Thursday, March 25, 2010

Metadata: There is more in your photos than meets the eye!

I came accross an marvellous post made by Mr.Ludwig J. at http://ludwigjkeck.spaces.live.com/. I would like to quote the same here.


More info and Comments can be viewed at http://ludwigjkeck.spaces.live.com/



In addition to the actual picture, photo files contain a lot of other information. It is like a little notebook with preprinted boxes for all sorts of information. The general term for that is “metadata”. Some of that information is obvious, the file name, date, file size, and more. Other data is more obscure. In this post I will explore some of that information. When a digital photo is taken, the majority of modern cameras store some data along with the image. This is known by the name “EXIF” data - “Exchangeable Image File Format”. When the photos are transferred to a computer this data is moved along. Using Windows Live Photo Gallery for making the transfer provides for attaching additional information at that time. Much more data can be added with other equipment or programs. To illustrate this I will use a photo for which I have “filled in” a lot of the data – by no means all that can be added. When the photo is selected in Photo Gallery the Info pane displays some of that data:
image
Windows Live Photo Gallery makes extensive use of “tags” for managing and finding photos. The Info pane shows “People tags” – none in this case, “Descriptive tags” that have been assigned either in the import operation or manually later. For this picture two tags are shown, there is a scroll bar to allow displaying additional tags. Also shown is the file “Caption” which in other applications may be called “title”. The Information portion provides the file name and details, the rating that is assigned, the “Author” and some of the camera data. Cameras assign file names, during import that can be changed. I like to retain the file name assigned by the camera. In this case that name was appended with “(2)” when I made a copy of the file.
To see more of the data, right-clicking the thumbnail and selecting “Properties” – then the “Details” tab, brings up a long list of information. Here are a couple of screen shots:
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Notice the top section, “Description” includes the “title”, a “subject” – which can, of course be different from the title, the rating, tags and this can be quite a lengthy list and “Comments”. Comments can be added manually and may be quite long. Many cameras allow the user to define a comment string which is then recorded with each picture. This is what I did in this case. The next section, “Origin”, gives some data, author, and copyright, that was manually added or by a specialized program, and the automatically logged “date taken” and the name of the program that was last used to manipulate the photo, in this case Windows Live Photo Gallery. The “Image” section shows automatically generated data, as does the “Camera” and “Advanced photo” sections.
There is more, scrolling down reveals the “GPS” and “File” sections. The “file” section provides information about the name, location, and other parameters of the file pertaining to the local computer.
image
The GPS section shows the geographic coordinates of the location where the picture was take. Some cameras have built-in GPS receivers and can do this “geotagging” automatically. With some, an external GPS receiver can be attached. Many GPS units can transfer location data to pictures with special software. There are also applications that make adding this data manually rather easy.
The Properties dialog accessed inside Windows Live Photo Gallery is the same as what is obtained in Windows Explorer. The details pane in Windows Explorer also shows some of this data:
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(View full-size image)
There is even more data stored. Some special programs permit displaying more of this information.
I want to show a couple of examples of how some of this information is used.
The Flickr photo sharing site serves photo enthusiasts for displaying, sharing, and finding photos. Since camera data shows the details of how the photo was taken, shutter speed, aperture, etc. that information can be a valuable learning tool. Flickr thus provides just about all the data that is embedded within a photo. Here is how this picture is shown on Flickr (the image provides a link to the page on flickr):
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In the lower right there is a “More properties” link – and does it ever provide more:
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And more:
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Note that in this list (which is shown just partially) there is location information, website of the author, even the author’s e-mail address. Here I am using the demonstration address used in my book, Digital Pictures Basics. (Mail sent to this address is not forwarded to me.)
Another sharing site, picasaweb, makes good use of the location information (the image provides a link to the picasaweb page).
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(View full-size image)
Note the little map in the lower right. It shows where the picture was taken. The “View album map” link is even more fun:
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(View full-size image)
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(View full-size image)
It shows little thumbnails of the pictures in the album, placed on the map in the locations where the pictures where taken -  the map can be zoomed and manipulated. Clicking on a thumbnail shows a larger picture.
So there is a lot of information that can be attached to photos and used in many fun and valuable ways. In another post I will discuss how to add, delete, and manage this “metadata”.
If you would like to explore the flickr or picasaweb images, click on the first image in each sequence above.
Here are some links to additional information about adding data from my other blog posts:
Moving photos from camera to computer using Windows Live Photo Gallery
More on moving photos from camera to computer using Windows Live Photo Gallery
Find your photos 2


Credits : Mr.Ludwig J
Link:       http://ludwigjkeck.spaces.live.com/

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Youtube – Change language from Hindi to English

Right from my childhood, I never liked Hindi and the Hindi Speaking people mainly because I don’t know HINDI. This may sound weird, but true. The Indian Youtube version was out and similar releases were made to most of the local hubs of internet word in countries and based upon the location, the language settings were made, without any prior notice, i repeat “NO PRIOR NOTICE”. It was a horror time for me to find out how to change the homepage from Hindi to English. Follow the steps below and enjoy the IPL telecasted over it.

