Wisnaes.com - Visual communication

There is one part of the internet that for me looks like it has been totally ignored. And even this article is a good example of it. Take a look at my picture. I had to edit the whole thing in Photoshop to get the result I wanted.

I am using Windows Live Writer to publish this article to my Word Press powered blog. But neither Windows Live Writer, neither Word Press has any mechanism to add a copyright (or Creative Commons), the name of the photographer and a caption (the description) to each picture.

I would like to see the possibility to add this for each picture I use in my article. For me, this is a no brainer. The photographer deserves credit just as much as the article writer. So why is it not there?

The group of websites that actually uses some form of this best are the online newspapers. I guess that stems from the photographers there knowing a lot more about their rights. But we really need this on even small blogs today.

A very good source for illustrations for a blog today are the photosharing sites like Flickr. On Flickr, you can do a search only among the Creative Commons pictures to find something that you can use. Bust most of the CC marked pictures require that you give the photographer due credit and maybe also link back to both her/him and to the correct CC webpage. Today, there is no way to do this easily and I am trying to get some attention to this.

One way that has been suggested is to use the watermark feature in some editors to add the text inside the picture itself. But this means altering the picture and a lot of photographers do not want you to do that. Also, take a look at my picture above and think about placing the caption over the picture. First of all, it would look extremely odd. Second, it would hardly be readable. Sure, I could set the text color to white. But next picture might be a high key picture that requires me to set it to black.. No, forget about putting anything inside the picture. And by the way – why use a workaround that is clearly not meant for this? What we need is a real solution.

The first way to handle it would be to ask the creators of different WYSIWYG editors and off-line editors to add this functionality. It should not be too difficult. The second step would be to get it into the core of the different CMS’es like WordPress and Joomla. That is where it really belongs.

I want to add one more thing to the list. Microsoft has made available a nice plugin or addition to Windows XP. It is called Photo Info and it allows you to add the required text to the IPTC fields of pictures. Most of the higher end photo editing programs can do the same, and as I do not like doing the same thing twice, I would love to see Windows Live Writer and WordPress being able to load the IPTC info into the correct fields for each picture when I publish them on my blog. I consider this to be the ultimate and most elegant solution, but for now I will settle for one that just let me enter and display the needed info in a nice manner.

There are several ways to display it, and here the template designers might come in with some styling. The name and copyright could be added under the picture as I have done. But I have also seen it displayed up along the right side of the picture. The caption could either be under or over. For my own blog, I would prefer something more or less the way I made the mockup in this article. I am not totally sure about the 5% grey behind the caption, but I need to make sure it is easy to separate it from the article itself.

How would you like to display photo credits and captions? Do you do it today? As far as I know, copyright laws in most countries requires us to put a credit for pictures we use. Why has this been omitted in most CMS systems?

UPDATE: I have now posted an idea on WordPress.org to try to gather support for this. Add your vote on the idea! I have also put the idea into a forum for Windows Live Writer and someone replied that he could probably make something like this. Sounds like Windows Live Writer might be the first one to get something usable. This will of course be good news for more than WordPress users. You can add your support for it here.

UPDATE2: I tried to make an example of what it could look like in Windows Live Writer. Take a look at it here.

Have you ever tried making a nice DVD? Then you know it can be a lot of work and a lot of details to take care of to make things work correctly. But – Sometimes you just have a bunch of video files that you want to put on a DVD. You could of course use one of the big authoring tools available. If you want to take the time, make sure all video is in an acceptable format, and not the least – spend the money on buying these tools.

Or you could head over to http://www.dvdflick.net/ and download DVDFlick. It is probably the easiest tool I have come across to make DVD’s. From their own description:

DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks as well as subtitles of your choice.

And here is a short list of some features:

• Burn near any video file to DVD
• Support for over 45 file formats
• Support for over 60 video codecs
• Support for over 40 audio codecs
• Add your own subtitles
• Easy to use interface
• Burn your project to disc after encoding
• Completely free without any adware, spyware or limitations

I can really recommend this program. And for the price of it, you can hardly go wrong – it is free. But if you like it and become a user, you should consider donating something. These programmers that make software and then give it out for free really deserve our support.

