You may have already seen this video (it's from mid-August) on resizing images in a more content-aware way: called "seam carving". If not, take a look.
I've shown that video to a few people over the last couple of weeks and nearly every one of them asked where they could get software to do that. The package that everyone points to is the GIMP plugin "liquid resize".
The only problem with pointing people over to that plugin is that it's not exactly obvious that it shows up under the "Layer" menu in GIMP. Similarly non-obvious is exactly how to use it to get the best results.
If you just fire away, you don't get the benefits of preserving people's faces, for example. Instead, you get a distorted image that's little better than if you had just resized it and ignored the proportions.
Oh, and, for the record, while GIMP is typically run on Linux, you CAN run it on Windows as well. Just make sure you run the GTK installer before the GIMP installer (both on the site).
If you don't like the results that the GIMP plugin gives you, take a look at this other implementation of the idea or wait for Photoshop to integrate it (they hired the guy from the video).
In my new job, I'm doing some work with .NET in C# and VB.NET for both console apps and ASP.NET. While you can do it without Visual Studio, I'm happy that the new office bought a copy of Visual Studio for me. However, learning the tools works better when you can have a copy at home too, but I'm not really thrilled with paying the full price for VS.NET 2005. So, I was happy to see that they're offering a free copy of VS.NET 2005 Standard if you watch 3 webcasts on learning ASP.NET. And, they have a track for learning it if you already know PHP, which meant that there were actually 3 of them that were worth watching for me. The offer expires June 30, 2006, so you've got a few weeks to sqeeze in the webcasts and get your copy too.
Those 3D software boxes and ebook covers are everywhere and with good reason. They really help people envision your digital object as being more "real". What is unreal is the money they are asking for the services to make them as well as the software dedicated to the task. If you've got Photoshop and a few minutes, you're set and I whipped up a screencast showing just how easy it is.
I couple of weeks ago, Alex Barnett was listing the things that he considered requirements for a good RSS reader. It appeared to me that he'd overlooked what I use as my solution: Thunderbird, a dedicated IMAP account and my OPML file run through some custom scripts (though there are plenty of RSS to email services as well). He asked if I could do a quick screencast, showing a little more about how I work. So, a couple of days ago, I did just that. Then I went to upload it to Ourmedia.org (since 27MB is a bandwidth killer that I don't want to run through this site). However, 3 days later, it's still telling me to be patient to get the link. So, in the mean time, I'm putting up a Bittorrent of the video. It's in WMV format.
the WMV torrent file and more information on the torrent as well as how to install Bittorrent can be found here
I've been looking for background music to build intro's, credits and transitions for podcasts and screencasts (while I wait for UPS to deliver my microphone). Here are a few links to free MP3 or WAV loops and snippets of music for use in podcasts and screencasts.
For better or worse, I'm the guy who runs things here. I'm a web consultant, software developer, writer and geek from Minneapolis, MN. This site is a fairly wide cross-section of the things I'm interested in and enjoy writing about.
Oh, and if you happen to be looking for hosting for your Subversion repositories or just web hosting in general, take a look at Dreamhost. It's what I use for Subversion and your signup helps me out.
