Ask2Roger

All about computing

How to create an Online Quiz.

Everybody loves quizzes especially if they are for fun. Quizzes are an easy way to increase your knowledge and fun. So what about creating your own quizzes and embedding it in your WebPages or sending your friends. Here is how to easily create a quiz online.
MyStudiyo is a website that allows you to create your own quizzes. What you have to do is to register yourself with Mystudiyo. To register click here.

You are just a few clicks away from creating your own quiz. First you have to choose a template for your quiz. There are a large number of templates from which you can choose the apt one. You can also customize these templates by adding splash screens at the beginning and so on. Now it is time to add your questions. The questions should be in text format or you can use your images and videos questions. Then you have to add choices for your question. It is form these choices that a user has to select the right answer. In this way you can add number of questions and their choices. At the end the final score a user got is calculated based on the number of right answers and you can choose up to five custom ways in which the score is to be displayed.
You can also create interactive quizzes in which the user is allowed to submit questions. But he must be a member of MyStudiyo to do so. It is up to you to decide whether to accept the submitted questions or not. You can also include a contact form in your quiz so that users can send you their feedbacks about your quiz.

The quiz you created can be embedded in a webpage. So if you have a blog or is a member of a forum etc you can embed it there. All you have to do is to copy the quiz code provided by MyStudiyo and paste it in your webpage. If you do not have a webpage then you can email the URL of your quiz to your friends so that they can click on that link to participate in your quiz.
A quiz adds variety to your WebPages and allows more interactivity than a poll. So I think it is a nice idea to add a quiz in your webpage which will add more interactivity to your site.

I hope you enjoyed the post!

The online office suite from Adobe

A new contender entered the online document sharing arena. Adobe after its online Photoshop edition has released an online office suite which is called Acrobat Office. It allows online sharing of document and can be used for both business and home purposes. It allows online publishing of documents and sharing of documents along with online conferencing facilities. The service is completely free and to use the service you just have to log on to www.acrobat.com.
Getting an account with Acrobat office.
First go to the acrobat office website. To sign up click on the sign up button.


You have to provide correct email address because a conformation email will be sent to your inbox for verification. You have to click on the link provided in the email to complete the sign up process.

Features of Acrobat Office.
Acrobat Office posses a flash based word processor called Buzzword. Buzzword has all the basic features you expect from an office application. It allows you to create documents, format documents, add images to your documents, hyperlinks, and tables. The interface is nice and easy to understand. You can easily share your documents or collaboratively create documents using Buzzword.

There are different sharing modes in Buzzword. Using these modes you can give different rights to users. You can set user rights for users while submitting a document. The first one is the Co-author mode which allows users to edit your document. The second one is the reviewer mode which allows users to just comment on these documents. The third one is reader mode which only allows users to read documents. Hence you can secure your online documents from unauthorized editing. The comments are given different colors depending on their privileges.
Buzzword supports a large number of file formats. You can import and export buzzword documents to .doc, .xml, .rtf, and .txt file formats. A buzzword file can be exported to .pdf, HTML format.
Acrobat office allows sharing of documents. When you create an account you get 5GB of storage space and each file you uploaded to the website will be given an URL. To share a document you have to provide the email address of those with which you desire to share the document. An email is sent to the email you specified which contains the URL of the document to be shared. You can easily sort documents based on user rights and also see the changes made to your document, time a document is edited, user comments etc.

Acrobat office allows conversion of documents to PDF documents. But it is restricted to 5 PDF conversions a month. So you cannot use the service just to convert your documents to PDF format. It supports a large number of file formats like .rtf, .txt, .doc, openoffice, word perfect, Photoshop, jpeg, tiff, png, gif, and bmp. The maximum size of a file that can be converted to PDF format is 200 MB.

Acrobat office online web conferencing feature called Connect Now. The maximum number of people who can participate in conferencing is three. It provides all you need for a full fledged online conferencing which include screen sharing, VOIP, chatting, white boards etc. Connect Now provides a unique meeting URL. So to participate in a conferencing just point your browser to that URL.
Prerequisites.
Acrobat office requires the latest flash player. You have to install Flash Player 10 . It supports Firefox 2, IE 6/7, and Safari 3 browsers and Widows Xp with SP2, Vista, or Mac OS v10.5.
It is going to be a close encounter with Acrobat Office and Google Docs. More and more features will be added to Acrobat office in the future including free and paid services.

How to enable Registry Editor and many other options disabled by Virus?