The interface is very easy. You add movies to a list and then you create the DVD. But before you start creating, make sure you have gone through the project settings and set the target size, target format etc. You can also decide to make an ISO-file instead of burning direct to DVD.

For each video that you add to the list, you can click on edit and adjust a number of settings. One thing to look out for here is the aspect ration. Check that it is set correct. This is also where you can add extra video sources, audio tracks and subtitles.

If you are new to making DVD’s, there is a nice tutorial online that you can get to by clicking on the guide button. It is a very easy step-by-step guide that should answer most questions.

I only have one thing to complain about. My main video editing program is Avid MediaComposer, and I have had some reports of problems with the Avid DV codec. So if you are using any of the Avid editing programs, you might want to make sure you are exporting with a more generic codec. But of course, try it out once with a couple of small videos. I have sent a mail to the author to tell him about the problem, so it might get solved in the near future.

Have you tried this program? Did you experience any problems? Let us know how it worked for you by leaving a comment. Is this the solution to all DVD authoring problems?

I have been looking for an easier way to write blog posts for the few blogs I have. So far I have been looking at a number of different blog editors and every time I have ended up using the online interface.

Some time ago, I tested Windows Live Writer and could not even get it to run properly. Yesterday, I upgraded my MSN Messenger and had the opportunity to install Live Writer at the same time. So I thought "Why not try it again"? Maybe this time it will work.

Well, the installation was easy enough and it started fine. After giving it the log-in to my first blog, Live Writer discovered that it was a WordPress blog and it was ready to go.

Writing feels like writing in a word processor. I like this feeling and I also like being able to save drafts on my laptop. Now I can work on posts even if I am on an airplane with no connection to the internet. Of course, I could do this before by just using any wordprocessor, but I like this feeling of having a dedicated tool for the job. I hope it is easy to switch between different blogs so I can manage all of them from the same interface.

I have installed WYSIWYG editors on all my blogs. I do not like using codes when I write. I feel it interrupts the natural flow of writing. If Live Writer works, I can keep the WYSIWYG plug-in out of WordPress. One less thing to think about to update and install. Now I just wish there was a way to use Live Writer as a Live Comment System…

Do you know of any system for managing comments where you do not have to log in on your website?

I have for a long time told people they need to set up some kind of secure storage at home to take care of backup of pictures. And I am trying to reseach what is going on in the home server area at the moment. I have come across a few projects and think they are promising. So I decided to put together a kind of wish-list for my perfect server. None of these ideas are new, but I felt it was interesting to list all of them together.

This is all about security for the data. First I list everything that I think is really essential. Everything else should be and add-in except for file and printer sharing.

RAID-1

Whether it is soft or hardware based (I really prefer hardware based, so I like support for Highpoint, 3ware and Promise drivers at least…), a home server needs to have a solid system for securing files. Why RAID-1? Well, a single point of failure will always be the RAID control mechanism, either as software or hardware. If you use RAID-1, you can just take one drive out of the server and mount it on a different PC and you have access to all your data. If you use RAID-5 or RAID-6, you are not sure to be able to recover your raid if the controller goes… RAID-1 is not as efficient as RAID-5 or RAID-6 in terms of storage space, but in my opinion, the security is higher.

The system drive should also be on a RAID-1 setup so it is not lost because of harddrive failure. The whole OS including programs, not any user data or backup data, should fit on a relatively small drive so there is no cost excuse to skip running a RAID-1 for it.

File system

Based on maksimum security, there should go a lot of thought into what filesystem that should be used for the data drives. FAT32 would be a good candidate if it had been a bit more robust and allowed for bigger filesizes. But with a maximum of 2GB files, it is totally out of the question since many people would like to store backups of DVD’s on a server like this. A good solution might be to to use ext-2 or ext-3 and provide Windows and OSX drivers to be able to read the drives if there should be a major crisis.

