Media Southside Of The James

Digitizing Your Media

admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:04:24 +0000

Many of us born before the digital age, often have amassed a large collection of analog media. We may also have older digital technologies that we wish to upgrade to current media standards.

Some advantages of Digitizing your media, include:

*Reduction of Clutter

*Centralization your various media

*Ability to share with friends and family.

*The ability to easily make copies.

Ready to take the digital plunge?

First thing is first, organize your media. Decide what you’d like to digitize. Take inventory and see what you are able to do on your own and what makes sense to send out to a service.

Documents- I am terrible at paper management. In order to stay organized, I scan all my bills, documents, receipts and then discard them. For light scanning, a flat bed scanner will do. For higher quantity scans, I would recommend a Scanner with a sheet feeder. Very Large scan jobs can be farmed out to a professional.

Photos- Been tempted to place your high school photos on Facebook for the 30th reunion? How about digitizing your photos? Small collections can be scanned with a flatbed or sheet feeding scanner. If you have thousands of photos, you may want to utilize the services of scanmyphotos.com for $50 they will scan 1000 of your photos and provide you with a DVD of all your photos.

Negatives and Slides- remember those? For the occasional negative scan, many flatbeds come with a slide adapter. To scan an entire collection, a slide scanner or scanning service may make more sense.

Video- we will discuss a few common video formats. Please be aware if your media is recorded in the PAL or NTSC format to insure you have the correct gear. For more information on the formats, see my article “Top Tech Tips for Olim”

VHS, VHS-C, Hi8 – These formats can easily be converted to DVD with the use of a DVD Recorder. Simply connect RCA, S-VIDEO, or other supported cable from the output of your VCR or CAMCORDER, to the input on your DVD recorder.

If you’d like to manipulate and edit your footage, there are video capture devices and software that allow you to download the footage to your computer where you can make edits and then render the file as a movie to play on your PC or on a DVD.

Digital 8, Mini-DV – These cameras are equipped with FireWire connections which allow you to download your footage to your PC or MAC, once it captured on your computer, the video can be edited and converted to a digital file for your hard drive or “Burned” to a DVD.

Records – Have an old record collection? Are/Were you a DJ with lots of vinyl?

There are specialized USB turntables that allow you to convert your records to MP3 format.

With additional hardware and software, you can mix and manipulate your music. Audacity is a free audio editing program and is a good start.

Cassettes and REEL to Reel recordings With an RCA output from the cassette player connected to the input on your sound card, you can record the cassette to a digital file. With specialized software, you can enhance the sound quality of your recordings. If you don’t have inputs on your sound card, you can pick up a USB adapter.

CD’S- With programs like Itunes or widows media player, it’s easy to copy your audio collection to hard disk, and access them with the computers on your network. You can also make compilation CD’s for the road.

DVDS- With low cost disk space available, it is possible to backup your personal DVD collection to hard disk, where you can view them all in a central location. To backup a DVD to Hard Disk, you will need DVD Ripping software to convert the DVD to a usable format.

Note: In all the above scenarios, we are assuming you are digitizing your own material. Before making copies of any copyright media, familiarize yourself with the laws. In some cases you may be able to make a backup copy for your own use if you are the rightful owner of the media.

For those looking to digitize your family history, I recommend taking a look at

the book “Digitizing your family history.”

We’ve gone through various media digitization options. Once you have your collection digitized, be aware that digital files do not last forever. It is important to setup a backup and security strategy for your precious data. Please see my article on “securing your data and systems.” I hope this article has been helpful. Share your media conversion tips or experiences on the blog.

Finally, if you need assistance in digitizing or backing up your media feel free to contact us regarding our services.

Getting Multiple Domains

admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:36:41 +0000

Some businesses have more than one websites for a wider and more extensive coverage of the market online. If your company needs multiple domains, understand first the pros and cons of getting a single web host to provide your domains. You can gain insights about it at web hosting articles . You should know the benefits and disadvantages of having one web host for your domains. webhosting awards presents the recognized multiple domain web hosts. If you want the best web host that offers multiple domains, check joomla webhosting .

Sentence English Software™ – Easily Write Better Than Your English Teacher!

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:12:05 +0000

Sentence English software – A software can’t match the quality of manually correcting your writing or correcting your grammar? Wrong. There are now sentence English software applications that work in a very advanced manner to make writing easier and error free. Do you know what sentence English software is? Many people believe that the most computers can do, as far as helping people write, is to check for spelling mistakes. This may have been true some years ago, but now we have something that does far more -grammar software, that actually analyzes your grammar, punctuation and word usage, making corrections and giving you suggestions for better alternatives. sentence English software operates by using a very large database of written material, containing many commonly used phrases, and comparing that to what the user writes. Mistakes are found, and alternative words are suggested, much like an automated thesaurus. sentence English software uses a technology called NLP (Natural Language Processing), which reads your whole sentences in context, unlike an ordinary spell checker, which only words single words. Reading in context is important, because without context a spell checker can’t tell if you mean “their” or “there,” as both are words in English.

sentence English software is the patent-pending solution which automatically works with all text based tools, easily correcting all grammatical, spelling, punctuation or any other writing errors.

You may use it for: Study documents, Work documents, Business letter writing, Personal letter writing, Essay Writing, Article Writing, Creative Writing, Email, Instant Messaging, Facebook, Social Media, Blogging, Legal writing, Business writing and much, much more.

For people who must write a great deal, whether for school or work, sentence English software can make someone instantly more understandable in English. It’s like having a virtual writing teacher built into your computer. English is actually not one of the easiest languages in the world, even for native speakers. Well, consider the following five reasons why you might very well need it.

1. If you are in business and must send out correspondences, emails, reports and other information, you want your writing to be clear, correct and professional. This will enable people to better understand your communications. It will also improve your image as someone who writes well and clearly.

2. sentence English software can help increase your creativity as a writer, as in addition to correcting mistakes, it also acts as a thesaurus and suggests different words, such as descriptive adverbs and adjectives. This makes your writing more interesting and versatile.

3. If English is not your first language but you have a need to communicate clearly in this language, this is the perfect solution for you. You can write down the basic ideas of what you need to say, while the software will read and correct your mistakes and suggest alternatives.

4. If you spend time rewriting or editing your reports or other correspondences, sentence English software can save you a lot of time by automating these tedious tasks.

5. When you make mistakes in your writing and people notice it, it can have a negative effect in the way they think of you. If you are in business, trying to sell something, attempting to persuade someone of something, or even if you are just writing social emails, isn’t it better to be seen as someone who is well educated and can write well.

When you write letters or emails, you can do so faster and with more confidence, as sentence English software will correct your mistakes and suggest better word usage, much like a thesaurus. If you have to do much writing, for any reason at all, sentence English software can help you to communicate faster and more effectively.