27 July 2007

Extract Still Photographs from Wedding DVD Videos for Printing

extract photo from dvd videoThere are tons of software for creating a slideshow DVD movie of your photographs but DI reader Pedro Almeida from Lisbon has a reverse requirement. He wants to extract still pictures from his Wedding video DVD for printing.

The professional wedding photographer who produced the photo DVD has the source images but he's probably charging lot of money for the service. Pedro writes:
The Wedding DVD was sold to me by a photographer and has cost me a great deal of money.

One of the DVD menu choices is to view all the wedding photos as a slideshow presentation. The photographer will take an additional charge of 3,5 euros for printing each photo.

Can we split this DVD photos presentation into separate image files like GIF or JPG. Then I will be able to print the photos myself and it would just cost me 0,5 euros each photo!!
Pedro, there are two solutions to your problem as explained here:

Solution A: - Play the DVD movie inside a media player and capture the scenes (or video frames) that you would like to print. A word of caution - normal screen capture commands like Print Screen won't work with capturing DVD videos and all you will get is a blank screen.

Read our previous guide on on how to screen capture scenes from DVD movies.

Solution B: - The second solution involves ripping the slideshow DVD into AVI or WMV files and then using a video extractor software to convert that ripped video into still photographs.

Use a DVD backup software like DVDx to convert yoaur Wedding DVD vob files into AVI format. Then download AVCutty to extract picture frames from this AVI video.

AVCutty is smart and can automatically detect the scene changes in video files. Open the extracted photographs in an software like Picasa and select the ones that you like to print. Burn them onto a CD from Picasa and just walk into your nearest photo printing shop.

And yes, all the software mentioned above are absolutely free. The quality of extracted images may not match that of original pictures but they would still be good enough.

Samson vs Blue Snowball: USB Microphones for Recording Podcasts

As the name suggests, the CO1U mic plugs directly into the USB port of your computer instead of the regular Audio-In port of the sound card so the quality of sound is much better when you compare it with the traditional stereo headset microphones.

Today, Macworld has a detailed comparison of Samson Microphone with Blue Snowball which is another popular USB mic for computer based sound recording. In brief, Samson gets 4 while Snoball get 3.5 points.

Samson C01U

Pros: Easy USB connection; fully powered by USB; very good sound quality for the price; output customizable via software.

Cons: Bulky for portable use; cable length limited by USB; doesn’t include stand; software not currently Intel-compatible; no stereo support.

Blue Snowball

Pros: Easy USB connection; fully powered by USB; dual-capsule design; good sound quality; sturdy, well-designed stand.

Cons: Bulky for portable use; cable length limited by USB; low output; omni-directional mode still somewhat directional; no software controls; no stereo support.

Update: Oreilly has some tips for using microphones to get the best recording:

1. Position the microphone as close as possible to the source, up to about three or four inches away. This helps reduce any unwanted background noise.

2. Position the microphone at a 10-40 degree angle from the sound source. This works really well, since the worst p-popping occurs from wind blasts that hit the microphone capsule straight on.

Update: The Samson C01U microphone may have some trouble with Adobe Audition 2 since that requires ASIO sound drivers. However, it should work fine with Audacity or your screencasting apps like Camtasia Studio. There's absolutely no issues if you are planning to use Windows Sound recorder.

For running Samson mics with Audition, you can download the free ASIO4ALL drivers , set Samons as the default device in the ASIO control panel and finally choose Samson in the recording device settings. This workaround may not be required in Adobe Audition 1.5 or Cool Edit pro.

Alternatively, download and install the free Samson softpre applet which is ASIO compliant. The applet lets you monitor the recording levels as well as amplify the recording in real time. [Quick Tip: Keep the green bar around -12db for best recording and never let it turn orange which is too high a volume]

You can attach multiple USB mics to your laptop computer depending upon the number of free USB ports and your audio recording software. Not all software would have support for more than one microphone.

Convert Audio Cassette Tapes to MP3 files or CD


Audio cassette tapes, once the primary audio storage medium, are now disappearing quickly from the music store shelves to be replaced with Audio CDs. If you still own a pile of audio cassettes, now is the perfect time to convert them to MP3 files or Windows Media Audio before they're gone forever.

Digitizing analog tapes essentially involves playing the tape on the taperecorder deck, capturing the audio on your computer and finally converting the .wav files to mp3 or wma formats using software like LAMP MP3 encoder or Adobe Audition. The audio cable is connected to the line-in jack on your PC's sound card.

Now there are various options to transfer your audio tapes to CD depending on your OS platform and budget. Let's look at expert opinion on the web:

Using MusicMatch - Connect the to your sound card's line-in terminal with a 1/8" mini-jack and record the contents of your tape as a WAV file. Just set MusicMatch to record the line-in channel, press play on your tape deck, and then press the record button on the MusicMatch Jukebox.

Tips for better recordings - If your tape of a favorite live concert begins with a few minutes of audience murmuring, delete it. If you’ve recorded multiple songs, split your single recording into separate files. That way, you can make each song or section a separate track on an audio CD or on your iPod. Some software can detect silence between songs and divide them for you.

Using Audacity on Mac - Audio I/O: Recording should be set for 2 channels (stereo) and both the playback and recording devices set at Built in audio controller. Audio CDs sample sound 44,100 times per second. The standard sample format (number of digits in the digital representation of each sample) is 16-bit. Audacity’s defaults are a 44 KHz sample rate, but 32-bit sample format.

Using External Audio Capture Device - Consider using an external audio-capture device such as the plug-and-play USB M-Audio Transit instead of your sound card; it will record a much cleaner signal.

Remember to set your audio software’s volume controls according to the loudness of your tape or record. Proper volume is vital to getting good sound. Set the levels too low, and your audio will be too soft and prone to noise. Set levels too high, and loud portions of the recording will sound horribly distorted.

Convert Real Audio rm/ra to mp3/wav Audio Files for Free

Convert RM to MP3 with FreewareThe most straightforward method is by using the RealPlayer itself. If the ra or rm file is linked directly on the website, just right click and choose "Save Target As" to save the real audio files to your hard drive.

Now open RealPlayer and choose Tools - CD - CD Burner to create an MP3 CD from your saved rm files. Later you can copy these MP3 files from the CD back to your hard drive or the iPod. [More on Real Player CD Burner here.]

Alternatively, you can try the RM to MP3 Converter from Jodix - it is a freeware can convert all Real Media formats (*.rm, *.ra, *.rmvb) to MP3 files. Switch from Swift Sound is also a possible solution.

The above techniques / software may not work for streaming real audio (like .ram) since they are buffered and not saved directly to the computer.

In that case, you can use Audacity to save real media as MP3 files. The method for saving the streaming real audio to MP3 is exactly same as described here. Play the file with RealPlayer and hit the record button in Audacity.

You can extend the above methods to convert rm to wmv or mov formats. First create the mp3 file and then convert it to other formats using free software like SUPER or online services like Zamzar.