One of the common problems created by Viruses that affect our PCs is that they will disable some important options like registry editor, task manager etc. This virtually disables our administrative privileges on our system.
It is very important to re-enable these options like removing the virus. Sometimes you cannot access your registry, taskmanger etc even when the virus is removed. To solve this problem do the following
RRT(Remove Restriction Tool) is a small software you can download to re-enable the important option disabled by viruses. To download RRT click here.
It is a small download of about 139 Kb. But it is extremely useful. After you have downloaded the zip file unzip it to a location of your choice. Now you have to boot your PC in the safe mode.

Run RRT and check the options you want to enable. Click on the "Remove" button to re-enable the disabled features.
There is a pro version for RRT which helps you to remove malwares that infect through removable storage devices like Pen drives. If you want to use this additional feature you have to purchase RRT.
I hope you enjoyed the post!

How to edit images using IrfanView?

IrfanView is a free image editing tool that can be used as an image editor and viewer. Here are some cool things that you can do with IrfanView.
1. Applying filters
IrfanView comes with a bunch of filters that can be used to give a nice look to your photos. To easily apply filters to an image using IrfanView do the following:
Navigate to Image>Effects>Effects Browser or simply press "Ctrl+E".

You will get a list of filters along with the preview of the image before and after applying the filters. Click on these filters to see how your image will look like before it is being applied to it. You can also adjust the filter settings by dragging the sliders associated with each filter.
To apply the selected filter click on the "Apply to original image button".
2. Color Correction

Color correction involves making changes to the overall brightness and contrast of a image. It is also used to color balance the image to compensate for any tonal deficiencies and color casts in the original image. Let us see how to do color correction in IrfanView.
To color correct a image in IrfanView chose Image>Enhance colors or press "Shift+G".

You can adjust the Brightness and Contrast of your image to make it look better. You can adjust the RGB values by dragging the Color balance sliders. To darken or lighten the midtones drag the Gamma correction slider to the left or right. You can also enter a Gamma value at the entry box to the right of the Gamma slider. To adjust the saturation of the image drag the Saturation slider.

You can see a live preview of the changes that occur to your image before it is being applied to it. To apply multiple color corrections to your image use the "Apply to image" button. To reset the changes applied to the image you click on "Set default values" button. After you are satisfied with the changes press the "OK" button to apply the changes.

3. To create Grayscale of an image

To create Grayscale of an image chose Image>Convert to Grayscale. This will help you to create black and white images from color photos.



4. To pixelize an image
Another useful option in IrfanView is that it helps you to pixelize images. It can be used if you do not want to dispay certain parts of an image.
To pixelize an image first select the region of the image you want to pixelize. Then chose Image>Effects>Pixelize.
5. To crop a image

To crop a image, position your cursor on the image, then click and drag to define the crop.
Chose Edit>Crop Selection or press "Ctl+Y" to apply the crop.
6. To rotate an image

To rotate an image in IrfanView chose Image>Custom/Fine rotation. Enter value of the angle to which the image is to be rotated in the entry box. You can also set the background color of the rotated image here. Click on "Choose" to select a background color. Press "OK" to apply your changes.

7. To create a slide show
You can use IrfanView to create a slideshow and then can save it as an EXE/SCR file. To create a screensaver do the following:
Chose File>Slideshow or press "W". A dialog box will appear which allows you to add images to your slideshow.

Select a directory to add images to your slideshow. You can add all the images in a directory pressing the "Add all" button. If you want to add only a few images then you can use the "Add" button.
To add an MP3 as background music for your slideshow select an MP3 file and add it to your slideshow. Check the option "Loop MP3 files(background music)" to loop the MP3 song until the end of the slideshow.
Click on "Advanced options" to set whether the slideshow should be displayed in fullscreen, otherwise you can specify a custom size.
Now you are almost done and after specifying the time interval between each slides and a little bit tweaking you can save your slideshow. To save the slideshow click on "Save as EXE/SCR file". If you have Nero Plugin for IrfanView you can burn it to CD or create a VCD by clicking on the "Burn to CD" button.
8. Create a Panorama image.
Multiple images can be stiched together to create a large image. Such images are called panorama images. You can create Panorama images using IrfanView. To create a Panorama do the following:
Go to Image>Create panorama image.

A dialog box will appear which prompt you to enter the images to be used to create a panorama.

Make sure that you selected the images that closely match each other. Specify a horizondal or vertical alignment. To create a Panorama image press on "Create image" button. You have successfully created a nice looking Panorama image!
Good Luck!

How search engines work?

Search engines are the life of the internet. Search engines played an important role in making the web as simple as it is now. Otherwise the web will just be a geeks’ only land. Now it is a playground for all. It is definite that the web will not be what it is now without search engines.
A search engine can be simply defined as a piece of software that can access a database of internet resources. When a user enters a query in the search box it searches in this database to provide relevant search results.

