I have a webcam which I never thought was bad but whenever I video-chat with anyone they always say it’s grainy and the picture is not very good.  So, I was planning on getting a new one and was wondering what to look for.  Is expensive always better?

Great questions!  There are two major concerns with a webcam (other than price) – Frames and Resolution.  However, before you think about buying something new, consider the following options.

Connection Speed and other animals

Although I’d love to tell you that getting a new webcam would do the trick, there are other issues that you should understand.  I found a great resource here with some very technical details.  However, before you dive into that, I would suggest trying the following:

1. Make sure your camera plugs into your computer directly (and not through a hub).  You don’t want any other devices to share your potential speed.
2. Remember that Skype video quality will be better after a few minutes of a call, so don’t expect the best quality when you first connect.
3. Do a speed test of your connection at Speed.io.  A slow connection will make all of your webcam purchasing totally pointless…

If all that turned out fine, then on to the techie gooey details…

Frames

I guess it’s not much of a secret.  The more frames you have, the more times you get to see the image, therefore the smoother the result.  The human eye does not process images like a video camera, so we don’t have a “frame rate” for our eyes.  However, just to give you a point of reference, at the movies, we enjoy 25 frames per second (fps), while on TV it is more often around 30 fps.

In the interest of completeness, I should add that the human eye makes all of this a bit complicated by adding a twist: a blurred image at a slower frame rate can look the same as a sharp image at a higher frame rate.  This isn’t terribly important, unless you are planning to webcast from a moving car, but it’s worth knowing that the subject isn’t quite as simple as it sounds.

My theory, when it comes to webcams, is that you want to stream video, so you’re looking for 30fps.  The good news?  Nearly all camera’s these days, over 10 dollars, have an acceptable frame rate.  All you have to do is know that frame rate exists and watch out for frame rates (if listed) under 30fps.

Resolution

Resolution is the number of pixels per inch.  What is a pixel?

A decent zoom	A crazy zoom

Do you see the little tiny red dot in my crazy zoom?  That is a pixel.  In a way, it’s just a piece of color information.  Make it red (like in my example) and it causes a tiny defect in the image.  The more pixels you have per inch of space, the more information is there for a computer to display.

72 pixels per inch	5 pixels per inch

So what kind of resolution should you buy?

Here are the options (as of the date of this post) on CNET.com.  352×288 stinks.  1280×960 rocks.

The thing to remember is that the resolution is simply how good the image taken could be.  Therefore a really, really cheap webcam that can pump out 1280×960 may not be the best choice.

Also, watch out for “effective resolution”.  Sometimes a low resolution camera will tout itself as a better product by saying that with software, which they include, you can increase the resolution from the standard provided by the lens.  My personal advice would be – try to find a decently priced camera, with good resolution out of the box.

Most internet connections cannot support the highest resolutions of today’s webcams.  However, getting a better top end may improve performance around 800×600 (where most people end up streaming).

Conclusion

I hope this helps.  To summarize, you need to look for a frame rate near 30fps, although you might only stream at 800×600 – consider a higher resolution and finally, remember to check your connection speed.  If you follow those basic guidelines, you’ll be fine with a mid-range webcam (at this moment between 30 and 60 USD).

Good luck!

~ab

Filter one – Star messages that are confirmations of orders.

When I order something online, I often star confirmation messages of pending deliveries for quick reference.   I’ve had about 99% accuracy with this search:

((confirmation OR Thank you) and order)

Give it a try.  Put that same search in your search bar in Gmail.

Did it work?  The results should pretty much just be order confirmations… Click on to create your own filter with the same query.  Put the terms in the “Has the words” section, as shown below and click next step.

Check the box “Star It” as shown below, or you could add a new label for your orders.

Finally, click “create filter”.  In my case, I didn’t want to apply this to previous conversations, only new ones, so I didn’t check the box next to “Also apply filter to ### conversations below”

Filter 2 – Travel Itineraries

I travel quite a bit and my itineraries end up getting lost in a sea of incoming email.  I call them out with this query:

(Itinerary and confirmation) –unsubscribe

You might be wondering why I include the –unsubscribe.  This is to remove emails from vendors who are trying to sell me travel software (that can track itineraries and confirmations and therefore appear in my results).  Who needs a piece of software when I can make Gmail do it?

