X-Box is Microsoft's first video game console. In 2001 Microsoft developed it. And already worldwide they have sold 20 million units. To compete with Sony's Playstation, Microsoft rebuilt the X-Box and came up with X-Box 360. Hers Experimental Design Laboratory Inc. of Japan and Astro Studios of USA developed the exterior of the system. This game can be played from Media Center PC, MP3 player, digital camera or any Microsoft® Windows® XP-based PC.
It is a very powerful machine. And it has an online version as well. The online version is called X-Box live. With X-Box 360 we can do a lot of activities. Apart from video games we can rip, stream, download any media including movies, music etc. There are two types of X-Box 360 available in the market: X-Box 360 and X-Box 360 Core System.
The X-Box pack also contains a HD AV cable, an Ethernet connectivity cable, a headset, a wireless controller, a media remote and a removable hard drive. In the X-box core system an AV cable and a wired controller are additional articles. Paul has been providing answers to lots of queries through his website on a wide variety of subjects ranging from satellite phones to acne. To learn more visit http://www.askaquery.com/Answers/qn507.html
About the Author
Paul has been providing answers to lots of queries through his website on a wide variety of subjects ranging from satellite phones to acne. To learn more visit http://www.askaquery.com/Answers/qn507.html
Monday, April 30, 2007
Easy Guide to Buy Digital Camcorders and DVD Camcorders
A camcorder is a portmanteau word made by combining 'Camera' and 'recorder'. A camcorder is a portable television camera and videocassette recorder. It is an electronic device for recording video images and audio onto a storage device. It contains both camera and recorder in one unit. The camcorders generally contain digital cameras. A camcorder having digital camera or digital technology is known as digital camcorder. A camcorder having dvd facility is dvd camcorder. A camcorder is powered with a camcorder battery.
Sony introduced the first camcorder in 1983, followed by Kodak in 1984. The first camcorders combined the video-camera with an existing full-size VHS/Betamax recorder. These camcorders were large devices that required a sturdy tripod or strong shoulders to stably support the camera's bulk. The majority of these were designed for right-handed operation, except a few that possessed ambidextrous ergonomics.
Sony introduced the first HandyCam camcorder in 1984. The HandyCam could be held and operated entirely within the palm of the operator's hand, made possible by the 8mm video format.
The lens, imager, and recorder are the three major components of a camcorder. The lens gathers and focuses light on the imager. The imager (usually a CCD (charge-coupled device) or CMOS sensor IC on modern camcorders; earlier examples often used vidicon tubes) converts incident light into an electrical (video) signal. Finally, the recorder encodes the video signal into a storable form. The optics and imager are commonly referred to as the camera section.
The recent times are witnessing a great revolution in the camcorders. The camcorders with ultra modern technology are in the market. The mainstream consumer market favors ease of use, portable cheap camcorders and discount camcorders.
There is a great number of websites offering bulks of info on camcorders, cheap camcorders and discount camcorders. There are numerous online sources offers camcorder articles & blogs, camcorder review, digital camcorder review, sony camcorder review, canon camcorder review, sharp camcorder review, kodak camcorder review etc. The guys planning to buy camcorder must go through these reviews and articles, before buying a camcorder.
About the Author
About Author: The author owns a website on digital camcorders http://www.123digitalcamcorder.com You can check their website for latest deals on buyers guide for a quick review on camcorders http://www.digitalcamcorderguide.info
Sony introduced the first camcorder in 1983, followed by Kodak in 1984. The first camcorders combined the video-camera with an existing full-size VHS/Betamax recorder. These camcorders were large devices that required a sturdy tripod or strong shoulders to stably support the camera's bulk. The majority of these were designed for right-handed operation, except a few that possessed ambidextrous ergonomics.
Sony introduced the first HandyCam camcorder in 1984. The HandyCam could be held and operated entirely within the palm of the operator's hand, made possible by the 8mm video format.
The lens, imager, and recorder are the three major components of a camcorder. The lens gathers and focuses light on the imager. The imager (usually a CCD (charge-coupled device) or CMOS sensor IC on modern camcorders; earlier examples often used vidicon tubes) converts incident light into an electrical (video) signal. Finally, the recorder encodes the video signal into a storable form. The optics and imager are commonly referred to as the camera section.
The recent times are witnessing a great revolution in the camcorders. The camcorders with ultra modern technology are in the market. The mainstream consumer market favors ease of use, portable cheap camcorders and discount camcorders.
There is a great number of websites offering bulks of info on camcorders, cheap camcorders and discount camcorders. There are numerous online sources offers camcorder articles & blogs, camcorder review, digital camcorder review, sony camcorder review, canon camcorder review, sharp camcorder review, kodak camcorder review etc. The guys planning to buy camcorder must go through these reviews and articles, before buying a camcorder.
About the Author
About Author: The author owns a website on digital camcorders http://www.123digitalcamcorder.com You can check their website for latest deals on buyers guide for a quick review on camcorders http://www.digitalcamcorderguide.info
Digital Photography: Using Windows XP
This information is Copyright January 2006 by Windy Dawn Marketing and Loring Windblad. References for this article include the author's personal knowledge and experience. Additional information references with first article. This article may be freely copied and used on other web sites only if it is copied complete with all links and text, including this header, intact and unchanged in all details.
The title of this article is actually Digital Photography: Using Windows XP (to manage your digital pictures). If you have read my previous articles, Digital Photography: The Basics and Digital Photography: Choosing Your Camera, you have a pretty good idea that all of a sudden one trip can really put a lot of megabytes onto your computer hard disk.
Just as an example here, if I shoot 20 still images (JPGs) I will be adding about 16-17 MB of pictures to my collection. If I shoot 1 minute of .AVI video clip that alone is about 14 MB of data. So 10 minutes of video runs about 145 MB. You have a 128 MB memory chip? Well, better go to 256 MB and a couple of them. If you're doing lots of video, get more. So 10 minutes of video and 30 pictures takes up 170 MB. It only takes about 6 of these sessions to put a whole gigabyte of pictures on your HD! You're gonna take a trip for 2 weeks? Someplace you've never been before? You had better take along about 5-6 or more extra 512 MB memory chips. You came home and you've got 3 gigabytes of pictures and video to sort and store and prepare for the web? And take selected pictures and make photo prints of them for your photo album? WOW! HELP! Well, that's what I'm here for.
Let's take a look at our old computers. They were 1.1 gHz AMD Duron CPUs with 2 each 60 GB HD's and Windows 2000...and we were running out of space. Both HD's were partitioned*. My sweetie and I have one computer each, twins of one another, and networked for file sharing, etc. Well, they got old (3 years, 4 now) and so 31 December a year ago we built new ones. These are 3200 AMD Athlon-64s with 1 gb of RAM, 2 each 160 gb of HD, Windows XP SP2 and most of the basic bells and whistles. Further, the first HD, with the O/S, is partitioned, but the second HD is not partitioned, giving us a single 160 GB "work space" to edit videos and movies and etc.
Partitioning your HD is not important to your digital photography and your digital or film camera. But it is important to how you handle and store and work with your digital images when you put them onto your computer. First, as a minimum, you should have at least two partitions. They would be C, D and E. Then you would have your second HD, un-partitioned, as F.
Your C partition would be about 15-20 GB and it would hold your installed O/S and all your installed operating programs - and nothing else! Your D partition would be about the same and it would hold all your email files. Your E partition would be the rest of your work, all the things you create and save, letters, pictures, designs, writing, etc. And your F would be un-partitioned to provide the maximum sized workspace you can have for manipulating your digital picture files, making movies, etc. It would also provide, if you wanted it, a backup of your C partition.
Example: You are hit by a virus, you cannot clean it as there is no cure out for it yet and it will destroy your computer the moment you boot your system. If you use any of your programs you will begin infecting other things. Your only solution is to format your C partition. If you only have one partition on your HD, this means you have now lost everything you had on your computer and must start over. If you have partitioned it as above you will only lose your installed programs and Windows. You can format it, copy the backup from your F drive and you are back in business - and no virus.
Remember in the previous articles that we went to http://www.santaclausca.com twice and checked for two different things about the video clips? Well, what you need to know about them is this (dealing with only the second one, the video CD). It is approximately 23 MB on the web - and on my HD. That's BIG you say? Yes....and no. Yes, it is pretty big. But no, its also actually pretty small. Lets take a look at just how it was created and how big - or small - it really is!
First, all versions of Windows came with a sound recorder; Windows XP is no different in that respect. But Windows XP SP2 also comes with a Windows Movie Maker. It makes movies for you in .WMV format - Windows Media Video. And it makes those movies from either video clips or still jpg clips or a combination of video and still images. Finally it will use either .AVI or .MPG video and probably just about any stills, including .JPG and .GIF all scrunched into one final video output.
But that's just the icing on the cake. It will also play the audio you had as part of your video clips as part of the final output and you can add in your own audio clips made in the Sound Recorder. You can also add in MP3 music clips and possibly even MIDI (MP2) audio clips, and make them a part of your .WMV presentation. You just have to be a little careful not to overlap your audio portions. Finally you can add in titling on your finished video production, especially helpful if you are making a slide presentation.
OK, back to my Santa video. I used two 1-minute video clips and a couple which were shorter. The 1-minute clips were 14+ mb each. The shorter ones were 2, 4 and 5 mb. And I used several stills at 500 kb each. Then I added a couple of audio .WAV clips at a couple of megabytes each! The total was about 45 megabytes and I was aghast! But, well, I did it, I liked it (finally), and so I saved it. I figured that Windows Movie Maker would create something larger than the composite parts - a very reasonable supposition, ordinarily! Much to my surprise, the resultant .WMV production came in at a slim, trim and svelte 23 MB! Voila! I was impressed. It also runs 3½ minutes of play time.
So what we're looking at here is a working file which has, just for this production, nearly 50 mb of files, and an additional 23 mb of final production - actually 3 copies. Close to 110 mb total in this one file! This is why I have a 160 gb HD that is un-partitioned. This is just my "working folder for this Santa video clip"; every piece of my work goes into its own individual folder.
On my HD I have a Digital Pictures folder and it holds almost all of my digital pictures. It will hold all of them as soon as I get them all arranged and sorted and filed properly. Right now that Digital Pictures folder holds 9.15 gb of digital files, audio, video and still. I have a second section for Music where I store all of my MP3 music and .WAV music files. It occupies 16.7 gb of music, but there are another 8 gb of mp3 music stored on CD and not on my HD. I also have another 4.07 gb of digital video in .VOB format, which is my digital 8 videos converted from digital 8 format to a usable Windows format. These are the four video presentations I produced for a third party and the represent only 2 ½ hours of video footage.
If we look at the Digital Pictures folder we find it has sub-folders for every trip we have made, for pictures I have converted from photographs to digital to use on the internet, from our backyard in bloom and in snow to fishing, fossil hunting to gold panning. And I have a Family folder which is subdivided to 22 different sub-folders Altogether my digital pictures folder contains 14,888 files and 277 sub-folders.
What I suggest for your digital picture storage is a similar system of filing. 1) Take if off your C partition. 2) Provide as many folders as you will need and label each appropriately so that you can find what you are looking for when you need it. 3) Add new folders as they are needed, with appropriate folder names. 4) Finally, and probably first, make sure that you correctly label each picture with a short name and date before you put it in its final file folder.
OK, you have your picture files all organized on your HD, you are ready to make movie presentations using your sound recorder and movie editor in Windows, and you even have an idea for a family web site to display all your pictures. Oooops! You just can't load 9 GB of pictures onto the internet. It would take you forever to upload them, it would cost you a fortune to host a web site with that much space used, and it would take visitors forever just to view a couple of pictures - even at modern ADSL speeds? So each picture you propose sending via email, and each picture you are going to use in your web site, needs to be processed and reduced. Pictures you send by email or upload to a web site should be no larger than 50 kb and shooting for 20-25 kb each is desirable. Even if you achieve a 25 kb average, if your web site holds 100 pictures that comes out to 2.5 mb. Just try sending 2.5 mb by email - it takes a little while to send and it takes a little while to receive and download, even by ADSL. And if you are on standard hotmail or yahoo mail your limit is 1 mb per message or thereabouts.
So your final step for preparing your files, jpg, that is, is to "reduce" them for web and email use. There are several programs out there, including some freeby programs, which will do this admirably.
Picassa is a free program from Yahoo which organizes your pictures on your computer and prepares them for email attachments. How well it prepares them for web use I don't know...I tend to do this myself so I know what and where everything is.
Adobe Photoshop is not a free program but it does come with a second internal program which is very useful. It's called Image Ready and with it I can process 20 pictures in about 20 minutes or less, including renaming them, color correcting them and reducing them from 800 kb to 20-45 kb and filing them back beside the original pictures.
Whatever name I use to identify the picture I simply add an "x" to it when I save it. This "x" tells me that I have reduced the image size and quality. If I also "crop" the picture I add "xy" to the end of the name. This tells me it has been color corrected, reduced and cropped. As an example, these labels would be something like:
SweetieBDay1-1-01-001.jpg 865 kb original in full resolution
SweetieBDay1-1-01-001x.jpg 34 kb for the web
SweetieBDay1-1-01-001xy.jpg 3.2 kb for email
About the Author
The title of this article is actually Digital Photography: Using Windows XP (to manage your digital pictures). If you have read my previous articles, Digital Photography: The Basics and Digital Photography: Choosing Your Camera, you have a pretty good idea that all of a sudden one trip can really put a lot of megabytes onto your computer hard disk.
Just as an example here, if I shoot 20 still images (JPGs) I will be adding about 16-17 MB of pictures to my collection. If I shoot 1 minute of .AVI video clip that alone is about 14 MB of data. So 10 minutes of video runs about 145 MB. You have a 128 MB memory chip? Well, better go to 256 MB and a couple of them. If you're doing lots of video, get more. So 10 minutes of video and 30 pictures takes up 170 MB. It only takes about 6 of these sessions to put a whole gigabyte of pictures on your HD! You're gonna take a trip for 2 weeks? Someplace you've never been before? You had better take along about 5-6 or more extra 512 MB memory chips. You came home and you've got 3 gigabytes of pictures and video to sort and store and prepare for the web? And take selected pictures and make photo prints of them for your photo album? WOW! HELP! Well, that's what I'm here for.
Let's take a look at our old computers. They were 1.1 gHz AMD Duron CPUs with 2 each 60 GB HD's and Windows 2000...and we were running out of space. Both HD's were partitioned*. My sweetie and I have one computer each, twins of one another, and networked for file sharing, etc. Well, they got old (3 years, 4 now) and so 31 December a year ago we built new ones. These are 3200 AMD Athlon-64s with 1 gb of RAM, 2 each 160 gb of HD, Windows XP SP2 and most of the basic bells and whistles. Further, the first HD, with the O/S, is partitioned, but the second HD is not partitioned, giving us a single 160 GB "work space" to edit videos and movies and etc.
Partitioning your HD is not important to your digital photography and your digital or film camera. But it is important to how you handle and store and work with your digital images when you put them onto your computer. First, as a minimum, you should have at least two partitions. They would be C, D and E. Then you would have your second HD, un-partitioned, as F.
Your C partition would be about 15-20 GB and it would hold your installed O/S and all your installed operating programs - and nothing else! Your D partition would be about the same and it would hold all your email files. Your E partition would be the rest of your work, all the things you create and save, letters, pictures, designs, writing, etc. And your F would be un-partitioned to provide the maximum sized workspace you can have for manipulating your digital picture files, making movies, etc. It would also provide, if you wanted it, a backup of your C partition.
Example: You are hit by a virus, you cannot clean it as there is no cure out for it yet and it will destroy your computer the moment you boot your system. If you use any of your programs you will begin infecting other things. Your only solution is to format your C partition. If you only have one partition on your HD, this means you have now lost everything you had on your computer and must start over. If you have partitioned it as above you will only lose your installed programs and Windows. You can format it, copy the backup from your F drive and you are back in business - and no virus.
Remember in the previous articles that we went to http://www.santaclausca.com twice and checked for two different things about the video clips? Well, what you need to know about them is this (dealing with only the second one, the video CD). It is approximately 23 MB on the web - and on my HD. That's BIG you say? Yes....and no. Yes, it is pretty big. But no, its also actually pretty small. Lets take a look at just how it was created and how big - or small - it really is!
First, all versions of Windows came with a sound recorder; Windows XP is no different in that respect. But Windows XP SP2 also comes with a Windows Movie Maker. It makes movies for you in .WMV format - Windows Media Video. And it makes those movies from either video clips or still jpg clips or a combination of video and still images. Finally it will use either .AVI or .MPG video and probably just about any stills, including .JPG and .GIF all scrunched into one final video output.
But that's just the icing on the cake. It will also play the audio you had as part of your video clips as part of the final output and you can add in your own audio clips made in the Sound Recorder. You can also add in MP3 music clips and possibly even MIDI (MP2) audio clips, and make them a part of your .WMV presentation. You just have to be a little careful not to overlap your audio portions. Finally you can add in titling on your finished video production, especially helpful if you are making a slide presentation.
OK, back to my Santa video. I used two 1-minute video clips and a couple which were shorter. The 1-minute clips were 14+ mb each. The shorter ones were 2, 4 and 5 mb. And I used several stills at 500 kb each. Then I added a couple of audio .WAV clips at a couple of megabytes each! The total was about 45 megabytes and I was aghast! But, well, I did it, I liked it (finally), and so I saved it. I figured that Windows Movie Maker would create something larger than the composite parts - a very reasonable supposition, ordinarily! Much to my surprise, the resultant .WMV production came in at a slim, trim and svelte 23 MB! Voila! I was impressed. It also runs 3½ minutes of play time.
So what we're looking at here is a working file which has, just for this production, nearly 50 mb of files, and an additional 23 mb of final production - actually 3 copies. Close to 110 mb total in this one file! This is why I have a 160 gb HD that is un-partitioned. This is just my "working folder for this Santa video clip"; every piece of my work goes into its own individual folder.
