India Special » Tech

7 Everyday Tips For Better Photographs -Tip 3: Read The Manual

Uttkarsh — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:41:47 +0000

Modern cameras have a whole lot of features and using the right feature at the right time can make the difference you seek. Many of the features are hidden away in menus and configuration keys, so much so that you even forget they even exist. It is seldom that you use more than 4 or 5 features of your camera.

Read the instruction manual and make yourself familiar with the capabilities of your camera. Features such as exposure control, flash control, ISO setting, white balance etc are basic but can give you good options to experiment with and hone your creative skills.

Having the manual handy makes it very easy for you to make the right settings under a wide range of shooting conditions as the need arises. Not only will you become familiar with the controls of your camera, you will also find yourself using more and more features of your camera. Get what you paid for!Similar Posts:

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Touch Screen Phones Are In!

Nars — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:38:01 +0000

Mobile phones in India were launched in late 1997 or early 1998 if my memory serves me right. For the first time mobile users, the choices were very limited. The “brick” like Nokia 5100 with the antenna and the crazy packages that came along with the deals that charged as high as Rs.14 for incoming calls and a higher amount for outgoing calls. Very few people had them and the ones who had them were obviously the rich and famous. I was in college then and recall how owning a laptop in those days was a big deal.

I still remember how a friend of mine was going back to Kerala on a train and had a few interesting companions – a laptop user who started to pull up the laptop and according to my friend “show off” and another, who went a step further to pull out his laptop and plug in his mobile phone to browse the internet. These were days when telephony in India was prohibitively expensive and this left my friend flummoxed!

Turn back the time and in just over 10 years, the face of mobile telephony has changed. With the devices getting smaller by the day and features increasing by the day, the mobile phone is pretty much the be all and end all of any modern Indian man – pardon me for sounding a bit biased here, I still believe the women don’t get it with gadgets and start a lot later than men here!

The in-thing is the new touch screen phone and this seems to be the next big thing in the mobile world! I don’t know who came first between HTC and the iPhone, but these two together have effectively changed the way the world sees mobile phones. I recall the hype the iPhone created in the US when they were being launched in 2007. Crowds braved bad weather and wanted to make history and waited overnight at stores to get phones as they were launched. For the connoisseur of the mobile, the iPhone was dubbed the Idiot Phone.

Why?

Simple – It does everything that a phone is not intended to do, what with an integrated bipod and a fancy camera and auto tilt screens. The iPhone has evolved over the last 2 years and there are newer and better versions out in the market. When India got its chance to get the iPhone officially, the hype was no different.

The iPhone has done to the market what no other phone over the last few years did – touch screen phones are the rage in town today. The last time I remotely remember anything like this being a rage was when we had the season of phones with a stylus. One may argue that this was the mother of the touch screen in a manner of speaking. But that said, the styles fever wasn’t as hot or anywhere as close to the touch screen fever.

In a matter of a few months, the competition has reacted and reacted strongly. Nokia’s 5880 is huge hit. It brings the traditional “durability” factor along with the touch screen phone that most people think lacks in the iPhone. With its provision for expandable memory and the market wining strategy of half the price of the iPhone, it’s a hot deal in town today.

The eye brow rising, WOW change for me comes from Blackberry. Who on earth thought that Blackberry with its huge office email using base will go touch screen. They were so renowned for their QWERTY keyboard and they changed, releasing the Blackberry Storm very close on the heels of their release of the Bold. I was reading an article where they shamelessly accepted that they had to make this change to keep pace with iPhone for the fear of being left far behind.

One thing is certain though. Technology being technology, things will change and change fast.

Any guess on what will take over from the touch screens?

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Stealth Bomber-The Invicible Aircraft

Vigil — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Aircraft is a machine which flies supported by air. The wings of the plane generate lift which raises the main body and further the plane is controlled by the stabilizers at the rear. Stealth bomber is one such aircraft known for it’s speed and swiftness.

The B-2 bomber named the B2 Spirit, commonly known as stealth bomber, is an aircraft nearly invisible to enemy sensors and could carry bombs across the globe in few hours unrefueled for nearly 11000 Kms. It is capable of all altitude attack missions. It has a unique flying wing design which avoids the normal stabilizers and wings of the planes. Further the fuselage portion is not in the wings.