Disclaimer: While it easy to convert RealAudio (.ra) and RealMedia (.rm) file formats to MP3, make sure that you are not violating any copyrights by doing so.

Extract Still Image Sequences from Video Clips with AVCutty

AVCutty ScreenshotAVCutty is a small but useful tool that lets you do lot of interesting things with your video clips [that includes videos downloaded from Youtube in AVI format].

Here's a quick summary of the popular features in AVCutty:

» If the video is too long or boring, you can manually trim down the clip to retain just the interesting portion of the video. Or you can instruct AVCutty to split a video into multiple video clips of 'n' seconds or 'n' frames.

» AVCutty can scan any AVI video file and automatically detects the scene changes. Each scene can then be saved as a separate AVI file. For instance, if the video has scenes from the dinner table, living room and your kitchen, AVCutty can easily detect the three different areas and will save them as three separate videos. [probably works by comparing keyframes]

» AVCutty can export the entire movie or a part of the video to a series of bitmaps or picture frames which can later be printed as creating Flipbooks - a book of still images where you just flip the pages quickly and some animation appears to play.

While the donation screen can be a bit annoying, the program is still very useful especially if you are looking to cut big avi files into smaller video clips. Plus the ability to create thumbnail images from movie clips can be handy for printing contact sheets of your video clips.

There won't be any loss in video quality as AVCutty uses a loseless process and re-encoding is not done.

MP3 Cutters: Split MP3 Files Into Multiple Audio Tracks and Vice-Versa

DI Reader Ashish Gupta has an interesting question - "Do you have any easy to use freeware to split mp3 file into smaller mp3 (at user defined points)? I know Virtual Dub that does same to video files."

MP3 Splitter utilities let you easily trim the not-so-interesting portions of a podcast show, music recording or even a CD song. This reduces the file size and your friends won't get bored as they get to listen only the relevant parts of the audio clip.

While there are tons of free and commercial MP3 Trimming software, the most popular ones are MP3Splt and MP3DirectCut - both are free and keep the music quality intact as they directly in the MP3 format without having to decode/re-encode.

Command Line Utility for Splitting MP3 files

MP3Splt is a free but amazing command-line utility that can split mp3 and ogg files from a begin time to an end time. MP3Splt can even detect silent points in your audio clip and split the track accordingly.

mp3splt -t 10.00 album.mp3 [Split album.mp3 in many equal-sized parts of 10 minutes each.]

mp3splt album.mp3 10.12 14.25 -o out.mp3 [Split album.mp3 starting at 10min 12sec, ending at 14mins 25sec and save the mp3 slice in a new file called out.mp3]

Mp3Splt is available for Mac, Windows, DOS and Linux platforms. [Download]

GUI Based MP3 Splitter Software

MP3DirectCut is Windows based audio editor that also supports splitting of Audio CDs into smaller MP3 files. You can visually select and divide portions of mp3 files or use the command line.

The audio quality is preserved as the editing is done directly on the MP3 file without conversion to other formats. Can also be used to join mp3 file without re-encoding. Tiny footprint and does the job exceptionally well. [Download]

Advanced MP3 Splitting

While the above two utilities should satisfy most of your needs, if you are looking for that extra power, download Audacity with Lame MP3 encoder. It's free and has tons of advanced audio editing features with visual waveforms, sound effects and more.

Download Music from Internet Radio Stations to iPod or MP3 CD

Download Internet Radio songs streamingGeoff Allen is a 69 year young Aussie, a jazz musician and loves listening to music on web radio from USA and Australia. He is looking for a simple internet radio recorder to rip save his favorite songs as MP3 audio. Geoff writes:
I want to record songs from online radio stations, label each one as I record it and put a small space in between each one (about 2 seconds) then save the songs (could be as many as 30/40 per session) in MP3 format to burn to a CD disc or the iPod MP3 player.

My greatest thrill in life other than riding my sidecar motorcycle rig is listening to good music that I can replay at my discretion and take with me wherever I go.
Disclaimer: While the method described here can be used to save streaming audio from all internet radio stations like Live365, Last.fm, AOL Radio, Pandora music or even from iTunes and Yahoo! Music Launchcast, you should cross-check their terms of service.

Geoff, assuming that you have the necessary permissions, here's a step-by-step guide to help you create an MP3 album of your favorite songs from online radio:

Step 1: Download Audacity from Sourceforge.net here. Available for Mac, Windows and Linux platforms.

Download streaming music

Step 2: Open Audacity and choose View -> Float Mixer Toolbar. In the drop-down menu on Audacity's mixer toolbar, choose "Wave Out" or "Stereo Mix" as the input source. Open the Audacity Preferences dialog and choose Mono channel in the Audio I/O tab. Select your sound card name in Recording Device [Sigma Tel C-Major Audio in my case]

Step 3: Open the radio station of choice using the web browser or Real player or Yahoo! Messenger. Hit the play button and switch to Audacity.

Step 4: As the song of your choice is about to play, hit the keyboard shortcut - R to begin recording of the song or press the Record button on the Audacity interface. When the song end, hit the Space Bar to stop recording.

Record web radio

Now when your next favorite song is playing on the radio station, hit the R button again. Now Audacity will record the song in a separate track. This is helpful as you will realize in a minute. Repart the R-space bar cycle until you record all the songs to your PC or Mac.

Step 5: The last step - Choose File -> Export Multiple - this will save the individual Audacity track as separate MP3 files or WAV files. Choose the export folder and select "Split files based on Tracks". Click export.

Export Internet Radio to iPod
That's it. Burn this folder as an Audio CD or transfer them your iPod or mobile phone and enjoy the web music offline.

[Make sure you download the free LAME MP3 encoder to export recording as MP3 files. Advanced users may consider Audacity effects to fine-tune their internet recordings.]

Democracy Player can Search & Download Videos from YouTube, Google Video & more

Democracy Video Player is an absolute gem of an application that has all the potential to replace Windows Media Player or Apple iTunes on your computer.

Democracy Video Player
The software is absolutely free and available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Since it uses the popular VLC Media Player, it can play virtually all video formats from MOV to Windows Media to iPod MP4.

And here's a little known but extremely feature of Democracy Player that makes it unique among all other media players - you can use Democracy to search or download videos from YouTube, Google Video, Blip.tv, Revver and many other video sharing websites.

You can also pause and resume video downloads. The videos can also be saved on del.icio.us, Digg, or Reddit right from within the Democracy interface.

Democracy will automatically watch for new videos tagged with your keyword -- when a new video is found, it'll be automatically downloaded to your computer.

How To Rip Audio from YouTube Videos

Youtube Music Videos on iPod
DI reader Russell Tully is trying to record and save the audio from Youtube videos but without any success. Russ writes:
There are some rare music videos on 'youtube'. I very much want just the sound from these videos, but I've tried a number of different audio capture programs and I just can't seem to get any working - problem with sound card probably.