On my HD I have a Digital Pictures folder and it holds almost all of my digital pictures. It will hold all of them as soon as I get them all arranged and sorted and filed properly. Right now that Digital Pictures folder holds 9.15 gb of digital files, audio, video and still. I have a second section for Music where I store all of my MP3 music and .WAV music files. It occupies 16.7 gb of music, but there are another 8 gb of mp3 music stored on CD and not on my HD. I also have another 4.07 gb of digital video in .VOB format, which is my digital 8 videos converted from digital 8 format to a usable Windows format. These are the four video presentations I produced for a third party and the represent only 2 ½ hours of video footage.
If we look at the Digital Pictures folder we find it has sub-folders for every trip we have made, for pictures I have converted from photographs to digital to use on the internet, from our backyard in bloom and in snow to fishing, fossil hunting to gold panning. And I have a Family folder which is subdivided to 22 different sub-folders Altogether my digital pictures folder contains 14,888 files and 277 sub-folders.
What I suggest for your digital picture storage is a similar system of filing. 1) Take if off your C partition. 2) Provide as many folders as you will need and label each appropriately so that you can find what you are looking for when you need it. 3) Add new folders as they are needed, with appropriate folder names. 4) Finally, and probably first, make sure that you correctly label each picture with a short name and date before you put it in its final file folder.
OK, you have your picture files all organized on your HD, you are ready to make movie presentations using your sound recorder and movie editor in Windows, and you even have an idea for a family web site to display all your pictures. Oooops! You just can't load 9 GB of pictures onto the internet. It would take you forever to upload them, it would cost you a fortune to host a web site with that much space used, and it would take visitors forever just to view a couple of pictures - even at modern ADSL speeds? So each picture you propose sending via email, and each picture you are going to use in your web site, needs to be processed and reduced. Pictures you send by email or upload to a web site should be no larger than 50 kb and shooting for 20-25 kb each is desirable. Even if you achieve a 25 kb average, if your web site holds 100 pictures that comes out to 2.5 mb. Just try sending 2.5 mb by email - it takes a little while to send and it takes a little while to receive and download, even by ADSL. And if you are on standard hotmail or yahoo mail your limit is 1 mb per message or thereabouts.
So your final step for preparing your files, jpg, that is, is to "reduce" them for web and email use. There are several programs out there, including some freeby programs, which will do this admirably.
Picassa is a free program from Yahoo which organizes your pictures on your computer and prepares them for email attachments. How well it prepares them for web use I don't know...I tend to do this myself so I know what and where everything is.
Adobe Photoshop is not a free program but it does come with a second internal program which is very useful. It's called Image Ready and with it I can process 20 pictures in about 20 minutes or less, including renaming them, color correcting them and reducing them from 800 kb to 20-45 kb and filing them back beside the original pictures.
Whatever name I use to identify the picture I simply add an "x" to it when I save it. This "x" tells me that I have reduced the image size and quality. If I also "crop" the picture I add "xy" to the end of the name. This tells me it has been color corrected, reduced and cropped. As an example, these labels would be something like:
SweetieBDay1-1-01-001.jpg 865 kb original in full resolution
SweetieBDay1-1-01-001x.jpg 34 kb for the web
SweetieBDay1-1-01-001xy.jpg 3.2 kb for email
About the Author
Loring Windblad worked as a freelance photographer for more than 20 years. He and his wife presently own and regularly use 1 VHS camcorder, 2 digital 8 camcorders and two digital still cameras, as well as a standard 35mm SLR. His latest business endeavor is at: http://www.santaclausca.com.
Wide Angle Digital Camera
Zoom digital camera lenses can be found in short or long zoom proportions according to the manufactured version of a particular camera or the specific preferences of a consumer. There are also several other types of lenses available on today's market including wide angle digital camera lenses. Wide angle lenses can be a bit trickier to purchase and maneuver for the amateur photographer because of the proportionality that must be maintained for good photos. Stretching and distorting are common problems with improper use of wide angled lenses which makes it necessary to understand how to purchase and use this piece of photographic equipment.
Lenses help to focus a prospective photo to the liking of the photographer and many consumers use various types of lenses to enhance their picture taking abilities. Scenes can be enlarged, resized or filtered with different types of lenses which make many consumers want to own as many variations as possible. Many cameras come with attached zoom digital camera lens that are made to adjust automatically to a particular photo setting. For many people, this is the best option because they are not proficient in photographic manipulation to be able to focus without help from an automatic source. Other cameras offer detachable lens options that can be purchased extra such as wide angle digital camera lens or telephoto lens that offer a huge array of photo options for the more ambitious or professional photographer.
Any typical lens that is purchased with a camera will generally do the job that most consumers want done in respect to photo quality. Whether the lens is attached or is a detachable option, most produce good quality photographs for indoor and outdoor scenery or portraits. Much of what is perceived as good or poor quality is based on the photography ability of the consumer rather than the lens itself. However, there are lens options such as wide angle digital camera lenses that can add extra focus and quality to any photo for those who know to use them. This type of lens will include a broader area of the scene and even though the focal point may be smaller, the surroundings will be more visible. Many photographers appreciate the added depth that this lens brings to photographs and opt to always have one on hand no matter where they are.
Another type of lens that is extremely popular with professional or avid photographers is a telephoto lens. Telephoto lenses are used to focus in on a specified target and draw the image in closer to allow a clear photo of the subject or target. Many professional photographers use this sort of equipment rather than the typical zoom digital camera lens because of the enhanced detail that can be gleaned from scenes and subjects that otherwise would be missed in the 'big picture' of things. Telephoto lenses are used to capture a drop of nectar from a hummingbirds bill that otherwise would never be seen by any other method. "I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works." (Psalm 9:1) Of course, high speed photo functions are important as well in this endeavor, but small points of interest can more easily be captured through telephoto capabilities.
A very popular type of lens available that provides a broad range of capabilities, ease of use and quality output is the zoom lens. A zoom lens offers a way to be camera-ready for just about anything that any typical consumer will have need of. These types of lenses provide the best of both telephoto and wide angle digital camera lens options because they can be adjusted according to the moments requirement. This lens will remain in a normal photo position until needed for wide or zoom angles. The lens can be pulled or turned into place and will then produce photos with more detail and scenery involved. They are called short or long zoom according to the use that they are put to. Short zoom is when wide angle is used and the long zoom digital camera functions allow a telephoto lens to be used.
This type of lens is basically the best of all worlds when it comes to lenses and many consumers are satisfied with the features and quality that is offered. There are many types of cameras available today that provide prepackaged zoom digital camera lens and add on lens options. Point and shoot, professional and prosumer cameras are the basic types available to consumers and can cost anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to several thousand dollars for a professional model. The growing popularity of prosumer cameras is propelling this version to the forefront of consumer demand because of higher resolution and creative focusing capabilities. Prosumers costs a bit more than the small pocket sized photographic equipment, but it leaps forward in quality, usability and value.
For more information: http://www.christianet.com/digitalequipment
http://www.christianet.com/digitalequipment/wideangledigitalcamera.htm
Lenses help to focus a prospective photo to the liking of the photographer and many consumers use various types of lenses to enhance their picture taking abilities. Scenes can be enlarged, resized or filtered with different types of lenses which make many consumers want to own as many variations as possible. Many cameras come with attached zoom digital camera lens that are made to adjust automatically to a particular photo setting. For many people, this is the best option because they are not proficient in photographic manipulation to be able to focus without help from an automatic source. Other cameras offer detachable lens options that can be purchased extra such as wide angle digital camera lens or telephoto lens that offer a huge array of photo options for the more ambitious or professional photographer.
Any typical lens that is purchased with a camera will generally do the job that most consumers want done in respect to photo quality. Whether the lens is attached or is a detachable option, most produce good quality photographs for indoor and outdoor scenery or portraits. Much of what is perceived as good or poor quality is based on the photography ability of the consumer rather than the lens itself. However, there are lens options such as wide angle digital camera lenses that can add extra focus and quality to any photo for those who know to use them. This type of lens will include a broader area of the scene and even though the focal point may be smaller, the surroundings will be more visible. Many photographers appreciate the added depth that this lens brings to photographs and opt to always have one on hand no matter where they are.
Another type of lens that is extremely popular with professional or avid photographers is a telephoto lens. Telephoto lenses are used to focus in on a specified target and draw the image in closer to allow a clear photo of the subject or target. Many professional photographers use this sort of equipment rather than the typical zoom digital camera lens because of the enhanced detail that can be gleaned from scenes and subjects that otherwise would be missed in the 'big picture' of things. Telephoto lenses are used to capture a drop of nectar from a hummingbirds bill that otherwise would never be seen by any other method. "I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works." (Psalm 9:1) Of course, high speed photo functions are important as well in this endeavor, but small points of interest can more easily be captured through telephoto capabilities.
A very popular type of lens available that provides a broad range of capabilities, ease of use and quality output is the zoom lens. A zoom lens offers a way to be camera-ready for just about anything that any typical consumer will have need of. These types of lenses provide the best of both telephoto and wide angle digital camera lens options because they can be adjusted according to the moments requirement. This lens will remain in a normal photo position until needed for wide or zoom angles. The lens can be pulled or turned into place and will then produce photos with more detail and scenery involved. They are called short or long zoom according to the use that they are put to. Short zoom is when wide angle is used and the long zoom digital camera functions allow a telephoto lens to be used.
This type of lens is basically the best of all worlds when it comes to lenses and many consumers are satisfied with the features and quality that is offered. There are many types of cameras available today that provide prepackaged zoom digital camera lens and add on lens options. Point and shoot, professional and prosumer cameras are the basic types available to consumers and can cost anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to several thousand dollars for a professional model. The growing popularity of prosumer cameras is propelling this version to the forefront of consumer demand because of higher resolution and creative focusing capabilities. Prosumers costs a bit more than the small pocket sized photographic equipment, but it leaps forward in quality, usability and value.
For more information: http://www.christianet.com/digitalequipment
http://www.christianet.com/digitalequipment/wideangledigitalcamera.htm
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Digital camera disc formats
As it is a fact that digital cameras are comprised of miniature computers that have storage discs for retrieving the images as digital information, so a certain amount of knowledge is necessary regarding the digital camera disc formats. A proper understanding of the disc formats of the digital camera memory can help the photographer or user make efficient use of the device in a correct and useful fashion. This discussion is aimed at revealing these little details!
At present in among the common users of digital cameras there are two main types of storage medium available nowadays. Some cameras use 1.44-MB floppy disks, which are available almost everywhere in the present market trends, and some digital cameras use assorted forms of flash memory having a range of capacities covering from several megabytes to a gigabyte. The difference lies between these two types of disc formats in their capacity. Floppy disks have a fixed memory capacity that cannot be altered, and the flash memory devices have capacities that keep increasing everyday. This is a kind of boon because of the fact that picture-sizes are also increasing constantly with the invention of higher resolution cameras that become available in the markets with daily technical advancements.
The major and the most popular file format available for digital cameras are TIFF and JPEG formats respectively. Looking in a little detail into these two formats, the TIFF format is an uncompressed format without any alteration of image sizes and JPEG is a compressed format that does alter the image size for economic use of memory for storage. Certainly, from common sense, majority of the digital cameras use the JPEG file format for storing images and photographs, and they even offer quality settings such as medium or high and accordingly the size is altered thus providing both memory management as well as quality management of the pictures.
Again looking at the disc formats from a different angle, it is apparent that a 1.44-MB disk cannot clutch many photographs or images. Sometimes, in fact, they can't even fit one picture on one disk, due to high quality and subsequent seize and memory requirements. However, the floppy disks have their own advantages. In today's world of Internet publishing and email a picture size larger than 640x480 is hardly required, and more or less always they are saved in JPEG formats. During such times it is possible to accommodate about 15 pictures on every disk. Thus making situations more economic and flexible for the users. However for storing bigger and greater quality pictures higher capacity media are required such as a 128-MB flash memory card that can store more than 1,500 small compressed images or 20 of the uncompressed 1600x1200 images.
Thus so far a handsome amount of information regarding the disc formats has come into light from the above discussion. It is a humble effort to bring out the rudimentary knowledge for such a wide field of study as digital camera disc formats, which includes photography as well as computers all in one. What a fantastic combination!
About the Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.comVisit his digital camera guide and learn how to take better pictures with your digicam.
At present in among the common users of digital cameras there are two main types of storage medium available nowadays. Some cameras use 1.44-MB floppy disks, which are available almost everywhere in the present market trends, and some digital cameras use assorted forms of flash memory having a range of capacities covering from several megabytes to a gigabyte. The difference lies between these two types of disc formats in their capacity. Floppy disks have a fixed memory capacity that cannot be altered, and the flash memory devices have capacities that keep increasing everyday. This is a kind of boon because of the fact that picture-sizes are also increasing constantly with the invention of higher resolution cameras that become available in the markets with daily technical advancements.
The major and the most popular file format available for digital cameras are TIFF and JPEG formats respectively. Looking in a little detail into these two formats, the TIFF format is an uncompressed format without any alteration of image sizes and JPEG is a compressed format that does alter the image size for economic use of memory for storage. Certainly, from common sense, majority of the digital cameras use the JPEG file format for storing images and photographs, and they even offer quality settings such as medium or high and accordingly the size is altered thus providing both memory management as well as quality management of the pictures.
Again looking at the disc formats from a different angle, it is apparent that a 1.44-MB disk cannot clutch many photographs or images. Sometimes, in fact, they can't even fit one picture on one disk, due to high quality and subsequent seize and memory requirements. However, the floppy disks have their own advantages. In today's world of Internet publishing and email a picture size larger than 640x480 is hardly required, and more or less always they are saved in JPEG formats. During such times it is possible to accommodate about 15 pictures on every disk. Thus making situations more economic and flexible for the users. However for storing bigger and greater quality pictures higher capacity media are required such as a 128-MB flash memory card that can store more than 1,500 small compressed images or 20 of the uncompressed 1600x1200 images.
Thus so far a handsome amount of information regarding the disc formats has come into light from the above discussion. It is a humble effort to bring out the rudimentary knowledge for such a wide field of study as digital camera disc formats, which includes photography as well as computers all in one. What a fantastic combination!
About the Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.comVisit his digital camera guide and learn how to take better pictures with your digicam.
Old Fashioned High Resolution Photo Camera
Tired of trying to keep updated with the highest mega pixel resolution digital camera? Well even if one has tried to do that, most certainly he will soon find out that his few months old digital camera is outdated in terms of mega pixel resolution. It’s an ever changing kind of product that has become very hard to keep updated, unless one is willing to spend more money by making purchases every six to twelve months.
If the main intention of purchasing a photo camera is enlarging the image, then mega pixel resolution indeed will become the main factor. In this case one might consider a different option, which will keep his product updated for years to come. I’m talking about a used 4x5" film photo camera, together with a high resolution flat bed film scanner. All of this for less than one thousand US dollars. With all of this, one will get over 100 mega pixels in fine detailed film resolution and fine scanned digital images that can be enlarged up to 30x40" in size with professional quality. These 4x5" film cameras have done a remarkable job in general personal and commercial photography such as wedding, portraiture, product, documentary, advertising and landscape for nearly a hundred years.
Where to find 4x5" used film cameras? Since some of these cameras were mostly used in the past, until the 1960’s, it should be no problem in finding them in American auction web sites. Anyway, a good used 4x5" camera with lens can be found for less than four hundred US dollars.
As for the flat bed film scanner, one can find brand new ones for less than five hundred US dollars. Just make sure the scanner is able to scan films.
Whenever purchasing a 4x5" film camera, one should look for the following features: folds into a compact box, flexible bellows, lenses that can be easily interchanged, accepts sheet film, ground glass focusing screen, easily handheld and optical viewfinder accessory.
As for the lenses, there are four main categories: 1 - general purposes; 2 - wide field (mostly used for close up work and landscape); 3 – extreme wide angles lenses; 4 – special effects lenses (telephoto). However, one might use a general purpose 127 or 152mm lens for most of his photograph sessions. In cases where it requires special lenses, such as architecture or macro photography, one will still find lots of them available in auction sites. Used lenses for 4x5” cameras made after world word II have excellent performances comparable to today’s modern lenses.
Whenever making a purchase of a 4x5" camera make sure that: 1 - the bellows have no light leaks, 2 – the lens shutter works accurate at all speeds; 4 – the lens elements have no fungus and scratches of any kind; 4 – the focus is working properly between the ground glass and the film.
The option of using a 4x5" film camera, together with a flat bed film scanner, for enlarging images with professional quality is viable and accessible. Cheaper than top digital cameras, the 4x5" film camera offers better image quality and will always be updated in the future, maintaining its original value.
For those who wishes the very most detailed image enlargement, one can always use the 8x10" film camera. Four times the physical film size of the 4x5", this option offers so much film resolution that it is considered by many as the ultimate step for photo image enlargement.
Sometimes analog products deliver better results that its digital counterparts. If you are doing the job of enlarging photo images, you should give it a try with a 4x5" camera. You might just surprise yourself.
Roberto Sedycias
IT Consultant
This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.
About the Author
This article can also be accessed in portuguese language from the News Article section of page PoloMercantil
Roberto Sedycias has a bachelor degree in Business Administration and over 20 years experience in systems analysis and computer programming. Currently working as IT consultant for www.PoloMercantil.com.br
If the main intention of purchasing a photo camera is enlarging the image, then mega pixel resolution indeed will become the main factor. In this case one might consider a different option, which will keep his product updated for years to come. I’m talking about a used 4x5" film photo camera, together with a high resolution flat bed film scanner. All of this for less than one thousand US dollars. With all of this, one will get over 100 mega pixels in fine detailed film resolution and fine scanned digital images that can be enlarged up to 30x40" in size with professional quality. These 4x5" film cameras have done a remarkable job in general personal and commercial photography such as wedding, portraiture, product, documentary, advertising and landscape for nearly a hundred years.
