Photoshop Elements 3: Scanning alone may justify purchase

Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 Review: 3. Operation: Digital Photography Review

Divide Scanned Photos

Scanning multiple photographs with a flatbed scanner typically leads to a big image consisting of the photographs with white space in between. The Image -> Divide Scanned Photos command automatically detects each photograph, rotates it, crops away any white borders, and opens each image in a separate window. The command is equivalent to the The File -> Automate -> Crop and Straighten command in Photoshop CS.

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I wonder if VueScan does this? This feature is such a huge time saver it alone may justify purchase of PE 3. Note the Mac version doesn't include the Organizer features; also the Mac version has some serious security issues (won't run well in non-admin account, of course I suspect the XP version has even more severe security issues -- but no-one really runs XP other than in an admin account).

Sima CT-2 Video Signal Processor: Defeat macrovision copy protection

Amazon.com: Camera & Photo: Sima CT-2 Video Signal Processor

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This is a curious sort of device. When one reads the marketing description it's hard to see what it's good for. On reviewing the user commetns the value is rather more obvious -- it defeats Macrovision protection. So you can, if you're an honest sort, copy your old VHS video tapes to DVD. Or, if you're dishonest, you can make copies of rental DVDs and videos.

... what yu really need is a unit which will fully override both types of Macrovision, and to my knowledge, the only thing available is the SIMA SCC-2 Color Corrector 2. This thing is expensive ($150-200 bucks), but it's worth it if you have a big video collection you'd like to transfer to DVD-R. I hope this helps anyone out there who bought a bunch of VHS tapes and simply wants to transfer a few to DVD. Jeez....

It must be interesting to market a product who's primary value can never be described! The device does not seem terribly high quality. Some reviewers indicate they had to transfer the audio on a separate cable.

The future is now: Amazon and Google are the cutting edge

Amazon as a network OS

The Amazon Simple Queue Service offers a reliable, highly scalable hosted queue for buffering messages between distributed application components. The Amazon Simple Queue Service reduces the costs associated with resolving the producer-consumer problem that arises in distributed application development. Such costs include increased application development time, and potentially significant investment in server and network infrastructure to support distributed application messaging. Amazon has already invested in the large-scale computing infrastructure that runs the Queue Service, and since the Service's interface is exposed via Web services, integration with applications is fast and easy.

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I've been a bystander for some serious networked application development; at one point we used IBM's MQueue. This stuff is non-trivial. So now Amazon is providing a network queueing service?

Very strange. Who would ever depend on it? What's to stop it from vanishing? What the heck are they up to? I have to assume it's the first step is something rather larger.

Ask Jeeves -- time to reealuate?

Ask Jeeves - Ask.com

I've not used ask.com in years. They did quite well in a recent BBC test. Their contextual searches do seem to work now -- an understanding of phrase "meaning" rather than phrase string match. I'll have to figure out how to use them.

Twenty steps to fixing a troubled OS X Mac

macosxhints: Twenty steps to help diagnose and fix system issues

Why one must take problem reports with a grain of NaCl

Mac OS X 10.3.6

David Biddix
I wrote yesterday about my Other World Computing Mercury 400 FireWire Drive ceasing to work after I installed the 10.3.6 patch. I talked with OWC Tech Support today (Tuesday) about the issue and he had me run through several diagnostics, including one where we unplugged the FireWire cable from the drive. It lost power.

Tech support had me then trace my power connection for the drive, and I discovered that my toddler son had turned off the power strip to which it was connected (the power strip has no on/off light to show if it is on). He had me go ahead and update my firmware drivers (downloaded from the OWC site) as a backup plan, but my drive mounts perfectly.

It took only 5 minutes to complete the call...OWC Tech Support is first rate, and I appreciated the tech not laughing while I cleaned egg off of my face.

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Kudos to David for fessing up. I've done something similar myself.

So the OS X firewire problem may only be with the Inito chipset.

Film Scanning with PhotoCD

MacInTouch Home Page: "I'm a professional potter and I frequently need scans of my 35 mm color product slides. Kodak's Photo CD (NOT Picture CD!) has proven to be the best and the cheapest. One vendor I have used is Imagers out of Atlanta. They will put 100 scans on a CD and each scan is recorded in 5 resolutions, all for under $1 per slide. You just keep sending the same CD back to them until it's full. They even offer overnight service. I have also had a local photo store send my slides and CD off to Kodak for about the same price, but that usually takes 7-10 days."