Surely there is a program that would allow me to record and save the audio from a flash video stream and record it to my HHD. I can't seem to use my sound card for the job. Is there any other way?
Russ, you can easily save the Youtube Videos as MP3 files. Here's how:

Directly from Youtube - The FLV Online Converter at Vixy.net can take Youtube Video URLs and provide you an MP3 audio file of the YouTube video [via].

Extract Audio from FLV files - If the Youtube Video is on your hard-disk as an FLV video file, try the free FLV Extract utility that extracts video and audio from FLV files. The video is saved to .avi and the audio is saved to MP3.

The above trick can be applied to any video sharing website like MetaCafe, DailyMotion or Google Video.

YouTube Removed a Video ? Watch It With Deleted YouTube Video Viewer

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by XYZ Inc." - That's the message you see on Youtube.com when they remove a copyrighted video clip from the Youtube website.

Sometimes the video is unavailable when the owner himself removed the video but it's still showing up in the video search results. Youtube will also delete videos that are porn or NSFW.

It is however possible to watch deleted videos on Youtube - Just like Google Cache stores a copy of a webpage on Google servers, Youtube may maintain a copy of raw video on their servers even when the video has been taken off the main website.



To retrieve this "deleted video", just supply the Youtube video id (available in the video URL) to Youtube Infamousx, and this service may retrieve the deleted video from Youtube for you. [via GHacks.net]

This trick will not work for videos that have been permanently deleted from the Youtube servers.

Download Youtube Videos As iTunes MOV or MP3 Files Directly

Download YoutubeWhile there are tons of tricks that let you download flash videos from Youtube or Google videos in either FLV or AVI format, Vixy.net is a new player in this game with a difference.

With Vixy, you can download Youtube videos directly as a Quicktime video or a audio-only file (MP3 format). Vixy will effectively extract the audio portion from the Youtube video for you.

When you submit an url, this service will download and convert the video format. Then you can download the converted file.

And like Keepvid, you still have the option to download in the standard Windows AVI format with the DivX codec or the MP4 format for the video iPod.

Apart from Youtube Videos, Vixy can help you covert any FLV file to AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3 format online.

Convert PowerPoint Presentations into iPod or YouTube Video

Want to publish your Powerpoint PPT slideshows on Google Video or Youtube ? Or watch them without a computer on an iPod, mobile phones or your large TV screen using a DVD Player ?

Get PPTmovie, a conversion software that turns PowerPoint slides into movie formats like MP4, MPEG or AVI. The software will also record any background music or audio narrations through the microphone and sync it with the video slideshow.

Convert PPT to DVD, AVI or iPod
The tool costs around $50 but you can have it absolutely free today courtesy GiveAway website. [The free download link expires at 11:59 PM PST]

Download PPT Movie at GiveAway of the Day.

While PPT Movie will help you burn those PPT slideshows on a DVD disc or publish them on the video sharing websites that accept AVI, you may consider SlideShare for embedding Powerpoint slides as Flash in webpages.

Make SlideShows with your Flickr Pictures, Also Upload to Youtube

Though there exists a decent hack to create Flickr slideshows and embed them inside any website, here's a much better solution called SlideRoll that's easy and fun to work with.

Slideroll is like a web-based clone of Microsoft Photostory software - it lets you create slideshows of digital photographs that are your hard-drive or can fetch pictures directly from your Flickr account.



The advantage of using SlideRoll is that you can also add free music loops, transition effects and text titles to your Flickr slideshows and make them more appealing.

Slideroll provides a small HTML snippet to embed the Flickr slideshow in your Myspace webpage or any other blog.

Alternatively, you can download Flickr slideshows to your hard drive as MPEG Video using the free Slideroll Videomaker application and later upload them directly to Youtube.

How to Burn Youtube Videos to DVD

How to create a DVD movie of video downloaded from Google Video, Youtube or Myspace so that these videos can be watched on the TV screen ?

That's exactly the requirement of Sarah Chamma. She writes:
I'm trying to figure out how to burn YouTube videos on DVDs (not CDs). Could you please give it to me step by step, clear as crystal?

What systems to use, how to burn more than one video on one DVD, etc.? I don't consider myself terribly computer literate.
Before you decide to watch Youtube videos on TV via your DVD player, keep in mind that the video quality will be very low - The video resolution on sites like youtube or Google Video is 320x240 while DVD frame size is 720x480 for NTSC or 720x576 for PAL.

If you are still game, here's how you can burn one or more video onto a DVD without spending a penny:

Step 1: Download the Internet Video to your hard disk in Flash Video format (extension: flv) using any of the free tools like iTube, vixy.net or keepVid.com. [Details here & here]

Step 2: Get the free DVD authoring software called DVD Flick. The software takes all your videos, encodes them and burns a DVD that can be played on any DVD player. Follow this step-by-step guide on how to burn videos using DVD Flick.

With DVD Flick, you can also add Titles, subtitles and audio tracks to your Youtube DVD project to make them more interesting. Keep your Blank DVD disc ready.

Update: Sarah was finally able to transfer Youtube videos to Youtube. She writes - "Wow! Thanks a million. I did it! I'm so proud of myself. I can't thank you enough for that."

The Easiest Way to Save Youtube Videos: Kiss The Address Bar

Kiss YouTube offers an innovative approach for downloading video clips from Youtube. No browser bookmarklets, no software to install, just remember the KISS "Keep It Sweet & Simple" principle.

While you are watching a video clip on the youtube website, just add the word "kiss" to the video URL in your browser address bar and hit enter. The video is ready to be saved on your computer in FLV format.

For instance, if the Youtube URI is something like youtube.com/watch?v=ls1954aa, you can download the clip by adding the word "kiss" in front of the youtube.com domain name. Hence the final address becomes kissyoutube.com/watch?v=ls1954aa which will have the link to save that clip.

KissYoutube.com [Thanks Gina Hughes]

Previously published Youtube Video hacks on DI:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 vs Windows Vista Speech Recognition



Remember when Bill Gates was unveiling Windows 98 at the Comdex, the Operation System crashed infront of a gathering of some 85,000 computer professionals. It was one of the most embarrassing moments for the Microsoft and the world's richest man.
Well, history was repeated at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting when the much hyped speech recognition feature in Windows Vista did not behave as expected. The guy giving the demo kept on talking to Windows Vista and the program never obeyed him - "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all." [video after the post]

Nuance executives may be finding it very tough to hide their smiles in this situation. They just released Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 which is more accurate than Dragon 8 and eliminates the need to train the software to a user's voice. No wonder, Dragon 9 has received excellent reviews from tech gurus including David Pogue and Marc Orchant.

Microsoft developers are now running for cover and posting excuses and reasons on their blogs as to why the speech recognition demo had gone awry. Infact, things were not so bad when Microsoft showcased Vista speech technology for the first time, most people got impressed with the initial demo video.