The first search engine in the world is ALIEWEB, which was created in 1990 by Alan Entrage. It was not a full fledged search engine like what we see today. FTP was primary mode of sharing files online at that time. A user who wants to share files will run an FTP server. The person who wants to download a file runs an FTP client to connect to the FTP server and download the file from the server. The client need not be a server and only need a FTP client software to connect to a server and download files.. Later anonymous FTP sites came into existence which allowed users to post and retrieve content from FTP servers. But it is not as simple as you think. There are so many problems in using FTP protocol for file sharing. First the user has to know that an FTP server exists and he has to visit that server to download files from it. The problem is that FTP servers are not well organized and it is a monotonous task finding FTP servers at that time. You can get a list of anonymous FTP servers here.

Entrage created a searchable directory of FTP files called ALIEWEB or simply Archie. It used a script which scours the FTP sites and indexes the contents of FTP sites on its run. It also allowed users to submit the location of FTP files and servers. It requires Telnet and FTP. The regular expression matcher of ALIEWEB allowed users to access its database. It was considered as the first web search engine by many because it is the first tool developed to search files on the Internet.

Another search engine that was developed to search the internet is Veronica. It is a search engine that was developed in 1992. It was used to search and index Gopher files. Gopher is a protocol used to share plain text documents. So the indexed files in Veronica consist of plain text documents. Yet another Gopher search engine popular at that time was JUGHEAD. It was similar to Veronica but is not very effective.
Wanderer developed by Matthew Gray was the first web search engine to use the robot concept. It was also the first search engine that indexed the contents of the worldwide web A robot is a software program that is used to access WebPages using the links contained in WebPages. It is actually designed to count the number of web servers in the world to determine the size of the web. Wanderer captured one URL after the other and ultimately created the first web database. So we can say that it is wanderer that laid the foundation for future search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask, AltaVista etc which also employ almost the same concept.
What is a search Spider?

A search spider is the component of a search engine that crawls WebPages and index the links contained in them and then store them in a database. The spider crawls the internet from time to time updating the contents of the database. A spider works on the principle that all WebPages are linked through hyperlinks. They work very much like a web browser. They first start off by requesting an URL and then proliferate by accessing the hyperlinks contained in successive WebPages. A spider did not index all the contents of a website. It is programmed to filter the contents based on certain criteria and this makes crawling fast and efficient. The frequency with which a spider visits a WebPage depends on how often a website is updated. A large number of policies are used by a spider for this. These policies include the following:
1. Selection policy: A spider uses a selection policy which is used to decide which websites to be indexed and which not. The web is a huge country and it is not possible to index all the contents of it. So the web spiders use a selection policy so that the links include in its database will provide useful content. So the spider uses different techniques to decide which pages to include and which to neglect. First it checks for the quality of the webpage, then the number of inbound links, the amount of traffic to the website etc. Google spider uses the best selection policy and that is the reason why Google is considered the best engine.
2. Revisit policy: A spider uses a revisit policy to decide when to visit a website again to check for updates. This depends on the frequency in which a website is updated. If a website is updated on a daily basis then it may be possible that a spider revisits it often. But revisit policy used by spiders is a complex thing to deal with. Considering the amount of information contained in the web and the tremendous speed at which it is expanding revisiting websites for updates is a time consuming process. Here also different techniques are used by spiders. A spider always looks for most recent content. It tries to visit pages frequently, that serve fresh content and even if a site provide useful content but it is not relevant and fresh then the possibility of a spider revisiting the site is megre.

3. Politeness policy: The functionality of a search engine also depends on the politeness policy it uses. A politeness policy is something that prevents spiders from overloading websites. Spiders hog a small amount of bandwidth while crawling websites. This may affect the performance of the servers. Also spiders work in parallel because of the very nature of their functionality. This may create overload on the servers. To avoid this search engine uses politeness policies. A spider usually searches the site thinking that it is made for crawling! But sometimes the spider cannot be able to access the links in a website and may even crash a server if it cannot properly crawl a site. First a search engine uses a robot exclusion policy to avoid this. This allows a web administrator to specify which pages to crawl and which not to. On top of a URL a file named robot.txt is specified which invokes the robot exclusion protocol. Another method is to specify this information in the Meta tags of a webpage. Using anyone of these methods we can inform the spider that links contained in the page are not for indexing. A spider is programmed to obey this policy.
4. Parallelization policy: A spider is a multitasking application. It run multiple instances of it at the same time to increase the download speed and the number of pages crawled at a time. This also helps to increase the overhead on the server because the monotonous task of crawling websites is divided into different lighter processes. Hence this helps to improve the overall performance of the spider and also helps to reduce the work load on servers. There are mainly two types of parallelization policies used by search spiders. They are the following:
1. Dynamic Assignment: In dynamic assignment, a central server takes the responsibility of assigning URLs to each instance of the spider dynamically. This helps to maintain the load the server in equilibrium.
2. Static Assignment: In static assignment different algorithms are used to assign URLs to spider instances. These algorithms specify certain conditions which are to be satisfied for a spider process to start crawling a webpage. Different search engines use different algorithms for this purpose. But the concept implemented by these algorithms are almost the same.
Indexing the contents
After crawling the contents of a webpage the spider indexes the links. Indexing is the key process that decides the quality of a search engine. A search engine should index the contents crawled by the spider in such a way that the user gets relevant links while searching. If not it will not benefit the user or the search engine even how innovative and powerful the search spider is. The indexing occurs in a number of steps. The indexing of the links fetched by a spider is done by an Indexer. It is the indexers that do the following things.
1. It decompresses the contents fetched by the spider.
2. It parses the contents and links in a webpage fetched by the spider and store them in an anchor file
3. It converts the document into certain word occurrences called as hits which is used to determine the location of a particular keyword in a webpage.
Displaying the contents.

