Photo blogging for amateurs and others - Fotonomy

Getting into photography is a great experience. Once you are in, you need to find the best website to upload your pictures to share with the world. Everyone is there at Flickr..some at smugmug.some more at zooomr.but I always felt there was something missing everywhere. I stumbled upon this new website which has around 1000 members in Wikipedia, when I was searching for Photosharing sites. Its called the Fotonomy . Has a personalized page for your photos, unlimited albums, unlimited uploads, but all photos are public. So be careful on what you upload. http://www.fotonomy.com "Fotonomy is a photo sharing site for photographers of all levels. It provides a place for you to share, store and organise your photos online. Fotonomy features a clean, simple and stylish interface making it a joy to share and view photos. We store your photos in five different sizes, allowing you to view and share photos in a format that suits you." Listed Features: Upload unlimited photos Tag and geo-tag your photos Create unlimited albums Add unlimited friends Send and receive private messages Comment on other's photos and get feedback on your own work Keep track of your favourite photos RSS feeds for your photos, your friends' photos and your comments View extensive EXIF details of all photos

---

Keep up with people you care about with Yahoo! India Mail. Learn how.

read more...

Check the health of your domain name

Everyone owns a domain name today, and owning a domain name is far from using it. Most of us try to configure with the instructions provided by some websites which are mostly successful. Success is when you type the domain name and see the page you intended to see.

But a domain configuration is much more than that. MX records, CNAME records, etc define how your sub-domains, mails etc work.

intoDNS helps you out in identifying all the records for your domain and analyzing the status for it. It will also suggest probable solutions if there are errors.

You can check intoDNS at http://www.intoDNS.com

read more...

Save your privacy - Disposable email address

A disposable email address for your use. This will remain active till the "melting point" specified by you.

You can use this at a variety of places where you need an email id, but you don't want spam (you know what I mean...right ;) ? )

Check it out, its a cool and fast service and runs by the German Law.

http://www.meltmail.com

read more...

Dekoh Photos - Share Photos from your desktop

I am an amateur photographer and take a lot of pictures before I get the perfect shot. Usually I don't delete all the pictures, but would like to store then as a knowledge base. Some shots may not be the right shot, but would have helped me realize what I should not do.

Sharing large picture collections across the net is a nice but painful experience. Uploading the pictures to some website, without or without resizing, paying for the service etc. is actually a time consuming process. Some may like to do it, but lazyiness creeps in once I am done with my shooting.

I found a nice software called Dekoh Photos, which runs on your desktop and shares the pictures directly from your desktop. You get an unique URL for your pictures and the data size is limited to how much your hard disk can hold!

http://www.dekoh.com

Cons are that this is mainly dependant on your hard drive, which means that there is no concept of backup of pictures. Security of sharing through the internet directly from your desktop is still under question. But, this seems to be a good option for lazy people like me who would like to share pictures with the world.

Try it and let me know what my review is worth.

read more...

Aathavan Movie Review

Red Giant Movies "Aathavan' had raised lot of expectations prior to its release due to the fact that lot of stakes were high on this movie. The movie's hype was so powerful that Vijay starrer Vettaikaran which was also slated for a Diwali release has been postponed in order to avoid a clash. After the debacle in "kuruvi" producer Udayanithi Stalin decided to play it safe by hiring the services of K S Ravikumar "The Midas Touch Man" of Kollywood.

Nayanthara who was on a lull following spate of flops was also banking high on the result of this movie to revive her fortunes in Kollywood. In the end the final product has been a dampener for everyone.

Aathavan (Surya) a hit-man by profession along with his dad Rowther (Shiyaji Shinde) and brother Anand Babu are the most sought after group for high level assasinations. The group depends on the expertise of Aathavan in sharp-shooting gets an assignment of assisnating a Judge (Late Murali of "Dum Dum Dum" fame) worth crores. On the D-day Aathavan surprisingly missed the target and he faces the threat of his ability being questioned.

The Judge who comes to kolkata for an inquiry surprisingly brings his entire family along for a vacation. Banerjee (Vadivelu) the cook for the family provides the laugh riot at all possible places. Aathavan then catches Banerjee and through him enters the house for easy access to his target.

Thara (Nayanthara) is one amongst the relatives who falls in love with Aathavan after some silly twist in the story. The major expectation of this movie was the comeback of Saroja Devi but with due respect to her acting exploits one wonders how did director Ravikumar and Producer Udayanithi Stalin convince her to do such an idiotic role.

Normally in a movie with such a story would have some interesting twists to the plot and added to it some brilliant screenplay which would hold you to the edge of the seat but in this movie the supposedly called twists in the movie are pathetic and its high time our film makers put some thought to the story and screenplay.

There is nothing out of the ordinary here and to compliment is the screenplay that further drags the pace to a scorching halt. The actors have not really troubled themselves in terms of any effort to essay the roles assigned to them. Suriya looks unconvincing in his costumes and Nayanthara is no different from her previous movies.

Saroja Devi gets ridiculed time and again by Vadivelu for her make-up and in one scene he even questions her if the lipstick that she uses is from MGR times?. Music by Harris Jeyaraj is well barring a few songs a total disappointment.

The law of averages seemed to have caught up with Ravikumar and he has come out with a product not worthy of mention. Udayanithi Stalin should concenrate more on the story and screenplay than bank on the star value of the actor and director.

"Aathavan" badly fails to impress.

read more...

Basics of Photography

Recently I have got pretty interested in photography and read through various articles and learnt a few tricks. Its pretty much to read, understand and implement. Thought I would share my two cents to all our readers, who want to get to the next step in professional photography.

 

Some very common terms heard all over in this field are: Shutter Speed, ISO, Aperture.

 

Shutter Speed: This is the amount of time, the camera's shutter is open. More it is open, more light goes in and the possibility for more shake in your pictures ;)

Shutter speeds are measured in fractions of seconds. A 1/1000 shutter speed is extremely fast and a 1/30 or a 1/60 is relatively slow. It depends on the amount of light and the speed of the object you would like to picture. A tripod is suggested for any shutter speed less than 1/60, as it is difficult to get a good picture without a 'shake'.

 

Aperture: This is the size of opening of lens. More the opening, more the amount of light which goes inside. It is measured in f stops. Lower numbers represent higher size of opening. 2.8 is larger than 5.6. A 22 is smaller than 8.

 

Photography is all about light. So the Aperture and Shutter speed have direct relationships.

 

ISO: This is the sensitivity of your camera's sensor to light. An increased ISO will always be "noisy". Higher ISO have more grains in the shots, but you can trade off with less light. ISO 100 is acceptable as standard with well lit conditions, whereas 3200 (Hi ISO) brings out a very noisy picture, but the light requirements are less. An indoor sports event might need you to fix at a higher ISO, as the subject is fast moving yet the lights are low (No sunlight). These pictures might turn noisy, but you can still capture the event.

 

Finally, there is no right or wrong in photography. It all depends on how you want your final output to be. Some pictures which are framed extremely well may be a bad shot for someone. Try your hand. Most of the Point-and-shoot camera today have manual setting for Aperture, ISO and Shutter Speed. To an extent you can control these to get good pictures.

 

This write up is to give you a general idea of what these button means, to help you click the right picture, at the right moment.

 

Post your comments so that I can also learn a bit.

 

 

read more...