If the latest Vista speech demo fiasco had not taken place, a lot of people would have deferred buying Dragon 9 since a similar (or better) technology was coming for free in Vista next year. Unfortunately, that's not the case anymore and Nuance sales will only receive a major boost. Naunce, stop smiling and send a Thank You note to 1, Redmond Way.



Maybe, when the Dragon trial software is available on the Nuance website, I'll download Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 and post a detailed review on this blog.

Update: PC Magazine has done an even more comprehensive review of Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Professional [watch video] - Dragon 9 automatically integrates with all sorts of popular Windows applications, including all Microsoft Office apps, Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, Corel WordPerfect, Mozilla's Firefox browser, and more. Open the floating DragonBar, open Microsoft Word, and you're ready to dictate.

Apple Aperture vs Adobe Photoshop



Aperture will be able to make global image edits and print files without having to open them - something Photoshop can't do, Time is a critical resource for professional photographers, Rodney said, noting the slowness of Adobe's Camera Raw import.

Soom feel that Aperture could be iPhoto plus a Camera Raw plug-in. David Blatner, a graphics arts consultant and author, wondered if Aperture would be more a competitor to Adobe Bridge, a file management application that grew out of the file browser in Adobe's Creative Suite and is included in Creative Suite 2.

Apple Aperture is aimed at the professional photographer who shoots predominantly Raw files and is looking for a better way to manage their workflow and perform their initial Raw conversion. After installing Aperture, you might find yourself dragging iView MediaPro or Extensis Portfolio to the Trash, and your Raw workflow will definitely change, but Adobe Photoshop will stay firmly ensconced in your Applications folder.

However, though Aperture will provide adjustment tools such as Histogram to modify color and white balance, Apple seemed to suggest that most content editing of photos should remain Photoshop's province. In its product information, Apple wrote that Aperture will feature "seamless Photoshop integration." This will include one-click file export to Photoshop, native support for flattened or single-layer .PSD files and management of Photoshop-generated image versions.

Apple Computer today introduced Aperture, a digital-image-editing software targeted at professional photographers by simplifying the workflow issues many professionals have encountered over the years. The Aperture software appears to be a complete rethinking of the user interface for digital-image-editing software, giving users the option of seeing their photographs laid out like slides or negatives on a light table.

Like most of Apple's software, Aperture will only work on the company's Macintosh computers. As with all Apple products, Aperture aims to feel intuitive and easy to navigate. It's designed to help organize and manage photo workflow, while allowing for reversible image retouching and manipulation. It also allows photographers to work directly from more sophisticated data rather than having to use the more common compressed Jpeg format.

Apple's Aperture might be one of the most innovative and important pieces of digital photography software to come around in a long time. It's hard not to get all mouth-watery from watching Apple's demo movies because the program appears to include excellent solutions to common digital photography workflow problems. But while it's easy to get excited by the wow and flash of Apple's demos, it's important to remember that good Raw workflow involves much more than just good organization tools.

In the late 1990s, Adobe's Premiere program dominated the market for Mac video-editing programs. But Apple's Final Cut program, which the computer company introduced in 1999, changed all that. Apple had taken away such a significant chunk of Adobe's business on the Mac that by 2002, Adobe stopped making Premiere for Apple computers.

Unlike customers of office suites or operating systems, professionals who buy imaging or graphics software often purchase more than one program for a particular task, even if the features of the programs overlap. So Apple may be able to find a place on customers' desktops for Aperture even if the program doesn't displace Photoshop.

One of Aperture's chief selling points is its support for RAW files. And Adobe believes that has led to the perception among some users that Apple is targeting Photoshop with its new program. Adobe also believes that Aperture underscores the desire of professional photographers to have better workflow tools.

Online Photo Editors Compared: GIFWorks, Phixr, PXN8, Pixoh

Web based image editing software are very handy when you have to quickly finetune a web image or a family picture but there is no graphics software like Photoshop, GIMP or Picasa installed on you computer.

You may face such a situation when you are in a internet cafe or when you don't have admin rights to install software on the computer. No problem, there are tons of online photo editors to the rescue.

Most of these online photo editing apps are free and offer similar workflows. You upload the image on their server, perform editing like crop/resize/zoom/flip/colorize/apply filters/rotate and then save the modified image on your local hard-drive.

Here we look at some of the popular photo editing tools including GIFWorks, Pxn8 and Phixr.

Phixr - phixr.com

Phixr Online Photo editor has a sleek Web 2.0 look n' feel and offers more features than any other tool. The edited photos can be directly uploaded to flickr, fotopic, livejournal, photobucket, fotolog.com, buzznet and dropshots without downloading them to your hard-drive. Phixr lets you edit multiple pictures and stay online for about 3 hours.

Pros:
• Tons of photo editing features including Borders, Red Eye Remover, Rounded Corners, Color Fill, Sepia and more.
• Phixr supports photo upload by email.
• Merge two or more photos into one picture.
• Final image can be saved as JPEG, PDF, PNG or GIF formats.
• Phixr can extract text from image files [OCR].
• Preview effects before applying them to the image.
• Signup is optional and doesn't require an email address
• Clean, intuitive interface with a desktop like app look.

Cons:
• Photo size is limited to approximately 1280x1024 or 1.3 MB for free accounts.

GIFWorks - gifworks.com

GIFWorks is probably the oldest and most widely used online image editing tool in the market.

Pros
• Comes with a wide array of Photoshop like Filters [effects] like Pixelate, Watercolor, TV Lines, etc.
• Allows creation of animated GIF files
• Image Info dialog gives detailed information about the web graphic.

Cons
• Works only with GIF format images
• Some of the editing options open the image in a pop-up window. You may have to turn off the browser pop-up blocker.
• Cannot fetch images from other internet locations.
• Poor interface.

PXN8 [pix-en-ate] pxn8.com

PXN8 provides a browser bookmarklet that lists all the images files on any webpage and clicking a particular image will open it for editing in the PXN8 image editor.

Pros:
• PXN8 Bookmarklet save lot of time and hassle. With two clicks, a web image can be opened inside Pixenate.
• Balloon tips show help and tips associated with each tool. Great for new users.
• Editing images can be saved directly to Flickr.
• Save image permanently on the web to webshots and returns a tinyurl of the web address.
• Provided lot of editing filters and fun effects like snow, blur, etc.
• Info Tool shows the mouse cursor co-ordinates.

Cons:
• No preview option available.
• At the time of writing this review, Flickr upload was returning an error.

Pixoh - pixoh.com

Pixoh web interface is the most impressive of all image editing services. You can change the dimension of the image with the mouse as you would do in some desktop based image software. Pixoh also provides a bookmarklet to capture images from any webpage and edit them inside Pixoh.

Pros:
• Pixoh supports editing of big images - up to 10 MB, or 5000x5000 pixels
• Flickr export, or save as GIF, JPG, PDF, PNG, or TIF

Cons:
• Provides only basic editing tools like crop, rotate, resize - no filters or effects.