 

1.Go to http://www.Youtube.com/ , so that the regional settings of youtube will be transferred to main control.

hindi

2.Now Scroll down to the bottom of the page and see the youtube copyright symbol. 

3.You can see some text therein hindi as “भाषाएं दिखाएं” which means “Language: Hindi”, thanks to google translators. They help me clear this crap off.

change

4. Click on that and select the language you need. Choose English Preferably.

5.What next ??? Go and watch

                                               IPL ROFL ;)

Oracle 11g 64-Bit on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

This day morning I upgraded my existing 64 bit vista ultimate install. That way I already had Oracle loaded and just needed to get it running.
It took several hours to do the upgrade. An install would probably have run much faster and I would have started off with a clean registry but I was afraid the Oracle installer would say it didn't recognize this version of windows and then I wouldn't be able to get it running (at least not without jumping through a bunch of hoops).
The install, while taking a long time, was flawless at the end. I had to uninstall skype and powershell because of incompatibilities. Skype was a recommendation but powershell was required. Considering the vast amount of software I have installed, I am surprised that is all I had to remove.

I had a few issues with TNS at first but I was able to fix that by fixing my hosts file. After that, the database is running fine (as you can see in the screenshot above). I created a few objects and ran a few queries and everything is hunky dory.
I did get a warning message when running SQL Developer:

Nothing I can't live with. I'm not sure if that is just a Java issue or something with SQL Developer specifically. I plan to play with it some more this afternoon to find out.
So far, I haven't found the OS to be that much different than vista. Some user tweaks in UAC. You can set the screen resolution with a single menu click now. It does feel quite a bit quicker response-wise though. I may just be psyching myself out on that though.
Rather than regurgitate a windows 7 feature list, go check out what Microsoft has to say on the issue.

I guess now it is off to play!

Fake Mails made easy ! Kudos to spoofing

It had been a week since a MSP posted about a issue that he got a mail from Mr.BillGates congratulating him for his work. Funny ! I decided to make a post on it and make some joy out of it. Do you wish to play pranks sending emails from a friend’s id? Here is how you go about doing it. It’s pretty much simple, all you need to do is go to the website, and there is a send-fake-email form where in you fill the from name, from address, to name, to address and then go about writing an email like you normally would do.

DeadFake

dead-fakeDeadFake allows you to edit all ‘from’ and ‘to’ details before sending the email. It’s very quick and very easy. You don’t have to connect to the SMTP port of the site, issue commands and then send the email. Everything is done just like filling up an online form. One drawback being there is sentence at the bottom of the email sent which reads “No, this email’s not real, it’s http://deadfake.com”, but these things mostly go unnoticed when the recipient reads the email because even emails sent from yahoo usually have a link underneath which is usually not noticed by the reader.

Anonymous Speech

anonymous-speechAnonymous speech is also similar to DeadFake, here again the details can be edited before sending. But added to this you can set the date and time for sending the fake email and you could also send it to multiple recipients (up to 15). But before sending, you need to do a small sign-up with the website. But you needn’t worry; email address in the sign-up is only optional, just to trace your password.

Send Fake Mail

send-fakeA website that offers proper fake email sending without allowing the recipient trace the origin of the email. You can easily change the ‘from’ details so that the receiver thinks it’s from someone else. Added to this the service also offers Anonymous Browser, a utility that lets you browse the internet without revealing your correct IP address by creating a fake IP for you.

Services offered are:

  – Anonymous Emailing
  – Fake Emails
  – Text & HTML Mail
  – Priority Support
  – X-Mailer Header
  – Anonymous Surfing

But all this is not free, available to you at very minimal charges of $4.95/ month

Fuzz Mail

fuzz-mailAnother service that could be used is Fuzzmail. Here again the ‘from’ and ‘to’ ids can be given by the user. But this not a normal fake email sending, but a service which records the act of typing and lets you send that as an email. The receiver gets to know at what point of time when typing your letter there has been a pause, or typos errors, write overs etc. This is greatly made to send those love letters to the loved ones so that receiver can get to actually feel the writing happening.

Note : Never ever try to trouble anyone, you may fall in some sort of legal problems. The use of these services is completely up to you and use them at your own risk only.

