Verizon + YouTube = $$$ November 28, 2006
Posted by ialeggi2 in Internet.add a comment
Video is now on the go. Verizon just announced that YouTube will be available on their phones. YouTube changed the internet’s view on videos and now it is expanding to wireless technology. Soon people will be using their cell phones to watch movies on the subway into New York City or even at work on their cigarette break.
Verizon has had their service called VCast for about a year now but hasn’t been immensely popular. Verizon is forcing customers who want to be able to have YouTube on their phones to sign up with VCast. It is about $15/ month but only comes with a limited selection of videos available on YouTube as well as other services that Verizon offers such as weather. Verizon hopes that this introduction will increase sales as well as increase the number of subscribers to VCast.
The real question is: Is it worth $15/ month? VCast does offer YouTube, but at the same time it only offers a small portion of it selected by Verizon. What videos are they going to select as viewable by the general audience? Are they going to sensor the videos that are popular, yet have content that is not approved of by the FCC?
On the upside of things, verizon offers many other features as well as YouTube. They have music, videos, sport, weather, as well as games. Some featured artist are Fergie, Jimi Hendrix, Busta Rhymes, Shakiria, and many more. Some of their music videos are also offered.
Would you be using all those features that much in a month on your cell phone when you have a perfectly good computer, TV, radio, and internet connection in your own home that will do the exact same thing to make VCast worth $15 extra a month?
Photoshop November 8, 2006
Posted by ialeggi2 in Uncategorized.add a comment
Anyone who is anyone knows that Photoshop is one of the best programs in the market that will allow you to edit and create pictures. I have used it for absolutely every image file that I have ever created for the web. It is filled with useful filters, brushes, and tools and the possibilities are endless.
It is easy to be able to manipulate a picture, but in order to manipulate it to make it look real is more of an art. Photoshop offers many tools such as blur, sharpen, and smudge. These are primitive tools that will help only a little bit. It also offers the clone stamp and pattern stamp. You can select a certain area of the image and clone it to another part. This helps if you want to get rid of an imperfection that is part of a large picture.
Another useful tool would be the pen tool. This allows you to create a path or a mask and will curve lines with the help of handles. It takes a little pratice, but soon you will be able to follow any path you want. These paths can be stroked with any type of brush, color, thickness, and hardness. They can also be turned into masks. One useful thing about masks is that you can use it to put a picture behind the mask and only show where the mask allows.
Along with a plethera of tools, photoshop offers filters. If you want to add a certain artistic touch to your creations, then you can easily add a filter that will make things look much different. You can do anything from swirl, lens flare, pixilate, and many other effects.
If you are stuck and don’t know how to create the right look or are trying to make something such as clouds or fire, then stress no more. Photoshop is used in a variety of places and therefore have tutorials posted online to show you how to virtually do anything that you want.
Maya 8 November 1, 2006
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Maya 8 is a program that is used to make high end three dimentional scenes. It is used in the professional movie making world to create annimation as well as special effects. It is a very useful program but can be difficult to learn. It has a very sharp learning curve. You really have to learn a lot about it before someone can use it sucessfully. At a first glance, it can look impossible to do anything because of the sheer complexity of the interface as well as how different menu sets, views, and pull down menus there are. This is not the case at all, you can do almost anything… Once you learn more about the program that is.
Maya 8 has really changed from the previous versions. Pull down menus are more spread a part than before with more features. This can especially be seen in the polygon menu set. Polygon has been split into two different pull down menus making it harder to find things in the begining, but you pick up quickly on their genius behind splitting it apart.
One thing that is very useful is the shelf. It is customizable and has little icons that represent the most useful things in that specific menu set. You can also add the functions that you tend to use often. Another thing that I like about maya is the IPR rendering. It is something that will render a small portion of the screen and keep rerendering it in real time. It is especially useful for textures and lighting. It makes it much easier than rendering the whole scene over and over again. It also saves a great deal of harddrive space.
I am still a beginer at using Maya 8, but I would jighly recomend the program. It is very useful , just a little hard to learn in the begining. My suggestion would be to get a book on it and go through any tutorials that maya 8 has provided for you with the software. Overall, I would score this very high in my books and I am looking forward to getting good with it.