The aircraft is powered by four turbofan jet engines. It has elevons (up and down movement) & rudders (horizontal movement) which control the plane’s rotational movements. Computer in the aircraft works independent of pilot’s input. Air turbulence and corrections are automatically controlled by special systems in the plane. It’s a two seater air plane with provisions for the third if required. Minimal exhaust, narrow shape and black colour make it difficult to identify even during day times.

The bomber has got an aerodynamic efficient design. The engines are inside the plane and hence the noises are muffled. Further all exhausts pass through cooling tubes to avoid infrared sensors used by heat seeking missiles.

One beauty in the plane is the radar absorbent surface. B 2’s stealth comes from the reduced acoustic, visual, infrared and radar signatures. Radio energy is absorbed by certain materials and hence it absorbs radar signals. Further the curved surfaces deflect the radio waves. All reflective parts are inside the bomber. Rotary launchers in the plane can launch any type of bombs both conventional and nuclear. It carries JDAM bombs with internal guidance system coupled with GPS guidance.

It’s an amazing machine. But the cost is very high with each costing $2 billion and weather factors of the machine clearly not known. It requires air-conditioned hangars for maintaining the stealth technologies. However, transportable hangars are being developed. Anyway one can say it is the latest technology available in military aircrafts.

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7 Everyday Tips For Better Photographs-Tip 2: Get The Exposure Right

Uttkarsh — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:24:40 +0000

I have often seen people taking point and shoot snaps without much thought into exposure. A little bit of experimenting with exposure, and you can dramatically improve your snaps.

Simply put, exposure is ensuring your photos have the right amount of colour, brightness and contrast. This ensure that the primary subject(s) in your pictures are neither too dark nor too bright. While its very easy to ‘photoshop’ your images to get unrealistic colour, it takes a good camera and a better photographer to capture colours as close to reality as possible.

Conditions like bright direct sunlight, snow, sea water, night photography, sunrise and sunsets etc. provide difficult shooting conditions. Some cameras have settings that let you preselect an environmental condition, others allow you to manually increase or decrease the exposure.

Most automatic cameras have one or more small highlighted blocks (usually a small red rectangle) that comes on screen/ viewfinder when you press the shutter release button. This block is also used to read the image information and make calculations required to ensure correct exposure.Often these also have a half-lock position that is used to lock the exposure information and then compose your focus to do a full click. Some of the expensive cameras also have a dedicated exposure lock button.

The simplest thing one can do is to ensure that this block collects information about the small area that you really want to show lighting and colours correctly for. Remember, this is not necessarily what you want to focus on!

In the example of the sunset here, the exposure was set to reflect the setting sun – This helped in masking the trees (which were actually visible to the normal eye when the shot was taken). Thus the colours of the sunset and the brightness of the sun itself were captured accurately.

In the example of the sunflower, a flash and exposure compensation setting was used to override the harsh direct sunlight entering the camera. As you can see here, the background is completely white (overexposed) while the colours of the sunflower have been captured accurately.

It is possible to capture almost the entire image in its best form without really compromising on the exposure of the darker and brighter elements. HDR (High Dynamic Range imaging) is one such method fast catching up. We shall save that for sometime later.Similar Posts:

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7 Everyday Tips For Better Photographs – Tip 1 : Get Closer

Uttkarsh — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I am no whiz in photography, but have been earnestly trying out some of the great tips from the masters.

Here I share 7 of my best learnings for everyday photography. Trust me, the differences can be dramatic in certain cases.

Tip 1: Get Closer:

Easily, the single most important reason for not getting better photos!

No matter what the subject is, just when you have the subject covered, try this – zoom in or get closer.

Make sure you highlight the most important elements in the photograph – that’s what the photograph is for anyway! Real close up shots can yield dramatic results from portraits to macros, there is a whole world to explore out there!

So go out and click some stunning photos while I come back with more tips

on some great photography

The photographs on the side are examples of Close Up and Normal photos. The one below is an example of a photo with the Macro feature.

Image Credit: Uttkarsh

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How to Update Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook with Google FriendConnect Activities

Sid — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:18:45 +0000

Google has launched Friend Connect to perhaps aimed at a Global Social Network. Already thousands of sites have added the widgets and are using them.