Backup

Even if we have a secure way of storing data on the server, we still need a good backup system. And I really prefer a centrally managed system. There should only be a small agent installed on each PC (Windows, OSX or Linux/BSD) and then the rest should be done from the server – setting up what to backup, when and how often. There system MUST be able to backup files that are in use and to control bandwith use so it can run in the background even if you are working on the system.

There should be a wide range of options on where to store the backups. The backups of the pc’s in the network could be stored or cached on the server. But there must also be a way to wite to an different medium e.g. DVD+R or tape. Or some other kind of attached storage. Because of this it would be smart to have the backup program divide all backup files into chunks of 2GB or less.

Health monitoring of critical components in the network.

There are protocols to monitor hardware today. Especially harddrives that are S.M.A.R.T. enabled. So why not do this centrally? Use the same agent that do the backup control to continually monitor the harddrive, fans, CPU of the pc it is running on and send any critical messages immediately to the server. There you can have a program that send alerts by e-mail, sms, make a call through an IP-Phone and play a recorded message etc. This should not be complicated to set up. And it would be a good thing to send status for each PC on a regular basis so the server builds a statistics that can be reviewed.

File sharing

This is a given. Each user needs to have their own home folder where they can store documents and folders where more people have access so pictures and other things can be shared.

IMPORTANT: Actually, there should also be some sort of version control on this. I have no idea if this is possible in any of the filesystems out there, but pictures, music and video all share one thing – you do not want to destroy the original. So a way to mark files as originals and then block all modifications would be ok. I can see one reason to modify the originals – add metadata. So this part is a bit of a challenge and I have not seen anything about this on the internet at all.

Printer sharing

This is also a given. Most people can not afford to have one or more printers for each computer in the house. There should be an easy way to get the driver for the printer from the server when you install it on a local pc.

One function that I use a lot is printing to PDF. This could be a central function as well. Yes, I know there are good, local alternatives, but it would be nice to collect all "printer" functions at a central point.

User control

This add one more to the given list. I would like to set up both users and groups and have an easy way of adding users to groups. I like using groups instead of user to control access to functions. The server need to be able to run really headless. No monitor, no keyboard and no mouse.

Communication with a UPS

A UPS is essential in a setup like this and it is equally important that the server communicates with the UPS so it knows when the power goes down and can shut down the server in a controlled manner.

Anti-virus

There should definitely be some software for this running on the server as well as malware detection. It is important to go for a software that is updated very often and that have a live scanner that do not bog down the server.

Firewall

Yes, the server need to be protected as in beeing hardened so it can withstand an attack. BUT - I do not think the server itself should be a firewall for any other component in the network. This is a task better done by a separate box as I think it is too dangerous to attach the box with the data you are trying to protect directly to the internet.

Caching DNS and DHCP server

It should be possible, but all internet routers today have DNS and DHCP built in. Still, a caching DNS might be useful and it should come with Open DNS as a predefined choice as the main DNS. The server need to be able to switch to IPv6 as soon as it is available without any reconfiguration.

Dynamic DNS client

Also present in a lot of routers, but can be a good idea to add.

Network Time Server

To make sure all things are timestamped correctly in the network, the server should have a network time server. This one should have two different ways of keeping time. One is the internet time servers and the other should be the possibility to connect a GPS and read the time from the GPS system. The last one is often used in bigger networks.

Server-to-server communication through firewalls and NAT

I absolutely see the need to have and additional server in another house and have the possibility to let the two servers communicate. This could be done through VPN, but the setup has to be very easy AND extremely secure. So using certificates that are at least 2048 bit or preferrably more with strong encryption on the traffic is a must.

VPN

Yes, it would be nice to have a way to use VPN to access the box from the outside of the home network. But it has to be real easy, and it should not be based on passwords. Use a certificate based system as this should be much less vulnerable to attack. Locally, access is best done through a HTML interface. And that brings me to:

Control of the server

As already said, the main functionality should be through an HTML interface. But for admin purposes, it might be necessary to have SSH and FTP as well. As I guess mySQL will run on the box, myPHPAdmin should also be available.