The setup for this one is similar.  Follow the steps above, but in the first screen put:

You could also have put unsubscribe in the “doesn’t have” field (without the “-“) and it has the same effect.

In this case, you might want to include a new label, creating a folder for all your travel plans.

Filter 3 – Work Emails need their own space.

This one is going to need to be customized, but it’s still a goodie.  I send most of my mail to the same place.  However, personal mixed with professional else gets a bit tiresome (and confusing).  Luckily, there is a simple solution.  A domain specific filter.  This will put email from a specific domain (like “gmail.com”) in a special folder.

Create a new filter and try this:

By including the @justanasterisk.com in your “From” field, you filter only the messages sent by that domain.  In the next screen you can apply a new label and save your changes.

I hope that these little filter tricks have either given you some new tools or some food for thought.  Let me know if you have any filter tricks in the comments.  I’d love to hear them!

~ab

Thanks for reading!  As always, you can email post suggestions to ab@justanasterisk.com or posts@justanasterisk.com

~ab

Despite my mistake, I still want to go into the anatomy of a domain.  I want to try convince you that (no matter who you are) you can have your own web domain.  You can have your emails go to me@bobsagget.me or me@JAAismyfavoriteblog.com.  It’s not hard, nor should it be only done by professionals.  If you want a weekend project, and don’t mind reading a little bit, you too can have your own space on the fantastic interweb…  I should point out that this isn’t entirely free.   However, for less than price of 3 lattes, we can get you up and running.

Step 1:  Plant a flag to make your claim

The web is comprised of domains.  Each domain points to a specific location (in fact a server) where the web page(s) are stored.  Google.com is a domain.  Justanasterisk.com is a domain.  When a domain name is created, the name is passed across the world (very quickly), so people in dubai can log into the same site, with the same name, even though their server is not necessarily connected directly to yours…

To get your own domain, go to this site.  Whoooooa you say – What are google apps???

What if I were to tell you that an email address @gmail.com is for sissies?  You can use Gmail (which I love, as I think we’ve established from my previous posts) but you don’t have to work with the masses.  You can access it from the lofty heights of your own internet ivory tower! Moreover, Google calendar and docs are just part of the deal!

Let’s take an example:  I registered the domain justanasterisk.com.  Then I registered for Google Apps.  Now when someone emails ab@justanasterisk.com, THAT is my Gmail address.  Pretty cool eh?  To get started go the link.

When you get there, click on get a domain from Google tab and search for the name you want.  Hopefully, one of the names (or a variation proposed by the system) will be something you think you’d like to live with.  Notice that you’ll be setup with Google services for free! (see the box in red)  From here continue to registration.

On the next screen throw in your information (this domain name is going to be legally registered to you after all).  When you’re ready to pay, Google will send you to their checkout, where you can put in a credit card and register officially.  If everything goes well, you should see a picture like the one below.  Click on the link “Return to Google Apps”.

Now you are a proud domain owner!!!  Congrats.  Let’s get it setup as your home.

Step 2:  Setup Google Apps

The first thing you’ll have to do is setup an administrator account for your Google world.  This is just the username for the main account (you get 50 accounts for free), so don’t worry.  It doesn’t have to be your final choice of email address.

When you’re ready, continue with the setup.  In the following Google is going to walk you through your new site.  I recommend using their guide to get you started, but remember – you’ve done the hardest part.  From here on in, you’re just icing the cake.

Step 3:  Customize the crap out of your internet home

The coolest part of having a custom domain is that you can add sub-domains.  With your new domain, if you get it from Google, you can get all of this done for you.  Straight from the first second,  mail.yourdomain.com should lead to your email and docs.yourdomain.com should lead to your google docs.  Browse through your dashboard to see what else is available.  For some, this may be the end of the line.  However, if you’re feeling particularly nerdy, I suggest reading Gina Trapani’s Lifehacker post called “Trick Out Google Apps for your Domain” which can be found here.