While users are using the widgets and posting their activities, currently the FriendConnect System helps update these only on Orkut and Plaxo. It doesn’t provide either an RSS or a method to post these to other sites.

Well for users like me, who love to have all their web activities to be streamed this is a show stopper. Thankfully, we have the option of creating a Mashup to address this challenge.

Mashup in the context of web is defined as: “A web application or site mixing content from multiple sources”

So let’s get started. What you need are the following:

A Yahoo Account for use with Yahoo Pipes, a mashup creating tool
A Plaxo Account to capture the updates from Friend Connect
And of course registrations on FriendConnect enabled sites

Here’s how you can do this in 9 steps:

Step 1: Open the FriendConnect Setting, add Plaxo and check “Publish my activities on other sites”. Click Done. This will enable your activities to be streamed to Plaxo and be visible on Plaxo pulse.

Step 2: Log in to the Plaxo site and navigate to http://www.plaxo.com/rss. Click on “Enable” next to option “Me” as shown below. This will activate a link. Copy the URL displayed.

Step 3: Log in to Yahoo Pipes and click on “Create pipe”

This will open up a Pipe Layout.

Step 4: Select Sources->Fetch Feed and in the URL add the URL copied from Plaxo.

Step 5: Select Operators->Filter, and connect the Fetch Feed to Filter as shown in the figure.

Step 6: Now Change the Settings on Filter to “Permit” items that match “all” of the following. Under Rules add “item.title” contains Friendconnect.

Step 7: Now link Filter to Pipe Output, as shown in the figure.

Step 8: Click save and voila! you have created your Mashup!

Step 9: On the Run Screen, click on Get as RSS, copy the RSS URL

That’s it… You have your RSS of FriendConnect activities. You can use this to feed it into FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, Lifestream and any other tool which supports RSS import.

My preference is Twitterfeed.com feeding to Ping.fm, which updates lot of social networking sites at one go.

Get a flavor of how to get the web working for you? Welcome to Web 2.0.

Enjoy!

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A Layman’s Guide To Podcasting

Avineet — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:29:56 +0000

Podcasting, all you wanted to know. The term comes from a combination of the words iPod (a personal digital audio player made by Apple) and broadcasting. Even though the term is derived from the iPod, it is not limited to iPods.

As blogging has enabled almost anyone with a computer to become an author or a reporter, Podcasting allows virtually anyone with a computer to become a radio disc jockey, talk show host or recording artist. Podcasting is an extension of blogging using the digital audio technology, not to mention its counterpart, video podcasting. Most of the content on the internet is offered free and users need to pull the audio files from a source and consume it through their computers, iPods, MP3 players etc.

Contrast to a radio source,Podcasts are not required to be ‘tuned into’. Instead, they can be downloaded on demand or even subscribed to via an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, which automatically downloads the podcast to the computer. The technology is similar to that used by a personal video recorder that lets users set which programs they’d like to record and then automatically records those programs for later viewing.

Podcast Essentials

Tools:

Being very cost-effective, you only need a PC with soundcard, Microphone, speaker / head phone & audio recording software free or open-source ( e.g. audacity or PodProducer)

Topic:

Decide on a topic, can focus on professional issues, industry or a product

Capture:

Record or capture the podcast on the chosen topic, keeping in sight the length, professionalism and content.

Podcast:

Host them on your website or on the internet and test them. (ensuring accurate naming), and create your newsfeed for your podcasts, which are RSS files describing the podcast that contains information and are linked to the MP3 files so created.

Invite:

Invite your audience to tune into-it, using various methods as RSS etc.

Forrester podcasting report says just over 1% use podcasts. Podcasts have hit the mainstream consciousness but have not yet seen widespread use, with most interested in existing radio and other Internet radio channels.

Companies and individuals that are interested in using podcasting as a medium for their audio should focus not only on downloads but also on streaming audio as a means to get their content and ads to consumers / users. Podcasting has brought millions of music lovers nearer to the promising community of singers & musicians. The day may not be far when your daily scoop of Gita, Ramayan, Quran etc. is podcast to you!

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.Tel- The New Dot Com?