Conclusion: Best online photo editor
Phixr offers so many sophisticated image manipulating features for free that it can give Photoshop Elements a run for it's money. Pixoh editing style is most user friendly but the service is limited at the moment. Our favorite online photo editor is PXN8 since it has all the image editing features but with a very fast workflow. PXN8 allowed us to grab image from a website, edit it and finally saved the image on webshots without asking for any user credentials.

Resize pictures but no editing
If you just want to resize your images for IM avatars or forum profiles, you may be more interested in online image resizing services like ImageCrop.com or Resize2Mail. They have standard size presets so the final picture is always of the exact dimensions.

Google Finance vs Yahoo Finance

Google Finance offers most of the features already offered by Yahoo Finance. It even offers some unique features, such as interactive charts and company-related blogs. But are they enough to dethrone Yahoo Finance, the most popular finance website ? Read this comparison GOOG vs YHOO

The obvious URL
yahoo.com/finance returns a 404 while google.com/finance takes you to Google Finance portal.
Yahoo should be smart here and redirect users to finance.yahoo.com.
When you type finance.google.com, Google redirects to finance.google.com/finance - Why that extra finance after the subdomain ?

Front Page
Google has no ads. If you have signed in with a Google account, you will see stock quotes and news related to your recent searches. These section remain hidden if you there's no search history.
Yahoo Finance front page has ads at acceptable locations. More information is available like currency exchange rates, mortgage rates and links to finance related websites arranged in categories.

Stock Quote Search
Yahoo Finance requires you to remember the exact ticker symbol. Though there's a Yahoo Symbol lookup table, I think it should be integrated with primary stock search. The Yahoo Stock Screener lets you find stocks based on criteria like industry, share prices and other data.

Google Finance is smart. If you enter name of a company, even in part, Google does a "I'm feeling luck" search and takes you to the associated Stock information page. If Google doesn't find the stock company, it shows the resuls from Companies and Funds for you to choose from.

Google Finance has an integrated screener though not as advanced as Yahoo. You can enter an industry like "Magazine" and Google shows a list of companies associated with the Magazine publishing industry.

Stock Charts and other Information
The Google Finance page for Adobe looks really ugly on my Widescreen notebook. The "Flash" stock chart is too huge and occupies more than half the width of the screen. Yahoo has a much cleaner interface and looks more professional.

Google uses lot of Ajax and Flash, you can see stock quotes between custom dates with refreshing your page (like GMail or Google Maps). Then there a previews of Company Executive pictures, Links to related companies (or competitors).

Yahoo offers a more traditional look, the stock related information like Company profile, Balance Sheet, etc are all neatly arranged in the sidebar which I think is a better approach that Google finance. If I am check Adobe Stock several times a day, would I be interested in seeing the picture of Bruce Chizen each time ?

Blogs and Forum Posts
Google shows related blog posts. It essentially searches for the company name using Google Blogsearch and displays the top three results. This is of little or no significance as the posts can be misleading. While looking at the Adobe stock page, I could see a blog post selling pirated Adobe software. This is bad example considering that typically high-income, well-educated adults visit Finance websites.

The forum posts (Google groups discussions) are relatively better since they are moderated by Google staff. So it becomes difficult to flame Google in these forums.

Conclusion
There is already news that Yahoo is revamping the Yahoo Finance portal with new information, multimedia, and style features. Yahoo plans to make stock charts more dynamic and will incorporate sound, motion and video in the site.

Google Finance portal will prevent Google visitors from going elsewhere. Google has definitely made a good start but the Google finance portal interface requires serious tweakiing. Teenagers and hardcore geeks are not the usual kind of people that visit Finance portals. Elderly people who are not very computer savvy consitute the bulk of traffic on Finance websites. Heavy use of Flash or AJAX may just turn them off.

Google Calendar vs Yahoo Calendar


Google Calendar web based service leaves the Google Building today but like recent Google launches, the service is either too slow or down most of the time due to heavy web traffic. Expect the service to stabilize in a day or two.

We had a similar experience during the public launch of Google Analytics, Google Base, Google Page Creator or the most recent Google Finance.

Lot of people have already written indepth reviews of Google Calendar. The Screenshots of Google Calendar have been available on TechCrunch much before the public launch.

The user interface of Google Calendar is sleek and impressive. But let's try to compare features of the most popular online calendar service - Yahoo Calendar with Google Calendar. To begin, we'll peform the most common calendar-related tasks using both the online calendar services:



Quickly add an event (like a meeting appointment or task reminder)
Google Calendar: Click a cell in any Calendar view (like Day, Week or Month) - a callout appears - just type the event name with time (optional) like "pick movie tickets 4pm" - Google automatically schedules an event at 4pm.


Yahoo has a more traditional interface with a quick add event box at the bottom of the calendar screen (picture above). Google approach is quicker and since it uses AJAX, the event is added immediately without a page reload as in Yahoo.

Sharing Calendars, XML Feeds
You can share either calendars with public or specific users identified by email addresses. Google does offer a iCal/XML feed that users can subscribe to in their RSS readers. Yahoo has not touched the XML territory yet though it lets you share calendars with a web interface.


Schedule a recurring event (like your son's birthday or parents' anniversary)
Both Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar offer a similar form when it comes to adding a general event. Yahoo lets you select the type of event like Birthday, Anniversary, Call, etc (that's how it shows those tiny favicons near the event name on the calendar). Second, Yahoo lets you schedule multiple reminders for the same event.


Yahoo shows the "Add Event" in one long page while Google Calendar offers a better design layout. But when it comes to features, Yahoo wins by a long margin here.

Setting events from the past or in future
Yahoo Calendar lets you add tasks or events since the past year until the next eight years. Google Calendar has no such restriction and lets you schedule events starting from 1st January, 1900 until any date in the future. Google Calendar Widgets are more easy to use and flexible than the Yahoo Calendar dropdown.

Navigation: Support for Keyboard Shortcuts
Google has nice intutive keyboard shortcuts like c for creating event, q for quick add, / for search (like Firefox) and Esc to switch to the main view. Yahoo Calendar has no keyboard shortcut support and the only way to navigate is with a mouse pointer.

Multiple Calendars
Google Calendar lets you create multiple calendars like one for your office, one for your family events and one more for scheduling parties among friends. Yahoo does not support multiple calendars yet.

Sending out Notification and Event Reminders
Both Google and Yahoo calendar support notifications by email and SMS. They support most cellular operators in the US and SMS may attract a fee depending upon the service provider.

Google Calendar has a great feature called Daily Agenda that sends you a reminder at 5am of all scheduled events on that particular day. Yahoo has a Daily Calendar Reminders feature that allows you to have an email sent to you summarizing the day's calendar events and items on your Task list.

We've seen Google Finance quickly grab marketshare from Yahoo Finance because of a more interactive interface. The same could be said about Google Calendar. Though both Yahoo and Google offer similar set of features, the interface of Google Calendar is miles ahead of Yahoo Calendar.