Where to find 4x5" used film cameras? Since some of these cameras were mostly used in the past, until the 1960’s, it should be no problem in finding them in American auction web sites. Anyway, a good used 4x5" camera with lens can be found for less than four hundred US dollars.
As for the flat bed film scanner, one can find brand new ones for less than five hundred US dollars. Just make sure the scanner is able to scan films.
Whenever purchasing a 4x5" film camera, one should look for the following features: folds into a compact box, flexible bellows, lenses that can be easily interchanged, accepts sheet film, ground glass focusing screen, easily handheld and optical viewfinder accessory.
As for the lenses, there are four main categories: 1 - general purposes; 2 - wide field (mostly used for close up work and landscape); 3 – extreme wide angles lenses; 4 – special effects lenses (telephoto). However, one might use a general purpose 127 or 152mm lens for most of his photograph sessions. In cases where it requires special lenses, such as architecture or macro photography, one will still find lots of them available in auction sites. Used lenses for 4x5” cameras made after world word II have excellent performances comparable to today’s modern lenses.
Whenever making a purchase of a 4x5" camera make sure that: 1 - the bellows have no light leaks, 2 – the lens shutter works accurate at all speeds; 4 – the lens elements have no fungus and scratches of any kind; 4 – the focus is working properly between the ground glass and the film.
The option of using a 4x5" film camera, together with a flat bed film scanner, for enlarging images with professional quality is viable and accessible. Cheaper than top digital cameras, the 4x5" film camera offers better image quality and will always be updated in the future, maintaining its original value.
For those who wishes the very most detailed image enlargement, one can always use the 8x10" film camera. Four times the physical film size of the 4x5", this option offers so much film resolution that it is considered by many as the ultimate step for photo image enlargement.
Sometimes analog products deliver better results that its digital counterparts. If you are doing the job of enlarging photo images, you should give it a try with a 4x5" camera. You might just surprise yourself.
Roberto Sedycias
IT Consultant
This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.
About the Author
This article can also be accessed in portuguese language from the News Article section of page PoloMercantil
Roberto Sedycias has a bachelor degree in Business Administration and over 20 years experience in systems analysis and computer programming. Currently working as IT consultant for www.PoloMercantil.com.br
CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) Systems
If you are looking for a video surveillance system, then look no further, number of online internet mega stores for all your video surveillance and security camera equipment are found.
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) is not the panacea to all security and safety problems that many people believe it to be. CCTV should only be part of an integrated approach that considers all aspects of the security problems being experienced.
CCTV video security camera system will allow you to view recorded images while continuing to record on all security cameras and also offers smart advanced search and easy play back functionality.
CCTV video surveillance systme includes Color security cameras, Day and night security cameras, infrared security cameras, dome security cameras, black and white security cameras, bullet security camera, hidden cameras, pan tilt zoom (PTZ) cameras, zoom security cameras, dummy cameras, IP digital security cameras, and board mini security cameras.
The latest CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) news, including CCTV systems, CCTV security, mono or color camera, bullet or mini cameras, full pan, tilt and zoom cameras, remote monitoring, Digital Video Recorder (DVR), dome, monitor, video security, network security, lenses, controllers, control rooms. New CCTV technology is also covered, with wireless CCTV, internet-accessible/ IP CCTV, low light camera and night vision, computer assisted operation, and motion detection facilities.
A CCTV project that doesn’t show the viewing areas of each camera and their functions in different regions of space cannot be considered a professional one. Of course the real sequence of actions can differ, but in general one can see, that the process of designing a CCTV system is getting clearer for both the designer and the customer. The most important is the result one gets; an efficient CCTV system that fulfills its functions in full measure. Who knows how many crimes can be prevented and uncovered with the help of it? Now it’s up to you to discover the best video surveillance system for you.
About the Author
This article has been published by editorial staff of New Orleans Internet Marketing firm Search Influence on behalf of Shortagecontrol.com. For more information about CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) Systems, please visit http://www.shortagecontrol.com to view “Shortage Control, Inc ". Please direct any feedback on this article to marketing@searchinfluence.com.
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) is not the panacea to all security and safety problems that many people believe it to be. CCTV should only be part of an integrated approach that considers all aspects of the security problems being experienced.
CCTV video security camera system will allow you to view recorded images while continuing to record on all security cameras and also offers smart advanced search and easy play back functionality.
CCTV video surveillance systme includes Color security cameras, Day and night security cameras, infrared security cameras, dome security cameras, black and white security cameras, bullet security camera, hidden cameras, pan tilt zoom (PTZ) cameras, zoom security cameras, dummy cameras, IP digital security cameras, and board mini security cameras.
The latest CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) news, including CCTV systems, CCTV security, mono or color camera, bullet or mini cameras, full pan, tilt and zoom cameras, remote monitoring, Digital Video Recorder (DVR), dome, monitor, video security, network security, lenses, controllers, control rooms. New CCTV technology is also covered, with wireless CCTV, internet-accessible/ IP CCTV, low light camera and night vision, computer assisted operation, and motion detection facilities.
A CCTV project that doesn’t show the viewing areas of each camera and their functions in different regions of space cannot be considered a professional one. Of course the real sequence of actions can differ, but in general one can see, that the process of designing a CCTV system is getting clearer for both the designer and the customer. The most important is the result one gets; an efficient CCTV system that fulfills its functions in full measure. Who knows how many crimes can be prevented and uncovered with the help of it? Now it’s up to you to discover the best video surveillance system for you.
About the Author
This article has been published by editorial staff of New Orleans Internet Marketing firm Search Influence on behalf of Shortagecontrol.com. For more information about CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) Systems, please visit http://www.shortagecontrol.com to view “Shortage Control, Inc ". Please direct any feedback on this article to marketing@searchinfluence.com.
Digital camera batteries
Every device needs a driving force to operate, just as every living thing needs a heart to keep it alive! Basically electric power does this job for any kind of devices nowadays. Similarly for any digital camera too, a good battery is necessary in order to ensure an excellent performance from it as long as possible. Being such a crucial task as if searching for a good heart for a human being, perhaps the most tedious thing about digital cameras is the quest for their battery consumption and thereby finding a suitable one for any particular one. Yet a basic overview regarding this so important component of a digital camera makes the ventures of the users somewhat less complicated and makes life easier with a proper selection of the battery!
Leaving aside the ever power thirsty LCD screens and flashes, the digital cameras themselves exhaust batteries much faster than film cameras, due to their state of the art electronic designs and intricate circuitry. Many digital cameras run from AA cells, around 4, and can even drain a set of alkaline cells in less than 1 hour of working! For example, the Kodak DC120 draws about 210mA during start or switch ON, but progresses to around 1.3A with the association of the LCD fully working and can go ahead to about 2.1A while picture taking and after it too.
With all these nightmares regarding the batteries of the digital cameras, it is worthwhile to analyze and reveal some of the available batteries for the digital cameras in an effort to explore area of power consumption in this fantastic device. Coming to first one of these, like its great name suggests, it is the Li-ion (Lithium Ion). It is one of the latest cell types available to digital camera users. This has many advantages to its credit. It is light in weight and currently available for many commercial uses and thus being so the Li-ion (Lithium Ion) battery type is becoming quite popular. This has an added advantage of being able to endow with more power than any of the other main cell types available. It is also free from the problems of memory effect, hat some battery types do have, and maintenance is least in this type of battery. These are but real goodies about this Li-ion (Lithium Ion) battery. Yet it has one major disadvantage, that is, the price is usually significantly higher than conventional batteries, due to its sophisticated design and technology.
Coming to the next one in the line, the NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride). This is a battery that is perhaps the most frequently under use for not only digital cameras, but also for other sophisticated devices like laptop computers! This has the advantage of being cheap in price due to the fact that it incurs cheap manufacturing costs, and thus a choice for many users! But this does have the problems of memory effect, and much more maintenance and care is required while handling this kind of battery.
Another such battery is the NiCAD (Nickel Cadmium) Battery. This is perhaps belonging to one of the older cell types generally available for older laptops and electronic devices. These batteries or cells have an aptitude for handling high power loads, and therefore is more frequently found in handy power tools and devices that require more amounts power to work efficiently and perfectly. Yet again, these batteries too have the problems of memory effect, and much more maintenance and care is required while handling this kind of battery.
Apart from the different batteries themselves, the selection should be based upon the charging techniques and the different charges available for all these digital camera batteries. Latest batteries come handy with charging free techniques too! So care needs to be taken in this area also, depending upon the requirements of the user.
With all the vivid conversation regarding the hearts of the digital cameras, their batteries, it is expected for every person going through the lines to have grabbed a significant amount of information in dealing with the intricacies of the purchase, and thereby also augment the ability of the person in using such a sophisticated device as a digital camera with a proper battery!
About the Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.comVisit his digital camera guide and learn how to take better pictures with your digicam.
Leaving aside the ever power thirsty LCD screens and flashes, the digital cameras themselves exhaust batteries much faster than film cameras, due to their state of the art electronic designs and intricate circuitry. Many digital cameras run from AA cells, around 4, and can even drain a set of alkaline cells in less than 1 hour of working! For example, the Kodak DC120 draws about 210mA during start or switch ON, but progresses to around 1.3A with the association of the LCD fully working and can go ahead to about 2.1A while picture taking and after it too.
With all these nightmares regarding the batteries of the digital cameras, it is worthwhile to analyze and reveal some of the available batteries for the digital cameras in an effort to explore area of power consumption in this fantastic device. Coming to first one of these, like its great name suggests, it is the Li-ion (Lithium Ion). It is one of the latest cell types available to digital camera users. This has many advantages to its credit. It is light in weight and currently available for many commercial uses and thus being so the Li-ion (Lithium Ion) battery type is becoming quite popular. This has an added advantage of being able to endow with more power than any of the other main cell types available. It is also free from the problems of memory effect, hat some battery types do have, and maintenance is least in this type of battery. These are but real goodies about this Li-ion (Lithium Ion) battery. Yet it has one major disadvantage, that is, the price is usually significantly higher than conventional batteries, due to its sophisticated design and technology.
Coming to the next one in the line, the NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride). This is a battery that is perhaps the most frequently under use for not only digital cameras, but also for other sophisticated devices like laptop computers! This has the advantage of being cheap in price due to the fact that it incurs cheap manufacturing costs, and thus a choice for many users! But this does have the problems of memory effect, and much more maintenance and care is required while handling this kind of battery.
Another such battery is the NiCAD (Nickel Cadmium) Battery. This is perhaps belonging to one of the older cell types generally available for older laptops and electronic devices. These batteries or cells have an aptitude for handling high power loads, and therefore is more frequently found in handy power tools and devices that require more amounts power to work efficiently and perfectly. Yet again, these batteries too have the problems of memory effect, and much more maintenance and care is required while handling this kind of battery.
Apart from the different batteries themselves, the selection should be based upon the charging techniques and the different charges available for all these digital camera batteries. Latest batteries come handy with charging free techniques too! So care needs to be taken in this area also, depending upon the requirements of the user.
With all the vivid conversation regarding the hearts of the digital cameras, their batteries, it is expected for every person going through the lines to have grabbed a significant amount of information in dealing with the intricacies of the purchase, and thereby also augment the ability of the person in using such a sophisticated device as a digital camera with a proper battery!
About the Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.comVisit his digital camera guide and learn how to take better pictures with your digicam.
Friday, April 27, 2007
EBay for starters
Making money is really a hard thing to do these days, as many people want to get some extra dollars out of their unused stuffs, eBay comes along to help. Having to sell them is quite a task but no means that hard. I have stated the basic things you need to start out an eBay business.
These are for the beginners who would like to make money on eBay. The proper ingredients to having your very own cyber shop are really not that demanding. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, a digital camera, and of course, products to sell.
You can sell used items you find at garage sales, from your closet, etc. You can sell new items you find at discount prices from liquidators, dollar stores and clearance sales. If you can find a supplier who will make you a deal, you're even luckier.
Skills for the trade
Marketing Skills You can develop these skills as you learn how to sell various items on eBay. Read some marketing books and articles to help yourself sell things, but really, its selling them efficiently by having your own strategy which you already got from other successful entrepreneurs online. Take time to read and plan things out. You will thank yourself later for a job well dome.
Organizational Skills You need to keep good records of your sales and not just for tax purposes. You need to be able to keep track of which buyers have paid, which have received their items, etc. Setting up a spreadsheet with all the pertinent information should help keep this under control. You can also get affiliated with third party payment systems online. There are choices to choose from, however, they charge for about 1 percent of the item price but nothing is better than your clients having to be at ease purchasing your items.
Basic HTML Skills To make your auctions eye-catching and appealing, you will want to know some basic HTML skills. There are a lot of simple and basic tutorials online. Start out by searching for html tutorials, you can choose which one you like for your convenience.
Starting up on eBay
Start by choosing a certain type of product to specialize in (ex. toys, clothes, etc.). That way, you can become an expert in those products and how to sell them effectively. You may want to expand your product line at a later date.
Getting started is easy. Create an eBay user ID and you're on your way. Be sure to read through the eBay selling rules and check out all the tips eBay offers along the way.
Put up only a few items to start and don't saturate your auctions with too many of the exact same item. The objective is to sell your item at the highest price. If you are selling 5 identical items, it may be harder for you to get a high price. Experiment with various selling methods and find out what works your particular items.
Online Marketing Ideas Promote your business with your own personal web page. This can be a web page just to promote your eBay business, or it can be an online store that links to your auctions. It gives you a more established presence on the Internet and gives your clients a better sense of who you are. Build a mailing list. Send out an informative newsletter on a regular basis to your subscribers. Just be sure to promote your auctions in the newsletter too.
Other Online Auctions Don't limit yourself to eBay. EBay is only one of the many online auction houses available, but it is, by far the largest. However, eBay's fees can get expensive. It may be cost effective to also sell your items on other auction sites and you may face less selling competition especially if you are selling items at a fixed price. Other auction sites might be a good opportunity for you to buy items to sell for higher prices elsewhere.
So what you need is some motivation and patience to see your hard- earned money in the palms of your hand.
Just remember, you may also have fewer buyers for your products and may have a lower selling price. You will need to evaluate which is the most efficient way to sell your items.
About the Author
If you are looking for more information on selling or buying on eBay, visit Ralph and Liz's make money on ebay site.
These are for the beginners who would like to make money on eBay. The proper ingredients to having your very own cyber shop are really not that demanding. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, a digital camera, and of course, products to sell.
You can sell used items you find at garage sales, from your closet, etc. You can sell new items you find at discount prices from liquidators, dollar stores and clearance sales. If you can find a supplier who will make you a deal, you're even luckier.
Skills for the trade
Marketing Skills You can develop these skills as you learn how to sell various items on eBay. Read some marketing books and articles to help yourself sell things, but really, its selling them efficiently by having your own strategy which you already got from other successful entrepreneurs online. Take time to read and plan things out. You will thank yourself later for a job well dome.
Organizational Skills You need to keep good records of your sales and not just for tax purposes. You need to be able to keep track of which buyers have paid, which have received their items, etc. Setting up a spreadsheet with all the pertinent information should help keep this under control. You can also get affiliated with third party payment systems online. There are choices to choose from, however, they charge for about 1 percent of the item price but nothing is better than your clients having to be at ease purchasing your items.
Basic HTML Skills To make your auctions eye-catching and appealing, you will want to know some basic HTML skills. There are a lot of simple and basic tutorials online. Start out by searching for html tutorials, you can choose which one you like for your convenience.
Starting up on eBay
Start by choosing a certain type of product to specialize in (ex. toys, clothes, etc.). That way, you can become an expert in those products and how to sell them effectively. You may want to expand your product line at a later date.
Getting started is easy. Create an eBay user ID and you're on your way. Be sure to read through the eBay selling rules and check out all the tips eBay offers along the way.
Put up only a few items to start and don't saturate your auctions with too many of the exact same item. The objective is to sell your item at the highest price. If you are selling 5 identical items, it may be harder for you to get a high price. Experiment with various selling methods and find out what works your particular items.
Online Marketing Ideas Promote your business with your own personal web page. This can be a web page just to promote your eBay business, or it can be an online store that links to your auctions. It gives you a more established presence on the Internet and gives your clients a better sense of who you are. Build a mailing list. Send out an informative newsletter on a regular basis to your subscribers. Just be sure to promote your auctions in the newsletter too.
Other Online Auctions Don't limit yourself to eBay. EBay is only one of the many online auction houses available, but it is, by far the largest. However, eBay's fees can get expensive. It may be cost effective to also sell your items on other auction sites and you may face less selling competition especially if you are selling items at a fixed price. Other auction sites might be a good opportunity for you to buy items to sell for higher prices elsewhere.
So what you need is some motivation and patience to see your hard- earned money in the palms of your hand.
Just remember, you may also have fewer buyers for your products and may have a lower selling price. You will need to evaluate which is the most efficient way to sell your items.
About the Author
If you are looking for more information on selling or buying on eBay, visit Ralph and Liz's make money on ebay site.
Don't Trust Digital Camcorder Reviews
A couple years ago (ok, more than a few), I became really interested in buying a digital camcorder. Like most people new to the trade, I wanted to purchase the latest digital camcorder that featured the best technology. I always enjoyed looking at the flashy camcorder magazines to check out pictures, and read articles and reviews on the latest camcorders.
However, once I became serious about wanting to buy one, it suddenly occurred to me, as I was reading the magazine reviews, that almost every single one had a positive slant. Virtually every review I read, discussed only the benefits and cool features of the camcorders.
All of these good reviews made me realize that what I was reading was biased information designed as a marketing tool. The content within these articles and reviews was nothing more than eye candy for techies. Essentially, aside from stats (which I could barely make heads or tails of) the magazine reviews actually provided very little information about the quality and practicality of the camcorder.
So, to test my theory on my favorite "flashy magazine", I plugged in the names of the few digital camcorders that interested me into a search engine. Low and behold I found genuine reviews from consumers who had actually purchased the cameras and expressed their real opinions about the product. What did I discover with my research? I learned that my first digital camcorder choice actually only received a "good" video quality rating from most users. This was a much different result compared to the "excellent" rating it was given by the magazine. Naturally, my attitude toward this digital camcorder changed, and I began investigating other models.
