Exiles' top goal is not finishing top, says Smith

9:00am Saturday 4th January 2014 in Sport By Damian Dolan

London Welsh have the opportunity to regain top spot when they visit Jersey this afternoon, but assistant coach Ollie Smith has stressed that finishing top is not the clubs primary motivation.

After setting the pace in the Greene King IPA Championship for so long, the exiles slipped to a second consecutive league defeat to London Scottish at the Kassam Stadium last time out, on the back of losing at Bedford Blues.

The festive period duly saw them knocked off the top of the table by Bristol, but while the Exiles have the chance to reclaim top spot at St Peter (kick-off 2pm), finishing in the top four is the aim.

Its about what happens at the end of the season, said Smith. Wed like to be top but it means very little and that was proven when London Welsh finished fourth and got promoted.

Yeah, its nice to be top but we go from day to day and game to game, and our focus is very much on what needs to be done to win at the weekend.

Hopefully in hindsight those two defeats, and maybe one or two more than happen along the way because weve got some tough places to go to, will stand us in better stead than going unbeaten.

It proves we are beatable and while youd love to go into a game with the opposition thinking they havent got a chance, in your own mind youve got to have fear yourself to get the result you need.

Thats the key thing to come out of these last two games. Where could we have done better? Why did we lose?

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SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - The CHP and other law enforcement agencies will be out in full force Tuesday, keeping an eye out for New Year's revelers who choose to drink and drive.

Checkpoints and saturation patrols will be set up around the county, and partiers are being urged to designate a driver.

"Make sure you have a sober driver before you go out. That way you don't have to put yourself in a situation when the night is over that you're getting behind the wheel while you're intoxicated," CHP Officer Tommy Doerr said.

Of course, there is no need to get behind the wheel at all with the number of ride-sharing options now available. High-tech alternatives to hailing a traditional taxi cab include Lyft, Sidecar and Uber.

With these services, customers needing a ride first download the company's app on their smartphone. With Uber, you can choose three different levels of service, from a less-expensive standard sedan to a Pricer SUV for larger crowds. You can see in real time where the closest available Uber drivers are to your location, and with a quick tap, request one of them. You even see who your driver is, and what kind of car they're picking you up in,

Because you upload your credit card info ahead of time, there's no need for cash. You're simply billed later, including the tip.

"You get in, you get out. You don't have to worry about anything," Uber general manager Chris Ballard said.

Although keep in mind the price for an Uber ride fluctuates depending on the demand, so peak request times -- such as just after midnight tonight -- will be a bit pricier.

"If you can wait just a little while longer, keep checking your app as the prices do change dynamically. The later on in the evening as demand goes down, the lower the price is going to be for that ride," Ballard said.

Before you order your ride through Uber, there is a fare estimate feature as part of the app to get an idea of how much you'll be charged at any given time.

Excerpt from:

New ride shares can get you home safe for cheap

Trapped in a lift, thanks to a sudden power cut, I picked up my phone in the claustrophobic dark space and... clicked a selfie. For those judging me, come on, you know you would do it too. After all, this phenomenon was quite the rage this year.

The Pope did it. Barrack Obama does it...boy, arent we in good company? Closer home, a clutch of celebrities and sports stars, including Priyanka Chopra, Shah Rukh Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Sania Mirza, often splatter their Twitter accounts with self shots and fans arent complaining.

Keeping the trend in mind, photographer Atul Kasbekar launched an app titled Signature Selfies. All one has to do is upload his/her best selfie and win an opportunity to get their photo shot by the ace photographer. Actor Lekha Washington may not be incessantly clicking selfies but is all for it. We all need a witness, documentation as it were, and I see nothing wrong with selfies. Artists have been doing self-portraits for centuries. Its how you take a selfie that says a lot about you. Vanity is a hard thing to remove from a selfie, as are duck faces! she adds.

The word selfie has been around for a while with the first one being shot in the mid 1800s. But it was one of those words nobody paid any attention to till camera phones, Instagram and the social media-self obsessed lot like us took to it with a vengeance. Its popularity skyrocketed and so did the number of selfies on Facebook. The Oxford Dictionary went ahead and made it the word of the year. Apparently it was a unanimous choice. Even Miley Cyrus much-talked-about act at the MTV VMA couldnt do much to get twerk the coveted title. According to the Oxford dictionary, selfie is defined as aphotograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.

