Realty World Northern California & Nevada

Over the years, the cost for digital cameras have come down and the quality of digital cameras have gone up. An almost ideal scenario. I say “almost” because for those of you who have purchased a reasonably priced digital camera in the last year or two probably have a digital camera that takes nice pictures (which is great) but the image file sizes have become very large, which is not so great.

To put into perspective, you can find on buy.com a 7.2MP camera for $55.99 with free shipping. Most people believe that the higher the number next to “MP” or “megapixel” value, the higher the quality of the pictures taken and that is not always the case. The “quality” of a picture is primarily determined from the quality of the camera’s digital sensor and the optical quality of the camera lens. The megapixel count primarily determines how large you will be able to print the picture. In addition, printing of pictures is very different from how large a picture will look on a computer screen. On most peoples’ computers a 2MP image will fill their screen completely and can produce a 4″ x 6″ print. A 3MP image will be twice as large as their screen and can produce a 5″ x 7″ print. A 5MP image would be 2.5 times as large as their screen and can produce a 8″ x 10″ print. What this means is the 7.2MP camera I described above for $55.99 with free shipping can produce extremely large images on the screen and can produce a 11″ x 14″ print.
Please note: I have not reviewed this particular camera for quality, durability, functionality, warranty, or price.

Most of us never print pictures using specific high quality photo paper on a photo printer with the intention of framing it and hanging it on a wall. Most of us use our digital cameras and take pictures with the intention of viewing them on a computer screen, uploading to the MLS or to another website, sending to friends by email, or posting to Facebook. Since all of these are based on viewing on a computer screen a 2MP image would more than suffice for this and chances are when you email a handful of photos to someone they didn’t receive it because the pictures were too large or maybe they requested for you not to send such large photos because they have to scroll left to right and up and down to view the entire image.

There is an EASY way to resize multiples images at one time. Depending on which version of Microsoft Windows you have on your computer, there are two options for you to select from.

For Windows XP users, you will need to download and install the Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP which is located at the bottom of the page.

For Windows 2000, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 users, you will need to download and install the Image Resizer Powertoy Clone.

After downloading and installing the correct version for you, open up the folder where you have images that you would like to resize. Select as many images as you would like to resize and then right click with your mouse and select the option “Resize Pictures.”

You will be then prompted with options for various sizes. I suggest using the “Small” option which will almost completely fill most people’s computer screens, or the “Medium” option which would more than fill most peoples’ computer screens.

There are two additional options for “Make pictures smaller but not larger” which is a safe option to select. If for some reason your picture was smaller than the size you selected, you would not want to increase the image size because it would heavily degrade the image quality. The last option is “Resize the original pictures (don’t create copies)” which is pretty self-explanatory and purely your preference.

After you hit “OK” the images will either replace (if you selected to resize the originals) or will create duplicate images (with the name of the size selected added into the file name).

My actual testing of an image I took with my digital camera took an original file size of 3,162 KB down to 200 KB (using the Medium setting) and 109 KB (using the Small setting). Sending this photo to someone will be much faster and I will not have to worry about hitting an email attachment size limit. Additionally, some websites have size limitations for image uploading which also will not be a problem.

Verizon Wireless’ Droid 2 officially launches August 12th. It is currently available for pre-order today. This is a very exciting time for the cell phone market and especially for Droid fans out there. The Droid 2 ships out with Android 2.2, nicknamed “Froyo,” and comes with a rather large performance upgrade from the original Droid.

Following are a few of the performance updates compared to the Droid:

• Increased memory from 256MB to 512MB
• On-board storage increased from 256MB to 8GB, expandable to 32GB
• Updated processor from 550MHz to 1Ghz
• Video recording from 720×480, 24fps to 720×480, 30fps
• Battery life talk time extended from 6.4 hours to 9.6 hours
• Battery life standby extended from 11.3 days to 13.1 days

The Droid 2 has a 3.7″ TouchScreen with a display resolution of 854×480 and has a 5MP camera. The Droid 2, like the Droid X, includes support for Wi-Fi hotspot functionality. However, it requires an extra $20.00 per month. The Droid 2 sports revised QWERTY keyboard with raised keys that are designed to increase the speed of your typing. I am interested to hear if this does in fact help in typing speed.

If you have more thane one computer (including a smartphone) keeping track of all files can be a hassle with having to copy files across from one computer to another using any combination of USB flash drives, portable backup drives, burning data DVDs, iTunes, etc. Dropbox is a single secure place for all of your files to be organized, managed, shared, and synchronized.

With Dropbox anything you put in your “Dropbox” folder (including folder and file names) gets copied over to all computers. In addition you can go online from any computer’s website browser to access files using your email address and password for your Dropbox account.

Instead of having to email a bunch of photos of a property or multiple properties, you can create a folder for someone to view. You can email out the link and once they click on it they can view all of the images in a nice full screen viewer.

Sharing of documents is very easy to do. From your computer’s Dropbox folder you can right click on a particular folder and go to the Dropbox menu and click “Share this folder.” That will launch the specific sharing options for that folder in a browser where you can enter in recipient email addresses and optionally send a message. When the person receives the email it will contain a link and your message and will open up their web browser. Viewing the folder contents of private documents (non-public documents) does require them to create a Dropbox account (if they don’t have one already).

Once they have logged in or created their account they can view and download the documents in the folder. You can revoke anyone’s permission to view the contents of the folder by going to your Dropbox account online and clicking into the desired folder and click on “Shared folder options” where you will be displayed who has access and you will have the option to remove their access.

An optional way to share files with people who do not wish to create a Dropbox account is to add the files into your “Public” folder. Your “Public” folder is exactly like other folders only it will not require users to have or create a Dropbox account but it’s open to the world to view the contents so be careful what you put in there.

If you are interested in signing up for a Dropbox account Click Here and you and I will both receive a 250MB bonus of space, on top of the already free 2GB that comes free with a standard Dropbox account. Larger storage size is available at monthly fees.