Friday, March 19, 2010

XP mode no longer requires hardware virtualization


I’d like to share some exciting news about Windows XP Mode.  The team is removing the virtualization processor requirement for Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate systems.  Windows XP Mode continues to use hardware virtualization such as Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) or the AMD-V™ chipset when available but it no longer requires them. 
Microsoft has released an update that enables PCs without hardware virtualization to also take advantage of Windows XP Mode.  This change simplifies the customer experience and makes this benefit accessible to many more PCs.
Enterprise customers should consider using Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance.  MED-V provides deployment and manageability features which are designed to address the needs of enterprise customers.
When will this happen?
The removal of this requirement has been publicly announced today, March 18th 2010 with the update available on the Windows XP Mode download page at the same time. 
How does this impact MED-V?
MED-V 1.0 SP1 builds on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to help enterprises with their upgrade to Windows Vista and Windows 7 when applications are not yet compatible. 
MED-V 1.0 SP1 does not require hardware virtualization.
The user experience provided by MED-V is similar to “Windows XP mode” – even though a different virtualization technology is used.
MED-V 2.0 will leverage Windows Virtual PC and will benefit from the update above. Availability date for MED-V 2.0 is yet to be announced.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

PhotoSynth - Sri Krishna Arts and Science College

I'm happy to produce to you my College`s PhotoSynth ! Data to be updated Soon !

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Dream Spark Yatra @ Vellalar College, Erode...

No energy to blog today !

It was an damn Insane Conference with 2500+ students ;)

AWESOME  ! ! !

Be back with the full report in a couple of days....

Thursday, March 4, 2010

DreamSpark Yatra @ Muthayammal College, Rasipuram,TamilNadu, INDIA.

 It was a long time for me since I saw a good crowd.
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/sathyathemobileking/Upload?feat=directlink



To be blogged soon..... Please use the archives to see the previous event`s reports.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Dream Spark Yatra @ Excel Engineering

Dream Spark Yatra @ Excel Engineering College

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Event: Dream Spark Yatra

Dates: 27th February

Venue: Excel Engineering College

City: Komarapalayam, Namakkal

Organizers: Balaji , Arumugham, Abhishek Suresh

Speakers: SathyaNarayanan, Venkat, Indhuja, Harini, Shiva, Aravindhan, Gopinathan, Abhishek Suresh

Participants: 650 Students

Agenda (We had parallel Sessions:

For Auditorium 1

Time

Session

Handling

9:00 - 9:30

Registration And Distribution of Goodies

9:30 - 10:00

Inauguration

10:00 - 11:00   

Introduction to CBEUG, UX+Silverlight+WPF

Abhishek Suresh (President CBEUG)

11:00 - 12:00  

Windows 7

Indhuja Pillai

12:00 - 13:00 

Microsoft Visio

Venkateswaran

13:00 - 14:00

Lunch Break

14:00 - 15:00  

Windows Azure

Harini Palanivel

15:00 - 16:00

Imagine Cup activity

Kennedy Singh

16:00 – 16:30

Project Natal

Shiva

16:30- 17:00

Certificate Distribution & Wind Up

For Auditorium 2

Time

Session

Handling

9:00 - 9:30

Registration And Distribution of Goodies

9:30 - 10:00

Inauguration

10:00 - 11:00   

Introduction to CBEUG, Windows 7

Sathya Narayanan ( Vice President CBEUG)

11:00 - 12:00  

Microsoft DeepZoom, Photosynth, Live Writer

Gopinathan.R

12:00 - 13:00 

Project Kodu

Aravindhan .A

13:00 - 14:00

Lunch Break

14:00 - 15:00  

Blogging, Facebook, MIXed Technology

Abhishek Suresh

15:00 - 16:00

Small Basic

Indhuja Pillai

16:00 – 16:30

Imagine Cup activity

Kennedy Singh

16:30- 17:00

Certificate Distribution & Wind Up

Microsoft Dreamspark yatra is the new initiative by Microsoft Academic team to cover 100 cities in 10 weeks. We CBEUG set our own goal of covering 10,000 students across CBEUG territories during this Dream Spark Yatra. As of now our Usergroup has reached out to 16,000 Students. A major milestone for the Usergroup

This was the Second DreamSpark Event at Excel Engineering College, in Namakkal, on 27th February 2010. This is the 3rd city of our DreamSpark Campaign.

This event was organized by the CBEUG MSP, Balaji. The way he organized the entire event was awesome. He did it single handedly without any assistance from any other MSP.He pulled off the DreamSpark Yatra amazingly well. The hospitality provided was good. We had more than 380 students in a single hall with a mixture of students coming from various departments like MCA, Computer Science, Electronics, Electrical and IT.

The chief guests were

Abhishek Suresh – President, CBEUG

Other Special invites were

Sathyanarayanan, MSP, Vice President, CBEUG

Indhuja, MSP, CBEUG

Aravindhan, MSP, CBEUG

Shiva, MSP, CBEUG

Harini, MSP, CBEUG

 

Next stop … Rasipuram | Muthayammal College of Engineering :)