Beginners Guide to Digital Photography

Digital cameras have become a hot product nowadays due to their falling prices and everyone with some cash to spare is buying one now. But more often than not people don't really know much about digital photography (or photography in general) and how to work with the options that cameras offer. Most of them just point and shoot.

Although it may work fine in some cases, for others you would have to do some fiddling with the settings to get a decent picture. But if you're serious about getting a good shot you need to understand a bit of the basics. For instance, do you really know what white balance is? Or what the ISO setting does? Or the difference between digital and optical zooms? Well, if the answer to all those questions is a solid "No", then fear not, for today we will be discussing some basics of shooting with a digital camera.

Do note that these are only the basics and meant for absolute beginners. So if you are a professional photographer, you may feel like you have revisited kindergarten. Also, no amount of fiddling with the settings will help if you lack the basic knowledge of what looks good or bad, or if you lack the photographer's eye. With that little disclaimer out of the way, let's get on with this guide.

Techtree.com India Features Beginners Guide to Digital Photography

Nexus in India

Google's Nexus One, referred as 'super phone', might be launched in India too in the near future. But a "scaled down" or rather "Emerging Countries" version of Nexus One being considered for India & Russia. That said, you could always import one should you prefer the "original" Nexus One. Coming back to the scaled down Nexus One, it will be slimmer than the current Nexus One (which is already quite thin!) and will pack in lesser features when compared with its better endowed variant. This Nexus One is likely to be priced very less as compared to the original.
  
What we are not sure as of now is whether this Nexus One would be a completely new phone or just a stripped down version of the original with a few features missing. We believe even the cheaper Nexus One will boast of the main features of the phone namely, the 3.7-inch screen and the uber fast Snapdragon processor. The things that might see a compromise would be the camera and other features like internal memory.

MSN messenger 7.0 (beta)

Microsoft has decided to suspend the test release of MSN messenger 7 beta version citing some security concerns over one of its features. Just last week Microsoft released its new MSN beta messenger 7.0 for testing & user feedback. The security problem seems to be with the 'wink' feature, which allows the users to exchange flash based sound animations. This feature might enable potential hackers to send their own animation winks to users and cause a security threat. Microsoft has decided to postpone the release by a week, where the messenger will be tested without the 'wink' feature. But it has decided to club the wink feature in the final release, after cementing the hole in it.

There have been reports of leakage of the beta version in the web, though Microsoft still maintains that they had given access to the messenger for a small group for testing before the release. Still it is unclear as to how many people have downloaded the vulnerable messenger, which is reported to have moved quickly among users in the world.

According to reports the wink feature was aimed at 18 - 24 age group, where Microsoft is believed to have hired college graduates for the development of the feature. The group call themselves 'Three degrees'. They have been associated with Microsoft's development team from the year 2001.

The MSN messenger is the most popular chat client after Yahoo messenger and boasts of 135 million users per month, worldwide. Microsoft is making plans to release the final version by the first quarter of 2005.

I'm the Best

Former World Cup striker Romario said that he considers himself to be Brazil's most important player since 1970 at a media conference on Thursday. Romario is now playing for first division Fluminense. Romario, now 38, announced that he would reunite Brazil's 1994 World Cup winning team for a match in Los Angeles on November 10 to mark his international farewell. Although he has never officially announced his international retirement, Romario has not been picked by his country since captaining the side which lost 1-0 to Uruguay in a World Cup qualifier three years ago. Romario scored five goals in the 1994 tournament.
Romario, who has not played much first team football this year. But he said that he still had no intention of retiring, although he admitted it was now almost impossible to reach his target of scoring 1,000 goals in his career. At present his score stands at 908. Critics claim that his scores include youth team games and other non-official matches. Romario had played for PSV Eindhoven, Barcelona and Valencia as a striker.

Duncan Mackenzie's website

Duncan Mackenzie

I came across Duncan Mackenzie’s site while exploring MSDN. Really liked his Coding4Fun column. Duncan Mackenzie is the Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Content Strategist for MSDN during the day, and a dedicated coder late at night.
Cheers!

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005

Microsoft this week previewed its upcoming Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, which will ship next year. The company says the tool will help software developers in small to mid-size organizations migrate from Visual Basic to the .NET architecture. Standard Edition provides professional developers working in small organizations a tool that maintains the simplicity of the Visual Studio Express products," Austinson noted. Express is designed for amateur and beginning developers. The Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh is the same as the previous beta release, but now includes a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Visual Studio 2005 Team System. While betas receive a much higher level of testing and feature work, CTPs are intended to expose developers to the latest working build.
Here is the system requirement:
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Processor Recommended: 2.6 GHz Pentium IV, Athlon, or Opteron processor Operating System Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server can be installed on any of the following systems: Microsoft Windows® 2003 Server™ Enterprise Edition Microsoft Windows® 2003 Server™ Standard Edition RAM Recommended:Application Tier: 1 GB Database Tier: 1 GB Hard Disk Application Tier: 20 GB of available space Database Tier:
20 GB of available space DVD Drive Required (for installation using DVD) Display Minimum: 800 x 600 256 colors Recommended:
1024 x 768 High Color — 16-bit Mouse Microsoft mouse or compatible pointing device

Knowledge.ppt - The Economic Times

Knowledge.ppt - The Economic Times
About your XP installation XPerience!