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The Paletta Mansion, City of Burlington, Ontario Canada
This photo was taken one early morning after a winter snowfall. The photo itself was taken at 28mm focal length, ISO 200 at 1/125th of a second. The former estate mansion now owned by the City of Burlington makes a wonderful site for a morning stole, banquet or wedding. Over looking Lake Ontario the site is a must visit for the nature buff or photographer.
Pat Martin
Abbey Graphics Photography
Have you ever wonder what your internet speed you are getting from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Have you ever wanted to compare the speeds you are getting with other in your neighborhood or around the world. Well speedtest.net is the site we have been using for a years now. There are many of these sites on the net and I find them quite useful. If you go to Speed Test you will be greeted with a map of North America and a number of servers you can choose from. Pick a server and Speed Test will conduct and upload and download and then save you results. You can come back at different times and compare you results. The site also provides top five bandwidth countries and ISPs. You can compare you results with other ISPs and other countries around the world. This is a very useful site and should be in you bookmarks at all times.
Pat Martin
www.abbeygraphics.com
Internet at Your Finger Tips
Nokia N800 NSeries Internet Tablet
The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet exemplifies the epitome of technology,
style and portability. The N800 easily connects to the Internet via
Wi-Fi or compatible cellular phone. Enjoy the Internet on a portable
size tablet with a high-resolution widescreen display in the palm of
your hand. Effortlessly make Internet Phone calls, check & send
e-mail, instant message and take advantage of GPS capabilities with the
Nokia N800. You can also access Internet media at home or on-the-go
with the Nokia N800's high quality stereo audio.
The Nokia N800 NSeries Internet Tablet frees you from your desk and bulky laptop and places the World Wide Web and much more in the palm of your hand. The N800 is the ideal tool if you're always on-the-go and need to stay connected. Once you use the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, you'll never leave home without it.
We have been using a N800 for approximately 4 months now. In my review I will draw from my own experience with the N800. With retailers such as Tiger Direct for around $200 Dollar the device is a wonderful purchase. The introduction of the new N810 model makes the N800 a no brain purchase. It features a (rumored, faster 320 Mhz ) TI CPU, two SD slots, 128 MB RAM, 256 MB flash storage, 4.1" 800x480 touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth, 3.5mm headphones jack and mini-USB port. The device runs under the Internet Tablet OS 2007 a Linux based operating system. This allows one to install 3rd Party software such as SKYPE to make the uses of the device even more vast. The Screen is beautiful and allows showing photos at high resolutions. The video play back is sub par but I don't use it the device as a video player. The WIFI connection is through 802.11B as the range seems to be well above average.
The device also includes bluetooth for connection to devices such as cellular phones.
Other goodies include VoIP support, instant messaging, an RSS news reader, a media player, and dual expansion slots. I have installed two SD memory cards in our device, giving ample store for other applications and photos. The online community for the device is active and application are being developed on a regular basis. The OS for the new N810 is the same as the N800 so development should continue into the future. For more in depth of the N800 visit CNET's review at this link.
IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista.
It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.
IrfanView is trying to create new and/or interesting features in its own way, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole "creativity" is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example: XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 7+ years).
IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support.
One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support.
The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support.
Visit the IfranView Website Here
This Photo was take this Fall at the Bronte Creek Provincial Park in Oakville Ontario. We love the colours in the shot. The twisting of the tree also leads the eye from the bottom corner of the picture though the middle to the top of the image. The photo was taken at 50mm, f6.3 at 200 ISO
This is now segment for Abbeyspotlight and for us at AbbeyGraphics. We have decided to spotlight a free file of the week. There are so many great developers out there for the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms producing great freeware products that we thought we would take a few minutes and blog about them each week. Our first file is Auslogics Disk Defrag from the developers at Auslogics Software Pty Ltd located in Sydney New South Wales, Australia. Auslogics makes a whole suite of software but their disk defrag too is worth a try. The requirements to run the product are :
Auslogics Says :
Disk fragmentation leads to system slowdowns, PC crashes, slow startup and shutdown and sometimes to system failures. Auslogics Disk Defrag is designed for fast optimization of today's modern hard disks. Get the maximum performance out of your expensive hardware investments.
Download you copy of Auslogics Disk Defrag HERE
This is a great website we located while surfing the net. Its a site that can be helpful to the novice or advanced amatuer photographer who does not want to invest heavily in photo editing software or just wants to make a quick edit a photo online.
You can upload a photo from your computer to the Picnik site and autofix, rotate, crop, resize, adjust exposure, adjust colour, fix redeye and sharpen you image is seconds. No registrations is nessessary although a pay account is available to enable more features. Once you have you image the way you like you can safe it back you desktop and continue on. This is a great site for those of us with small hard drives or slower computer that do not wish to run photo editing software locally. Picnik also works with other online sites such as Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and Webshots.
GIVE PICNIK A Try for Free Today
TIVO SERVICE IS 
NOW AVAILABLE IN CANADA
Recently TIVO service has become available in Canada.
What is TIVO ?
With a TiVo DVR, you can record one show
while you watch another. You can even pause
live TV and quickly rewind or fast-forward
through the dull parts.
Your TiVo DVR can record an entire season
of a TV series with a single click. If the network
moves a show, the TiVo Season Pass™ feature automatically changes course and records it.
We recently purchased a TIVO Series 2 unit here at Abbey Graphics to try out the new service. After about a month of using our new TIVO box we are quite impressed with its features and ease of use. It is a new way of watching TV. You can select your favourite shows, have TIVO record them and watch them when you want to. You can fast forward, rewind and pause the shows as you are watching them. Setup of the TIVO box with our COGECO TV service was a snap ! We plugged in to our current broadband internet service and TIVO did all the rest. The series 2 can record one digital and one analogue show at a time and can save up to 80hrs of shows on its internal hard drive. The unit being part of our home network allows transfer of shows from the TIVO box to our home PC or MAC. Once there the show can be burned onto DVD-R for safe keeping. For a more in depth review see this link over at Engaget.com.
TIVO Series Two units can be purchased in Canada at the following retailers for $199.00 for the basic model.
Best Buy Future Shop The Brick London Drugs
This shot was taken on the shores of Lake Ontario after a winter snow fall. Not only does this shot capture the feeling of the cold winter season but the shore line crossing the photo from the bottom left to top right draws the eye across the entire shot. To see more shot visit out Flickr.com account at www.patio3900.com
Pat
Abbey Graphics Photography
This was a shot that was taken last week at Lion's Valley Park in the north part of Oakville. I like the shot because of the shadows. They lead the eye from the bottom of the shot right up to the center. The shot was take with a 70-300mm lens, ISO 100 in portrait mode. Although Lion's Valley is closed to vehicle traffic this time of year. The walk down to the creek is well worth it..
P. Martin , Abbey Graphics Photography
www,abbeygraphics.com