Vacation spots often have wide-eyed travellers clicking selfies in front of monuments. Pictures of peoples faces in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and the Taj Mahal are common on websites. It doesnt matter anymore that the actual subjects are partially covered by the selfie enthusiasts face. Its a good thing Mona Lisa cannot complain about how often she gets photobombed. Unfortunately, decorum has taken a backseat with tourists clicking selfies at sombre monuments such as the Auschwitz Memorial, Pearl Harbour and tombs. One of the news reports of a Canada-based website even suggested that sculptors, of late, are making monuments keeping the selfie obsession in mind, so that the selfie, when clicked, can comfortablyaccommodateboth the person andthemonument. Taking the obsession a step further and not necessarily in good taste, Tumblr has a group titled Selfies at Funerals that documents selfies clicked by its members at funerals or other such melancholic events.

So what is it that makes selfies so popular? It does feednarcissistictendencies. But it also makes me look good. I know which angle works for me. Its better than requesting people to keep clicking till they get the perfect shot, right? says 20-year-old Anoushka Sarkar who clicks around 30 selfies of herself in a week.

Paloma Rao says, I am so bad at selfies. I am still trying to perfect my aim. I think selfies are convenient and tell a story. Its the random, no-purpose ones that I dont quite understand.

Some are unapologetic advocates of selfies, while there are a few who have self shots posted across their pages but are embarrassed to comment about them. And then there are those who find the whole concept annoying and futile.

Its not clear whether the trend is here to stay or will fizzle out, but while it lasts we are making the most of it. So pose, pout and click, its time for a selfie!

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I, Me, Selfie!

Health care reform is looking to people like me -- late twentysomethings and thirtysomethings -- to switch from no insurance to the Affordable Care Act.

But I value my time over money, and I don't mind paying higher amounts for convenience. I have no interest in being on hold with customer service reps or dealing with a clunky website, concerns I had when the website first rolled out.

I didn't decide to check out the federal health exchange website until the weekend before Christmas. Days before, a former employer left a voicemail that my temporary health insurance through COBRA would jump up by 20 percent.

COBRA, the Con-solidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, had been eating through my bank account each month since the spring when I left a job in Vermont.

I lived in California for most of this year, and there were even some months where health insurance cost more than my monthly apartment rent.

I work here at The Times as a government and politics reporter, and my health benefits will start March 1. I had figured I would just keep paying for COBRA, but the thought of not having insurance for some months crossed my mind -- I don't really need it.

But after hearing that voicemail, I signed up on Dec. 22 through HealthCare.gov. It took about 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes at most.

Then I spent about an hour altogether last week making sure the enrollment was successful, calling up customer service staff at the marketplace and my new Pittsburgh-area insurance provider.

Two phone calls and two online chat sessions later with the health insurance marketplace, I found out that if you live in Pennsylvania, you apparently can't upload documents through HealthCare.gov.

Things like that made me think the website was built by teenagers.

Here is the original post:

Why I wavered on signing up for Affordable Care Act

American model Chrissy Teigen has caused quite a stir due to her recent Instagram video upload.

Although the video was a prank, it raised concerns from many of her Instagram followers, as it initially looked like anything but a joke.

As a matter of fact, lots of fans found it quite creepy and offensive.

The short 15-second clip features Teigen and her husband, R&B soul singer John Legend. In the video, John Legend is grabbing Teigen by the throat while she wished her fans Merry Christmas. However, the video doesnt stop there.

It actually gets a little more disconcerting. The camera then moved to focus on his hand closing around her neck. Teigen even struggled, and fought back while crying out for help.

To the average viewer, the footage appeared to be real and quite disturbing. There was no clear ending as the clip ended abruptly. But, as soon as it was posted, the comments started pouring in, and the video quickly began to attract attention outside of Instagram.

What started as a joke turned out to be rather offensive. A number of critics even called the actual dramatization tasteless. Shortly after Teigen began noticing the negative comments and backlash, she immediately removed the video from her Instagram timeline.