What I learned as I began conducting my digital camcorder review research was that while the stats of the camera matter, they aren't the most important part of a review. Until you actually purchase the digital camcorder and compare it to another camcorder, or an older model, you won't know if the digital camcorder is true to its hype. In other words, most of the fancy stats mean squat to the average consumer who knows very little about digital camcorder technology.
Think about it, if you know very little about digital camcorders and a review only provides you with technical details and a product description, how will you know if the camcorder will suit your intended use?
For instance, observe the following example that has been based on an actual digital camcorder review:
The digital camcorder captures fantastic videos and stills. It is compact, lightweight and capable. The Camcorder features a 4x digital zoom, an internal 16MB flash memory with external SD/MMC card slot (supports up to 1 GB) and a 3.2-megapixel CCD image sensor. The digital camcorder has an image resolution of 1280x960, 1600x1200 and 2048x1536, and records MPEG-4 movies. The digital camcorder also has a 1.8" TFT monitor, NTSC/PAL TV out format, and USB 1.1 PC connection.
Did that mean anything to you? Do you know whether or not you need all of those features, or if you have the right equipment to accommodate the camcorder? If you're like me, and technical stats make your eyes cross, here's what you need to do to ensure that the digital camcorder you buy is ideal for your needs.
First and foremost, avoid getting sucked in by all technical flare such as the lab/bench tests, color/lines of resolution etc. Look for quality reviews that will tell you what purpose the camera is ideal for, and the type of person it will likely suit.
Thus, if you are looking for honest camcorder reviews, direct your browser to sites that sell these products such as Amazon.com and find out what people who actually purchased these products had to say about them in the user comments section. Here you will not only receive a consumer "five-star rating", but also find out what they liked and didn't like about the camera.
About the Author
Mark Sturge is the owner of KMS Productions and webmaster at kmsvideo.com. A site where visitors can find camcorder reviews such as the panasonic pv-gs400 3 ccd camcorder as well as useful hints and tips to better their filming techniques.
However, once I became serious about wanting to buy one, it suddenly occurred to me, as I was reading the magazine reviews, that almost every single one had a positive slant. Virtually every review I read, discussed only the benefits and cool features of the camcorders.
All of these good reviews made me realize that what I was reading was biased information designed as a marketing tool. The content within these articles and reviews was nothing more than eye candy for techies. Essentially, aside from stats (which I could barely make heads or tails of) the magazine reviews actually provided very little information about the quality and practicality of the camcorder.
So, to test my theory on my favorite "flashy magazine", I plugged in the names of the few digital camcorders that interested me into a search engine. Low and behold I found genuine reviews from consumers who had actually purchased the cameras and expressed their real opinions about the product. What did I discover with my research? I learned that my first digital camcorder choice actually only received a "good" video quality rating from most users. This was a much different result compared to the "excellent" rating it was given by the magazine. Naturally, my attitude toward this digital camcorder changed, and I began investigating other models.
What I learned as I began conducting my digital camcorder review research was that while the stats of the camera matter, they aren't the most important part of a review. Until you actually purchase the digital camcorder and compare it to another camcorder, or an older model, you won't know if the digital camcorder is true to its hype. In other words, most of the fancy stats mean squat to the average consumer who knows very little about digital camcorder technology.
Think about it, if you know very little about digital camcorders and a review only provides you with technical details and a product description, how will you know if the camcorder will suit your intended use?
For instance, observe the following example that has been based on an actual digital camcorder review:
The digital camcorder captures fantastic videos and stills. It is compact, lightweight and capable. The Camcorder features a 4x digital zoom, an internal 16MB flash memory with external SD/MMC card slot (supports up to 1 GB) and a 3.2-megapixel CCD image sensor. The digital camcorder has an image resolution of 1280x960, 1600x1200 and 2048x1536, and records MPEG-4 movies. The digital camcorder also has a 1.8" TFT monitor, NTSC/PAL TV out format, and USB 1.1 PC connection.
Did that mean anything to you? Do you know whether or not you need all of those features, or if you have the right equipment to accommodate the camcorder? If you're like me, and technical stats make your eyes cross, here's what you need to do to ensure that the digital camcorder you buy is ideal for your needs.
First and foremost, avoid getting sucked in by all technical flare such as the lab/bench tests, color/lines of resolution etc. Look for quality reviews that will tell you what purpose the camera is ideal for, and the type of person it will likely suit.
Thus, if you are looking for honest camcorder reviews, direct your browser to sites that sell these products such as Amazon.com and find out what people who actually purchased these products had to say about them in the user comments section. Here you will not only receive a consumer "five-star rating", but also find out what they liked and didn't like about the camera.
About the Author
Mark Sturge is the owner of KMS Productions and webmaster at kmsvideo.com. A site where visitors can find camcorder reviews such as the panasonic pv-gs400 3 ccd camcorder as well as useful hints and tips to better their filming techniques.
Make Money Easy with Your Own DVD!
Making and marketing your own DVD. Does that sound like a viable business? Well, let us see... You shoot some video tape and have it transferred to a blank DVD. Just a few bucks spent for a one time expense. From there you can have the DVD duplicated with four-color printing on it and have it in four-color printed packaging which makes it look very professional for just a couple dollars each, but that's just if you want to be fancy about it by using photographs. Otherwise, two-color printing will work just fine.
Now your DVDs are ready to sell. From just over a dollar's worth cost for production when you use two-color printing, you can mark up your product as you see fit. Charge $97.00 or $149.00 a copy, over and over again. Or produce a set of DVD's and charge $495.00! Does not take much math skills to figure why people are becoming rich doing this!
The way to make a valuable DVD is to have it show and tell how to do something people want to do, or how to have something people want to have. You can come up with some ideas if you reach into your experience of things you have learned or discovered how to do.
This is the information age and if you put out the information, people are going to buy it up because they are hungry to know everything. Truth is that if you are currently selling printed how-to material, you can command a much higher price to provide that information in DVD format. Sell them your knowledge on a DVD.
Of course you will need some equipment to make your DVD. You can be up and running without a big budget. A tripod holding a digital camcorder than can connect directly to your computer so that you can use video editing software and a good microphone so you can be heard clearly is what it comes down to.
Having a remote control on your camcorder could even make video editing unnecessary, since what really counts in DVDs is the information contained in the DVD and not how pretty the presentation is. What really makes winners is down and dirty content.
A good place to get content from which to produce a DVD that you can call your own is InfoGround. In fact there is so much there covering the most popular niche markets that you can give yourself the reputation of being an expert! InfoGoRound has hundreds of top quality, private label articles for the taking!
Converting some of the many information products found at InfoGoRound to DVD is the fast track to being a 'how-to' author able to effortlessly bring in the easy money. You will have so much content to work with that you should even use some of the video you make to put up on a website. Showing free video samples on your website is sure to drive traffic and skyrocket DVD sales.
Are you ready to do this and join the ranks of the Millionaire Internet Marketers? There are a couple of those marketers who amazingly enough have separate website videos in the same spacious white room with huge decorative windows. Assuming they don't live in the same mansion, you might think they are filming in the same studio. If you think that then you would be wrong.
You can make your video look like it was done at a beautiful gorgeous place no matter what the surroundings you currently have. To set up your own amazing studio, get some florescent lights as they provide lighting without much extra heat or shadows, and set up a screen for your background. Put a light on each side of the camera pointing toward the screen. You will want to experiment in order to get the lights placed just right.
Now you have a clutter free background by using a screen, which could just be a sheet or curtain placed up. The secret to having any type of background you want however, is to invest in a chroma key green or blue screen. Also get and learn how to use video editing software that has chroma key effect. What chroma key effect does is replace the colored background with any type of background you want... even an image of the inside of a mansion! It is definitely the way to make a great impression.
Information DVDs are perfect products to develop. You can build your whole business around them. They are inexpensive to make, yet have a high-perceived value. They are heavily in demand, and staggeringly easy to sell for big fat wallet-filling profits. Film yourself on DVDs sharing what you know or make a presentation from the treasure-trove of information found at InfoGoRound. The money you can generate from doing this is outrageous!
About the Author
Mr James has owned The Cartridge Specialists (Melbourne) since 2004 selling ink, toner, fax rolls etc & regularly writes articles about his industry
Now your DVDs are ready to sell. From just over a dollar's worth cost for production when you use two-color printing, you can mark up your product as you see fit. Charge $97.00 or $149.00 a copy, over and over again. Or produce a set of DVD's and charge $495.00! Does not take much math skills to figure why people are becoming rich doing this!
The way to make a valuable DVD is to have it show and tell how to do something people want to do, or how to have something people want to have. You can come up with some ideas if you reach into your experience of things you have learned or discovered how to do.
This is the information age and if you put out the information, people are going to buy it up because they are hungry to know everything. Truth is that if you are currently selling printed how-to material, you can command a much higher price to provide that information in DVD format. Sell them your knowledge on a DVD.
Of course you will need some equipment to make your DVD. You can be up and running without a big budget. A tripod holding a digital camcorder than can connect directly to your computer so that you can use video editing software and a good microphone so you can be heard clearly is what it comes down to.
Having a remote control on your camcorder could even make video editing unnecessary, since what really counts in DVDs is the information contained in the DVD and not how pretty the presentation is. What really makes winners is down and dirty content.
A good place to get content from which to produce a DVD that you can call your own is InfoGround. In fact there is so much there covering the most popular niche markets that you can give yourself the reputation of being an expert! InfoGoRound has hundreds of top quality, private label articles for the taking!
Converting some of the many information products found at InfoGoRound to DVD is the fast track to being a 'how-to' author able to effortlessly bring in the easy money. You will have so much content to work with that you should even use some of the video you make to put up on a website. Showing free video samples on your website is sure to drive traffic and skyrocket DVD sales.
Are you ready to do this and join the ranks of the Millionaire Internet Marketers? There are a couple of those marketers who amazingly enough have separate website videos in the same spacious white room with huge decorative windows. Assuming they don't live in the same mansion, you might think they are filming in the same studio. If you think that then you would be wrong.
You can make your video look like it was done at a beautiful gorgeous place no matter what the surroundings you currently have. To set up your own amazing studio, get some florescent lights as they provide lighting without much extra heat or shadows, and set up a screen for your background. Put a light on each side of the camera pointing toward the screen. You will want to experiment in order to get the lights placed just right.
Now you have a clutter free background by using a screen, which could just be a sheet or curtain placed up. The secret to having any type of background you want however, is to invest in a chroma key green or blue screen. Also get and learn how to use video editing software that has chroma key effect. What chroma key effect does is replace the colored background with any type of background you want... even an image of the inside of a mansion! It is definitely the way to make a great impression.
Information DVDs are perfect products to develop. You can build your whole business around them. They are inexpensive to make, yet have a high-perceived value. They are heavily in demand, and staggeringly easy to sell for big fat wallet-filling profits. Film yourself on DVDs sharing what you know or make a presentation from the treasure-trove of information found at InfoGoRound. The money you can generate from doing this is outrageous!
About the Author
Mr James has owned The Cartridge Specialists (Melbourne) since 2004 selling ink, toner, fax rolls etc & regularly writes articles about his industry
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Amateur Photographers: You Can Make this World a Happier Place by Knowing Where to Share Images and Scanned Photos
Autumn is a perfect time for all photographers, professional and hobbyist, to travel the countrysides to capture the spectrum of fall colors that abound for a brief time each year. Point your lens anywhere during this cavalcade of color and, like a finger print, you will get at least one shot that is uniquely yours!
It is said that the best picture images are those that amateur photographers have not shared with others. This is the case with my own passion of Photographic Art. I was encouraged for years by family and friends to 'Sell My Stuff'. I ask you to consider sharing with the world the beauty you have captured on film or through your digital photos! The world has enough dark and dread already. You can help tip the balance in favor of beauty and brightness! Share your delightful images with the world in all its autumn splendor.
How? You ask?
Would you like to share your camera images with a minimum of text? Well, there is Flickr, an easy place to load up your choice images for the world to view and on which to comment. Or Photosite is another choice photo sharing site. Search on Photo Sharing and you will see numerous FREE image and video hosting websites. You will find other photographers are very liberal in their praise of a 'great shot'. It can be a very encouraging and supportive community. If you can take constructive criticism then, you, too, will thrive in this learning environment.
Currently (September 2006) I am in a beta test environment of Google's latest effort - Picasa Web Albums. I am an avid user of Picasa. Yes, as a professional photographer, most of my wedding and landscape images have been cataloged and adjusted using the power of Picasa. Adobe Photoshop has been relegated to only specific special effects.
If you wish to add a story or more detail behind the images, then I encourage you to use one of the many BLOGS (weB LOGS) that exist. But choose one or two of them that allow images to be uploaded to accompany your text. The newest BLOG site by Google, blogger, is such a site that allows you creative license. In fact, you can post multi images per BLOG article. With some of the other BLOG sites you can overcome the shortcoming of not being able to integrate images; simply by referencing your related images posted in Flickr or Google Picasa Web Albums.
Most BLOGS have an 'Insert HyperLink button', but a simple piece of html code inserted right in your article is all that is required: 1) Open a new browser window and go to the specific site and location of the group of pictures you which to 'hyper link' from your BLOG article 2) Copy the URL found in the menu line at the top of the browser window 3) Return to your article, locate your cursor at the place you wish to reference your image web location 4) Type and paste the following: A) type: < href=" C) paste the url you just copied from your photo image website D) type: ">Look at my images here (or some description) E) immediately type: /a> People reading your BLOG will now be able to hyperlink to your expanded collection of photo images.
Google's Blogger gives you the ability to integrate multiple images with your posted BLOG and then you can easily hyperlink your Posted Article Title to even more images on Flickr or (soon) Google Picasa Web Albums. Isn't the internet grand!
You have questions on exactly how to do this? Take a look at a few of my BLOG articles. Still have questions? E-mail me through one of the websites below.
Get out there and do your part to make this world a brighter and happier place to live!
About the Author
Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, photographer, and avid snowmobiler. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, Foursight Marketing and Consulting, and Foursight Photography, which provide business, marketing, and internet marketing consulting services. Carl with wife, Janet, also operate a number of e-commerce
It is said that the best picture images are those that amateur photographers have not shared with others. This is the case with my own passion of Photographic Art. I was encouraged for years by family and friends to 'Sell My Stuff'. I ask you to consider sharing with the world the beauty you have captured on film or through your digital photos! The world has enough dark and dread already. You can help tip the balance in favor of beauty and brightness! Share your delightful images with the world in all its autumn splendor.
How? You ask?
Would you like to share your camera images with a minimum of text? Well, there is Flickr, an easy place to load up your choice images for the world to view and on which to comment. Or Photosite is another choice photo sharing site. Search on Photo Sharing and you will see numerous FREE image and video hosting websites. You will find other photographers are very liberal in their praise of a 'great shot'. It can be a very encouraging and supportive community. If you can take constructive criticism then, you, too, will thrive in this learning environment.
Currently (September 2006) I am in a beta test environment of Google's latest effort - Picasa Web Albums. I am an avid user of Picasa. Yes, as a professional photographer, most of my wedding and landscape images have been cataloged and adjusted using the power of Picasa. Adobe Photoshop has been relegated to only specific special effects.
If you wish to add a story or more detail behind the images, then I encourage you to use one of the many BLOGS (weB LOGS) that exist. But choose one or two of them that allow images to be uploaded to accompany your text. The newest BLOG site by Google, blogger, is such a site that allows you creative license. In fact, you can post multi images per BLOG article. With some of the other BLOG sites you can overcome the shortcoming of not being able to integrate images; simply by referencing your related images posted in Flickr or Google Picasa Web Albums.
Most BLOGS have an 'Insert HyperLink button', but a simple piece of html code inserted right in your article is all that is required: 1) Open a new browser window and go to the specific site and location of the group of pictures you which to 'hyper link' from your BLOG article 2) Copy the URL found in the menu line at the top of the browser window 3) Return to your article, locate your cursor at the place you wish to reference your image web location 4) Type and paste the following: A) type: < href=" C) paste the url you just copied from your photo image website D) type: ">Look at my images here (or some description) E) immediately type: /a> People reading your BLOG will now be able to hyperlink to your expanded collection of photo images.
Google's Blogger gives you the ability to integrate multiple images with your posted BLOG and then you can easily hyperlink your Posted Article Title to even more images on Flickr or (soon) Google Picasa Web Albums. Isn't the internet grand!
You have questions on exactly how to do this? Take a look at a few of my BLOG articles. Still have questions? E-mail me through one of the websites below.
Get out there and do your part to make this world a brighter and happier place to live!
About the Author
Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, photographer, and avid snowmobiler. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, Foursight Marketing and Consulting, and Foursight Photography, which provide business, marketing, and internet marketing consulting services. Carl with wife, Janet, also operate a number of e-commerce
Cruise Tips To Maximize Your Cruise Vacation
You are getting ready for your much anticipated cruise vacation. The best way to maximize your cruise travel is to have some of these cruise tips about the little things you should know. Many cruisers have questions about phoning home, seasickness, laundry facilities, and photography while on their cruise vacation. These are not big items that should concern you during your cruise travel but helpful hints nonetheless.
Phoning home always gives one peace of mind when they are on vacation. It is natural to want to check on your children, or check into the office, just remember that ship to shore phone costs can be very hefty. They can cost up to $15 minute, so I if you must, keep it brief. You can use your cell phone but be aware that in some areas roaming charges will apply. Your cell phone will not work in Europe unless you have universal service.
It is very important that you leave the information on how to contact you at home in case of an emergency. When you receive your cruise packet there will be contact information included. Make sure you leave the name of the ship, the cruise line you are traveling with, and the itinerary that you plan to follow. Make it very clear that it is for emergencies only.