Since Google makes it very easy to import existing calendars from Yahoo calendar or Microsoft Outlook, expect lot of people to make a switch to Google Calendar once their servers are ready to take the load. Yahoo, better hurry up.

Installing software ? Let EULAlyzer read the license agreement for you


You agree to a EULA every time you install new software. But since EULA's contain lengthy and boring text in small fonts, most people skip reading them altogether. That's a risky option because if you aren't reading the license agreements, you have no idea what you could be agreeing to.

Well, there is an easy way to read and analyze license agreements. EULAlyzer helps you understand just what you're agreeing to and flags clauses that deserve special attention.

EULAlyzer Personal analyzes language of end user license agreements (EULAs) and flags "interesting" phrases. You can optionally save analyzed EULAs or submit them to Javacool's security center.

Be sure to use EULAlyzer during the installation process though, as EULAs (especially shady EULAs) aren't generally accessible after install.

When installing software, never just click past the license agreement. Pop it into EULAlyzer, and EULAlyze it!

Lycos Phone vs Skype vs Yahoo Messenger with Voice


Lycos today made a grand entry in the Internet telephony (VoIP) market with the launch of Lycos Phone - a software dialer that also has a Media player for playing streaming video and MP3 music.

Lycos is giving a free US telephone number to all Lycos Phone users. Other competitors like Yahoo and Skype charge upto $36 per year for similar service.

You can use the Lycos Phone if you are not residing in America. So your business card can have a US contact number irrespective of the country where you are located.

Unlike Skype or Yahoo, Lycos Phone provides free voice calls to landline or mobile phones when the user signs up for offers for credit cards or Netflix's DVD service.

Lycos Phone users who don't accept the offers will pay 1 cent a minute for domestic calls when they exhaust their initial 100 free minutes. Lycos Phone will feature banner ads within the phone interface.

Lycos Phone plans to add some new exclusive features like:

1. Free Voice Mail to e mail
2. Use your Lycos Phone US number to receive fax to your e mail from any part of the world.
3. Free video on demand and matured pay per view content

Lycos Phone uses technology from Axill Europe which has agreed to not license Globe7 to any other major portal, including Yahoo, Google, MSN and AOL.

Adobe Audition or Adobe SoundBooth CS3 ?

Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) and Adobe SoundBooth CS3 are both professional audio editing software. SoundBooth CS3, a brand new offering from Adobe, is available for $199 while Cool Edit Pro's descendant called Audition costs $399.

So whether you need to record voice-overs or edit music for your podcasts, Youtube video or screencasts, which of these audio tools is right for you ? (assuming you want something extra than what Audacity has to offer)

adobe audition 3.0

Adobe SoundBooth CS3 is primarily aimed at people without audio production background. SoundBooth can automatically detect and clean the background noises including hisses and hums from your sound recordings. The UI is simple with just the essential tools.

And like the auto heal feature in Photoshop, you can visually identify and remove unwanted noises. SoundBooth users can also download thousands of sound effects from the internet without leaving the software interface.

Adobe Audition is an high end editor for professionals who really understand audio. It has all the features of SoundBooth and more. While I am no audio expert, this page has a great overview of the various features of Audition.

Your current OS may limit your choices. Adobe Audition is available only for the Windows XP platform but it's new cousin (SoundBooth CS3) is supported on Mac as well Vista/XP platforms.

Audition is not on the same path as ImageReady or GoLive. Adobe Audition 3.0 is very much in the works though it is no longer part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3.

Resources: Download Adobe SoundBooth CS3 Datasheet, Podcasting with Adobe Audition

Flickr vs Picasa Web Albums: Where are tags, Photo notes & Communities

Picasa Web Albums service, which is Google's answer to Yahoo Flickr, has gone live today. Like other Google beta services, Picasa Web is open by invitation only.

We had a chance to try Picasa Web Albums and our first impression is that it is very inspired by Flickr but not anywhere near. Here's a first hand comparison of Picasa Web Albums with Flickr based on several parameters like prices, storage, ease of use, features, etc.

Storage Limit and Price for Pro Accounts
Flickr Pro charges $25 for uploading upto 2GB of pictures per month while Google charges the same price for uploading 6GB of photos per year. Therefore, Flickr provides 4 times more storage space than Google at the same price.

Storage Limit for Pro Accounts
For free accounts, Picasa users are limited to 250 MB of space while Flickr lets free users upload upto 20 MB per month. So the storage limit is roughly the same for both services. Also, there is no bandwidth limit in either of the servies.

Photo Uploading
Both services provide a web browser interface for uploading pictures. When it comes to software, Flickr has a very basic Flickr Uploader software while Google has integrated the photo uploader right in the Picasa software itself. However, Flickr provides other photo uploading options like Mobile Phones and email.

Tags and Descriptions
Unlike Flickr, Picasa Web has no support for tags. You can attach labels to individual images or an entire photo album in Picasa Photo software but that doesn't reflect in the web albums when you upload a photo. Both services allow you to add captions to pictures but Flickr automatically parses text and converts URLs into clickable hyperlinks.

Photo Notes
Flickr allows users to visually mark certain areas of the picture by drawing a marquee and attach a description and even a link to that area. For instance, in a group photo, you can mark your face and link it to your website. Picasa Web Albums have no such feature.

Photo Comments
Both services allow users to post comments on other pictures. In Flickr, you can also subscribe to your recent comments feed.

Picture Slideshows
Flickr creates photo slideshows using Flash while Picasa Web Slideshows are done in HTML and Javascript. Flickr Flash has more effect like zoomable thumbnails, dynamic hide-show features but Picasa Slideshows are more usable and easy to integrate in external websites.

Mark a Photo as favorite
Both services allow users to add any public picture to their favorite folder.

RSS Feeds
Both Picasa Web Albums and Flickr provide RSS feed for all photos from a user or selected album (or photoset). However, in Flickr you can subscribe to photos based on Tags.

Downloading Photos locally
Flickr allows download of individual photos while Picasa goes a step further and lets you download all pictures in a web album. However, Flickr provides various size options when you download a picture. We miss this in Picasa.

Support for Developers
Flickr exposes a nice API that has been used to develop some amazing web-apps like the Flickr Graph. Google Web Albums provides no API.

Support for Blogging
Flickr lets you directly publish a photo to a blog. You can do this from Picasa locally but not from the Web Album interface.

Where Google Picasa Web Album Wins:
Picasa provides an extremely easy program to upload photos online. You can visually select files and folders in Picasa, save them to the tray and upload all of them in one go. Picasa Slideshows are much easy to customize as they are done in HTML code.

Where Flickr Wins
Flicks is a more mature and robust application than Picasa Web Albums. Flickr supports tags and photo clusters which make the task of finding relevant photos so easy. Unlike Picasa, Flickr provides communities and photo pools where anyone can join and share related pictures. Flickr has an active support community and your Flickr related queries are answered almost instantly. Also, Flickr has an API for programmers.