Avineet — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:30:00 +0000

The 1990s saw a humongous rush to secure an attractive and promising domain names. ‘Squatting’ was more pronounced for domain name registrations which went on to became a lucrative business opportunity.

Hoping that a worthy buyer will come along and make good the exorbitant price tag they carried. Quite a few did, like business.com, which went under the hammer for $7.5 million in 1999. More recently creditcards.com found a buyer at $2.75 million. Most of these were sold before the dot-com burst in 2001. Most of the domains names registered worldwide are under .com suffix, while .net comes a distant second.

This low investment, effortless business opportunity for several wannabe entrepreneurs across the globe has seen it charm fade away. This received a further blow, when last year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which regulates top-level domain names, announced that it would open up the system to allow any suffix.

More recently, in Feb 2009, the “.tel” (touted to be world’s largest phone book ) was launched where this was available on first come first served basis, which meant registration of domains under the nose of popular establishments, vis-a-vis bmw.com etc. For those of you beginning to rush to check on the more recognisable names, NASA, FBI, Microsoft, IBM, Google and so on, don’t fret, as they have already secured their “.tel” addresses, earlier this year, while some of the popular Indian names, like “rediff.tel”, “ndtv.tel”, etc. are still up for grabs!

However, this needs to be bought for a minimum of 3 years initially costing $327 to $375 based on the country and domain registrar you register from. From 23rd March, .tel domains would be registered at $20 a year.

“.tel is your place on the internet, which will act like a switchboard.” said Kash Madhavi, the chief executive of Telnic, the London-based company that runs the .tel registry. “You can say, ‘Here are my Facebook details, here is my mobile number, and people will always be able to find you.” In the near future these will become more valuable when the need for mobile content increases further and a stripped-down web pages made available through mobile phones such as Blackberry, Apple iPhone etc.

Happy buying, if you foresee a big moolah, in this.

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Ovi – The Door

Sid — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:01:00 +0000

Ovi, which means door in Finnish, is the new service from Nokia for all its users.

Ovi, helps you manage your phone by providing a host of features. This service signs that Nokia clearly wants to keep its hold on the mobile market and realizes that it will be in competition with likes of Microsoft, Google and Apple.

Nokia recently conducted a survey and mentioned that Indian population is now fast becoming top in mobile internet usage therefore needless to say that this service is open to India as well.

Ovi provides the following features which for any users would be very handy:

Calendar, Contacts, Notes Sync: This will help backup all entries of Contact, Calendar and notes on your Nokia phone to the Ovi website. What this means is even if you lose your phone, you still have all your important details safe. The experience to sync is seamless and easy. The website provides good features to edit the contacts and calendar entries. One thing I wish this site has was ability to import calendars from say Outlook, Hotmail or Gmail. I am sure they will add it as the time passes. Overall this takes away the worry about keeping your contacts in sync.
Photos and Videos: One of the best feature. This site provides unlimited storage and sharing options for Photos and Videos. You can upload as many of videos and photos as you want, either from your computer or from your mobile directly. There is integration with Flickr available to share you pictures directly to Flickr. Overall a very nice service.
Files: This service is similar to Mobile Me service from Apple. This one is not free, but has some good features to give it a try. This enables you to access files on your computer through your mobile. Microsoft already is ready to launch My Phone service which is specifically for Windows Mobile Phone.

Other services include, the Nokia Maps, N-Gage and Nokia Music store. It looks like the rumoured Nokia App Store will be an addition to this site.

Overall Ovi is a very good service and sure will set some good competition for Apple Mobile Me and upcoming My Phone.

If you own a Nokia phone, then this is a service that you must use. Give it a spin @ http://ovi.comSimilar Posts:

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Location Mapper, Zero Cost Geo Tagger for Symbian Devices

Sid — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:09:35 +0000

In my earlier posts I talked about impromptu photography, Geo tagging and applications for Nokia. Today I want to write about all of them together.

Yes I am referring to Location Mapper, an application for Nokia (Symbian) GPS enabled phone like N95, which will help Geo tag the images and videos taken on the phone. Get the Location Mapper from Nokia Betalabs. Install it on your device and follow the following steps:

Go to Applications and run the application
Open the camera
Wait for the Location Mapper to lock the location.
Click you picture or video.

As simple as that.

