Who hasn’t taken a power nap in a compromising position? Now, if you snap a photo of them you can be the next to win a VIP discount on a Saatva ultra-premium mattress!

Saatva is giving 50% off one of the company’s luxury mattresses to the person who submits the best candid photo of an unsuspecting snoozer.

Anyone living in New York, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Los Angeles, Fresno, and San Francisco is eligible to enter. Just “Like” Saatva on Facebook and upload a recently snapped photo of the snoozer to Saavta’s Facebook wall. The contest will run through March 13th, 2011 when the winner will be announced.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Picasa application isn’t really a photo editing tool in my opinion, although it’s got some tools that are nice for the entry-level and home user. What I believe Picasa excels at is organizing and managing your photos and other graphics.

Part of that organization has now become their facial recognition tool. Picasa will start to recognize faces in your photos and then prompt you to tell you who it is. You then tag those photos, similar to how you would in Facebook, and Picasa begins to learn to recognize that same person in other photos.

I was very impressed with how quickly and accurately Picasa was able to accomplish this task. It doesn’t take long to train it, but the more you tweak and adjust, it gets better and better and more accurate.

Now, the next time you need to find a photo with someone in particular, you can go right to it and find exactly what you need.

I wish I could adjust the sensitivity to recognizing the faces though. It will start picking up faces on clothing, billboards and other displays. Perhaps the most frustrating part is when it prompts you to identify all the people in a crowd. That becomes a real big waste of time.

Overall though, I’m very impressed and really enjoying seeing all my photos in a different way now. Organized by person is really interesting.

Post from: EveryJoe

Obviously the picture above wouldn’t make a good profile photo. Almost my entire face is cut off in the image. The reason is the original resolution of the image as it came from my camera.

You see each one of those megapixels, which gives you a higher quality image, means that your original image isn’t quite suited for use on the web. The picture above has been cropped and resized as well. The image above has the dimensions of 590 pixels by 248 pixels. Grabbing that sized square off the original image just gave me the end of my nose. The original photo was 3072 pixels by 2304 pixels and a total file size of 2.04MB.

The original image in its entirety looks like the one below

It’s been resized to 300 pixels by 225 pixels and is now just under 12k in file size. That’s quite a difference between the original photos.

I cropped the image above a little more to make it work as my Facebook profile photo and it’s shown below at 200 pixels by 150 pixels and is just over 6k in size.

Why am I sharing all of this? Because there’s a difference between actually resizing and resampling your images and just stretching them or squeezing them by the corners to make them “look” smaller. If you take your original photo and just stretch/squeeze it, you’re making the same super large image file (over 2MB in our example) look like the smaller image file. But you’ve just changed the look. Your browser still has to load the larger file completely. This is why many sites have problems when you try to upload an original photo from your camera without resizing.

Since I can’t cover all the how-to’s for each of your image programs, I just want to point you in the direction of learning more about how to do resizing and resampling with whatever program you use. Just look for the Help section and search for the terms resizing and resampling.

Also learn how to crop images, a cropped image can have a much louder impact than one that was just resized to fit in the original format. Be creative. Get out there and have fun.

If you’re looking for a great image editing program, here are a few I use, have tried and or recommend highly: Picasa, IrfanView, Picnik, Paint.NET, Snagit.

Post from: EveryJoe

Booths, displays, celebrities, and oddities! Here are literally tons of photos from the Exhibit Hall of the infinite wonders at Comic-Con 2009…

Be aware that if you click through the “more” link, the page you will get is HUGE with almost 200 photos!

Instead of a booth, this year Syfy (formerly Scifi Channel) branded a local restaurant

One of many promotional pieces for the movie District 9

High. Way. Robbery.

Lego Rock Band

Warner Bros. booth

Recreations of instruments from Lego Rock Band made out of real Lego bricks

Tobin Bell, aka “Jigsaw” from the Saw movies

Star Wars chess

Marvel Superheroes

The Batpod from The Dark Knight

This booth offered to make you a monster using professional prosthetics & makeup

A glove worn by Michael Jackson, to be sold at auction in the future

I think it’s meant to be flattering, but you’ve got to wonder how Barack feels about this