Automatic updates

There are no ways around this one. It is extremely important that the whole system is built to allow automatic updates from day one. All add-ins should also allow for this so there need to be some kind of guidelines on how to package them. The only alternative would be a kind of one-click updates. The server send the admin an e-mail about a new update. You log on and click the update button.

Add-in: Mail

This one is almost a part of the base system for me, but I realise that a lot of people are very satisfied using their normal mail client.

POP3, IMAP and SMTP server with webmail system. It should also have the possibility to act as a POP3 and IMAP client for the users that do not have their own domain. This is a part of the server that would be nice to access from the outside of the house when you are travelling.

Add-in: Calendar

This also comes close to the base system list. Having a shared calendar system with calendars for all the people in the house can be a major advantage. Especially if the calendars can use Google calendar or another internet based calendar to display busy/free times. Scheduling time in a busy family can be a good reason to install this add-in. It should also be possible to subscribe to calendars on the internet so things like football schedules, school holidays and other things can be easily added.

Add-in: Address book

The third of the "almost base system" add-ins. Beeing able to share important addresses would also be a major advantage. It is a must for me that any addressbook as a minimum can sync completely with Outlook and that I will not loose ANY of the information I have stored there when I sync.

I love any system that can take some of the work of keeping addresses updated away from me. I use Plaxo and as long as you do not pester your friends with invites and upload your whole addressbook there, I think it is a good service. I would love to see a serverbased sync with Plaxo so I don’t have to run the client on my PC. This would also mean that I would have correct addresses even when I use programs that do not sync with Plaxo as long as that program sync with the home server.

It is of course extremely important that you are able to control what addresses that are shared and what part of the info in an address that is shared. I use the comments on addresses in Outlook a lot and the info there is not always something that should be shared in a network although it would be a good thing to have it on the server so only I can see it.

Add-in: To-do list

This goes well together with the previous things and I am pretty sure there are programs developed that already cover this. But it is important that there also exist free sync systems for all major software packages (Outlook, Thunderbird, Opera etc.)

Add-in: Fax

Another type of printer function might be sending of faxes. The use of fax is diminishing by the day, but there are still companies that would like to have it. So why not add this as a printerservice?

Reception of faxes should also be an easy one with central management. It should be possible to add the e-mail addresses of each person in the house and then log on to the server, pick the right recipient for a fax and click the deliver button. It should then be sent as an attachment to the right persons e-mail.

Add-in: VOIP central

There is a beautiful box out there called Fritzbox. It is a ADSL2 modem, router, WiFi AP and VOIP router at the same time. I would love to have Asterisk added to the server and be able to do some of the things you can do with the Fritzbox. I have no idea if it is possible to use a standard modem or ISDN card as an interface to the normal phone system, but there should be a way to route the normal phone into this and use that line for local calls and emergency calls.

Then it should be possible to use something like VOIPDiscount to call international. There are now good IP handsets out there from Grandstream etc. so with a home PBX, you could have phones all over the house. Just plug them into the switch. And make sure you buy a switch with enough ports As the use of a server like this grows, it would be nice to be able connect to friends and family and set up your own small telephone network where you can call for free using this.

Add-in: Squeeze server

A server to serv all your MP3’s. I love the Squeeze box idea and the fact that you can stream audio without having to use a PC to play it back.

Add-in: *AMP server

I guess all of these will be running anyway, so it might be an idea to have a way to add php scripts. I develop websites and would really love to have a Joomla and WordPress system running locally. BUT - the directories for these things need to be on the data drives so they are backed up regularly. Maybe there should even be an automated setup where I only need to place the latest distribution of each system in a special folder and then I could go to the web interface and click on "Add new Joomla site" or "Add new WordPress site" and the server took care of setting up the database, user and install the script. Could be a cool thing. A little like Fantastico, but using the standard distributed packages so whenever there is an update from the developers, you can just replace the package.

Add-in: Web site backup server

As I work with web sites, I would love to have an efficient way to use the home server to regularly make backups of each domain so I do not have to think about it or run a separate PC to do it. But only as an add-in. Most people do not want this functionality.