There is a way to get around this expense and that is to buy a phone card and call home from your ports of call. The connection will be far greater and your savings too. Be aware that this is where the crew members make their calls home so you may want to venture further from the dock to find a not so busy public phone.
All of the modern ships are wired for the internet so you can stay in touch with email. This is a much easier and cheaper way to but your mind at ease. On some ships if you are a frequent cruiser the internet time is free. If you are not, connections can run from fifty cents to a dollar a minute. Just keep in mind that they are not high speed hook ups so they will be slow. Compose offline and then send your message. Some ships will offer you package deals to save a little money. Here again, if you can wait until you get to port, internet cafes ashore are relatively inexpensive.
Seasickness is almost a moot point on today's cruise ships. They are so large that you don't even know you are moving unless you look out the window or you are up on deck. With today's technology for weather tracking the cruise lines know in advance if any storms are approaching and therefore can avoid the area. Earlier cruise ships had stabilizers but nothing compared fo today's technology which enables them to counter act any motion the sea has to offer.
If that doesn't calm your fears about seasickness and cruise travel there are a number of ways to ensure a very comfortable cruise. Take a cruise vacation in an area of the world that has calm waters on a modern ship with the aforementioned stabilizers. It is best to book a cabin in the middle of the ship on one of the lower levels. If just looking at a horizon that is moving sends you into a tizzy, book an inside cabin. A little known cruise tip is to arrange your beds in alignment with the ship, bow to stern. Rocking is always easier to handle than a rolling motion. Once, you've got yourself situated on board go up on deck and stare at a fixed position on the horizon to get your body use to the motion.
Your doctor may have some medication you can take, or try the acupuncture bracelets that go around your wrists. If you do feel queasy eat crackers and green apples to settle your stomach. Ginger capsules have been said to work wonders and are available in your health food store. By all means avoid any alcoholic beverages which will only make your symptoms worse.
On board laundry services are very expensive. Book a ship that has an onboard laundry room for passengers so you can do your own. These laundry rooms will be equipped with an iron and an ironing board. An alternative is to pack a small bottle of laundry liquid and a few clothes pins in you luggage, hand wash them in your stateroom and hang them from the shower line provided.
Photography is always a big question. Should you bring a camera or rely on the ships photographer? The answer is to bring your own. If you don't want to worry about your expensive digital camera, buy a lot of the throw away types. Pick up a few waterproof ones too for when you take you snorkel adventure. Take twice as many as you think you need. If you don't use them on this cruise vacation you can always use them at the next holiday or birthday celebration.
You could also opt to pick up a cheap digital. You can buy them for about $20.00 and you won't have to worry about losing it since your expensive one is at home. These are usually smaller than the pricey ones so they are easier to carry around.
On formal nights you will want to get your picture taken by the ships photographer. These pictures are wonderful memories of your cruise but they are expensive. The ships photographer will take pictures of you all through the cruise. Getting on and off the ship, on deck, in the dining room at your table and when you enter the dining room on some nights. Although these pictures are fun, you are not obligated to buy them. If you are on a cruise vacation for a special occasion like a honeymoon or an anniversary, splurge and buy them, they will be more than just memories.
These are just a few cruise tips for the little things you should know about cruise travel. Having this knowledge before your cruise vacation will help you on the way to clear sailing.
Happy Cruising!
Copyright © Mary Hanna, All Rights Reserved.
This article may be distributed freely on your website and in your ezines, as long as this entire article, copyright notice, links and the resource box are unchanged.
Mary Hanna has traveled the world by Air and Ship while writing eBooks, Software Reviews and Practical Articles on Internet Marketing, Cruising, Gardening and Cooking. Visit her websites at: http://www.CruiseGold.com http://www.CruiseTravelDirectory.com and http://www.CruisingTips.com
About the Author
Mary Hanna has traveled the world by Air and Ship while writing eBooks, Software Reviews and Practical Articles on Internet Marketing, Cruising, Gardening and Cooking. Visit her websites at: http://www.CruiseGold.com http://www.CruiseTravelDirectory.com and http://www.CruisingTips.com
Phoning home always gives one peace of mind when they are on vacation. It is natural to want to check on your children, or check into the office, just remember that ship to shore phone costs can be very hefty. They can cost up to $15 minute, so I if you must, keep it brief. You can use your cell phone but be aware that in some areas roaming charges will apply. Your cell phone will not work in Europe unless you have universal service.
It is very important that you leave the information on how to contact you at home in case of an emergency. When you receive your cruise packet there will be contact information included. Make sure you leave the name of the ship, the cruise line you are traveling with, and the itinerary that you plan to follow. Make it very clear that it is for emergencies only.
There is a way to get around this expense and that is to buy a phone card and call home from your ports of call. The connection will be far greater and your savings too. Be aware that this is where the crew members make their calls home so you may want to venture further from the dock to find a not so busy public phone.
All of the modern ships are wired for the internet so you can stay in touch with email. This is a much easier and cheaper way to but your mind at ease. On some ships if you are a frequent cruiser the internet time is free. If you are not, connections can run from fifty cents to a dollar a minute. Just keep in mind that they are not high speed hook ups so they will be slow. Compose offline and then send your message. Some ships will offer you package deals to save a little money. Here again, if you can wait until you get to port, internet cafes ashore are relatively inexpensive.
Seasickness is almost a moot point on today's cruise ships. They are so large that you don't even know you are moving unless you look out the window or you are up on deck. With today's technology for weather tracking the cruise lines know in advance if any storms are approaching and therefore can avoid the area. Earlier cruise ships had stabilizers but nothing compared fo today's technology which enables them to counter act any motion the sea has to offer.
If that doesn't calm your fears about seasickness and cruise travel there are a number of ways to ensure a very comfortable cruise. Take a cruise vacation in an area of the world that has calm waters on a modern ship with the aforementioned stabilizers. It is best to book a cabin in the middle of the ship on one of the lower levels. If just looking at a horizon that is moving sends you into a tizzy, book an inside cabin. A little known cruise tip is to arrange your beds in alignment with the ship, bow to stern. Rocking is always easier to handle than a rolling motion. Once, you've got yourself situated on board go up on deck and stare at a fixed position on the horizon to get your body use to the motion.
Your doctor may have some medication you can take, or try the acupuncture bracelets that go around your wrists. If you do feel queasy eat crackers and green apples to settle your stomach. Ginger capsules have been said to work wonders and are available in your health food store. By all means avoid any alcoholic beverages which will only make your symptoms worse.
On board laundry services are very expensive. Book a ship that has an onboard laundry room for passengers so you can do your own. These laundry rooms will be equipped with an iron and an ironing board. An alternative is to pack a small bottle of laundry liquid and a few clothes pins in you luggage, hand wash them in your stateroom and hang them from the shower line provided.
Photography is always a big question. Should you bring a camera or rely on the ships photographer? The answer is to bring your own. If you don't want to worry about your expensive digital camera, buy a lot of the throw away types. Pick up a few waterproof ones too for when you take you snorkel adventure. Take twice as many as you think you need. If you don't use them on this cruise vacation you can always use them at the next holiday or birthday celebration.
You could also opt to pick up a cheap digital. You can buy them for about $20.00 and you won't have to worry about losing it since your expensive one is at home. These are usually smaller than the pricey ones so they are easier to carry around.
On formal nights you will want to get your picture taken by the ships photographer. These pictures are wonderful memories of your cruise but they are expensive. The ships photographer will take pictures of you all through the cruise. Getting on and off the ship, on deck, in the dining room at your table and when you enter the dining room on some nights. Although these pictures are fun, you are not obligated to buy them. If you are on a cruise vacation for a special occasion like a honeymoon or an anniversary, splurge and buy them, they will be more than just memories.
These are just a few cruise tips for the little things you should know about cruise travel. Having this knowledge before your cruise vacation will help you on the way to clear sailing.
Happy Cruising!
Copyright © Mary Hanna, All Rights Reserved.
This article may be distributed freely on your website and in your ezines, as long as this entire article, copyright notice, links and the resource box are unchanged.
Mary Hanna has traveled the world by Air and Ship while writing eBooks, Software Reviews and Practical Articles on Internet Marketing, Cruising, Gardening and Cooking. Visit her websites at: http://www.CruiseGold.com http://www.CruiseTravelDirectory.com and http://www.CruisingTips.com
About the Author
Mary Hanna has traveled the world by Air and Ship while writing eBooks, Software Reviews and Practical Articles on Internet Marketing, Cruising, Gardening and Cooking. Visit her websites at: http://www.CruiseGold.com http://www.CruiseTravelDirectory.com and http://www.CruisingTips.com
The Camera Obscura: What Does It Relate To?
The term camera obscura arises from time to time in the photoraphy arena. I remember the time I first heard the term but knew not what it was. By the second or third time someone mentioned it in passing, I just had to look it up and I'm glad I did. It won't help you take better pictures and you won't earn more money but will gain some knowledge that starts the knowledge drive and understanding of the principles of photography that much further.
If you don't know anything about the camera obscura, you will after this. Did you ever ask yourself why are photographic devices called cameras? They were called cameras because their direct ancestor is the camera obscura, an optical device functioning on the basis of a simple law of physics. Camera Obscura is the Latin for dark room. It is important to understand it is not an invented mechanical device; it works on a naturally occurring phenomenon. It is like a fire or rainbow.
To fully understand the concept, you can try this out: on a bright day, get into a very dark room (you can obtain the darkness by covering the window with an opaque, but thin material). Make a pinhole in the item that covers the window. If the hole is small enough, on the opposite wall you will see the world outside the window, in full color and motion and turned upside down. Your room is now a camera obscura.
Let's see what is the principle of the camera obscura .When the rays reflected from the bright objects outside (this is why you need to make the experiment on a bright day) pass through the pinhole they do not scatter. Instead, they cross and reform as an upside down image on the opposite wall, or on any flat surface held parallel to the hole.
The principles of the camera obscura have been known since antiquity. Its earliest mention was by the Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti in the 5th century BC. His experiment was similar to the one described above. He called the darkened room the "locked treasure room". Aristotle (3rd century BC) also understood the principle of the camera obscura. It has been claimed that the Islamic scientist Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham (also known as Al-Hazen) is the one who actually discovered it while carrying out some experiments in optics, in the early 11th century, Egypt.
In the 15th century Leonardo da Vinci described camera obscura in Codex Atlanticus. It appears that he was the first who discovered its potential as a drawing aid. In the 17th and 18th century artists such as Johannes Vermeer, Canaletto, Guardi and Paul Sandby were known for their incredible attention to detail. Therefore, it has been speculated that they made use of the camera obscura. If you've seen Girl with a Pearl Earring (a movie about how Vermeer created his masterpiece that gave the name of the film), you must remember that "magic box" that Griet finds in the artist's atelier and her surprise when he shows her the way it works.
The camera obscura used by artists was not the rudimentary one described in the beginning of the article. The image quality was improved by adding a convex lens into the aperture and a set of mirrors solved the problem of the upside down image.
Let's now understand how din this simple optical device turn into the photographic camera. The camera obscura managed to get an accurate image of the world outside; the only problem remained recording this image. Therefore, adding a sheet of light sensitive material to the little modified camera obscura was enough. This is the way photography was invented in the early 19th century.
Another use of the camera obscura was for entertainment; some camera obscura rooms have been built at the seaside or in areas of scenic beauty as tourist attractions. Some of them still survive. They are large chambers situated in high buildings. A live panorama of the outside is projected inside the room through a rotating lens. Some of you might ask yourselves what is the point of going into a dark room to look at the reflection of something you can see outside. The interesting thing in this kind of experience is not the view itself, but the feeling you get when you are just a spectator of the world that surrounds you.
Personally, I am absolutely fascinated by the camera obscura. There are many interesting things about it that I did not mention in this article. For instance, with its aid, you can experiment that light travels in time, with speed, and even calculate the speed of light. This was Al-Hazen's discovery. Another interesting thing is that the German astronomer Johannes Kepler used a camera obscura for his astronomical observations. And there is much more to find out about this magical device...
This article has been supplied courtesy of Roy Barker. Roy often writes and works closely with Profitable Photography Business. This site is dedicated to coaching you in starting your own photography business but places a strong emphasis on profitability issues & guidelines. You can also gain many photography resources (some free) from Digital Photography Equipment If you seek further guides, helpful hints, articles and news, you can go to http://www.photography-business-tips.com which also has a Photographers Forum for exchange of views with other photographers.
About the Author
This article has been supplied courtesy of Roy Barker. Roy often writes and works closely with http://profitable-photography.com This site is dedicated to coaching you in starting your own photography business but places a strong emphasis on profitability issues & guidelines. You can also gain many photography resources (some free) from http://photography-business-tips.com
If you don't know anything about the camera obscura, you will after this. Did you ever ask yourself why are photographic devices called cameras? They were called cameras because their direct ancestor is the camera obscura, an optical device functioning on the basis of a simple law of physics. Camera Obscura is the Latin for dark room. It is important to understand it is not an invented mechanical device; it works on a naturally occurring phenomenon. It is like a fire or rainbow.
To fully understand the concept, you can try this out: on a bright day, get into a very dark room (you can obtain the darkness by covering the window with an opaque, but thin material). Make a pinhole in the item that covers the window. If the hole is small enough, on the opposite wall you will see the world outside the window, in full color and motion and turned upside down. Your room is now a camera obscura.
Let's see what is the principle of the camera obscura .When the rays reflected from the bright objects outside (this is why you need to make the experiment on a bright day) pass through the pinhole they do not scatter. Instead, they cross and reform as an upside down image on the opposite wall, or on any flat surface held parallel to the hole.
The principles of the camera obscura have been known since antiquity. Its earliest mention was by the Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti in the 5th century BC. His experiment was similar to the one described above. He called the darkened room the "locked treasure room". Aristotle (3rd century BC) also understood the principle of the camera obscura. It has been claimed that the Islamic scientist Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham (also known as Al-Hazen) is the one who actually discovered it while carrying out some experiments in optics, in the early 11th century, Egypt.
In the 15th century Leonardo da Vinci described camera obscura in Codex Atlanticus. It appears that he was the first who discovered its potential as a drawing aid. In the 17th and 18th century artists such as Johannes Vermeer, Canaletto, Guardi and Paul Sandby were known for their incredible attention to detail. Therefore, it has been speculated that they made use of the camera obscura. If you've seen Girl with a Pearl Earring (a movie about how Vermeer created his masterpiece that gave the name of the film), you must remember that "magic box" that Griet finds in the artist's atelier and her surprise when he shows her the way it works.
The camera obscura used by artists was not the rudimentary one described in the beginning of the article. The image quality was improved by adding a convex lens into the aperture and a set of mirrors solved the problem of the upside down image.
Let's now understand how din this simple optical device turn into the photographic camera. The camera obscura managed to get an accurate image of the world outside; the only problem remained recording this image. Therefore, adding a sheet of light sensitive material to the little modified camera obscura was enough. This is the way photography was invented in the early 19th century.
Another use of the camera obscura was for entertainment; some camera obscura rooms have been built at the seaside or in areas of scenic beauty as tourist attractions. Some of them still survive. They are large chambers situated in high buildings. A live panorama of the outside is projected inside the room through a rotating lens. Some of you might ask yourselves what is the point of going into a dark room to look at the reflection of something you can see outside. The interesting thing in this kind of experience is not the view itself, but the feeling you get when you are just a spectator of the world that surrounds you.
Personally, I am absolutely fascinated by the camera obscura. There are many interesting things about it that I did not mention in this article. For instance, with its aid, you can experiment that light travels in time, with speed, and even calculate the speed of light. This was Al-Hazen's discovery. Another interesting thing is that the German astronomer Johannes Kepler used a camera obscura for his astronomical observations. And there is much more to find out about this magical device...
This article has been supplied courtesy of Roy Barker. Roy often writes and works closely with Profitable Photography Business. This site is dedicated to coaching you in starting your own photography business but places a strong emphasis on profitability issues & guidelines. You can also gain many photography resources (some free) from Digital Photography Equipment If you seek further guides, helpful hints, articles and news, you can go to http://www.photography-business-tips.com which also has a Photographers Forum for exchange of views with other photographers.
About the Author
This article has been supplied courtesy of Roy Barker. Roy often writes and works closely with http://profitable-photography.com This site is dedicated to coaching you in starting your own photography business but places a strong emphasis on profitability issues & guidelines. You can also gain many photography resources (some free) from http://photography-business-tips.com
Continuous focus mode used for shooting digital photos of moving objects
It is harder to shoot good digital photos of moving objects than of still objects. When objects are still you have all the time that you need to focus on the object and set the other camera parameters like shutter speed and aperture. This time shortens as the objects in the frame move faster and faster.
An example of moving objects that you might be photographing is a runner in a race, a racecar in a racing event or a jet fighter in an air show. The closer you are to those moving objects the faster they appear to be moving relative to your position and the faster they move the less time you have to set the camera and shoot the digital photo. For example if you are really far from a racecar during a race you have more time to take the photo than if you are virtually on the track and the car is heading your way.
There are many aspects to shooting good moving objects photos. In this article we will only look at one: focusing on the object. Other parameters such as shutter speed and aperture are explained in other articles. When objects are in focus digital photos look sharp and crisp when objects are out of focus they look unclear and blurry.
With low-end pocket cameras you do not have much choice when it comes to focusing. The camera will make its best effort to focus on the objects and there is little control for you as the photographer to guarantee the results. Semi-professional photographer are more likely to use SLR digital cameras with zoon lenses when taking photos of moving objects in scenarios like those described above. When using such equipment you can take advantage of a focusing mode known as Continuous Focus.
In Continuous Focus mode the camera continuously focuses on the objects in the photo. Once the shutter button is pressed and as long as it is held half way down the camera continuously focuses on the objects in the photo. The camera continuously corrects the focus as the objects distance from the camera changes.