Conclusion : Take the Flickr route. I would probably use Picasa Web Albums for storing picture backups but Flickr remains my favorite service until Google introduces tags, communities and more photo uploading options.

Zonelabs ZoneAlarm vs Windows Vista Firewall vs XP SP2

Similar to ZoneAlarm Firewall, the new Windows Vista Firewall filters both incoming and outgoing network traffic, meaning that it can be used to block external machines that are trying to connect to your Windows PC as well as locally installed software that is trying to communicate with the internet [phones home]

Though the underlying firewall code, called the Windows Filtering Platform, has been rewritten for Vista, the Vista Firewall is not much different from Windows Firewall included with Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 except the ability to block outgoing traffic which does not exist in Windows XP.



But think twice before putting that copy of ZoneAlarm in the trash bin once Vista arrives. Read the reasons that suggest ZoneLabs' free ZoneAlarm is much easier than the Vista or XP firewall.

Though Windows Vista Firewall can control which individual software programs can connect to the internet, there is no simple way to achieve it. You need to change your Local Security Policy Settings meaning that require a Vista administrator account. Also, the ability for the Windows Vista firewall to stop malicious activity both inbound and outbound will not be enabled by default.

Security experts recommend that if Vista's firewall remains as is, disable the Windows Vista firewall entirely and install a third-party firewall. Or enroll in the Microsoft OneCare service that automatically has two-way firewall protection enabled.

Even Zone Labs is feeling lucky and is looking forward to Vista's arrival because it is likely to further boost sales of the company's firewall products, which is what happened when Microsoft launched SP2 for Windows XP.

FeedBlitz Lost Over a Million RSS-to-EMail Subscribers Overnight

FeedBlitz, a service that lets you read blogs and RSS feeds like any other email message, lost over a million email subscribers in one day.

Just yesterday, Feedblitz website claimed to have around ~3.3 million email subscribers. (see screenshot)

feedblitz-yesterday

Today, that number has dropped by a million to around ~2.4 million email subscribers though the number of RSS feeds syndicated by FeedBlitz is fairly constant during the same period.

feedblitz-today

Wondering why this mass exodus ? Did FeedBlitz publishers switch en masse to FeedBurner email. The reason is quite amusing - it was all because of one spammer who was probably using Feedblitz to publish MFA websites and splogs.

The spammer had opened several accounts on FeedBlitz under different aliases and when FeedBlitz decided to delete his/her account, their circulation figures dropped immediately by a third.

It's interesting that spammers could easily abuse the Feedblitz system even though they have CAPTCHAS and email verification in place.

Create Timelines With Your Photos and Videos

AOL today launched an extremely cool web-based timeline maker software called circaVie that helps you define and build interactive timelines to represent events with pictures, videos and text captions.

Your friends can click on the individual pictures to learn more about the event. There's a horizontal scroller to help them easily navigate the timelines. Or they can manually type the date to jump to a specific section of the timeline.

create visual timeline online

To create your personal picture timeline with circaVie, all you need are a bunch of photographs related to the event - you upload each of the picture to the timeline, provide a text caption (optional) and the date when the event happened. That's it.

You can also link events on the timeline to external webpages and related videos to add more context to the events - for instance, you can generate timelines for biographies, iPod Video Ads, Harry Potter Book releases, History of Internet, Pregnancy Timeline, Web browser releases, and so on.

Since these photo timelines are done in Flash, they can be easily embedded in websites, blogs and wikis. A good visualization tool for educators, historians and everyone else.

How to Upload Videos to YouTube if Access to Website is Blocked

Richard, who works for a large Fortune 100 company, recently wrote on Facebook that he cannot upload screencast video clips to YouTube since the company he works for has blocked access to YouTube and other video sharing websites though the firewall.

upload youtube mobile phone One of the available options is to use your mobile phone for uploading videos on YouTube - just create a mobile profile on YouTube from a computer outside the organization's firewall and then email the video to YouTube as an MMS message.

The second more versatile option is the one-to-many Hey!Spread - this is an online service to help you upload a video clip to multiple video sharing websites in one go.

You upload the video to Hey!Spread servers and they in turn upload it to the various other video sites including YouTube, MySpace, PhotoBucket, MetaCafe, Google, Yahoo! video, DailyMotion, etc.

unblock youtube block

Chances are high that access to Hey!Spread is open in your company - they'll send you an email confirmation as soon as your video is uploaded successfully to the different sites.

To watch YouTube videos online in countries like Thailand, Brazil, Turkey or UAE where YouTube is banned on Government orders, try the workarounds explained in the following articles: (1) How to Access Blocked Websites (2) Unblock Access to MySpace or Facebook.

A Wall Projector for your iPod, Mobile phone or Digital Cameras

oio explay mobile projector
[Picture of a couple watching video clips from their mobile phone projected on the wall]

explay oio wall projectorImagine projecting pictures or video clips from your iPod or mobile phone on to the nearest wall. Or playing the PowerPoint presentation directly from your smartphone or PDA on the wall of the conference room without the bulky projector.


Explay, a company based in Israel, has developed a battery-operated projector called "oio" that looks like a USB thumb drive and can be used to display content from any mobile device including cell phones, digital camera, media player, video camcorders, etc.

Oio mobile projector is no vaporware, the device was recently demonstrated at a conference in California and Explay plans a commercial launch in 2008. No word on pricing yet.

So you are not limited to viewing those high resolution pictures on the tiny LCD screen of the mobile device, Oio will help you watch content on any surface like a wall, coffee table or even your bed.

The Problem with Advertising on Digg - Very Poor Conversion Rate

Digg, who enjoys all the privileges of a premium Adsense publisher, today dumped the Google Advertising program in favor of Microsoft who will now serve advertising to over 150 million eyeballs that hit Digg every month.

Kevin Rose and the wise Digg army are no fans of Microsoft. Infact, if you even submit a story on Digg highlighting some bug in MS-DOS of the early 90's, it's likely to reach the Digg front page in no time. Then why did Kevin switch from GOOG to MSFT?

digg google ads

[A search for Microsoft on Digg shows Google Ads related to Diabetes, Cholesterol and Air Valves]

Poor Conversion of CPC Ads:
I was listening to Tim Ferris of The Four Hour Week here and he said that his blog has been on the Digg home page atleast half a dozen times in less than a month. Whenever that would happen, he would see an avalanche of visitors coming to his website but the conversion ratio was negligible.

Tim felt that most Digg visitors were like 15 year old** Warcraft loving kids who came, who saw and then went away. On the other hand, if that same post was linked / recommended by some influential blogger like Robert Scoble, Tim felt much better as far as the conversion ratio was concerned.

Tim's observation may explain why advertisers may be shying away from placing CPC ads infront of the highly tech-savvy audience of Digg - they are not converting. [TechCrunch CPC figures]

Traffic from Search Engines:
It's a well-known fact that visitors who come via search engines convert best because they are in dire need of information and in that mode to buy products. Digg stories are placed well in organic search results, often at a higher position than the actual story, but the traffic that comes from search engines may not be converting well.