Add-in: Wiki server

Making an in-house manual for different things can be a good idea. Just wish there were a way to just scan the manual of the new TV and say "Make Wiki"...

Add-in: Podcast client "server"

The people in our family have different taste. And we all love music. I like podcasts, but the others find it too difficult to mess with. But all of us use MP3 players. So my thoughts go like this: What if I had a system where they could subscribe to the podcasts on the server, then the server downloaded the podcasts automatically and put it in a folder where the Squeeze server could stream them locally? Also, there should be a way to just plug in the MP3 players, the server recognize them and load the right podcasts on them. The big feature here would be a function that would allow me to tell the server to make sure tha at any time, only the last 2 or 4 podcasts or whatever I decide are on my MP3 player. This way I will be sure it do not fill up. So I just need to set up a USB hub where we plug in the players whenever we want to update them. MP3 player central

Add-in: BitTorrent client

More and more things are distributed as BitTorrents. So it only makes sense to have a BitTorrent client available as an add-in. Not all people will care about this, but I know a lot will. I think many TV series in the future will be distributed this way. Also podcasts/vidcasts are being distributed through the BitTorrent protocol.

Keep the base system clean

There are things that I absolutely would like to keep away from this server. Home-automation, weather station, anonymous ftp server, Media Center are all examples of this. It should not be the everything-in-one box. It should be a server with the focus on security for files. Get all the basic stuff covered before any thought is given to the add-in stuff. If anyone want to tinker with the system and ad the possibility to make coffe, it is fine by me But do not add this into the base functions. Let people post it on the internet so anyone can add it if they want. But keep the base system clean.

What do you think? What is important for you in a server like this? I will add to this post as I get new input and ideas.

The picture is used under Creative Commons – Some Rights Reserved , Photographer: Zack Williams.

Are you concerned about megapixels? They may not be as important anymore as they were. Take a look at what Image Engineering has to say about the subject. Also, check what they say about diffraction, a subject that few people ever think about. Usually it has been said that you should step down your aperture to get more field of depth and an overall sharper picture. But depending on the size of the pixels, type of camera and lense, when you reach a certain f-stop your picture will suffer from diffraction and will become worse! It makes for good reading if you are interested in some of the technology behind our digital world. So no need to get anything better than my 7.1 MegaPixel camera

Edit: The holiday is over, and the free stuff has ended for this time. But the free version is still a keeper!

We all love free stuff. Especially when it is something we otherwise would have to pay for. The fine people behind Divx has decided to give out a gift this holiday season. It is unsure how long it will run, so hurry over there and get your copy of a totally free Divx Pro.

What does this give you over the free version of Divx? Here is their own explanation:

So, the primary reason to buy DivX Pro for Windows is to get full
versions of the DivX Converter and the DivX Pro Codec, two things that
let you easily create DivX videos. What are these two things, you ask,
and why should you care? Read on, kind friend, read on…

DivX Converter

The DivX Converter is the official DivX video creation software application. It lets you:

• Drag-and-drop nearly any video format to create a high-quality, highly compressed DivX video
• Merge and convert multiple videos into a single DivX file with an automatically generated menu
• Back
  up your home-made DVDs, compress a full movie to fit onto one regular
  CD (requires the optional $4.99 DivX Converter MPEG-2/DVD Plug-in)

DivX Pro Codec

The DivX Pro Codec is the top of the food chain, codec-wise. It
includes the most advanced version of the DivX video encoder so you can
create the highest-quality DivX files in combination with DivX
Converter or another third-party encoding application. DivX Pro gives
you:

• Higher performance, including multi-threaded support
  for better performance on all HyperThreaded, dual core and dual CPU
  (SMP) systems
• More encoding options, including six
  carefully optimized encoding modes that balance visual quality and
  performance for virtually any application 

What are you waiting for?

If you use Photoshop to isolate objects from their white background, you might have heard of a small plugin called Remove White.

I used it back in the days of Photoshop 5 and really loved the way you could lift out any object from the white background with a click. If any pixel was not completely black, it would be partially transparent. This meant that soft shadows could be lifted off as well, something I have not been able to do with any other method so far.