When using this mode to shoot photos of moving objects you should hold the shutter button half way down and continuously move the camera to follow the objects. The camera will continuously keep the objects in focus. When you are ready to shoot the photo simply press the shutter button all the way down. By continuously correcting the focus the camera guarantees that it is always ready to shoot the photo when you feel the composition is right. For example you can use this mode to track an airplane in an air show and take the photo exactly when the composition is right - maybe when another bigger and slower airplane is visible making the digital photo composition more impressive.
This mode is not free of drawbacks. One drawback is the associated high power consumption as the camera continuously corrects the focus it uses the power hungry motors in the lens in order to move the optical components back and forth. Another drawback is the need to keep the objects in focus in a specific area of the frame that the camera focuses on limiting the composition options - usually this area is in the center of the frame.
About the Author
Ziv Haparnas writes about science and technology. More information on digital photo printing and photography is available on printrates.com - a site about photo prints Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran. This article can be published only if the resource box including the backlink is included.
An example of moving objects that you might be photographing is a runner in a race, a racecar in a racing event or a jet fighter in an air show. The closer you are to those moving objects the faster they appear to be moving relative to your position and the faster they move the less time you have to set the camera and shoot the digital photo. For example if you are really far from a racecar during a race you have more time to take the photo than if you are virtually on the track and the car is heading your way.
There are many aspects to shooting good moving objects photos. In this article we will only look at one: focusing on the object. Other parameters such as shutter speed and aperture are explained in other articles. When objects are in focus digital photos look sharp and crisp when objects are out of focus they look unclear and blurry.
With low-end pocket cameras you do not have much choice when it comes to focusing. The camera will make its best effort to focus on the objects and there is little control for you as the photographer to guarantee the results. Semi-professional photographer are more likely to use SLR digital cameras with zoon lenses when taking photos of moving objects in scenarios like those described above. When using such equipment you can take advantage of a focusing mode known as Continuous Focus.
In Continuous Focus mode the camera continuously focuses on the objects in the photo. Once the shutter button is pressed and as long as it is held half way down the camera continuously focuses on the objects in the photo. The camera continuously corrects the focus as the objects distance from the camera changes.
When using this mode to shoot photos of moving objects you should hold the shutter button half way down and continuously move the camera to follow the objects. The camera will continuously keep the objects in focus. When you are ready to shoot the photo simply press the shutter button all the way down. By continuously correcting the focus the camera guarantees that it is always ready to shoot the photo when you feel the composition is right. For example you can use this mode to track an airplane in an air show and take the photo exactly when the composition is right - maybe when another bigger and slower airplane is visible making the digital photo composition more impressive.
This mode is not free of drawbacks. One drawback is the associated high power consumption as the camera continuously corrects the focus it uses the power hungry motors in the lens in order to move the optical components back and forth. Another drawback is the need to keep the objects in focus in a specific area of the frame that the camera focuses on limiting the composition options - usually this area is in the center of the frame.
About the Author
Ziv Haparnas writes about science and technology. More information on digital photo printing and photography is available on printrates.com - a site about photo prints Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran. This article can be published only if the resource box including the backlink is included.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
How to start an online newsletter!
The first thing you need to do is decide on a topic that you are interested in and your potential customers would also like to know more about. Then all you need to do is decide if you have enough knowledge on that subject to write confidently about it, and if you don't, there are ways around that too. Then decide what format you want to use to present the information and bingo; you have a winning formula for your newsletter. The first thing you need to do is decide on a topic that you are interested in and your potential customers would also like to know more about. Then all you need to do is decide if you have enough knowledge on that subject to write confidently about it, and if you don't, there are ways around that too. Then decide what format you want to use to present the information and bingo; you have a winning formula for your newsletter.
Choose a topic. You should pick a subject that interests you, and if possible, one that you already know something about. It should also be a topic that is relevant and interesting to your potential customers. It should also be linked to the products and services you sell so that throughout your publications, you can refer readers to your web site for further information or relevant products or services.
For example, if you sell second hand cars, you may want to write a newsletter about "What to look for when buying a second hand car" or "Basic car maintenance", if you sell houses, you may want to write about" Tips for preparing your house for sale", or "How to profit from the buy-to-let market", etc.
Do you have the knowledge? If you don't feel you have enough knowledge to write on specific, relevant topics, another strategy for producing a newsletter is to ask others to write it for you. Why would an author give you an article for your newsletter? Because they can include their contact information and links to their web pages, that's why. The more copies of your newsletter that you give away, the more traffic they get to their web sites. More traffic equals more sales.
There are many article syndication agencies that take articles from experts in all fields for reproduction in newsletters and on web sites. It's a great place to start looking for articles you can use and as long as you reproduce them in their entirely, including the authors details and links, there will be no problem with copyright infringement. Try typing "article syndication" into a major search engine such as Google along with your particular area of interest and see what comes up.
I would also advise that if you use an article from a particular author, you email them and let them know you have reproduced it and are interested in any other articles of a similar type. You may then find that they send you new relevant articles as they are finished and this will provide content for some of your future newsletters without having to go looking for it.
Another way of getting experts to write articles for you is to seek them out and interview them. Ask yourself: - What problem can you think of that could be solved by experts? - Who are these experts? - Where can I contact them? Ask them if they agree to be interviewed for your newsletter. You can interview them by telephone, email or in person. Often, experts who would not take the time to write an article would be more than happy to answer a few questions and let you publish their answers in return for the free publicity, the publishing of their contact details and a link to their web site. Don't get discouraged if they don't all respond. Remember to be courteous and respectful as they're doing you a favor.
How to present the information If you are using someone else's articles or interviews for your newsletter, the format will present itself. You can't change the format of a prewritten article for copyright reasons and an interview is usually easiest to present in a question an answer format. When writing your own articles you can also use question and answer format, using yourself as the expert or you can explore a topic in depth in an article style format. Another popular way to present the information is what I call the "tip-list" list option.
For example:
21 maintenance tips for your car
10 ways to prepare your home for sale
101 things you can with your digital camera
25 easy ways to say money on your household bills
All you need to do is decide what question or problem you want to solve and come up with a list of answers. Easy! And if you get stuck, go back to those experts again. The truth of the matter is, today anyone can become a published author with a subscriber based newsletter in no time at all. Now that you're a newsletter author, you're going to be interested in ways to improve and make money from your newsletter. But that's a topic for next time...
About the Author
Matt Bacak became "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine's e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up for Matt Bacak's Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or http://promotingtips.com
Choose a topic. You should pick a subject that interests you, and if possible, one that you already know something about. It should also be a topic that is relevant and interesting to your potential customers. It should also be linked to the products and services you sell so that throughout your publications, you can refer readers to your web site for further information or relevant products or services.
For example, if you sell second hand cars, you may want to write a newsletter about "What to look for when buying a second hand car" or "Basic car maintenance", if you sell houses, you may want to write about" Tips for preparing your house for sale", or "How to profit from the buy-to-let market", etc.
Do you have the knowledge? If you don't feel you have enough knowledge to write on specific, relevant topics, another strategy for producing a newsletter is to ask others to write it for you. Why would an author give you an article for your newsletter? Because they can include their contact information and links to their web pages, that's why. The more copies of your newsletter that you give away, the more traffic they get to their web sites. More traffic equals more sales.
There are many article syndication agencies that take articles from experts in all fields for reproduction in newsletters and on web sites. It's a great place to start looking for articles you can use and as long as you reproduce them in their entirely, including the authors details and links, there will be no problem with copyright infringement. Try typing "article syndication" into a major search engine such as Google along with your particular area of interest and see what comes up.
I would also advise that if you use an article from a particular author, you email them and let them know you have reproduced it and are interested in any other articles of a similar type. You may then find that they send you new relevant articles as they are finished and this will provide content for some of your future newsletters without having to go looking for it.
Another way of getting experts to write articles for you is to seek them out and interview them. Ask yourself: - What problem can you think of that could be solved by experts? - Who are these experts? - Where can I contact them? Ask them if they agree to be interviewed for your newsletter. You can interview them by telephone, email or in person. Often, experts who would not take the time to write an article would be more than happy to answer a few questions and let you publish their answers in return for the free publicity, the publishing of their contact details and a link to their web site. Don't get discouraged if they don't all respond. Remember to be courteous and respectful as they're doing you a favor.
How to present the information If you are using someone else's articles or interviews for your newsletter, the format will present itself. You can't change the format of a prewritten article for copyright reasons and an interview is usually easiest to present in a question an answer format. When writing your own articles you can also use question and answer format, using yourself as the expert or you can explore a topic in depth in an article style format. Another popular way to present the information is what I call the "tip-list" list option.
For example:
21 maintenance tips for your car
10 ways to prepare your home for sale
101 things you can with your digital camera
25 easy ways to say money on your household bills
All you need to do is decide what question or problem you want to solve and come up with a list of answers. Easy! And if you get stuck, go back to those experts again. The truth of the matter is, today anyone can become a published author with a subscriber based newsletter in no time at all. Now that you're a newsletter author, you're going to be interested in ways to improve and make money from your newsletter. But that's a topic for next time...
About the Author
Matt Bacak became "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine's e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up for Matt Bacak's Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or http://promotingtips.com
Packing Up For a Long Motorcycle Trip
Packing Up for a long Motorcycle Trip
by Jeff Sinason aka Tools
Packing Up for a long Motorcycle Trip By Jeff Sinason
Weeks before I'm ready to leave on a long motorcycle trip, I start getting excited. Often I get to the point where I can think of anything else. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that I spend the time getting prepared for it. I usually put this off to the very end. I've learned however over the years that this means that my packing never matches what I will really need for the trip. Proof, last year I was in Sturgis with nothing more than a sweatshirt and leather vest riding around in 45 to 55 degree weather. DUMB MOVE. Anyway, to try to avoid that I've started putting a list together of the stuff I need to pack for every trip and where I want to store it on the motorcycle. To help me build the list I put everything in categories to help keep it a little more organized. The categories I use are:
Things to keep the Motorcycle Rolling Things to keep the Motorcycle Secure Things to keep the rider going Protective clothing and gear (Riding Gear) Hygiene Camping Equipment Miscellaneous Stuff
Things to keep the Motorcycle Rolling
Regardless of your mechanical skills, on long trips you will usually end up having to fix something on your motorcycle. It's just the nature of motorcycles. At a bare minimum I always carry tire patch and CO2 cartridges to perform those road side tire problems and hope I don't have far to go till the next motorcycle shop. If the shop is a fair distance away you should have tools that would allow you to remove the tire and hitch a ride. Since I ride a Harley Davidson (not balanced and not rubber-mounted) I always carry a complete set of wrenches, Torx, and Allen wrenches, along with a bottle of LocTite to tighten up those parts that think it would be better to end up on the side of the road. I also carry a small multi-tool that includes a small LED flashlight because it seems I always breakdown after dark. In my tool pouch you can almost (important word there) always find extra fuses, an extra sparkplug and extra light bulbs. And the two most important things, zip ties and electrical tape. After all with those you can fix just about anything that would keep you from making it down the road. I've found that for most brands of motorcycles you can find pre-packaged tool pouches that have a good set of tools lined up for you. Sometimes the quality of the tools may be questionable, but hey all they're going to do is ride around in your saddlebags and they'll do in a pinch.
Things to keep the Motorcycle Secure
If you plan your trips like me (NOT) you don't always end up staying at the most reputable establishments. It's always a good idea to lock your bike and have some way of locking the wheels. At least that way you'll keep the lazy motorcycle thieves from getting away with your bike. I always carry two keys for every lock with me when I travel. There's the ones that I carry in my pocket or attached to my belt, and the ones I carry deep in my bag for when I lose the other ones. As for disc lock I really recommend them. They are small, strong and provide a pretty good deterrent. They don't however address the case where someone comes with a lift and just hauls your bike away. For that you need to carry a heavy duty cable or chain lock to tie your bike to a solid structure. I personally don't like these due to the bulk and weight that they add to the saddlebags, but then I have pretty good insurance to replace the motorcycle if it's stolen.
Things to keep the rider going
Taking care of the rider is every bit, if not more so, important as keeping the motorcycle going. When we are out there in the wind there are millions of things that affect our ability to be comfortable and safe. Some of these I've discussed in other articles. First and foremost we need to make sure that we are protected from the sun. Getting sunburned on your arms, hands and face can absolutely ruin a good day of riding. I carry a stick sunscreen that has a SPF-30 rating and is waterproof and dries instantly. I use it on any skin that I have exposed to the sun. In addition I always carry a lip balm. Chapped lips can be a very painful thing on the road.
Both sunburn and chapped lips can sneak up on you without you being aware of it. Other things that I pack are a first aid kit that includes bandages, pain reliever and antiseptic ointments. Injuries on the road can become infected very easy due to the road grim that we are constantly hit by.
Perhaps my most important piece of equipment is my cell phone. I always carry that with me and make sure that it's always charged. Today, there is probably no piece of equipment that is more important than a cell phone in case of emergency. I usually carry a charger for use at night and a 12v car charger. Luckily I've installed a lighter on my motorcycle that allows me to charge my phone from the bike. This way I never have to worry about being stranded with a dead phone.
While I'm talking about phones, please make sure that you have I.C.E. number coded into your address book on the phone. I.C.E. numbers are the first thing that emergency workers will look for In Case of Emergency. Having these number(s) in your phone can greatly increase your chances of getting proper medical care. Two basic considerations for the numbers should be: Make sure the numbers are current. It won't do any good to have a number that is no longer valid specified as your ICE. Make sure that the person that answers that call has some basic knowledge about your medical history. Things like known allergies, blood type and doctors' name. By providing this basic information the emergency medical workers will be able to make much more informed decisions. Protective clothing and gear (Riding Gear)
On long trips you are most likely going to hit every kind of conceivable weather. No matter how hot it may get in the middle of that sunny summer day, there's probably some cold miserable weather waiting out there for you. If you're in the middle of the desert you're sure to run into some rain. After all you are on a motorcycle. To be prepared, I save all of the space in my saddlebags for riding gear. My usual list is: My colors. Can't ride a bike without those. Leather Jacket preferably one that has a removable lining and good ventilation. Chaps. Make sure they fit well and are in good condition. Fingerless gloves and full fingered gloves A couple of extra doo rags. I'm always losing those things. Face mask of some sort. I've got a windshield on my bike and that protects me most of the time but in heavy rain, hail and the cold a neoprene face mask really helps. Sunglasses and/or goggles. I personally like the convertible combos, which can change from sunglasses to goggles and have interchangeable lenses. My personal favorites are the SG-1 from WileyX. Rain Suit. One of those cheap sets from Wally World won't do. Sure they may keep you dry for awhile, but more often than not you'll get 30 miles down the road and the suit will be flying behind you like streamers. Don't skimp here.A couple of bandannas will always come in handy. If the weather is going to be extremely hot then a polymer crystal cooling bandanna is a great piece of gear to be carrying. I usually carry this in a small baggie that helps keep it fresh and keeps other things from getting wet from it when not in use.
Of course as has been said millions of times "Dressing in layers is the way to go". Being able to add layers and take off layers can substantially add to your riding comfort. As far as clothing is concerned keep it to a minimum. Carry enough for a few days and plan wash stops into your trip. This will help keep your load manageable. The key is to pack for all the conditions you are likely to run into but keep the load as sparse as possible. Get creative and figure out multiple uses for different pieces of clothing and the best way to extend the wear-ability of the clothes. After all if you get caught in the rain without your rainsuit, those clothes are good for another day. Aren't they?
Hygiene
Even a scummy old biker like me likes to clean up every once in awhile. And since I often alternate between camping and motels I carry things to wash up with. These would include a towel, washcloth and those little bars of soap and bottles of shampoo you can get at most motels. It helps that in my day job I travel all the time so I've got a life time supply of those.
I'm also trying to keep the last few remaining teeth that I have so that means I have to carry my toothbrush and toothpaste. Since I've got long hair I have to carry a brush to get the rat's nest that forms in my hair every day out. Usually on long trips I don't shave, but I always have a razor with me. I just use the soap to lather up on my face instead of carrying shaving cream.
One last item you should never leave without is toilet paper. There's nothing worse than suddenly needing it when you're out on the road and not having it. I usually start out with a small quantity which would take care of the duties a couple of times. If I end up using that up, I usually restock courtesy of the next gas stop or hotel.
All of this is carried in a small bag that I always have packed so I never have to worry about it. If I use something, I replace it and it's a thoughtless act to throw that in the T-Bags.
Camping Equipment
Camping equipment is probably one of the hardest things to carry and pack on a motorcycle. This is based mostly on the fact that it usually bulky and doesn't necessarily pack down real well. Even when they pack down the bags seem to be longer than you would want. They usually end up being to tall if you tie them on standing up, or to wide if you try to have them laying down.
For a tent, I've found that the small two man dome tents work best. They are easy to set up, have plenty of room to spread out in at night (if there's only one person in it), and they pack down pretty nice. My tent originally came in a flimsy nylon bag that I knew would hold up to rolling down the road so I replaced the bag with a sturdier one. My tent is usually bungeed onto my T-Bag and additional one to attach it to the motorcycle.
On the other side of the T-Bag, I have my mattress. As the years have gone by that ground has gotten harder and harder. I use one of those self-inflating mattresses that blow themselves up. While they're not the most comfortable, it sure beat sleeping on the ground. In the morning all you have to do is open the valve, roll it up and it's ready to go. I got a bag to carry the mattress in too.
Miscellaneous Stuff
I've always found that carrying cameras on a motorcycle trip can be a pain. The old styles (film based) have a tendency to take up to much space. And the digital camera require to much accessory stuff, like chargers, place to download the pictures and such. For a while I was carrying Advantix cameras, since they can be relatively small and take good quality pictures. Now I've never been a fan of the panoramic views but that is available on them. I'm now carrying a digital camera and have bought several different memory cards for it. This way I can use the cards like regular film and don't have to carry all the stuff to download the pictures until I get home.
Other important items are a wallet, credit cards and money. Can't keep going without these. And the one thing that I consider the most important, a notebook and pens. When I'm on a trip it's great to be able to keep notes about what you saw, how the motorcycle was running, where I stayed and interesting characters I meet along the way. It's also important cause if you're like me and suffer from CRAFT disease (write me if you want to know what that stands for) it's a great way to refresh your memories of the trip years from now.
