Free Image Software and bulk resizing images – Pixresizer

An essential piece of software when you need to resize an image of photograph quickly and without hassle. Pixresizer is free and easy to use. Although there are many online based image resizing services they can be a little slow if you have to batch resize a range of images and as this is a small package and installs very quickly its exactly whats required when you have to send an email or upload a folders of photos without wasting time.

– > Download Pixresizer

In regards using Pixresizer there are two main options. Firstly is the resizing of a single image but it also supports batch/multiple images so here is a quick guide on how to process both types.

Pixresizer single images.

Starting at the top:
1. Select the tab “Work with one file”
2. Load the picture into Pixresizer
3. Select the select button or the custom size option if you know the dimensions you want
4. Ensure “Maintain Aspect Ratio” is check to automatically maintain the proportions of the image
5. Select the type of file to be output. (a photo will be a JPEG, Gifs are for FLAT colour images like logos)
6. Select Save picture to resize and save the image on your computer.

Free Image Software and bulk resizing images   Pixresizer

Multiple or Batch Image Resizing with Pixresizer

A little more preparation is required here but following these steps will ensure you get the most out of the software.

**NOTE: Are you aware of the difference between a portrait image and a landscape image? Pixresizer IS NOT! If you instruct it to resize all the images to a certain width then all images will have this criteria applied to them meaning that some may end up becoming disproportional. Separate the images into different folders beforehand.**

Starting at the top:

1. Have your folder of images ready
2. Open the folder and inside create a new folder and call it “small/resized/web/thumbnails” or similar
3. Select the tab “Work with multiple files”
4. Select “Source” and find the folder with all your images
5. Select “Destination” and choose the folder you created inside the original folder
6. Use the slider bar to dictate the size of the images you require
7. Again, select the file type (probably JPEGs if they are photos)
8. Select “Save Pictures”
9. Watch the small bar above this button process your images
10. Open the folder of resized images

Free Image Software and bulk resizing images   Pixresizer

As i mentioned, quick, simple and easy. If more people used this tool (or something similar) it would save so much heartache as 5 MB images are not exactly the ideal thing to be emailing across the internet!

If you want more information regarding the Pixresizer tool the website address is:
http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

Speed Dial plugin for Firefox

I came across this plugin for Firefox recently and cannot imagine living without it. An incredibly simple concept, the Speed Dial Plugin for Firefox allows you to have multiple home pages on a single page. Sound confusing? Not at all!

Have you got a list of websites that you visit regularly? If so then the Speed Dial plugin simply allows you to set up your home page to include as many shortcuts as you require to specific pages you allocate in a simple and attractive graphical interface.

The end result is that your home page will look something like this:

Speed Dial plugin for Firefox

Each screen shot can be allocated a web page easily by clicking on the settings button on the top right of each tab and adding in the URL of the web page you want to insert via this interface:

Speed Dial plugin for Firefox

And all the options can be edited to suit your preferred layout allowing you to add in columns and rows, dictate whether or not its in a new home page or when you open a new tab and how many tabs are available overall. Heres an example of the options screen:

Speed Dial plugin for Firefox
Grab the speed dial plugin here.

G Speak – The soe, spatial operating environment

Oblong industries blog has one totally amazing video Its included in this post below) for the demonstration of G Speak or Spatial Operating Environment (SOE).

Remember Minority Report? Tom Cruise happily interacted with a semi-transparent computer display to manipulate the information presented by waving his hands around and “twisting” the data via fluxations in the hands position to display the information as he required. Fantasy? No way.

Seems Oblong Industries have already worked on making this system a reality. Check out the video to see this amazing technology in action and then think how this type of technology would affect each and every single aspect of our life’s if it became available. I don’t think “g speak” is so far away either as the technology is already in a huge number of homes across the world.

Dont know what I mean?

Think Wii


g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.