Remember that once you’re setup, you have all the same features you had when you used Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs.  The only difference is that you’re now your own brand!  Well done!

Feel free to ping me with any questions in the comments.

~ab

Obviously, I’m saying DON’T send money to people like this.  We can break down the letter, but these people are not nice.  They steal… Now on to the ridicule :)

From: Rev.David Johnson

Right off the bat, this guy is a Reverend.  How could a man of god ever be bad?  He obviously isn’t aware that Reverend is an honorific not a title (details, details).. Very impressive though.  I’m listening now.

JOHNSON ENGINEERING COMPANY,
26, V-Island Road,
Mohamed 5 Avenue,
Tйtouan-Morocco

And an Engineer?  Both brains and faith – the whole package.  With such credentials, the address must be legit! (it’s not, i checked)

Dear Friend,

I am Rev.David Johnson from Canada, I have been an international contractor that
collects contract from Big Companies and countries, I got involved in one
contract in Morocco which my payment was refused, I was down and almost lose
hope.

And a Canadian??? Do people like this even exist?  He’s a Canadian reverend who seems to have an engineering company that works with “Big Companies and countries”.  I can feel myself reaching for my wallet…  These Canadians sure do have awful grammar…

After 2 years of this contract, I later talked to God to assist me in getting
this money. I made a vow to benefit someone with the sum of Nine hundred
thousand United State Dollars (USD $900,000) draft payment if my payment could
be approved and to my surprise I was called upon by the Morocco Government
sometimes last month that my contract file have been looked into and it is ready
for payment.I never believed it until I was advised by my Pastor and later moved
down to Morocco and to my unbelievable surprise I was paid this money.

So one man of God, asks the big man (or woman) for a favor and sure enough, he delivers.  Moreover, man of God 2 (the pastor) lets man of God 1 (the reverend) know what’s going on.  So things worked out just fine… or did they?

Due to my pledge to God I have agreed to show the person that i will be sending
the Nine hundred thousand United State Dollars (USD $900,000) through ballot
system on the internet which happened to be your email so you are lucky. What
you have to do now is to get in touch with my secretary Mr Robert Dennis and
instruct him on how to send your USD $900,000 Bank draft to you.

Now we have a third player in the story (is he a man of God?) who will be my contact, now that I’ve been chosen in a completely random lottery (lucky, lucky me).  I particularly like the “Nine” rather than “nine” and the fact that it’s not 1 million – because that would just be silly…

BELOW IS THE CONTACT OF MY SECRETARY

Mr Robert Dennis
Office Phone  :
E-mail address:

I’ve removed the email address and phone of this guy.  Needless to say, it was the wrong number of digits to be ANY country’s number… and were you really going to call…?

Send to my secretary your contact address and telephone number,let him make
arrangement for the shipment of your draft to your doorstep and also you can
give him a call to confirm your address.What I want you to believe now is that
this is the opportunity which God have promised you this year so it is better
you have it in time before it goes again from you so contact my secretary in
time.And for your information presently i am in the United Kingdom for another
contract so i want you to go into prayer with me for the success of this
contract.

The end is the best part: “What I want you to believe now is that this is the opportunity that God have promised you this year”.   Invoke God and make it an issue of MY faith… THEN tell me that you are in the United Kingdom working on another contract – Very respectable.  Oh and you want me to join you in prayer for your next contract.  Sounds like a plan.  Should I add a part about funds needing to be transferred by a guy you spam via email or will you put that in this time?

With Best Regards,
Rev.David Johnson.

Well it’s over, but don’t worry!  I’m sure there will be another one soon enough.

Thanks for reliving the fun with me. 

~ab

The good news, my brothers and sisters, is that there are other ways to send files. These services will reduce the scoldings while even providing some additional services that you probably hadn’t considered. Major disclaimer note: If you are using this for work, your company may have security concerns about using outside services. Be very careful not to violate any security policies!

