Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is here!

Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 3 software helps you bring out the best in your photography, whether you?re perfecting one image, searching for ten, processing hundreds, or organizing thousands. Create incredible images that move your audience. Experiment fearlessly with state-of-the-art nondestructive editing tools, including world-class noise reduction. Easily manage all your images. And showcase your work in elegant print layouts, slide show videos with music, and on popular photo-sharing sites. All from within one fast, intuitive application.

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The iPad is really starting to get around — not only is it in the car, but now it’s also embedded in a kitchen cabinet.

Alan Daly custom mounted the “magical” Apple device inside his kitchen cabinet.

The headphone jack funnels sound into a MIDI system for audio output duties, and apps like the Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List App [iTunes link] turn Daly’s kitchen cabinet into a modern day bottomless recipe book. Daly plans to use the Apple Remote App [iTunes link] to tap into the home’s main music library once Apple updates it to support landscape mode.

Check out the video of the installation below and let us know what you think. Are you be interested in an iPad kitchen centerpiece? Where will we see Apple’s tablet pop up next?

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Lynda.com offers amazing online training and over 700 classes and topics.

Learn Photoshop, Office, Lightroom and more!

Now you can try it free for 24hrs. Get some sleep and click the link below to get started!

Free 24 hour pass to lynda.com.

Technorati Tags: training, photoshop, lightroom, online, office

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Class registration deadline is Thursday March 25th so don’t delay!

A friend of mine in California has been training people on how to build amazing websites for many years. It doesn’t matter if you are a rookie or have some background in graphics or web design, Christina takes you through the basics to advanced a little at a time over 10 weeks! Plus you get a demo website to mess around with.

She only offers her class in spring and fall and the deadline to register is this Thursday, March 25th.

This  is an online class but instructor led and recorded if you cannot make a weekly class. There are handout materials and guides and a demo website for you to test and practice. There are 8 modules to the course and a couple bonus weeks so the entire training takes place a couple hours a week over 10 weeks.

Christina has a conference call on Wednesday you can listen to by phone or computer. The details and more descriptions are here:

*******  Teleseminar Info *******
Date: Wednesday March 24th
Time: 4:00pm Eastern/ 3:00pm Central/ 1:00pm Pacific
Duration: 60-70 minutes
Registration Details:

http://cyberinnovation.com/websiteworkshop_preview

Note you can listen on your computer, or the phone
******************************

Technorati Tags: WordPress, training, class, workshop

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Join Adobe for the exclusive Global Online Launch Event, Monday, April 12, 2010

Technorati Tags: adobe, cs5

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Seems a bit surreal but this weekend I disconnected our home telephone handsets. Recently we canceled service or disconnected our home phone number….. who would have predicted that? We’ve had this phone number for over 20 years.

I remember not long ago the long distance telephone price wars. Our monthly phone bills would range from $50-100 and the “Friends and Family” rate per minute was lower than other options.

Then we started getting free nationwide long distance with our mobile phones and now everyone in our family has a mobile phone! Now we pay 2-3 times what we used to pay but the phones are now personal to the individual.

Remember the days of calling a house to ask if someone was there. Or leaving a message hoping they’d get it and call back. Remember talking or hanging on the phone with a friend in school and really saying nothing but to hear your parents or siblings tell you to get off the phone! It was so cool when my parents got call waiting so you could talk on the phone and answer if someone else called!

Oh and remember the answering machine so people could leave a message when you were gone! Remember a family member erasing your message and not writing it down It was frustrating at the time but another memory of the past as we all have our own personal answering machine today and if you delete your own message it’s no one’s fault but your own!

In the past phones were for the family and connected to the household, today they are connected to the person and I’ll tell my grand kids about this someday. Heck I’m going to box up home phones and bring them out in another 10-20 years and share this story.

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This is an amazing idea:

A roll up laptop that you carry under your arm!

Check out the video here:

I don’t know if this is just conceptual or in process? Looks extremely detailed to be just an idea but who knows?

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I’m both a photographer and web designer so I use Lightroom, Photoshop CS4 and Bridge almost daily.

I love Photoshop but when it comes to photography, I think, hands down Lightroom is your best choice for importing, managing, editing and exporting your photos.
It doesn’t matter what type of digital camera you have.
It doesn’t matter what type of  computer you have.
It doesn’t matter if you print at home, at a retailer or upload online.

Maybe you want to build a book of photos or a website or export to Facebook, Picassa, Flickr or others? You can copyright and/or watermark and make your color, curves, sharpening adjustments inside of Lightroom without the complexity of Photoshop!

I’m sure I’ll hear from the super advance CS4 techies will say you can do more in CS4 but for 90% of the world Lightroom will cover everything you need! I only use CS4 for advanced photo editing or being creative with a poster/flyer or color blends.