Now that the bike's all loaded up one last thing to remember is that with all the additional weight of the stuff you're carrying the motorcycle is likely to handle differently. Remember to try to keep the weight as low and as close to the center of the motorcycle as possible. This will help keep the front wheel from getting to light or making the motorcycle a little top heavy. Make sure everything is strapped on real well. Good straps and bungies will give you a good dose of peace of mind knowing that your load is secure.
Be Safe ... Enjoy the Ride
Tools
http://www.bikerwares.com
About the Author
Jeff Sinason aka Tools is an avid traveler on his motorcycle. He is also the owner of Bikerwares which is an online store that has a great selection and great prices for motorcycle eyewear and goggles and much more. He is also the owner of Motorcycle Articles which is a great information resource for bikers
by Jeff Sinason aka Tools
Packing Up for a long Motorcycle Trip By Jeff Sinason
Weeks before I'm ready to leave on a long motorcycle trip, I start getting excited. Often I get to the point where I can think of anything else. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that I spend the time getting prepared for it. I usually put this off to the very end. I've learned however over the years that this means that my packing never matches what I will really need for the trip. Proof, last year I was in Sturgis with nothing more than a sweatshirt and leather vest riding around in 45 to 55 degree weather. DUMB MOVE. Anyway, to try to avoid that I've started putting a list together of the stuff I need to pack for every trip and where I want to store it on the motorcycle. To help me build the list I put everything in categories to help keep it a little more organized. The categories I use are:
Things to keep the Motorcycle Rolling Things to keep the Motorcycle Secure Things to keep the rider going Protective clothing and gear (Riding Gear) Hygiene Camping Equipment Miscellaneous Stuff
Things to keep the Motorcycle Rolling
Regardless of your mechanical skills, on long trips you will usually end up having to fix something on your motorcycle. It's just the nature of motorcycles. At a bare minimum I always carry tire patch and CO2 cartridges to perform those road side tire problems and hope I don't have far to go till the next motorcycle shop. If the shop is a fair distance away you should have tools that would allow you to remove the tire and hitch a ride. Since I ride a Harley Davidson (not balanced and not rubber-mounted) I always carry a complete set of wrenches, Torx, and Allen wrenches, along with a bottle of LocTite to tighten up those parts that think it would be better to end up on the side of the road. I also carry a small multi-tool that includes a small LED flashlight because it seems I always breakdown after dark. In my tool pouch you can almost (important word there) always find extra fuses, an extra sparkplug and extra light bulbs. And the two most important things, zip ties and electrical tape. After all with those you can fix just about anything that would keep you from making it down the road. I've found that for most brands of motorcycles you can find pre-packaged tool pouches that have a good set of tools lined up for you. Sometimes the quality of the tools may be questionable, but hey all they're going to do is ride around in your saddlebags and they'll do in a pinch.
Things to keep the Motorcycle Secure
If you plan your trips like me (NOT) you don't always end up staying at the most reputable establishments. It's always a good idea to lock your bike and have some way of locking the wheels. At least that way you'll keep the lazy motorcycle thieves from getting away with your bike. I always carry two keys for every lock with me when I travel. There's the ones that I carry in my pocket or attached to my belt, and the ones I carry deep in my bag for when I lose the other ones. As for disc lock I really recommend them. They are small, strong and provide a pretty good deterrent. They don't however address the case where someone comes with a lift and just hauls your bike away. For that you need to carry a heavy duty cable or chain lock to tie your bike to a solid structure. I personally don't like these due to the bulk and weight that they add to the saddlebags, but then I have pretty good insurance to replace the motorcycle if it's stolen.
Things to keep the rider going
Taking care of the rider is every bit, if not more so, important as keeping the motorcycle going. When we are out there in the wind there are millions of things that affect our ability to be comfortable and safe. Some of these I've discussed in other articles. First and foremost we need to make sure that we are protected from the sun. Getting sunburned on your arms, hands and face can absolutely ruin a good day of riding. I carry a stick sunscreen that has a SPF-30 rating and is waterproof and dries instantly. I use it on any skin that I have exposed to the sun. In addition I always carry a lip balm. Chapped lips can be a very painful thing on the road.
Both sunburn and chapped lips can sneak up on you without you being aware of it. Other things that I pack are a first aid kit that includes bandages, pain reliever and antiseptic ointments. Injuries on the road can become infected very easy due to the road grim that we are constantly hit by.
Perhaps my most important piece of equipment is my cell phone. I always carry that with me and make sure that it's always charged. Today, there is probably no piece of equipment that is more important than a cell phone in case of emergency. I usually carry a charger for use at night and a 12v car charger. Luckily I've installed a lighter on my motorcycle that allows me to charge my phone from the bike. This way I never have to worry about being stranded with a dead phone.
While I'm talking about phones, please make sure that you have I.C.E. number coded into your address book on the phone. I.C.E. numbers are the first thing that emergency workers will look for In Case of Emergency. Having these number(s) in your phone can greatly increase your chances of getting proper medical care. Two basic considerations for the numbers should be: Make sure the numbers are current. It won't do any good to have a number that is no longer valid specified as your ICE. Make sure that the person that answers that call has some basic knowledge about your medical history. Things like known allergies, blood type and doctors' name. By providing this basic information the emergency medical workers will be able to make much more informed decisions. Protective clothing and gear (Riding Gear)
On long trips you are most likely going to hit every kind of conceivable weather. No matter how hot it may get in the middle of that sunny summer day, there's probably some cold miserable weather waiting out there for you. If you're in the middle of the desert you're sure to run into some rain. After all you are on a motorcycle. To be prepared, I save all of the space in my saddlebags for riding gear. My usual list is: My colors. Can't ride a bike without those. Leather Jacket preferably one that has a removable lining and good ventilation. Chaps. Make sure they fit well and are in good condition. Fingerless gloves and full fingered gloves A couple of extra doo rags. I'm always losing those things. Face mask of some sort. I've got a windshield on my bike and that protects me most of the time but in heavy rain, hail and the cold a neoprene face mask really helps. Sunglasses and/or goggles. I personally like the convertible combos, which can change from sunglasses to goggles and have interchangeable lenses. My personal favorites are the SG-1 from WileyX. Rain Suit. One of those cheap sets from Wally World won't do. Sure they may keep you dry for awhile, but more often than not you'll get 30 miles down the road and the suit will be flying behind you like streamers. Don't skimp here.A couple of bandannas will always come in handy. If the weather is going to be extremely hot then a polymer crystal cooling bandanna is a great piece of gear to be carrying. I usually carry this in a small baggie that helps keep it fresh and keeps other things from getting wet from it when not in use.
Of course as has been said millions of times "Dressing in layers is the way to go". Being able to add layers and take off layers can substantially add to your riding comfort. As far as clothing is concerned keep it to a minimum. Carry enough for a few days and plan wash stops into your trip. This will help keep your load manageable. The key is to pack for all the conditions you are likely to run into but keep the load as sparse as possible. Get creative and figure out multiple uses for different pieces of clothing and the best way to extend the wear-ability of the clothes. After all if you get caught in the rain without your rainsuit, those clothes are good for another day. Aren't they?
Hygiene
Even a scummy old biker like me likes to clean up every once in awhile. And since I often alternate between camping and motels I carry things to wash up with. These would include a towel, washcloth and those little bars of soap and bottles of shampoo you can get at most motels. It helps that in my day job I travel all the time so I've got a life time supply of those.
I'm also trying to keep the last few remaining teeth that I have so that means I have to carry my toothbrush and toothpaste. Since I've got long hair I have to carry a brush to get the rat's nest that forms in my hair every day out. Usually on long trips I don't shave, but I always have a razor with me. I just use the soap to lather up on my face instead of carrying shaving cream.
One last item you should never leave without is toilet paper. There's nothing worse than suddenly needing it when you're out on the road and not having it. I usually start out with a small quantity which would take care of the duties a couple of times. If I end up using that up, I usually restock courtesy of the next gas stop or hotel.
All of this is carried in a small bag that I always have packed so I never have to worry about it. If I use something, I replace it and it's a thoughtless act to throw that in the T-Bags.
Camping Equipment
Camping equipment is probably one of the hardest things to carry and pack on a motorcycle. This is based mostly on the fact that it usually bulky and doesn't necessarily pack down real well. Even when they pack down the bags seem to be longer than you would want. They usually end up being to tall if you tie them on standing up, or to wide if you try to have them laying down.
For a tent, I've found that the small two man dome tents work best. They are easy to set up, have plenty of room to spread out in at night (if there's only one person in it), and they pack down pretty nice. My tent originally came in a flimsy nylon bag that I knew would hold up to rolling down the road so I replaced the bag with a sturdier one. My tent is usually bungeed onto my T-Bag and additional one to attach it to the motorcycle.
On the other side of the T-Bag, I have my mattress. As the years have gone by that ground has gotten harder and harder. I use one of those self-inflating mattresses that blow themselves up. While they're not the most comfortable, it sure beat sleeping on the ground. In the morning all you have to do is open the valve, roll it up and it's ready to go. I got a bag to carry the mattress in too.
Miscellaneous Stuff
I've always found that carrying cameras on a motorcycle trip can be a pain. The old styles (film based) have a tendency to take up to much space. And the digital camera require to much accessory stuff, like chargers, place to download the pictures and such. For a while I was carrying Advantix cameras, since they can be relatively small and take good quality pictures. Now I've never been a fan of the panoramic views but that is available on them. I'm now carrying a digital camera and have bought several different memory cards for it. This way I can use the cards like regular film and don't have to carry all the stuff to download the pictures until I get home.
Other important items are a wallet, credit cards and money. Can't keep going without these. And the one thing that I consider the most important, a notebook and pens. When I'm on a trip it's great to be able to keep notes about what you saw, how the motorcycle was running, where I stayed and interesting characters I meet along the way. It's also important cause if you're like me and suffer from CRAFT disease (write me if you want to know what that stands for) it's a great way to refresh your memories of the trip years from now.
Now that the bike's all loaded up one last thing to remember is that with all the additional weight of the stuff you're carrying the motorcycle is likely to handle differently. Remember to try to keep the weight as low and as close to the center of the motorcycle as possible. This will help keep the front wheel from getting to light or making the motorcycle a little top heavy. Make sure everything is strapped on real well. Good straps and bungies will give you a good dose of peace of mind knowing that your load is secure.
Be Safe ... Enjoy the Ride
Tools
http://www.bikerwares.com
About the Author
Jeff Sinason aka Tools is an avid traveler on his motorcycle. He is also the owner of Bikerwares which is an online store that has a great selection and great prices for motorcycle eyewear and goggles and much more. He is also the owner of Motorcycle Articles which is a great information resource for bikers
Why Choose Laser Printers?
If your business strategy doesn't pave too much attention, you should come up with good reasons to keep it up and improve. In aiming for a good promotion, you should create a lasting and big impression to your customers. You just simply need a computer and publishing software and you're all set. Simple as it may appear, it will take all accounts t0 increasing your promotion. Even one person can do this simple job. A good publishing software is essential along with skills and taste of designs in order to march the scene. Even the computer with your digital camera and your printer can help you come up with professional prints and pieces. According to many researchers and analysts, home or office printing is in demand and so many have switched to that alternative because it has been proven to be effective and manageable. Laser printers have been selling high these days so more and more people are aware of what might these laser printers showcase their customers. Every year, the production and selling of printers have increased.
If you don't have your own printer, there are so many affordable printers in the market which is fit for your budget and convenience. Just be sure you land on the right choice and you are not taken advantage of.
In selecting a printer, you should know which type of printing technology you are going to use and maintain. The most common printers which is the inkjet and the laser printers have their specialty in print jobs. Before selecting the inkjet or the laser, make sure you go for what is compatible with your printing job.
The useful laser printers were based in production of the early Xerox process. Xerox is mainly used to create copies and duplicates of some print materials with the use of carbon as inks. Inkjet printers have a more direct approach when it comes to printing colors in particular. The print head works magnificently and it contains hundreds of chambers where the ink passes through when it is heated. When electricity flows, tiny drops of ink are spread onto paper to form an image. For some, Inkjet printers are more advantageous among all other printers. Aside from they are being sold at a low cost, it can print outrageous prints with high quality colors and a faster turn around in print production is also possible. Keeping a deadline might not be a very dead line at all.
For more related articles, you may visit http://www.printingshoppersonline.com
About the Author
Karen Nodalo came across writing when she was about 11. The whole craze for writing started when she first wrote her diary during elementary years. After school, she would write in it first before doing homework. She finds it cool and until now she still keeps one.
If you don't have your own printer, there are so many affordable printers in the market which is fit for your budget and convenience. Just be sure you land on the right choice and you are not taken advantage of.
In selecting a printer, you should know which type of printing technology you are going to use and maintain. The most common printers which is the inkjet and the laser printers have their specialty in print jobs. Before selecting the inkjet or the laser, make sure you go for what is compatible with your printing job.
The useful laser printers were based in production of the early Xerox process. Xerox is mainly used to create copies and duplicates of some print materials with the use of carbon as inks. Inkjet printers have a more direct approach when it comes to printing colors in particular. The print head works magnificently and it contains hundreds of chambers where the ink passes through when it is heated. When electricity flows, tiny drops of ink are spread onto paper to form an image. For some, Inkjet printers are more advantageous among all other printers. Aside from they are being sold at a low cost, it can print outrageous prints with high quality colors and a faster turn around in print production is also possible. Keeping a deadline might not be a very dead line at all.
For more related articles, you may visit http://www.printingshoppersonline.com
About the Author
Karen Nodalo came across writing when she was about 11. The whole craze for writing started when she first wrote her diary during elementary years. After school, she would write in it first before doing homework. She finds it cool and until now she still keeps one.
Increase Your Response On eBay, Starting Right Now!
Your auction is up and running. You've got bidders seeing your auction and looking things over. Now you just need to push them over the edge. This article will cover various ways to increase your bids from prospective buyers.
First off, make sure that your display picture is of the highest quality. You might have the best written description in the world, but if your picture doesn't mirror your description that will turn bidders off. Use a digital camera if possible. Create a clean, unobtrusive picture. Take care in the background and lighting of the picture and you should be all set.
Adding an About Me page is a great way to increase your response as well. If your bidders have some personal information about you and your business this goes along way to establishing that trusting relationship between you and your customers. You can also post a few special offers on this page for people who take the time to look at it. Also, ask visitors to sign up for your mailing list as well.
Sign up at Square Trade, and display their logo on your auctions. This shows potential bidders that you are committed to resolving any disputes that might arise. Power Sellers always carry this logo on their auctions, and you should too. It makes you look much more professional.
Clearly spell out your terms and conditions making it very visible. Give details of things like shipping times and prices, the refund policy and anything else you want to make your buyers aware of. This also helps create trust between you and your customers. Plus having it all spelled out clearly, helps if any dispute issues arise as well.
Display your good feedback on your auction so that visitors don't have to go looking for it. You can simply cut and paste the text, or create a screenshot image of your feedback. If you have a 100% feedback rating, be sure to make a mention of that as well.
If you have room on your auction title, use NR (No Reserve) at the end of your title. Bidders like auctions that have no reserve, so having this on your title allows bidders to see that your auction has no reserve without actually having to click on your auction link.
Make sure you auction highlights the benefits of your product and not just the features. You want to tell your visitors why your product is good for THEM. You can have all the features in the world, but without describing the benefits of those features many bidders will pass on by.
In order to reach those last few buyers that you might miss otherwise, accept various unusual payment methods like checks or money orders. Many other sellers don't take these forms of payment, but the fact that you do may bring you that extra sale.
Upgrade your auction. Buying upgrades helps get you listed higher in the list of items. This can help a lot if your product is in a crowded category. You might just find out that it's worth the money.
Article Location:
http://www.ebaybusiness.net/ebay-articles/increase-your-response-on-ebay.html
About the Author
This article was written on behalf of eBayBusiness.net by Webmaster and Internet Marketer Jordan Williams. Visit http://www.ebaybusiness.net today and get started on the road to eBay Business Success.
First off, make sure that your display picture is of the highest quality. You might have the best written description in the world, but if your picture doesn't mirror your description that will turn bidders off. Use a digital camera if possible. Create a clean, unobtrusive picture. Take care in the background and lighting of the picture and you should be all set.
Adding an About Me page is a great way to increase your response as well. If your bidders have some personal information about you and your business this goes along way to establishing that trusting relationship between you and your customers. You can also post a few special offers on this page for people who take the time to look at it. Also, ask visitors to sign up for your mailing list as well.
Sign up at Square Trade, and display their logo on your auctions. This shows potential bidders that you are committed to resolving any disputes that might arise. Power Sellers always carry this logo on their auctions, and you should too. It makes you look much more professional.
Clearly spell out your terms and conditions making it very visible. Give details of things like shipping times and prices, the refund policy and anything else you want to make your buyers aware of. This also helps create trust between you and your customers. Plus having it all spelled out clearly, helps if any dispute issues arise as well.
Display your good feedback on your auction so that visitors don't have to go looking for it. You can simply cut and paste the text, or create a screenshot image of your feedback. If you have a 100% feedback rating, be sure to make a mention of that as well.
If you have room on your auction title, use NR (No Reserve) at the end of your title. Bidders like auctions that have no reserve, so having this on your title allows bidders to see that your auction has no reserve without actually having to click on your auction link.
Make sure you auction highlights the benefits of your product and not just the features. You want to tell your visitors why your product is good for THEM. You can have all the features in the world, but without describing the benefits of those features many bidders will pass on by.
In order to reach those last few buyers that you might miss otherwise, accept various unusual payment methods like checks or money orders. Many other sellers don't take these forms of payment, but the fact that you do may bring you that extra sale.
Upgrade your auction. Buying upgrades helps get you listed higher in the list of items. This can help a lot if your product is in a crowded category. You might just find out that it's worth the money.