But this plug-in does not work with Photoshop CS2 and I have been trying to find a newer version for a long time. Until recently when I stumbled across a way to run older plugins on newer version of Photoshop.

First of all – the Remove White plugin is as far as I know, made by Mark McLaren and you can find it here (scroll down and click on Remove White under Mark McLaren). Unpack the filter and put it in your filter folder.

But since it is an older type filter, you need an extra file to make it work. You need to add msvcrt10.dll (click here to download it) to the same folder as the Photoshop program. Do not add it to the system32 folder or anywhere else in the main Windows folder as it might interfere with how other programs work.

Reboot Photoshop, and it should start with no problems. You should now have a new category of plug-ins at the bottom of your filter list called Mac’s with a single filter called Remove White.

To apply this filter to an image, you first have to either duplicate the background layer and do it on the copy, or double-click on the background layer and turn it into a regular layer. If you want to apply this to just a portion of your image, you have to make a selection first, otherwise just choose the Remove White filter and you are done. You should now see the checkered background through the parts of your image that is not completely black.

To verify that the extraction is ok, make a new layer and fill it with white. Then place this layer under the image layer. You image should now look like it was before you removed the white background.

Most people do not like to have a transparent main object, so you need to make a quick mask of your object, fill it with white and place it under your main image layer. But you now have the option to exclude shadows so that the shadow will fall on whatever background you choose for your picture.

This is an effect that is simply not possible by using a mask or doing a selection based on color.

If you like this post, leave a comment and consider adding it to some of the social bookmarking sites.

It is now the rule rather than the exception that port 25, the normal port for outgoing mail (SMTP) is blocked. This creates big problems for users like me that moves around a lot. I have to find out what SMTP is available in the network where I am connecting. And if that one is only available to people that work in the company, I have to use a webmail solution.

But today I found a neat solution that will help a lot. If you have a GMail account, you are in luck. GMail has their SMTP servers on different ports than the usual 25. If you check this link, you can see that the ports are 465 or 587. I set this up in Thunderbird and had no problem bypassing the SMTP block in the network I was using at the time. Just remember to use SSL and authentication when you set it up. 

There are a couple of things to be aware of. GMail rewrites the from-address of your mail to your GMail address as well as the reply-to address. According to  Lifehacker it is possible to go to the settings of your GMail account and change the default address to change this. In addition, GMail stores all outgoing mail (and thus indexes it for it’s own use…). This probably does not appeal to everyone, but for many people is a minor issue.

If you really need to get that mail out and don’t have any other way of doing it, GMail might just save the day for you. 

Google has realised that video is a great way of communicating. The issue they tackle in this short video on YouTube is privacy.

There has been a lot of rumors about what kind of information Google stores about us when we search. And I guess the biggest sceptics will just call this video a smoke screen. But it makes sense and is exactly what most websites store anyway.

The difference now is that Google will start to anonymise their logs a bit when they are 18 months old. Maybe you heard this already, but here is a video explaining this, made by Google. Not only is it good information, but also a good example of how to communicate in the simplest way and get your message across.

 

 

 I love the combination of internet and video and I will be looking for more examples that can serve as ideas for anyone that want to put video online. There will also be some articles in the future about how to get maximum quality on your video. Watch this space!

Do you have any examples of great online video communication? Make a comment with a link!

Do you try to keep a finger on the pulse of your favorite blogs and websites? Do you spend a lot of time clicking your way around to the same websites every day? Then RSS is the right thing for you. No idea what I am talking about? Well, I was going to write something very clever about this and then I stumbled across someone that had done it already. Lee LeFever from Common Craft did it in a very cool way. So here is that video. Enjoy both the content and the style!

 My choice of rss reader at the moment is GreatNews , but I am happy to try out new ones whenever I come across them. I think that a tool like this is invaluable for people that work in the tv and film business as it allows us to stay on top of what is happening in our fields of interest. You find the links to add this blog in the right column or in the address bar of your web browser.

What is your favorite rss reader?