevent the security problem, the user must choose a secured OpenID provider.
References
(2010). Retrieved on 2010, April from wired.com: http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Use_OpenID
(2010). Retrieved on 2010, April from zdnet.com: http://blogs.zdnet.com/digitalID/?p=78
(2010). Retrieved on 2010, April from penn-olson.com: http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/openid.gif
