Articles about Content Creation

Take a photo with most digital cameras and by default you’ll get a JPG file, which is great for compatibility purposes, but does involve some compromises in image quality. And that’s because your picture will go through various processes before the final JPG is produced -- sharpening, adjusting colors and contrast, compressing the results -- and each step results in the loss of some information.

Take pictures using a camera’s RAW format, though (if it has one), will give you access to the full and unprocessed image data. And you can then apply any tweaks you like on a case by case basis, for the best possible results. You’ll probably need a specialist tool to access the RAW images, but that may not be a problem: Scarab Darkroom, for instance, is a very capable RAW converter with support for cameras by Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Samsung, and Sony, and you can download it and it entirely for free.

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According to Symantec, businesses are increasingly at risk of insider IP theft, with staff moving, sharing and exposing sensitive data on a daily basis and, worse still, taking confidential information with them when they change employers.

A new survey conducted by The Ponemon Institute, and based on responses from 3,317 individuals in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Brazil, China and Korea, shows that half of employees admit to taking corporate data when they leave a job, with 40 percent saying they intend to use the data in their new position.

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When you’re creating a presentation, a demonstration, a software tutorial, or just trying to show someone else what’s happening on your desktop, then you could just take and save screen grabs at the appropriate moments. But while that sounds simple enough, it’s not exactly convenient. You’ll have plenty of work to do later in converting your grabs into something meaningful. And even then, the finished results may not be that professional.

Fortunately ActivePresenter Free offers a more capable alternative. It’s a powerful screen recorder which can track everything you’re doing, and automatically add some useful annotations. You can then quickly customize the results with an excellent editor, before saving your project as images (JPEG, PNG) or video (WMV, AVI, MPEG4, WebM).

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It’s certainly one way to make sure your app store attracts a decent number of apps -- offer developers something that money can’t buy (except possibly later on through eBay). BlackBerry -- formerly RIM -- has produced a limited edition red BlackBerry Z10 for those developers who created "quality" third party apps for the new BB10 platform prior to launch.

There will be just 12,000 units of the new device made, and BlackBerry estimates those developers who qualify for one (and who must also have a BlackBerry Dev Alpha A or B testing device), will receive their handsets in 6-8 weeks. The company will email successful developers and explain how to trade a Dev Alpha unit for the new device.

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The Model B Raspberry Pi is hardly expensive, costing just $35 (plus local taxes and shipping/handling fees). But if that’s a little too much for you, or you don’t need fancy features like Ethernet, and 256MB of RAM sounds more than adequate, you can now get your hands on the Model A Raspberry Pi for a bargain $10 cheaper.

Available from Premier Farnell/Element 14 and RS Components, the Model A version of the popular credit card-sized ARM GNU/Linux computer will cost just $25. Although it’s currently only available in Europe, it will be rolling out to the rest of the world shortly. If you live in the US you can pre-order one, but there will be a slight delay before the order can be fulfilled.

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Although the Raspberry Pi was originally aimed at encouraging school children to learn to program as they did in 1980s and 90s, the affordable credit card-sized ARM GNU/Linux computer has actually ended up appealing to a broad range of ages.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has never lost sight of its initial purpose though, and thanks to the generosity of Google, it’s about to make some serious headway into British schools.

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Transforming a standard portrait photo into something which stands out from the crowd, a shot you’d genuinely like to share with others, usually takes a great deal of time and expertise. But if you don’t have much of either, you might want to consider Funny Photo Maker, an excellent tool which produces great results with the absolute minimum of hassle.

As you might guess from the program name, this isn’t a regular photo editor and won’t be for everyone. But if you’d like to take a friend’s face and place it on an ape, a magazine cover, movie poster or something similar, then you really need to take a closer look.

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Ashampoo has released 3D CAD Architecture 4 and 3D CAD Professional 4, the latest editions of its interior and exterior design tools.

And both programs are improved this time by the extended Project Wizard, now an even easier way to start your new design project. Choose your basic building floor shape, enter the dimensions, specify the number of floors and your preferred roof design and that’s it: even if you’ve never used this kind of tool before, you can have the core building shell created within a few moments.

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The problem with making apps -- whether for smartphones, tablets or the Windows Store -- is getting enough people to sit up and take notice. Sure, if it’s good enough, word of mouth might propel it upwards, but the sad truth is a lot of great apps never get the traction they need to succeed.

If you have an idea for a Windows Store app, Microsoft’s Windows Startup Challenge could be just the boost your concept needs. The winner of the app design contest will get the chance to launch their creation at DEMO Mobile in San Francisco on 17 April.

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Third in a series. Some readers of my last column in this series seem to think it was just about the movie business but it wasn’t. It was about the recorded entertainment industry, which includes movies, broadcast and cable television, video games, and derivative works. It’s just that the movie business, like the mainframe computer business, learned these lessons first and so offers fine examples.

Whether from Silicon Valley or Seattle, technology companies see video entertainment as a rich market to be absorbed. How can Hollywood resist? The tech companies have all the money. Between them Amazon, Apple, Google, Intel and Microsoft have $300 billion in cash and no debt -- enough capital to buy anything. Apple all by itself could buy the entire entertainment industry, though antitrust laws might interfere.

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Consumer Electronics Show is a big crazy event. There is a lot of new technology that might or might not see the light of day a couple of years down the road, and a whole lot more stuff that is rather hum-drum. Walking through millions of square feed of convention seeing thousands of cheap speakers and iPhone cases and over sized TVs can be a numbing waste of time.

That is why I like the side event, Showstoppers, which puts together a pretty good lineup of interesting tech products. While nothing jumped out as much this year as last, these are a few that piqued my interest as having some potential, or were simply interesting.

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CyberLink has released a notable update to its popular and powerful consumer video editor range. With release GM4, both CyberLink PowerDirector 11 Ultra and CyberLink PowerDirector 11 Ultimate add ultra hi-def resolutions to file production, support for editing GoPro HERO3 clips and an additional seven transitions to the Transition Room.

The new release, which is available for a 25 percent savings with exclusive bundle of extra goodies worth nearly $70 from the Downloadcrew Software Store, also promises improved program stability and frame accuracy, plus resolves a number of issues.

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If you’ve ever explored the world of Windows video players then you’ll almost certainly have come across Media Player Classic (compact, easy to use, but a little dated now) and its spin-off Home Cinema project (more powerful, plenty of features).

What you might not have noticed, though, is the latest addition to the family, Media Player Classic-BE (for “Black Edition”, apparently). It’s a recent offshoot from Home Cinema and looks almost exactly the same, but already has one notable addition and plenty of smaller tweaks to enjoy.

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Have you kept an eye on our amazing software giveaways this year? Hot on the heels of our first two amazing deals comes this, a free and fully functional copy of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6. This universally acclaimed design tool runs on Windows PCs and is capable of photo-editing, drawing, graphics design and even desktop publishing, all rolled into one super program.

And the best news of all? For a 48-hour period from midday GMT, Saturday December 29, you’ll be able to download this amazing app, worth $89, for free thanks to Downloadcrew Giveaway.

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Eighth in a series. Since the world is going down today anyway there is not really much need for today's article and while I thought for a moment about taking the day off, I'd like the idea of leaving the world with work done. So, here it is, the eighth part of the best Windows 8 apps of the week series on Doomsday.

Pssst: If the world doesn't end, and you have Windows 8, now you have something to look forward to.

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