So for now all those pictures from your phone are going to be Geo tagged and for the rest we have GeoSetter any way. Good thing to try over weekend, don’t you think?Similar Posts:

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Nokia Users Can Rejoice (Again) and Get Fit

Sid — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:38:22 +0000

Blogosphere is full of news about Nokia planning to launch an application store on the lines of Apple. As a Nokia user I was happy to hear this. I have been using Nokia N95 for over a year and am very happy with it. Needless to say my next phone would be Nokia.

On hearing this news, I decided to take a look around and see what apps are available for Nokia. I then reached for Nokia Beta Labs and took a look around.

While I evaluate rest of stuff that I wanted to share one of the app I found interesting.

Step Counter

An interesting application, while counts steps (pedometer) that you take in a day. The following are the features that this application offers:

Step counter to track number of steps taken
Time and distance spent walking
Track of day wise steps
Set a daily step limit etc.

After looking at the features I was keen to understand how it worked. I was surprised to know that Nokia N95 has an embedded accelerometer, a device which helps identify the orientation. The same helps iPhone to switch view when turned sideways.

I can only imagine how many more applications will developers write to use this feature. While I evaluate a few more and come back. Take a look at the step counter and start getting fit.

Don’t you think it is time for Nokia user can rejoice again?Similar Posts:

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Google Latitude is Cool!

Sid — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:32:47 +0000

It’s weekend and after clearing up some email, I started exploring new stuff around. I stumbled upon Google Latitude. Yet another Beta from Google you must be thinking, but I must tell you this one is worth exploring.

Not too sure if you have heard of Nokia Friend View, Google Latitude is very much on those lines. Simply put Latitude is a spy in your pocket

Latitude is an add on in Google Maps for mobile. It lets you sign in with your Google Account, and sets your current location using the GPS (Global Positioning System) device on your mobile. These days many mobile phones are coming with GPS devices and this will exactly make use of that.

Here’s what it lets you do:

Update your status-For instance I have updated my status here in the picture as “Testing Google Latitude”.
Add friends and share your location with them.
See their location on Google Maps
For those concerned about invasion of privacy it lets you manually set the location, so for instance you may be on the road, but your location may show as office
It also provides an iGoogle gadget which you can use on computer to view locations (pictured here)

It works with most locations, if it says “not supported in your region”, just change the URL on your browser to point to .google.com instead of say .google.co.in .

On the whole it seems to be an excellent piece of work from Google and with recent steps Google is taking in terms of Social Networking with Friend Connect and now Latitude, they may very well be on their road to creating the world’s largest network of social networks.

For now good work Google, you guys keep pushing the limits on use of technology and bring it to masses.

And readers get on to Google Latitude and give it a try!Similar Posts:

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Was India The Pioneer In War Rocket Technology?

Sid — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:44:12 +0000

Question might seem strange for many who witnessed success of Agni and other range of missiles developed by India. These rockets are hailed as one of the finest in the world and have been developed indigenously by Indian Defense Research and Development, which was spear headed by Dr. A P J Abdul Kalaam.

But for many it is a little known fact that the early usage of War Rocket Technology was indeed developed in India. Rockets as such were invented by Chinese around 1000 AD, however entertainment was the prime purpose. It was in the period of 1750 AD and 1799 AD, when Haider Ali and his son Tippu Sultan have improvised the technology and use them in battles against British Troops.

Tippu’s army launched a rocket assault on British troops, which caused massive destruction and lead to their defeat in the Second Anglo-Mysore War. He however lost the Third and Fourth Anglo-Mysore Wars. Tippu Sultan, died in 1799 saving his city, Seringapatnam, when British troops took over the City. The troops which captured the city found unused rockets which were then moved to Royal Artillery Center in London.

William Congreve, reverse engineered these rockets to develop new ones for British troops which were used by them in Wars fought later. Few of the rockets that were acquired during the siege of Seringapatnam are still at display in Royal Arsenal Museum in London.

NASA, is said to believe Tippu as father of War rocket technology and has a picture of the rocket attack on British troops in their halls. We are sharing this picture from NASA’s archive for you.

There is a detailed account of the Tippu’s rocket technology in “Wings of Fire”, the autobiography of Dr. A P J Abdul Kalaam, from where this article is inspired.