RAW Rules!

As Rick Sammon says “RAW RULES” so always shoot RAW. Cameras are basically small computers. When you take a photo it’s taken in a RAW format. If your camera is set to JPG, the camera then adjusts/color corrects and compresses your image into a JPG format. This is why an advertised 10mb camera shoots 6-7mb images!

I have too much money and time invested in taking my photos so don’t let your camera convert and compress your images into a JPG! Set your camera to RAW format. Yes the images are larger but the results are so much better!

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Saturday morning I slept in (as much as I can anymore). When I got up and looked at my email there was an invite to join Google Voice!

I had been waiting for many weeks as I was not a Grand Central customer but heard great things about the service! Google purchased Grand Central over a year ago and went to work on upgrading and improving their voice services.

Use my Gmail account or my Google Apps Email Account?

The first thing you do is click the link in the email invitation from Google and you are taken to the Google Voice login. Here you are prompted to login with your existing Gmail account. First I wasn’t sure if I should use my free Gmail account or my Google Apps account? I decided to go ahead using Gmail and was happy when I found out Google Voice is not part of Google Apps yet. (Google Apps allows organizations to host their email and domains with Google and also get shared calendars, documents and more. So you have all the Gmail features but with a custom domain name). Had I used the Google Apps account I wouldn’t be able to see the Google Apps contact list which is my list of friends and family and phone numbers in sync with my iTouch and Blackberry!

Next I walked through the setup of my voice account and was sent the authorization code by email and logged in. The first time I logged into Google Voice I had to choose my phone number. This is the main reason you want a Google voice number! You want a phone number you can give to friends, family and clients so you don’t have to give our your mobile phones, office phones or home phones. Give them one Google Voice number and route the callers by who they are! Living in a small Midwest town I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to get a local area code prefix but was happy to find it was available. I suspect Google has phone numbers available in all parts of the US?

I searched for numerous phone number combos to mean something but found the first 4 digits (prefix and first number) were locked so I found the best, most memorable number and moved ahead.

Unlimited Custom Greetings for all your groups or contacts!

Next I recorded my first greeting. It was easy intuitive and walked me through each step. You can create unlimited greetings for work clients group, friends group, family group etc. You can have fun and create a greeting and assign it to an individual and say some crazy things!

Configure your Phone Devices

Next I was prompted to configure my mobile phone number. I entered my mobile phone number and then given a verification code. Google Voice called my number and I entered the code to verify I own the number and I was setup. You can then add a home phone, office phone or as many phones as you like.

Time for Testing

At this point the basic service was setup and I called my Google Voice number and it rang into my cell phone. The caller ID was passed through so I had no idea I was getting a call via Google Voice. Next I left a voice message and hung up. About a minute later my mobile phone had a text message with a transcribed copy of my voice mail! Not a notice to dial in and listen to the message but the actual voicemail spelled out!

No longer do you need multiple voice mail inboxes! Have everyone call your Google voice number and if you don’t answer it will take a message and store it online to listen to later and transcribe and send you an email! Amazing! Remember you can create unlimited greetings and assign them to different contacts or groups of contacts in my address book! I could create a custom greeting for my wife, kids or people from my office or ???

Website Call Me Widgets!

Next I found the “web widgets area” and created a “Call Me” widget. A widget is a few lines of code to create a web page gadget for your sidebar. I placed the first one on our web development site http://CyberInnovation.com and gave it a test. Now someone visiting your site can click the widget, enter their phone number, check a box to hide their call back number if they prefer and click connect. Google now calls you and the web site visitor and we are connected.

If I don’t answer they get my voice mail transcribed to text and sent to my phone. How beautiful!

The Big Picture summary!

Think about people/organizations who have multiple websites and multiple businesses. They can now can use Google Voice to create custom greetings on each website and aggregate them to one phone number!

Non-profit organizations whose phone numbers change as board members change will now be able to get a single phone number for the organization.

As people cancel their land lines and email their friends/family about their new mobile phone numbers, they can now send a single number out for a replacement and route by contacts!

We’ve known for years the world of technology and IP telephony would overtake the days of hard wire phones and land lines, but now we can see it happening right in front of us!

Any questions call us 319-775-0045 and give Google Voice a try!

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Recently I gave a presentation to our local photography club on how to shoot HDR Photography and inside the presentation was a section on the importance of using RAW image format. Not only is RAW important with HDR but RAW image format gives the photographer so much more control over their image color/exposure corrections.

View the presentation outline with some photos below or you can download a copy of the presentation in PDF format here: HDR Photography & RAW Presentation – Web

Download the resource sheet and links here: HDR Presentation – Resource Sheet

Bob Randklev

http://CyberInnovation.com

http://BobFoto.com

Bob@CyberInnovation.com

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