While most who viewed the actual video were outraged, this isnt the first time Teigen has taken an Instagram joke too far. UPI reports that the Sports Illustrated model posted a video that she coined, raspberry vagina. The video, which was posted back in October,featured an obscene gesture and an offensive sexual innuendo.

It captured Teigen blowing an actual raspberry into another models crotch while another unidentified person explained the terminology.

Read the original:

Chrissy Teigen Deletes Choking Instagram Video

Paul Routledge says: At the back of my mind is a natural unease about where this is all going, because we have no control over the activities of those who wish to harm us

Many lucky people got a smartphone or a tablet or some such electronic gizmo for Christmas. It is the choice of the text Santa age.

The givers of these presents believe they were doing their friends or family a favour. The recipients certainly think so.

But, as the old proverb says, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

These little magic machines can be a greater source of evil than they are of good.

Consider the facts. Barely a week goes by without reports of a girl killing herself because of cyber-bullying.

Chelsea Clark, 13, of Wolverhampton, hanged herself in her bedroom.

Her mother blamed websites that target the young and vulnerable.

Izzy Dix, 14, of Brixham, Devon, also hanged herself, after being chiselled away by cruel remarks. She wrote a moving poem, I Give Up, on her mobile phone.

The lethal side of social media is not confined to the young.

Originally posted here:

The age of the smartphone - but I fear the internet revolution will devour its children

We are getting a good glimpse of Johnny Depp's latest project Transcendence, thanks to the sci-fi film's first full-length trailer.

"The path to building super intelligence requires us to unlock the most fundamental secrets of the universe," Depp, who portrays scientist Dr. Will Caster, tells an audience. "Imagine a machine with a full range of human emotion. Its analytical power will be greater than the collective intelligence of every person in the history of the world." Little does he know his life is about to change drastically.

PHOTOS: Movies from the future

Shortly after this speech, it is revealed that an anti-tech group is conducting a series of attacks and have hit A.I. labs all over the country. Depp's character gets shot with a radiation-laced bullet and he is told the effects are irreversible.

Even though Depp's body is dying, his mind is very much alive. The decision is made to upload Depp's consciousness into a computer and although this grants him tremendous power, he soon becomes unstoppable.

Kate Mara, Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall, Cillian Murphy and Paul Bettany also star. Longtime Christopher Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister is making his directorial debut.

Transcendence, produced by Warner Bros., hits theaters on April 18, 2014.

PHOTOS: Johnny Depp's most memorable roles

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Johnny Depp's Transcendence Trailer Released—Watch Now!

If "large files" (ie: 50 or 100 MB) fail, check this:

It may happen that your outgoing connection to the server is slow, and it may timeout not the "execution time" but the "input time", which for example in our system defaulted to 60s. In our case a large upload could take 1 or 2 hours.

Additionally we had "session settings" that should be preserved after upload.

1) You might want review those ini entries:

* session.gc_maxlifetime * max_input_time * max_execution_time * upload_max_filesize * post_max_size

2) Still fails? Caution, not all are changeable from the script itself. ini_set() might fail to override.

More info here: http://www.php.net/manual/es/ini.list.php

You can see that the "upload_max_filesize", among others, is PHP_INI_PERDIR and not PHP_INI_ALL. This invalidates to use ini_set(): http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.modes.php

Use .htaccess instead.

3) Still fails?. Just make sure you enabled ".htaccess" to overwrite your php settings. This is made in the apache file. You need at least AllowOverride Options.

See more here:

PHP: Handling file uploads - Manual

Depp undergoes an eerie transformation for this futuristic new sci-fi movie.

Johnny Depp is to undergo a cinematic transformation once again for new sci-fi thriller Transcendence. Directed by Wally Pfister, whose credits include Inception and The Prestige, the movie will star Depp as a scientist whose brain is uploaded to a supercomputer after his death.

Johnny Depp's New Film Sees The Actor Transformed Into An Automative Computer.

Will Caster (Depp) is a computer scientist at the forefront of artificial intelligence research, he is taken out by an anti-technology activist who stands against Caster's pioneering work into computer emotion. Determined not to die, the scientist and his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) rush to find a way to upload his consciousness so that he can communicate even beyond the grave. However, not everybody is so sure of what will happen if they succeed, especially as Carter's mind begins to evolve.

