Choosing a Digital Camera

Digital cameras have changed the way that we take photos! The obvious convenience of taking photos with a digital camera is that you can view the photo immediately, and if there is any problem with it, you can delete it and re-take it instantly. No more frowns or bunny ears going down on record in your family history!

What are the things that you look out for when buying a camera? I can only assume that you will want to buy the best camera possible for the amount of money you have to spend. How do you know which is the best camera to buy? There are some buzz words that you will hear often when you are shopping for a digital camera: Megapixels, resolution, memory, RAM… what do they all mean?

The first important thing to know when buying a camera is its resolution. Camera resolution gets better and better with each passing year. It is not a stagnant technology. Still, find out what should be standard resolution at the time that you buy your camera. Resolution is measured by megapixels. Your aim is to buy the camera with the best resolution for your budget.

Another characteristic that you should look for in a digital camera is the lens. Try to buy a camera with a glass lens, as opposed to a plastic lens. This will have a huge impact on the quality of the images it produces.

Memory is another important thing to consider for your digital camera. Most digital cameras allow for an unlimited amount of storage memory to be used through memory cards. Never buy a camera that only has built-in memory and does not allow you to extend storage through memory cards as this will be a huge limitation.

One of the features that you are likely to experiment with the most when taking digital images is zoom. Zoom technology is another one that gets better with time. Still, ask around at the time that you are buying to find out what is a reasonable zoom capacity to expect.

The best place to research a digital camera before you invest in one is on the Internet as you can read reviews, find out the technical specifications and compare prices.

Lastly, I always recommend that you ask around when you are going to make any kind of purchase. What are other people saying about the camera you want to buy? What are they saying about the cameras they own? If the camera you want to buy is a dud and someone you know has bought it, they can save you a lot of frustration and wasted money. If you want to be doubly sure, check what other consumers are saying about the camera you want. Check the reviews on web sites. This is a place where you can get the real deal on all types of consumer products.

Celebrity Geek: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs can only be described as a highly successful, ambitious soul. From his earliest years as a teenager, he had a strong curiosity about all things technical. As a high schooler, he would stop by Hewlett Packard (HP) regularly after school to attend the lectures given there. It was not long before HP saw his potential and hired him.

Just like many of our featured‘Celebrity Geeks’ and technology entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs dropped out of college very early after starting. Although he chose not to pursue a career, the one thing that he did was to continue to audit classes. Auditing allows you to attend a class for a semester just like a regular student without having to be tested on the material and without receiving official college credit for it. All of these years later, Steve Jobs says that some of the courses that he audited at Reed were crucial to the way that he developed the graphical user interface (GUI) abilities of Mac computers. He specifically related the course he took in calligraphy with the accuracy of the type faces on Macs.

Although best known for the work that he has done with Apple, Steve Jobs has had many accomplishments; he was the co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Apple, Inc. Serious conflict caused him to leave Apple for a while but he was able to return on his own terms years later and to continue where he left off. He was also the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and sits on the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company, which was bought by Pixar.

Early on in his career, Steve left the country and spent time living in India. He returned to the United States a different man. He had converted to Buddhism and even wore Indian robes daily for a while. Even today, Jobs considers himself to have a ‘counter-culture’ mentality and says that this has and still does strongly influence the unique course his life has taken.

At present, Steve Jobs works for Apple, although he is on a leave of absence due to issues related to his health. In 2004, Jobs discovered that he had a cancerous tumor on his pancreas. He has fought the disease through diet, lifestyle as well as through traditional medicine. The past few years of his life have been spent fighting against this sickness in one form or another.

The YouTube Phenomenon

YouTube.com is a revolutionary media web site that allows people to broadcast themselves. Anyone and everyone can upload home videos and all other types to the YouTube.com web site. YouTube is truly revolutionary because never before in the history or human beings has the everyday individual had access or the ‘power’ to make media broadcasts to the whole world!

No-one could have anticipated how popular YouTube would become. Its popularity and fame have literally skyrocketed from the moment of inception. YouTube.com was officially incorporated in February of 2005. It received immediate recognition as a site to keep your eye on. Only one year after launch, seeing the strength and potential of YouTube, Google.com made the decision to buy the company and they have held ownership ever since.

YouTube.com was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. All three of these had previously worked together at PayPal.com. There are many stories written about how these 3 came to form YouTube. After many discussions and after coming up with the idea for YouTube.com, they left their jobs at PayPal to pursue their own venture.

All kinds of videos and broadcasts can be found on the YouTube web site. Files are uploaded from the most amateur of videos that are made in a bedroom somewhere to highly professional, made-for-TV-quality broadcasts. One of the unique and also great things about YouTube is that videos of any quality can become extremely popular. It seems that videos are accepted and made popular for their content rather than for their quality or artistic prowess. This is the phenomenon of YouTube!

YouTube has a strong Social Networking element to it. Non YouTube members can watch videos however YouTube members can also post written reviews and comments on the videos they watch. Anyone that has an email account can sign up and become a member of YouTube. Star ratings for every video are also used to indicate how good the public rates the video.

YouTube is now such a popular site that it is not uncommon for the most popular videos to be watched over tens of millions of times by people. One of the most popular videos ever on YouTube is an entertainment video called, The Evolution of Dance. It is a six-minute dance routine performed by a popular comedian. It showcases his talent to dance and to entertain people and it has brought him unexpected worldwide recognition.

The Benefits of a Wireless Network in your Home

These days, most families have some form of Internet access in the homes. A decade ago, there may have been just one member of the average family that spent time online… if anyone at all. In today’s average family, every family member wants to have access to the Internet. This is true not only for the adults but for the youngest child as well. Social networking web sites and gaming sites have peaked the interest of children.

For most people, the current trend is to watch TV and to browse the Internet at the same time interactively, visiting the web sites that are promoted during television programs. A lot of TV programs now refer viewers to their web sites during programming. These web sites are filled with promotions, resources and more information on what they have been watching on television. To add to this, children’s television now also promotes the games that they provide. They even have an element of social networking on these sites for their young viewers.

With such a strong need for every family member to have access to the Internet, it is a good idea to set up a wireless network within your home. Without a network, whether wired or wireless, your only option is to share a single outlet for access to the Internet. This will quickly lead to arguments as family members struggle to prioritize their important work on the Internet over another’s entertainment on the Internet.

If you have a wired network in your home, you will have to run cables throughout the house to give family members access. There are many limitations with this type of set up and Internet access can start to become very complicated for everyone in the house. When a household has a wireless network, all family members can be online at the same time anywhere in the house. This solves a whole host of potential problems.

The great thing about a wireless network is that the signal is usually strong enough for the Internet to be available to everyone in the house regardless as to what room they are in. In general, a wireless signal will cover the complete area of an average-sized house. Users in rooms further away from where the router is located will have a weaker signal than those closer. This will result in slower download times but they will still be able to access the Internet.

If you need assistance setting up a network in your home, call Geeks2U on 1300 433 572 and one of our friendly and reliable technicians will help you.