Article Location:
http://www.ebaybusiness.net/ebay-articles/increase-your-response-on-ebay.html
About the Author
This article was written on behalf of eBayBusiness.net by Webmaster and Internet Marketer Jordan Williams. Visit http://www.ebaybusiness.net today and get started on the road to eBay Business Success.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Digital Camera Comparison Guide
When we are ready to buy a digital camera we need to look at various facts. These facts will help us to compare digital camera features and eventually decide which digital camera we wish to buy. As there are many features that can be present in the various digital cameras you will need to isolate the main points and features of interest to you.
By narrowing this field of comparison we can look for only the items that will help us take great looking photographs. Among these items to be compared can be the amount of pixels that are offered in each type of digital camera.
To compare digital camera features like this you should have access to a buyer's guide that will inform you about the amount of pixels that can be found in a digital camera. The amount of pixels will normally mean that your photograph quality will be very good.
You can also compare digital camera features to see if a digital camera is suited for the amateur photographer, semi-serious photographer, the serious amateur who is looking to better their photographic craft or even professional photographers.
The various information that you can find about digital cameras will let you see what different features are present in a certain digital camera. You will also see when you are looking to compare digital camera features of two or three digital cameras, if these digital cameras have the ability to turn your pictures into sepia, black and white, or soft focus pictures with the use of filters.
As you compare digital camera features it is necessary to see what types of shooting modes are present in the digital cameras that you want. There should be indications about the focusing and flash capabilities of different digital cameras like Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Minolta and even Pentac digital cameras.
These different types of information that you can find, will help you to compare digital camera features that are of a technical nature. There are other sources of information like photography magazines that will let you compare digital features that allow you to take photographs with special effects.
These effects can be how a zoom feature works to give you an unexpected shot from a totally new angle or the way that you can change the focus of a picture by cropping the surrounding areas of your subject.
To take great looking pictures it also helps to have a digital camera that provides you with many different helpful features. The many different sources that you can use like photography magazines, internet articles, and even digital camera buyer's guides will allow you to compare digital camera features.
This way you can select the best type of digital camera that is suited for your needs. To compare digital camera features you need all of these different sources. This way you have a wide choice of digital cameras to look at.
About the Author
Download List of Tools and utilities to help you with different tasks such as photo organizing, recovering lost images from digital camera memory cards, image editing and filtering At DPMastery.com Your Source For Digital Photography Tips
By narrowing this field of comparison we can look for only the items that will help us take great looking photographs. Among these items to be compared can be the amount of pixels that are offered in each type of digital camera.
To compare digital camera features like this you should have access to a buyer's guide that will inform you about the amount of pixels that can be found in a digital camera. The amount of pixels will normally mean that your photograph quality will be very good.
You can also compare digital camera features to see if a digital camera is suited for the amateur photographer, semi-serious photographer, the serious amateur who is looking to better their photographic craft or even professional photographers.
The various information that you can find about digital cameras will let you see what different features are present in a certain digital camera. You will also see when you are looking to compare digital camera features of two or three digital cameras, if these digital cameras have the ability to turn your pictures into sepia, black and white, or soft focus pictures with the use of filters.
As you compare digital camera features it is necessary to see what types of shooting modes are present in the digital cameras that you want. There should be indications about the focusing and flash capabilities of different digital cameras like Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Minolta and even Pentac digital cameras.
These different types of information that you can find, will help you to compare digital camera features that are of a technical nature. There are other sources of information like photography magazines that will let you compare digital features that allow you to take photographs with special effects.
These effects can be how a zoom feature works to give you an unexpected shot from a totally new angle or the way that you can change the focus of a picture by cropping the surrounding areas of your subject.
To take great looking pictures it also helps to have a digital camera that provides you with many different helpful features. The many different sources that you can use like photography magazines, internet articles, and even digital camera buyer's guides will allow you to compare digital camera features.
This way you can select the best type of digital camera that is suited for your needs. To compare digital camera features you need all of these different sources. This way you have a wide choice of digital cameras to look at.
About the Author
Download List of Tools and utilities to help you with different tasks such as photo organizing, recovering lost images from digital camera memory cards, image editing and filtering At DPMastery.com Your Source For Digital Photography Tips
How to earn money from your photos. A brief guide to online stock photography business.
Got a digital camera? Now you can earn money selling your pictures on the Internet! If you have a good eye and if you are a creative person you can generate very nice monthly income by selling your pictures on stock photography web sites. Personally, I am receiving checks and PayPal transfers for few hundreds bucks every month. You can do it too. At least, it pays you back for all that nice and expensive photographic gear you have purchased last year .
I truly love online stock photography Internet phenomenon, since it is the first in the world and probably the only business model which allows amateur photographers like you and me to earn some money from they lovely hobby. In fact, if you are a talented photographer and you shoot hundreds of pictures every month you can earn a very significant part of your living shooting high quality pictures for stock photography agencies.
There are many stock photography sites that will be happy to sell your photos and share with you the received revenues. iStockPhoto, ShutterStock, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto and CanStockPhoto are just few stock sites to name. All stock sites allow you to register for free as their submitting photographer and start upload your work to their banks. However, be aware that many sites will ask you to provide detailed personal information such as a scan of you picture ID / passport and will ask you to sign and fax them a signed copy of their 'submitter agreement'. I completely understand them in their effort to limit the image fraud on the Internet and to protect both their buyers and their submitters image copyright owners from the fraudulent behavior.
In addition to proper submitters authentication, many stock photo sites will ask you to pass a professional online test, which should verify that you have all the required photographic skills and that you understand rules of the game on stock photography market. Do not be afraid of that test. If you know the difference between shutter speed and the aperture and can explain what is DOF you will pass it for sure. And the basic stock photography rules are quite simple:
1) Do not submit images that include any copyrighted material Avoid company logos, trademarks, third-party images and brands.
2) Provide a model release for any recognizable person in your image Each site has its own standard model release form that you have to fill in and send along with each image containing a recognizable person. I suggest you to download and print model releases for all the sites you have selected to submit your images and always keep these releases handle. When you shoot a person, do not forget signing her on one or more model releases! Note, that most sites will also ask you for the copy of model's ID and for the witness signature. Some sites will request to send them a copy witness ID too. Keep all this in your mind when you prepare a stock shooting session
3) Editorial content Some stock photo agencies, e.g. ShutterStock has a separate section / category for editorial images. Different rules set apply for editorial content. Editorial content can be used only in news and therefore these images do not require model releases and can include any copyrighted material. So, if you have shoot carnival in Brazil do not throw out all your pictures because you do not have model releases for all these people. You still can submit your images as editorial content at some stock photography sites. However, be aware that there are not too much buyers for this type of content and the submitters' competition is tight.
4) Use appropriate lighting and composition This is common sense, but I will mention it anyway. Your images compete for the buyers attention with images created by highly qualified talented professional photographers which shoot for years, own nice equipment and definitely know how and when use it. You must think creatively in terms of lighting and composition, otherwise your images will never sell.
For instance, if until now you have relied on your built-in flash as a proper source for indoor lighting it is a time to change your mind. Go to the stock sites and take a look how other photographers use light in their work. You will probably need to switch to some more professional sources of lighting for your indoor photography. Again - be creative and you will win the war for the buyers' attention!
5) Images format must be JPG, typically from 2 megapixels and with max file size of 8-10 MB
6) Properly prepare your images before uploading them to stock photo sites First of all it means digital editing. There are many software applications that can help you to edit your image, starting from the industry leading Adobe Photoshop tool, the newest and much cheaper than Photoshop Adobe Lightroom and ending up with Google's Picassa, which is available free of charge. However, making your image look gorgeous is yet not the final destination for a properly prepared stock photograph.
Think about buyers. Buyers still have to find your image among all the similar pictures in the web image database provided by a stock agency. It means you have to user proper descriptive keywords to index your imagery before uploading it to a stock photo site. All the stock photo agencies allow you to upload images and add keywords through their web sites. However, imagine yourself adding the same keyword to each one of your images at every stock site you have decided to work with. It easily multiples the amount of time you are going to spend preparing your images to be sold. Such multiplication of image preparation steps makes all the preparations process completely ineffective.
Fortunately, there is a nice alternative to re-inserting the keywords at each stock photo site - put them directly into your JPG file. Modern JPG implementations support so called IPTC protocol. This protocol is used by multiple applications to insert and edit image metadata, including keywords, captures (titles) and descriptions. Some heavy-duty expensive graphical applications, like Photoshop, support this format, allowing you to add keywords and titles to your images. However, since IPTC editing is not a core business for such graphical editing software, typically its IPTC modifications interface is quite limited and ugly.
Editing of IPTC data and selection of proper descriptive keywords can take significant amount of time, especially if English is not exactly your mother tongue or if you just prefer to shoot images rather than index them. Obviously, it would be nice to automate this process. I looked for some help on the Internet but did not find too much choice here. At the moment I can point out only one dedicated stock photography management tool that provides significant aid for a stock photographer, helping her with semi-automated images keywording, proper image preparation and simultaneous images upload to multiple leading stock photography agencies. The tool is called ProStockMaster and it is available for free download from the product web site: http://www.prostockmaster.com. The free version is limited to 5 image uploads daily which certainly could be enough for many beginning stock photo submitters. I am using this tool for a while and I found it to be a very useful stock photography workflow management application saving me many hours of dirty work on my computer.
7) Prices and payments - what income you can expect Most stock photography agencies implement pay-per-download business model, giving their submitters some payment each time their image is downloaded (purchased) by a buyer. This is a micro-payment model and the prices you get paid start as low as $0.20. However, if you were successful to create a highly demanded image you can easy hit few hundreds downloads a month, so your earning arithmetic can be $0.2 x 300 = $60 monthly, just for a single image.
Of course, the rule of the thumb says the more images you have online in each and every stock photography agency, the more images you sell monthly and the higher income you will get. Typically, stock agencies send you a check or a PayPal transfer at the end of every month. However, this is true only if you have earned more than a certain amount of cash, typically $50 - $100. If your earnings still did not reach this pre-defined amount you will be paid at the end of the month when your income reaches that payment barrier.
Well, that's all folks! Just take your digital camera and go for a shooting session. Oh, - wait, wait a second. First, open your web browser and look what other people submit to stock photography agencies. Note the most popular images and read related web articles where agencies suggest their submitters on what they would accept and what is highly demanded by their buyers. Let me also give you a few personal tips, my $0.02 for your stock photography success. Please no close-up flowers, no landscapes, no buildings and snapshots. It is hard to get this stuff accepted by a stock photography agency. Shoot for business, trying to materialize business terms, e.g. 'success', 'failure', 'funding' and 'partnership' and be always creative in your work. Good luck and happy shooting!
Useful URLs: Online stock agencies: http://www.shutterstock.com http://www.istockphoto.com http://www.bigstockphoto.com http://www.canstockphoto.com http://www.fotolia.com
Free stock photography management tool: http://www.prostockmaster.com
Adobe image editing tools: http:///www.adobe.com<;a/>
About the Author
I am a civil engineer and an amateur photographer who works with multiple online stock photography agencies. I enjoy taking pictures at my free time, mostly at weekends and on travel. During the last year my income from selling stock photography items online has reached 50% of my monthly earnings, becoming to be a stable second source complimentary to my salary.
I truly love online stock photography Internet phenomenon, since it is the first in the world and probably the only business model which allows amateur photographers like you and me to earn some money from they lovely hobby. In fact, if you are a talented photographer and you shoot hundreds of pictures every month you can earn a very significant part of your living shooting high quality pictures for stock photography agencies.
There are many stock photography sites that will be happy to sell your photos and share with you the received revenues. iStockPhoto, ShutterStock, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto and CanStockPhoto are just few stock sites to name. All stock sites allow you to register for free as their submitting photographer and start upload your work to their banks. However, be aware that many sites will ask you to provide detailed personal information such as a scan of you picture ID / passport and will ask you to sign and fax them a signed copy of their 'submitter agreement'. I completely understand them in their effort to limit the image fraud on the Internet and to protect both their buyers and their submitters image copyright owners from the fraudulent behavior.
In addition to proper submitters authentication, many stock photo sites will ask you to pass a professional online test, which should verify that you have all the required photographic skills and that you understand rules of the game on stock photography market. Do not be afraid of that test. If you know the difference between shutter speed and the aperture and can explain what is DOF you will pass it for sure. And the basic stock photography rules are quite simple:
1) Do not submit images that include any copyrighted material Avoid company logos, trademarks, third-party images and brands.
2) Provide a model release for any recognizable person in your image Each site has its own standard model release form that you have to fill in and send along with each image containing a recognizable person. I suggest you to download and print model releases for all the sites you have selected to submit your images and always keep these releases handle. When you shoot a person, do not forget signing her on one or more model releases! Note, that most sites will also ask you for the copy of model's ID and for the witness signature. Some sites will request to send them a copy witness ID too. Keep all this in your mind when you prepare a stock shooting session
3) Editorial content Some stock photo agencies, e.g. ShutterStock has a separate section / category for editorial images. Different rules set apply for editorial content. Editorial content can be used only in news and therefore these images do not require model releases and can include any copyrighted material. So, if you have shoot carnival in Brazil do not throw out all your pictures because you do not have model releases for all these people. You still can submit your images as editorial content at some stock photography sites. However, be aware that there are not too much buyers for this type of content and the submitters' competition is tight.
4) Use appropriate lighting and composition This is common sense, but I will mention it anyway. Your images compete for the buyers attention with images created by highly qualified talented professional photographers which shoot for years, own nice equipment and definitely know how and when use it. You must think creatively in terms of lighting and composition, otherwise your images will never sell.
For instance, if until now you have relied on your built-in flash as a proper source for indoor lighting it is a time to change your mind. Go to the stock sites and take a look how other photographers use light in their work. You will probably need to switch to some more professional sources of lighting for your indoor photography. Again - be creative and you will win the war for the buyers' attention!
5) Images format must be JPG, typically from 2 megapixels and with max file size of 8-10 MB
6) Properly prepare your images before uploading them to stock photo sites First of all it means digital editing. There are many software applications that can help you to edit your image, starting from the industry leading Adobe Photoshop tool, the newest and much cheaper than Photoshop Adobe Lightroom and ending up with Google's Picassa, which is available free of charge. However, making your image look gorgeous is yet not the final destination for a properly prepared stock photograph.
Think about buyers. Buyers still have to find your image among all the similar pictures in the web image database provided by a stock agency. It means you have to user proper descriptive keywords to index your imagery before uploading it to a stock photo site. All the stock photo agencies allow you to upload images and add keywords through their web sites. However, imagine yourself adding the same keyword to each one of your images at every stock site you have decided to work with. It easily multiples the amount of time you are going to spend preparing your images to be sold. Such multiplication of image preparation steps makes all the preparations process completely ineffective.
Fortunately, there is a nice alternative to re-inserting the keywords at each stock photo site - put them directly into your JPG file. Modern JPG implementations support so called IPTC protocol. This protocol is used by multiple applications to insert and edit image metadata, including keywords, captures (titles) and descriptions. Some heavy-duty expensive graphical applications, like Photoshop, support this format, allowing you to add keywords and titles to your images. However, since IPTC editing is not a core business for such graphical editing software, typically its IPTC modifications interface is quite limited and ugly.
Editing of IPTC data and selection of proper descriptive keywords can take significant amount of time, especially if English is not exactly your mother tongue or if you just prefer to shoot images rather than index them. Obviously, it would be nice to automate this process. I looked for some help on the Internet but did not find too much choice here. At the moment I can point out only one dedicated stock photography management tool that provides significant aid for a stock photographer, helping her with semi-automated images keywording, proper image preparation and simultaneous images upload to multiple leading stock photography agencies. The tool is called ProStockMaster and it is available for free download from the product web site: http://www.prostockmaster.com. The free version is limited to 5 image uploads daily which certainly could be enough for many beginning stock photo submitters. I am using this tool for a while and I found it to be a very useful stock photography workflow management application saving me many hours of dirty work on my computer.
7) Prices and payments - what income you can expect Most stock photography agencies implement pay-per-download business model, giving their submitters some payment each time their image is downloaded (purchased) by a buyer. This is a micro-payment model and the prices you get paid start as low as $0.20. However, if you were successful to create a highly demanded image you can easy hit few hundreds downloads a month, so your earning arithmetic can be $0.2 x 300 = $60 monthly, just for a single image.
Of course, the rule of the thumb says the more images you have online in each and every stock photography agency, the more images you sell monthly and the higher income you will get. Typically, stock agencies send you a check or a PayPal transfer at the end of every month. However, this is true only if you have earned more than a certain amount of cash, typically $50 - $100. If your earnings still did not reach this pre-defined amount you will be paid at the end of the month when your income reaches that payment barrier.
Well, that's all folks! Just take your digital camera and go for a shooting session. Oh, - wait, wait a second. First, open your web browser and look what other people submit to stock photography agencies. Note the most popular images and read related web articles where agencies suggest their submitters on what they would accept and what is highly demanded by their buyers. Let me also give you a few personal tips, my $0.02 for your stock photography success. Please no close-up flowers, no landscapes, no buildings and snapshots. It is hard to get this stuff accepted by a stock photography agency. Shoot for business, trying to materialize business terms, e.g. 'success', 'failure', 'funding' and 'partnership' and be always creative in your work. Good luck and happy shooting!
Useful URLs: Online stock agencies: http://www.shutterstock.com http://www.istockphoto.com http://www.bigstockphoto.com http://www.canstockphoto.com http://www.fotolia.com
Free stock photography management tool: http://www.prostockmaster.com
Adobe image editing tools: http:///www.adobe.com<;a/>
About the Author
I am a civil engineer and an amateur photographer who works with multiple online stock photography agencies. I enjoy taking pictures at my free time, mostly at weekends and on travel. During the last year my income from selling stock photography items online has reached 50% of my monthly earnings, becoming to be a stable second source complimentary to my salary.
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