Pfister's unnerving thriller explores a future of science without boundaries and the untold effect that merging robotics with human emotional intelligence can have upon mankind.

Watch The 'Transcendence' Trailer:

As an actor, Depp has been transformed into all manner of characters and creatures, from the Mad Hatter, to Willy Wonka to drunken pirate Jack Sparrow.

What about Johnny Depp's other new film, Mortdecai?

Transcendence will see him transformed into a highly intelligent computer in his first high-profile science fiction role alongside Morgan Freeman, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy and Paul Bettany.

Not only is this sleek-looking movie the first solo-helmed project from Pfister, the director also calls upon rookie screenwriter Jack Paglen to produce a movie in the vein of Inception crossed with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Read more from the original source:

Johnny Depp's New Sci-Fi Thriller 'Transcendence' Trailer Drops [Trailer]

Unsung Hero: Berrylands piano teacher has coached children for 50 years

6:00am Sunday 22nd December 2013 in News By Eleanor Steafel

A piano teacher has coached children to prizewinning success for half a century, and even helps organise the music festival they enter.

Mavis Wilton, who has lived in Berrylands for more than 50 years, has spent that time giving piano lessons after making her mind up in 1943.

She said: It certainly doesnt feel like 50 years, but this is a dream that I have been playing out since I was 10 years old, when I decided I wanted to be a piano teacher.

My piano teacher used to visit. She used to have a music case bulging with new music.

Now I have got drawers full of lovely new music ready for teaching.

Miss Wilton, 80, said she knew she wanted to play the instrument for a living when she took part in the Kingston Performing Arts Festival as a child.

She said: I actually entered the competition myself in 1942 when I was nine years old and still at school.

Now I have pupils of my own in the festival every year and my daughter has carried on the tradition too.

More here:

Unsung Hero: Piano teacher has coached children for 50 years

AILO Scorpion
With AILO you can create simple or complex constructions and put them into work under the physics laws. - Build the system you have in your mind. - Upload your creations to the web. -...

By: AILO

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AILO Scorpion - Video

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Whole brain emulation (WBE) or mind uploading (sometimes called "mind copying" or "mind transfer") refers to the hypothetical process of copying the totality or considerable majority of mental contents (or consciousness) from a particular brain and transferring it to another storage medium (substrate-independent mind (SIM)), most commonly an engineered substrate that is digital, analogue, or quantum-based. The aim is to replicate the functions of neurophysiology and the structure of neuroanatomy that determines the interactions of basic components. Underlying the notion of mind uploading is the broad philosophy that consciousness lies within the brain, and can, in principle, be separated from the brain and re-implemented into a different physical form. This is not to deny that minds are richly adapted to their substrates, but rather to assert that mind is in essence about patterns of organization and behavior, and that the same patterns of organization and behavior can be realized via multiple different substrates.The focus of mind uploading is on data acquisition, rather than data maintenance of the brain. Mind uploading may essentially provide a permanent backup to our "mind-file". Given that the electrochemical signals that brains use to achieve thought travel at one hundred meters per second, while the electronic signals in computers are sent at three hundred million meters per second, this means that an electronic counterpart of a human biological brain might be able to think thousands to millions of times faster than our naturally evolved systems. As such, mind uploading might provide the mind a tremendous improvement in computational capacity.

Mind uploading could be accomplished by scanning and mapping a biological brain in detail, and then by copying and storing the information and computational processes of the brain into a computer system or another computational device. The computer could then run a simulation model of the conscious mind, such that it behaves in essentially the same way as the original brain (i.e., indistinguishable from the brain for all relevant purposes). A set of approaches known as Loosely-Coupled Off-Loading (LCOL) may be used in the attempt to characterize and copy the mental contents of a brain. The LCOL approach may take advantage of self-reports, life-logs and video recordings that can be analyzed by artificial intelligence. A bottom-up approach may focus on the specific resolution and morphology of neurons, the spike times of neurons, the times at which neurons produce action potential responses. [1] The simulated mind could be within a virtual reality or simulated world, supported by an anatomic 3D body simulation model. Alternatively, the simulated mind could reside in a computer that's inside (or connected to) a humanoid robot or a biological body.

