After buying a tripod for the animal rescue video project (more on that later), I decided to experiment. This is my first attempt at a virtual tour. If I can perfect the technique, perhaps we can offer it as a service. For the time being however, there are too many niggling problems at the moment.

Not bad, but could be better. Click and drag image to view. (may take a while to load on slow connections)

Well it’s happened again and inspired me to write a short blog. Digital photographs (including scanned, downloaded, stolen from Google images and digital cameras) are known as bitmaps. ANY TIME a photograph or video (different to some line drawings, see later) reaches the computer screen, it is converted to a bitmap (if it wasn’t one already). A bitmap is a grid with a finite number of pixels (digital cameras are measured in Megapixels (10M, 5M etc.), computer screens are also, 1024×768 etc), each pixel is assigned a colour. When these tiny pixels are zoomed out, shrunk down to individual points, the squares appear invisible and we see a complete photograph of a tree/landscape/dog/your mum.

When we zoom into the bitmap, these squares will become larger and detail in the photograph is lost. There is no way to magically split a pixel out into it’s composite parts, it is a single colour and nothing more, the information isn’t there to enhance! A low quality image or video will ALWAYS BE a low quality image or video.

I can’t blame you for thinking it is possible. I mean Hollywood shows this happening all the time, but it is physically impossible with today’s technology. Even future technology will not be able to improve photographs and videos created with the old technology. It’s IMPOSSIBLE.

Scan back to the start of the film… enhance the image. See the guy in the blue coat on the floor in the reflection of the computer screen. Enhance it, turn him round and lift him up so we can work out how tall he is. Look, can you see what he ate for Breakfast? Check his stomach contents, looks like it came from McDonalds on Regent Street at 11:02-11:04am this morning, lets go speak to Magda who served him to get an ID.

It’s just NOT possible!

The exception comes with some digital line drawings (with or without colour) but not all. The rule of thumb is, unless a graphic designer has issued you with a vector format file (Illustrator, Fireworks, Some PDFs etc.) then it’s probably not high enough quality to enlarge or print in high quality. Most images from your old website will be shrunk to just the right size for the screen, generally these can not be enlarged, printed for publication or improved upon, including logos. These would need to be retaken, redrawn or the original obtained.

Tomorrow’s blog: Time Travel – why a new website and graphics cannot be designed, built and tested before last week.

The news of Michael Jackson’s passing was quickly widespread, it was probably the fastest news story ever to reach the world and it did so because of technology, namely Twitter. Within minutes of the article appearing on TMZ’s website, it was global! I was following closely using one of my favourite Twitter news tools; Twitscoop which analyses public tweats looking for patterns in real time and shows emphasis on the most common subjects.

Through Twitter, I watched accusations on Michael’s Doctor, I saw mass hatred of Parez Hilton for accusing Michael of faking his collapse.

Yesterday I saw the start of the mass moonwalk in Liverpool Street Station, I even got to watch it live online through someone’s mobile phone!

Twitter is a wonderful thing because it allows mass communication spread instantly throughout the world.

While watching the trending keywords on Twitter however, something strange happened. Jeff Goldblum’s name popped up and quickly grew. After looking into it, news of his death was spreading just as quickly. Harrison Ford also cropped up as having died or gone missing depending on the source.

News of Michael Jackson stopped people in their tracks and brought them online to Twitter. Now people are poised for news, this story went even faster!

At the time of writing, both Jeff Boldblum and Harrison Ford are alive and well (and no doubt questioning that fact Sixth Sense style)

Before Twitter, reporters researched stories before publishing. All information needed some proof before it would get published.

With Twitter, the information leaks uncontrollably and is retweeted and spread with little or no such research.

The world has become a nation of well connected, free publishers. Is this a good thing? The alternative Orwellian Internet doesn’t bare thinking about but we should learn to be ever more careful about the source of our information.

We need to learn to fight the urge to become the ‘first’ and instead become the ‘best’. I wonder where else that lesson could be applied.

