Freeware: Free Image Converter

As requested, I downloaded a piece of freeware called Free Image Converter. It's less than half a megabyte so trialing this software won't be risky.

This program allows you to re-size photos in batches, as opposed to the time-consuming effort of having to re-size each photo one by one in programs such as Photoshop or Windows Picture Editor. You simply save all of the photos you wish to re-size, open the program, select the folder which contains the images, choose the desired image size and file name, select the target folder and click convert.

This program is actually really helpful if you have taken alot of high-quality images (normal shots on a Digital SLR for example, average around 2-4Mbs) and you need to re-size them to around 40-60KB's to send online or burn onto a CD.

I think the thing with these freeware applications, specifically the ones to do with photo imaging and editing, is that they only offer one real main function as opposed to the all-encompassing Adobe Photoshop. But hey, it's free so you can't complain.

News Report

Here is our news report we did. There were no survivors. Also I went bananas with the sound editing. IMovie is fun.
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-332399

Sketchcast

This program is easy to use but it's pretty pointless. It's just like Microsoft Paint but less functions.

Made for the Net:3 Short Films

#1



This is the best example of how effective and wide-reaching an independently-produced and internet-delivered video can be. Footage featuring the "Free Hugs" campaign, started by an Australian man named Juan Mann, became world famous back in 2006 when it became the music video for the song "All the Same" by Australian band Sick Pupies. First uploaded onto the internet via YouTube, it has become the most watched video of all time (emassing nearly 50 millions plays since) on the world's biggest video-sharing site. Not only did it spark the "Free Hugs" campaign as a social movement worldwide, it also boosted the career of Sick Puppies to worldwide recognition but like all things good, it had to come an end. Maybe proving that the band wasn't very good at all. Maybe that last sentence was biased. Moral of story: upload a cool video with your band's music and pray to a higher power (or the internet) that it becomes viral.

#2

The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

The style of "time-lapse" video (images captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back, thus appearing faster) has been overdone countless times in the internet age, but this particular short clip has a fresh take. It's basically a film of a guy who has taken one photo everyday for a 365 days whilst on his voyage through China (with the majority of travel taking place on foot) and like alot of human time-lapse video, you see him change from a day to day basis and in the process grow an awesome beard. What makes this cool is that every single shot has the location of where it's taken, from "middle of NOWHERE" to "36000 feet above sea level" along with the number of km's he has travelled. In reality, as cool as this short film is, the only place for it to be exhibited is on the Internet via video-sharing sites such as Vimeo and YouTube.

#3



These types of "fan-edits/fan films" are also becoming increasingly common nowadays. The premise is that the original content (i.e a music video or film clip) is re-edited and/or re-interpreted to give it a new meaning, most of the time becoming satirical. Usually these type of films cater to a "niche market" and only appeal to those within the same market but such fan edits/films like this one appeal to a widestream media-conscious audience. Entitled "Hitler's Reaction to Taylor Swift Winning Best Female Video at VMA's-Worse than Kanye", the video is a excerpt of the 2004 German film "Downfall" (about Hitler's last days) which has had its subtitles edited in order to make it seem that Hitler is furious about Taylor Swift winning the award over Beyonce. Perhaps the clip's strongest point is it's timeliness due to its reaction with current events, something that has been a benefit of the internet: to constantly produce timely content.

Google Map Is The New Black.

View The Park Benches Me and Girls have Sat On. in a larger map




A personalized map of Park Benches that have played an important part of my teenage years.

Personas: Nick Cave & Me

This thing is kinda cool. It's looks smooth. I like smooth. I've haven't done much in my life since it never found anything directly related to me. My name only came up in 10 fields...with a big bar on "illegal".



When Persona goes to work, it searches the internet for things related to your name, or in this case, Nick Cave. I don't have a full understanding of what Persona's aim is but I like this little intro (to a interview I suspect) it found: "From dark age to middle age, Nick Cave is such a far cry from the blood-spilling junkie of rock legend that these days you're likely to encounter..."
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Here's also one of a guy you might know:



The program can be accessed from here:
http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html