Whole brain emulation is discussed by some futurists as a "logical endpoint"[1] of the topical computational neuroscience and neuroinformatics fields, both about brain simulation for medical research purposes. It is discussed in artificial intelligence research publications[2] as an approach to strong AI. Among some futurists and within the transhumanist movement it is an important proposed life extension technology, originally suggested in biomedical literature in 1971.[3] It is a central conceptual feature of numerous science fiction novels and films.

Mainstream scientists, potential research funders and scientific journals presently remain skeptical of the feasibility of mind uploading. Although, in recent years, an increasingly large community of serious mind uploading researchers has emerged, taking this seemingly science-fictional notion seriously and pursuing it via experimental and theoretical research programs. According to these supporters, many of the tools and ideas needed to achieve mind uploading already exist or are currently under active development; however, they will admit that others are as yet very speculative but still in the realm of engineering possibility. Neuroscientist Randal Koene has formed a nonprofit organization called Carbon Copies to promote mind uploading research. Mind uploading research is dramatically cross-disciplinary, involving domains including brain imaging, computer science, neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, nanotechnology, genomics and biotechnology, psychology, philosophy, and consciousness studies. Substantial mainstream research in related areas is being conducted to develop faster super computers, virtual reality, brain-computer interfaces, animal brain mapping and simulation, connectomics and information extraction from dynamically functioning brains.[4]

Critics of mind uploading as a means of life extension often dismiss it as wishful thinking, claiming that even an exact copy of oneself would constitute an entirely independent (different) entity, whose (identical) sentiments (joy, pain) are virtually irrelevant to the original, by any egoistical definition.[citation needed] The question whether an emulated brain can be a human mind is debated by philosophers.

The human brain contains about 85 billion nerve cells called neurons, each individually linked to other neurons by way of connectors called axons and dendrites. Signals at the junctures (synapses) of these connections are transmitted by the release and detection of chemicals known as neurotransmitters. The established neuroscientific consensus is that the human mind is largely an emergent property of the information processing of this neural network.

Importantly, neuroscientists have stated that important functions performed by the mind, such as learning, memory, and consciousness, are due to purely physical and electrochemical processes in the brain and are governed by applicable laws. For example, Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi wrote in IEEE Spectrum:

"Consciousness is part of the natural world. It depends, we believe, only on mathematics and logic and on the imperfectly known laws of physics, chemistry, and biology; it does not arise from some magical or otherworldly quality."[5]

The concept of mind uploading is based on this mechanistic view of the mind, and denies the vitalist view of human life and consciousness.

Eminent computer scientists and neuroscientists have predicted that specially programmed computers will be capable of thought and even attain consciousness, including Koch and Tononi,[5]Douglas Hofstadter,[6]Jeff Hawkins,[6]Marvin Minsky,[7]Randal A. Koene,[8] and Rodolfo Llinas.[9]

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Mind uploading - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Simply go to Akinator.com, enter a nickname for yourself, your age and gender, and think of a prominent person, celebrity, or even fictional character, and Akinator will ask you up to 20 questions, after which "he" will nearly always guess the exact person you have in mind.

And he seems to be extremely accurate, as it guessed everyone from Julian Casablancas (lead singer of the Strokes) to Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin's character in "Home Alone") right on the first time when we tried it out earlier today. And its records show that it's guessed everyone from Jesus Christ to Dora the Explorer correct in recent days.

It's quite the impressive online time-killer, but the first question people ask when they first encounter Akinator is how does it work? How is it possible that a program can guess seemingly any person accurately by simply asking up to 20 basic questions (and often far less)?

As for how the program works, according to the site's Frequently Asked Questions section, "Akinator uses the program Limule published by Elokence.com. The algorithm we use is an original creation. How we created it is our little secret."

There doesn't appear to be much more information available about just how the program uses Limule to make the program work so effectively.

But there are some other clues about how Akinator works. In the rare instances when the program doesn't know who you're thinking of after a lengthy series of further questions, it asks you to upload your character's photo and name in order to add it to its extensive database. This provides more insight into the way Akinator works, suggesting that it has compiled an ever-evolving, massive log of characters that people have wanted it to guess, along with the answers they used to describe the characters before uploading them.