The next movie from Mike Judge of Office Space fame

The Black Beauty from Seth Rogen’s upcoming Green Hornet film

One of many posters promoting Fox’s new hit Glee

AMC’s highly anticipated miniseries reimagining of The Prisoner

“Angels with guns” movie Legion, starring Paul Bettany

Where the Wild Things Are

Wolverine wax figure

V recruitment center

Heroes booth

Summit Entertainment’s booth had a big emphasis on New Moon

AMC’s booth for The Prisoner

Life-sized replica of Bumblebee from Transformers

Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes from the G.I. Joe movie

I don’t remember ever seeing a Hallmark booth at Comic-Con before

Lego will soon be releasing toys from Disney properties like Prince of Persia…

…and Toy Story

Entrance to the Mattel booth

Mech-walker thing from James Cameron’s Avatar

Toys based on James Cameron’s Avatar

Another view of Summit Entertainment, this time for the horror movie Sorority Row

Nickelodeon’s booth

MGM’s Stargate booth

DC Comics booth

Xbox booth

Yours truly (center) with author Peter David (left) and Shadow Complex video game producer Donald Mustard

A tower o’ Spongebob toys

G4′s booth

A replica of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

The “sails pavilion” at the San Diego Convention Center, where everyone first enters

On the streets of San Diego, Syfy’s giveaways were denoted by these giant balloons

Sony’s booth, where District 9 had a big presence

Special, one-of-a-kind PSPs given away at Comic-Con by Sony

The cast of Spongebob Squarepants

Photo booth for New Moon

Clever marketing for the movie 2012

Nobody messes with the 501st! (Star Wars video game reference, sorry…)

Yes, there’s actually enough of a niche market for this

Replica of a squidee from The Matrix

Character replicas from Disney/Pixar’s Up

Replical of the new Enterprise from JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, complete with built-in lights

Best ship in the ‘verse

Model of the Tick

Herbie the Love Bug

The Rocketeer

The Nazgul from Lord of the Rings

An Uruk-Hai from Lord of the Rings

Legolas from Lord of the Rings

Zombies, zombies, everywhere

Models based on the Indiana Jones movies

“You throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!”

The ever-present Avatar

Some really creative and funny variations on Storm Troopers

Love the Optimus Prime Storm Trooper!

Grand Admiral Thrawn from the expanded Star Wars universe

Count Poopoo, I mean Dooku

C’mon, that’s just cool

An iconic moment in film history

Who doesn’t need a life-sized bust of Admiral Ackbar?

General Grievous

Bust of old man Anakin from Return of the Jedi

Venom Spider-Man

Captain America

The Angel of Death from Hellboy II

The “Big Baby” from Hellboy II

Iron Man Mark One armor

Galactus, the World Devourer

I am ze Governator

Tron Mickey Mouse

Captain Jack Sparrow Mickey Mouse

Gentle Giant booth, makers of film replica statues

Apparently the DVD was on sale for $10 at Comic-Con; I’m bitter that I missed it!

New Moon merch

Yeah, you know you want it

More Lego Rock Band

Rizzo

Kermit

A Dalek from Doctor Who

Sony Online Entertainment’s booth

THQ booth

PlayStation booth

Capcom booth

NCsoft booth

Activision booth

Sony’s booth

Fox’s booth

Lionsgate’s booth

Imagi booth

B.O.B. from Monsters vs. Aliens

BBC’s booth

Star Wars outfits

Lucasfilm booth

The police motorcycle from Star Trek

Sideshow Collectibles

A fan-made South Park character made entirely out of Lego bricks

A steampunk version of a Naboo fighter from Star Wars, made of Lego bricks

The Bridge of the Enterprise, made out of Lego bricks

No idea what this Lego creation is, but it’s very impressive

The California Browncoats, keeping Firefly/Serenity alive

A vendor that’s here every year, where you can satisfy all your poster needs

You know you want this too

Just thought this was funny

Marvel Comics booth, where it was all about Iron Man II

Gollum made out of bronze

Master Chief and the Arbiter, from Halo

Replicas of the ornate, detailed weapons from Lord of the Rings

Eowyn vs. the Witch King, from Return of the King

Smaug the Dragon from The Hobbit. Will the movie version resemble this?

A mosaic wall made out of tiny Lego bricks that fans got to help build

Paul Hogan (Colonel Saul Tigh) of Battlestar Galactica

James Callis (Gaius Baltar) of Battlestar Galactica

Edward James Olmos (Admiral William Adama) of Battlestar Galactica

Dexter was big at Comic-Con this year

Dexter toys

Peter Mayhew, aka Chewbacca from Star Wars, is a Comic-Con fixture

All photos by Robin Parrish.