It is however sad that such a Technology went into oblivion for 150 years before resurfacing. We will bring forth Ancient Indian perspectives on many current technologies through our series, “Ancient Indian Technologies”.

Keep reading!

Images Courtesy: NASA and WikipediaSimilar Posts:

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Geo Tag Your Photos Easily Using Geo Setter

Sid — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:11:17 +0000

Geo Tagging in simple terms is adding geographical information to photos, videos etc. Usually this information is represented in longitudes and latitudes, but sometimes is also expressed in altitude as well.

Geo tagging your photos has many benefits such as showing your albums on a map, and remembering the places where they have been taken. These photos when uploaded on services like Panoramio, Google Earth or Locr, will show up on respective locations on the maps.

Usually there are GPS (Global Positioning System) devices that you can attach to your cameras, which will record this information directly on the photos taken. While the information will be very accurate, that comes at a cost. GPS devices of Sony and Nikon are in the range of $160 to $280.

GeoSetter, the application I am talking about, helps you set the Geo Tags, at no cost. Well the level of accuracy is a little less and you might perhaps set the nearest location, but it is definitely better than nothing. In fact if you have a bit of patience you can actually navigate to the actual location and set the position.

GeoSetter presents a very easy to use and intuitive interface to do this. It uses Google Maps to find the locations, and then lets you transfer the locations to photos, as shown in the picture here:

Steps to Geo Tag:

1) Start the application. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, please use “Run as Administrator” option.

2) Select the folder containing the images

3) Point to the map, search for the location using the search box.

4) Select the location and click assign location button on toolbar.

5) Save… and you are done!

Sounds simple, isn’t it? Yes it is simple. Why don’t you give it a try? You can download GeoSetter from here.Similar Posts:

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Windows Live Photo Gallery, Can It Match Picasa?

Sid — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 09:53:00 +0000

Ok, now it’s Windows Live Photo Gallery’s (WLPG) turn. Read my views on other Windows Live Apps here.

Firstly, WLPG is a very refined photo management software. It’s interface is familiar to the Windows Explorer and let you perform most of the functions that you can perform on a folder through explorer.

Second, WLPG’s online uploads land in Windows Live Sky Drive, which means you have 25GB of online storage at disposal.

I am trying to compare it to Picasa, which is currently very popular and see where it stands:

Features	Live Photo Gallery	Picasa	Shutterfly
Basic Image Editing	Yes	Yes	Yes
Panaromic Stitching	Yes (Outstanding)	No	No
Collages	No	Yes (Excellent)	No
Photosynth Creation	Yes	No	No
Upload to Social Websites	Yes	No (only Youtube)	No
Online Storage	Yes (25 GB)	Yes (1 GB)	Yes (Unlimited)
Slide Show Creation	Yes (Excellent Control)	Yes (Partial Control)	No
Extensibility Plugins	Yes	No	No
Post to Blog	Yes	Yes	No
Order Prints	Yes	Yes	Yes
Face Tag	Yes	Yes (Online only)	No
Auto Gallery Sync	Yes	No	No
Coolness Factor	Medium	High	Low
Duplicate Image Search	No	Yes	Yes
Geo Tag	No	Yes	No
Bulk Download	Yes	Yes	No

So that’s a quick feature to feature comparison of WLPG, Picasa and Shutterfly. Lack of ability to upload to third party sites in Picasa needs to be plugged as soon as possible. I just wish it had a shorter name like Picasa. Anyway, there are few unique features that I want to highlight.

The photos uploaded on Sky Drive can be downloaded at one go, like Picasa. However with many other tools you need to download every photo separately. You can either download the entire album or download them as a ZIP file. Also the feature to sync the whole library, will make it even simpler to keep your photos synced with Sky Drive. The Sync Library option is disabled right now and should open up soon, in the meanwhile you can publish pictures to Sky Drive using Publish option. While Picasa offers a similar functionality, it is a bit crippled by low free of cost space.

Talking about the online storage you have the standard share features and ability to order prints via HP Snapfish.

Finally I would say that, Windows Live Photo Gallery is a very good addition and is a must have on your PC for the ease of use and host of other features. Also, keep Picasa for those cool collages it can make.

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