That way, the next time someone is thinking of the obscure 1970s French film director you used to stump the game, it will likely be able to get the answer right. In that sense, Akinator is a novel way of using Artificial Intelligence and a secret program combined with the wonders of crowd-sourcing to create a fun and shockingly accurate game. For a more in-depth explanation of how the game might work, check out this complicated Wired magazine article in which the author states his hypothesis about the program that drives Akinator.

And this Quora explainer seeks to make it a little (but not much) easier for the layman to understand. Here's a snippet: "Roughly speaking, you can think of the Akinator, or any other game of 20 questions, as a form of binary search. (Or as constructing a decision tree.) In the ideal case, you'd always be able to rule out half the remaining answers with every question, and you'd be able to narrow it down to one from around 2^20 = 1,048,576 possibilities in 20 questions. The specific algorithm the Akinator uses to decide between questions could probably be one of a number of things, but in any case the goal is definitely to divide the set of possibilities as close to in half as possible with each question."

The website -- and later, smartphone mobile app -- was registered by France developers, according to the Whois web domain registry site. And Google Trends indicates that the European version of the website first went live in late 2007, though it took a couple of years for it to spread to other markets including the United States. Though it's been around for years, it appears to have undergone a boost in popularity in recent days, as Twitter and Facebook users have shared it thousands of times as a whole new group of players have found out about its "magic powers."

For instance, Twitter user @michaelmarshjr said, "Another thing that will distract me from finals, Akinator the genie. Sorry I'm late on this one, but it amazes me that it got Sean McGrew!"

Go here to see the original:

How Does Akinator Work? Behind The Genie That 'Reads Your Mind'

A calendar made from old family photos is a great gift for parents, grandparents, and similarly sentimental family members. And by old photos, we mean printed from film and trapped in an album, envelope, or shoebox. Its very easy to upload newer, digital images to an online service to make all sorts of personalized gifts. But to do the same with truly old-fashioned photos, youll need to scan them.

Epson Perfection V550 scanner

Flatbed photo scanners (as opposed to sheetfed document scanners) are incredibly sophisticated these days. Not only do they digitize photos, but they come with software that can often assist with editing tasks such as sharpening, lighting, and cropping. What's more, a moderately priced scanner like the Epson Perfection V550 ($149), which we used for this how-to, can also scan transparencies such as negatives or slides with included special attachments. For scanning prints, a general-purpose scanner, such as one you might find on a multifunction printer, will suffice.

A good rule of thumb as you embark upon this project is to stay calm. Memories are powerful, and even families that don't consider themselves photo nuts likely have tons of old prints lying around. Focus on a select few albums and boxes, and limit the number of pictures to between 30 to 50 photos for your calendar. From that group, pick the best of the lot: The brightest, clearest, sharpest, most colorful, and best-composed shots will make the most successful journey from paper to electronic file and back.

Make sure to clean off your photos, negatives, and your scanner bed bed for a dust- and lint-free scan.

It's pretty simple to get your scanner in gear.If your hardware has been sitting around for awhile, be sure to clean the glass bed to get rid of streaks and dust that will ruin your images. Glass or a specialty cleaner on a soft clothnot directly on the glassworks well.

Similarly, prep your photos and negatives. Clean everything off with lint-free photo cloth such as PEC-12($22) to remove dust, even from prints and negatives that have been sitting safely in an album or negative/slide sleeves. Or use a soft brush. Now you're ready to scan.

Epson scanner interface for the Mac in Home mode.

The most popular consumer scanning software comes from photo-oriented printer companies such as Epson, HP, and Canon.

Epson Scan:Scanner companies typically release analogous PC and Mac versions of their scanner software.Epson's scanning package, which we used for this example, gives you a choice of four modes: Full Auto, Home, Office, and Professional.

Continue reading here:

How to turn old photos into new holiday calendars

A calendar made from old family photos is a great gift for parents, grandparents, and similarly sentimental family members. And by old photos, we mean those printed from film and trapped in an album, envelope, or shoe box. Its easy to upload newer, digital images to an online service to make all sorts of personalized gifts. But to do the same with truly old-fashioned photos, youll need to scan them.