Joomla is a great web developer package, it is online software aimed to help users update the content on their website. It’s open source so all the website development is essentially done. It’s easily skinnable, that is we can apply a custom website design to the software and clients can run with it. Contributors around the world have all chipped in to make the software and modules so we can add shopping carts, blogs, forums, polls and many more!

So why don’t I like Joomla?

First and foremost, the source code is available to anyone. This means that although security problems are found quickly, they’re not always found by the right people! When they are found, another update needs to be performed to keep client’s websites completely bulletproof. These updates take time and cost money which you never expect to spend. We have and will continue to implement Joomla sites when it is the best solution but we give clients the chance to decide for themselves whether to keep updated for an ongoing fee or let their website slip and risk being attacked.

Finally Joomla’s power is another weak point. For large complex sites, Joomla does a great job at making things updatable and flexible, but unfortunately this makes it too complicated for simpler websites and/or less technically minded users. It also becomes difficult to keep updated if we change things to make it easier and better for a particular website.

These are really the only two down points to using Joomla over a custom solution, but I feel they’re quite big ones. If you don’t know how to use it and it’s insecure, it makes a really terrible website… The latter is rare, but it does happen.

An Alternative?

There are plenty of alternatives, but few really do the job, so we designed our own CMS around simplicity and security. Zako CMS is much easier to use, and aimed at your average informative website, it is focussed it at doing one thing so we feel it does it much better than any other (that we’ve seen and tested). Besides fading images and image upload, we also have a simple shopping cart module for 1-10 products (beyond this and a full ecommerce package is recommended) payments can be taken through Paypal, news can be updated, text can be changed in three steps (click text, edit, save) and audio/video can be embedded without ever having to look at code or use third party sites like youtube. 90% of our clients use this software and to date, noone has had any complaints (apart from one who had a tiny screen due to all sorts of browser add-ons so we had to adapt her version to fit in a letterbox of a browser) This, we could never have done with out-of-the-box Joomla!

Like Joomla, our software is open-source but not available to anyone. This means if you decide to leave Zako Media for any reason you can take your website, design and software to another web design company. It’s all written in PHP so any good web developer will be able to amend and make changes to the code. I want happy clients so we don’t lock anyone in just because they’re using our software, that would be like removing the engine of your car for choosing another service garage!

Conclusion

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to web design software which is why we have a variety of solutions mainly built in-house but with some tried and tested open source or commercial products. This gives us the flexibility to find the best solution and not try to hack our way through one to perform a task it was never designed to do. People approach us from all over Europe with one thing in common; they want to make more money. It’s my job to work out how best to achieve this goal online. To do this job properly, I need a variety of tools and not limit myself to just one or two and shrug when things go wrong.

Ever wondered how to make money while on holiday? Most service providers ask this question every day. When you are not present, the business effectively pauses, your income stops but your bills continue to fly through the post every month. Is there a way to turn your knowledge into a real salable product? A product which sells itself while you take a break, go away, recover from illness? Before you answer that question, let me tell you about ebookplace:

Zako Media has teamed up with copywriters, search engine optimisers, marketeers and together we have put together the ULTIMATE ebook package. Using our individual expert knowledge and project managed by a single point of contact, we can help you with all aspects of ebooks from the initial concept, right up to taking your automated payments through automatic distribution.

We’ve also setup ebookplace A free community that is totally focussed on eBooks and other digital products. This community is ideal for people who have never written an eBook, and equally suited to seasoned eBook experts. You can explore eBook marketing ideas, share your eBook experiences, demonstrate your eBook knowledge, take part in eBook discussions, and if you are new to eBooks, ask all those eBook related questions that you were dying to ask.

But what have you got to write about?

Share your business knowledge, share your personal experiences, perhaps your recovery path through terminal illness, inspirational passages or poetry. Not everyone can afford your consultancy fees and you’re not willing to drop your prices that low, how about offering an alternative? Add worksheets to help them on their way.

If you think there’s a market for it, go onto ebookplace, talk to the growing community and find out. Don’t know how to write, market and sell? That’s where we can step in to give you a helping hand.

The quality ebook market is continuing to grow, don’t let that book stagnate inside you