My favorite file sending service
Perfectly named yousendit.com does one thing – you upload a file (100MB or less on a free account), you say who you are and who you want to send it to and the site sends a link for download. Files are available for several days, after which they are securely deleted.

Runner up: usend.io
This one gets the award for brevity: there are two fields – file and email(s). The first is for the filename and the second for a list of email addresses. This service keeps the files for quite a while and is based on the file-sharing service drop.io.

Also great!
If your file is larger than 100MB, it’s time for the big guns:
TransferBigFiles.com is the least pretty of the bunch, but with a 2GB limit (that’s ~2000MB), you’ll be able to send some very large files.

Hopefully, this is a quick fix for your emailing woes (kurt).

~ab

According to Wikipedia, “Gmail launched on 1 April 2004 as an invitation-only beta release and became available to the general public on 7 February 2007″ (source). I have used Gmail since 11/2005 (not to toot my own horn or anything) and I’ve consistently been amazed with all of the features (often unheralded) from Google. Google has their own page devoted to why you can use Gmail (here), and others have written good reviews (joke), but as always, I’m going to try to provide you with ways to use Gmail better!

Note: To spice up these articles, I’m going to refer to a few Google “labs” features, so you’ll need to activate these features individually in your Gmail account. You can access labs from your settings menu (top right) on the tab labs.

Search better…Boolean terms and saved searches

You’ve probably used Gmail’s search feature before. It is easy and quick, finding emails by keyword exactly in the same way as Google.com. Using the “more search options” feature makes searching even easier and allows you to specify exact criteria. However, what you may not know is that the standard search bar has hidden power. Actually, it’s not really hidden, Google is very open about it…. but unless your first thought when you search is “boolean operator”, perhaps a little more detail is needed?

For our purposes, the relevant Boolean operators are “AND”, “OR”. It turns out that George Boole wanted to define relationships between objects mathematically and created logic. His brilliant ideas have become part of search… To receive results with both “cats” and “dogs” type “cats AND dogs“. To receive either results about “cats” or “dogs”, type “cats OR dogs“. Not rocket science so far, but what if you combine the two? You could search for either references to “fish” or references to both “cats” and “dogs” by typing “fish OR (cats AND dogs)“. Get it?  Note: the capital letters are REQUIRED for these operators to work correctly (as far as I can tell).

Finally, you can remove terms that are messing up your results with “-“. For example, let’s say that I search for “bank” and “new york” because I need to find a specific email for my finances. My Chase bank balances (which I always seem to forget to delete) hog all of the results, something in the order of a few thousand. How can I see results without any reference to Chase? Add “-Chase” to my search terms and all Chase results will be ommited.

Other interesting operators to help you search:
Has:Attachment = only show me emails with attachments
label:mylabel = filter to show only mylabel emails
is:unread or is:read = read or unread
is:starred = only starred
from: and to: = specify the sender or recipient

This is only a sampling of the possible operators. For a full list go to this help page from Google.

You might be thinking that this is great, but more than a bit labor intensive. Agreed! Saved searches are the final piece of the puzzle. Google labs has enabled a feature that allows you to save any search for later use. A simple link will bring up your search results again (including all new additions). I have one for unread mail (using “is:unread“), one for pdf files (using “has:attachment AND pdf“), and one for emails from my wife (yes, I’m shamelessly sucking up). To use saved searches, simply do the following:
1. Enable Quick Links in your Labs settings (don’t forget to save changes  at the bottom of the settings page!):
 2. Search (using the standard Gmail search bar) and create your query like we did above.
3. Create a new link and give it a title you’ll remember:

4. Revel in how efficient you’ve become!

As a final note, remember that you can create quick links from any search you do in Gmail. Give it a try and let me know any brilliant searches you saved in the comments!

That should be enough for part 1. Still to come in the Gmail series:
- Remember better… Tasks, Calendar in Gmail
- Keep in contact better… Chat, Video, chat history!
- Organize better… labels and label colors, Contact lists

~ab

For those of you who just got an email update about email updates… my apologies :)

~ab