Epson Perfection V550 scanner

Flatbed photo scanners (as opposed to sheetfed document scanners) are incredibly sophisticated these days. Not only do they digitize photos, but they also come with software that often can assist with editing tasks such as sharpening, lighting, and cropping. Whats more, a moderately priced scanner such as the Epson Perfection V550 ($149), which we used for this how-to, can scan transparencies such as negatives or slides with included special attachments. For scanning prints, a general-purpose scanner, such as one you might find ona multifunction printer, will suffice.

A good rule of thumb as you embark upon this project is to stay calm. Memories are powerful, and even families who dont consider themselves photo nuts likely have tons of old prints lying around. Focus on a select few albums and boxes, and limit the number of pictures for your calendar to 30 to 50 photos. From that group, pick the best of the lot: The brightest, clearest, sharpest, most colorful, and best-composed shots will make the most successful journey from paper to electronic file and back.

Make sure to clean your photos, your negatives, and your scanner bed for a dust- and lint-free scan.

Its pretty simple to get your scanner in gear.If your hardware has been sitting around awhile, clean the glass bed to get rid of streaks and dust that will ruin your images. Glass cleaner or a specialty cleaner sprayed onto a soft clothnot directly on the glassworks well.

Similarly, prep your photos and negatives. Clean everything with a lint-free photo cloth such as PEC-12($22) to remove dust, even from prints and negatives that have been resting safely in an album or in negative/slide sleeves. Or use a soft brush. Now youre ready to scan.

The most popular consumer scanning software comes from photo-oriented printer companies such as Canon, Epson, and HP. Youd be surprised at how much they can do; well review the Epson Scan software as an example.

Epsons scanner-utility interface in Windows 8

Epson Scan:Scanner companies typically release analogous PC and Mac versions of their scanner software. Epsons scanning package gives you a choice of four modes: Full Auto, Home, Office, and Professional.

More here:

The 'Awww' factor: Turning old photos into new calendars

Mac Creative > All Reviews > Software > Video > Video editing > Apple iMovie 10 versus Adobe Premiere Elements 12 comparative review - which video editing application offers the best all-round feature set

Apple just cant seem to make up its mind about iMovies interface, and the new iMovie 10 gets another slightly untidy makeover. The Project panel that occupies the lower half of the screen now provides a more conventional editing timeline where you can quickly arrange your video clips in a simple linear sequence. Thats simple enough, but the programs other editing tools are scattered around the workspace almost at random, with audio and video effects activated by the Adjustments button up in the top-right corner of the workspace, while transitions and titles have been moved down into the bottom left corner of the newly expanded Library panel. Users of previous versions of iMovie may feel a little lost at first, and we werent impressed by the fact that you need an Internet connection in order to use the programs Help files either.

In contrast, Premiere Elements started out with a complex and intimidating interface but has gradually become easier to use with each annual upgrade. The recently released Premiere Elements 12 provides three editing modes that cater to different levels of experience. The new Guided mode starts out by offering really simple, step-by-step help with basic editing tasks. Once youve got the hang of the basics you can step into Quick mode, which displays a simple editing timeline with effects, transitions and other tools neatly arranged along the bottom of the screen. More experienced users can opt for Expert mode, which provides you with a multi-track timeline that allows you to perform more complex and precise editing work.

See OS X Mavericks review

The simpler timeline in iMovie is relatively straightforward and easy to use, but the Guided mode in Premiere Elements is very impressive and does an excellent job of introducing video-editing work for beginners.

It may take a little while to figure out where everything is in iMovie these days, but at least its main editing tools still retain their admirable simplicity and ease of use. The main innovation introduced by iMovie a few years ago was the ability to skim through video clips. You can simply move your mouse cursor over any section of a video clip in order to view it in the main Monitor window. You can skim through a clip as slowly or as quickly as you like, and this makes it really easy to select just the scenes or even just a few frames that you want to use in your movie.

Other tools are equally easy to use. Just drag a clip from the Browser window and place it directly above another clip in the editing timeline and iMovie automatically displays its Video Overlay menu. This allows you to instantly create complex picture-in-picture effects, a split-screen effect that plays both clips side-by-side at the same time, or to add green/blue-screen special effects.

See also Creative software reviews

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