Post from: EveryJoe

AutoCollage is a fairly light (7MB) download and installs easily on your machine. Once installed, you simply open the application and point it to a directory of photos you’d like to collage together. The program searches through the folder and pulls in the specified number of photos you’d like to use in your collage.

It works nicely, very straight-forward and has a variety of options you can use to customize how your collage is created.

If you’ve already got other advanced graphics programs installed, you can create these yourself fairly easily, but for beginning users the software provides a quick way to share a meaningful photograph with family and friends.

You can download a trial copy of AutoCollage 2008 that’s good for 30 days. I believe this should just be incorporated into Windows Live Gallery, which maybe they’ll do.

Post from: EveryJoe

The article talks about the potential risk of posting photos to public services when the photo information, or EXIF data may contain geographic location information of where and when the photo was taken. Some cameras can now tag these photos automatically and there are other 3rd party apps and gadgets that will also give you this information. There’s even a fairly low-tech way of doing it.

The question is whether or not you really want to share this information. Imagine being able to be tracked by location and time of your exact movements and locations at various times. I’m not too personally concerned over this, but I can imagine various circumstances where it might be an issue for people.

Kim Komando’s article provides instructions on how to edit the EXIF data on your photos and goes into some other details. My suggestion is to just be aware of the possibilities and the implications. A pet peeve of mine is when people live in constant fear of what might happen. I think you need to balance that with reality though and relax a little bit in the process.

Image: sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

Let’s talk about the size difference of these photos.

Reviewing Image Properties in Windows

In the example image above the attached photo would be almost 2.5MB for a single photo. I’m not sure what the limits are in most email programs or what the restrictions are by ISP’s, but this is a chunk of file weight to be flying around the Internet.

Take a moment and resize your images before sharing them with family and friends. You can use tools within Windows, or my preference for quick, dirty and FREE resizing is IrfanView. (I wrote recently about my Favorite Graphics Programs here.) There’s also a nice Windows PowerToy utility Image Resizer that also makes it very easy for casual computer users.

Let’s look at the difference that can be achieved with resizing and resampling a picture that’s better for appropriate sharing via e-mail.

Copyright 2009 - Jason Bean

The image above has been resized to 500 x 375 pixels dimensions and to 81.5kb in size. As you can see the quality is still good and anyone reviewing  the photos should be able to get the full enjoyment of the photo. On the other hand the original image is 3072 x 2074 pixels dimensions and the 2.41MB in size. That’s a reduction of more than 95% of the original size of the file, while still maintaining a high quality view of the image for your friends and family.

Of course the other option would be to not send anything through email and instead share your photos on a variety of free photo sharing sites that are available like flickr, Picasa, Photrade, Windows Live Gallery and many others.

Post from: EveryJoe

Jason Bean Photo of USB Thumb Drive and Hard Drive

That picture you see (sorry it’s so small) is of an old hard drive. What you can barely see on top of it is a 32MB thumb drive. Now, at the time, which was about 3 years ago, the 32MB drive was your above average USB drive. I can’t remember what I paid for it, but I know a few months after I purchased it there was double that capacity available for less price.

Now, what can really blow your mind is that the giant hard drive it’s sitting on provided less than the 32MB I believe.  Story is now even more relevant to me because of my task recently of collecting and organizing all of my family’s photos. What’s enough space to keep everything together? How long will the current method of storing .jpg’s on a standard hard drive be viable for the technology that’s coming down the road?

Post from: EveryJoe

After I moved all of the photos and images to the new drive I couldn’t get my local machine mapped to the new drive so I could access the photos as I had hoped. The problem was that I kept getting an error that I couldn’t connect to the share because there was already a connection made using the same login.  I couldn’t find the login for anything thought, not sure what was going on.

Snagit of Mapping Network Drive in Windows XP OS

Eventually I did what I end up always trying in events like this. Reboot. I did a full shut-down and reboot of the desktop computer along with a full shut-down and reboot of my laptop as well. Figuring this would close any existing connections using a login I was using, I would be good to go after the reboot.

I was right. Everything is good now.

Post from: EveryJoe

I just saw this commercial while watching TV tonight. Do you think it’s really this easy? Or, do kids just pick up things related to technology much easier and faster than us older people realize?

Who’s using Windows Live Photo Gallery. What do you think? Is it this easy?

Post from: EveryJoe