Why ? Because the search engine visitors are less likely to read the online ads on the Digg webpage - they are more inclined towards visiting the site that's linked from that Digg page. So the CPM ad impression may go waste.

Related: My experience with Digg Traffic

Lisa Barone and Todd Bishop wonder how Digg's users will react to the site's association with "evil" Microsoft.

**According to Federated Media, Digg readership is 94% male, 39% publish their own blog, 52% are IT professionals and most of them are in the 18-39 age group.

The Inbox Zero Presentation at Google by Merlin Mann

Getting things done and productivity guru Merlin Mann recently delivered a presentation on dealing with email overload at the Mountain View campus of Google.

The video recording of the entire talk is now up on Google Video. You can also download the presentation slides here. Anyone who gets more than a dozen emails a day should watch this Inbox Zero video.

Add Tags to Your Outlook Email Messages, Just Like GMail Labels

gmail tags in outlookGmail use the term "Labels" while del.icio.us, YouTube and other web 2.0 websites prefer to say "tags" but the basic idea is same - tags (or labels or categories) make it easy for you to filter or search content.

Like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, Microsoft Outlook uses the concept of folders to organize email messages - the problem with the folder approach is that an email message, task or contact can be stored only in one folder at a time unlike Gmail where you can place an email into any number of virtual folders

If you are missing tags in Outlook, get Taglocity. It's a Microsoft Outlook add-in that adds tagging feature to your Outlook interface. You can assign multiple tags to your emails messages and quickly filter content in folders based on tag names.

Similar to del.icio.us, you can create a tag cloud of your email messages where the varying font sizes help you visualize the number of messages under that tag.

Taglocity is available for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 on Windows XP and Windows Vista. There is a free version of Taglocity for Personal Use though it imposes a limit on the number of tags.



SONY ERICSSON W700i MOBILE


Your daily life Walkman® phone

Take your music wherever you go. Just press the Walkman® key to start the music player, choose your favourite song or playlist and enjoy. Getting your music into your phone is easy – the W700i comes with Disc2Phone music management software. Move the music from your CDs. Quick and easy.

Easy imaging

The W700i is also a 2 megapixel digital camera with video recording capability. Save your images in the W700i image gallery or move them to a PC. Share what you see with your friends - send a picture and video message (MMS).

Room for music

The W700i has plenty of storage room for your favourite music. The 256MB Memory Stick™ PRO Duo you'll find included in the box gives you capacity for up to 64 songs. And when you need to store more, you have up to 4GB Memory Stick™ PRO Duo media available in stores.

Enhance with accessories

A quality headset is included in the phone kit. If you prefer your favourite old stereo headphones: No worries. Just plug them in. Enhance further with accessories. Experience wireless freedom with a Bluetooth™ headset, share your music via portable or desktop speakers, or connect your W700i Walkman® phone to your home stereo with a Music Cable MMC-60.

[W700]

W700i


Your music in your phone — Walkman® phone
Have your music with you wherever you are. One press on the music button to start your music player, then choose your song or playlist and enjoy. Getting your music into your mobile is easy – the W700i comes with music management software. Move your favourite songs to your mobile. Quick and easy.

In addition, you have a 2-megapixel camera for quality images and video recording when you want to catch some action.

Screen
  • 262,144-colour TFT
  • 176x220 pixel
Sound
  • Music tones (MP3/AAC)
  • Polyphonic Sound 40 voices
Memory
  • Memory Stick Duo™ support
  • Memory Stick PRO Duo™ support
  • Phone memory 34MB*

*Actual free memory may vary due to phone pre-configuration.

Networks

  • GSM 900
  • GSM 1800
  • GSM 1900

Available colours

  • Titanium Gold

Size

  • 100 x 46 x 20.5 mm
  • 3.9 x 1.8 x .8 inches

Weight

  • 99 g
  • 3.5 oz

Key features
  • MP3 and AAC format support
  • 2-megapixel camera
  • 34MB phone memory + 256MB Memory Stick PRO Duo™ included
  • FM radio
  • Walkman® music player

Features

Imaging
  • 4x digital zoom
  • Camera 2 megapixel
  • Camera integrated
  • Photo light
  • Picture wallpaper
  • SVG Tiny 1.1
  • Video clip
  • Video record
  • Video streaming
  • VideoDJ™
  • Viewfinder display
  • Wallpaper animation
Messaging
  • Email
  • MMS (Multimedia messaging)
  • Predictive text input
  • SMS long (Text messaging)
  • Sound recorder
Entertainment
  • FM radio
  • Games embedded
  • Java
  • Media player
  • Mega Bass™ (trademark of Sony Corporation)
  • Music tones (MP3/AAC)
  • MusicDJ™
  • PlayNow™
  • Flight mode
  • Polyphonic ringtones
Connectivity
  • Bluetooth™ technology
  • Fast port
  • GPRS
  • Infrared
  • Synchronization PC
  • USB mass storage
  • USB support
Internet
  • Modem
  • WAP 1.2.1
  • WAP 2.0 XHTML
Controls
  • Camera button
  • Joystick
  • Vibrating alert
Organiser
  • Alarm clock
  • Business card exchange
  • Calculator
  • Calendar
  • Conference calls
  • Contacts
  • File manager
  • Memory Stick
  • Notes
  • PIM Sync
  • Phone book
  • Speakerphone
  • Stopwatch
  • Tasks
  • Timer
10437

Performance (dependent on network and phone usage)

Networks

Talk time (up to)

Standby time (up to)

Video call (up to)

GSM 900 9 hours 0 min 400 hours 0 min -
GSM 1800 9 hours 0 min 400 hours 0 min -
GSM 1900 9 hours 0 min 400 hours 0 min -

Battery performance may vary depending on network and phone usage.

General Network GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
Announced 2006, April
Status Available
Size Dimensions 100 x 46 x 20.5 mm
Weight 99 g
Display Type TFT, 256K colors
Size 176 x 220 pixels, 28 x 35 mm

- Wallpapers, screensavers
Ringtones Type Polyphonic (40 channels), MP3
Customization Composer, download
Vibration Yes
Memory Phonebook 500 x 20 fields, Photo call
Call records 30 received, dialed and missed calls
Card slot Memory Stick Duo Pro

- 34 MB shared memory
Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD Yes
EDGE No
3G No
WLAN No
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0
Infrared port Yes
USB Yes, v2.0
Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML
Games Yes + downloadable
Colors Titanium Gold
Camera 2 MP, 1632x1224 pixels, video, flash

- MP3/AAC player, up to 30h playback if the phone is switched off
- Video player
- Java MIDP 2.0
- T9
- FM radio with RDS
- Image viewer
- Picture editor
- Organiser
- Voice memo
- SyncML
- Built-in handsfree
Battery
Standard battery, Li-Ion
Stand-by Up to 400 h
Talk time Up to 9 h


Google

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