The next and the final phase is to display the indexed contents based on the keywords inputted by the user. This is the visible part of a search engine. It is based on this a user tends to rate a search engine. He does not want to understand how the contents are displayed. But the displayed contents are of importance to him. So the popularity of a search engine more or less depends of this. Most search engines use page ranking technique to display results. The efficiency of a search engine also depends on this page ranking technique. Currently many people consider Google uses the best page ranking technique. Different algorithms are used to rank WebPages. The ranking of a webpage is based on certain criteria as defined in the algorithm. So understanding how these algorithms work will help people figure out how to make their WebPages displayed among the first ten results of a search engine. Because most people only visit the sites listed in the first few pages of a search engine. The baddies use illegal techniques to be listed in the top ten and these websites are called as scraper sites because they make use of web spiders to index their content in the form of search results. The efficiency of page ranking algorithms also depends on how efficiently it can counter these illegal techniques. The search engine companies are constantly working on improving their page ranking techniques and there by increasing their popularity.
Types of Search Engines.
The websites we use now can be classified into different categories based on their functionality and working. The most popular type of search engines are the following

1. Meta search engine: A Meta search engine searches in more than one search engine at a time and then display the results in WebPages. The advantage of using Meta search engines is that you get the results in all major search engines without searching in them individually. Many Meta search engines allow users to specify the search engines in which they want to search. Meta search engines are available both as client side and server side applications. The disadvantage of Meta search engines is that they cannot provide the entire search results of search engines in which they search.
2. Subject directories: A subject directory is a completely human created database of internet resources. It is called directory based search engine because a directory is maintained by the webmaster which contain links to different websites. Also users can submit websites to these directories. The links in a directory is divided into subcategories based on the topic they are related to. A subject directory contains number of such directories. The disadvantage of a subject directory is that it is very difficult to fetch information from them.
3. Searchable databases: A searchable database is another type of search engine. The pages contained in a searchable database are not often indexed by search engines. So a searchable database is also called as invisible web because the contents of it are often not indexed by a search engine. These databases generally include research papers, library catalogs etc. They are called as specialized databases and to get results contained in them you have to visit that website and enter your query in the search box. Then results relevant to that keyword are displayed in a web interface. Searchable databases are generally created and maintained by universities, government organizations etc.
Which search engine is the best?

There are lots of search engines in the world. You even do not know the names of these search engines except the name of a few top ones like Google, Yahoo, Ask, AltaVista, Alltheweb, Alexa etc.But are lot of crawler and meta search engines out there unnoticed by you. A good search in Google or other popular search engines will unleash them before you. Are you confused with which search engine is the best? Then I will tell you some things that will help you decide which search engine is the best. The ultimate answer to this question should be found by you.
You have understood how a search engine works already. All search engines have the above mentioned components. What makes some search engines stand out and others neglected is determined by the way those components are implemented. Still I will mention some of the features that will help you determine the best search engine.
Database functionality

The database is the core of a search engine. How big the database of a search engine is plays a very important role in determining where a search engine stands. A good search engine database has answers to almost everything queried by a user. Google has the largest database of websites indexed. So Google surpasses all others in these in the size of database. It is evident from the results we got from Google and that is the reason why it is more dependable than any other search engine.

The size of a database alone is not a factor that determines the quality of a database. But it also depends on the freshness of the database. If you search for something and got the same results all the time then you can understand that the database is not updated efficiently. A good search engine has its database updated regularly and constantly. Another feature of a good search database is to include the results which contain different file formats. If you search for something like "C++" and you got only links to few HTML tutorials on C++ then the search engine cannot be considered as good. For example if you search Google for "C++", you got results which contain links to C++ books from Google Books, some links from Google Scholar, some pdf tutorial links, pages etc. The diversity of the links provided by a search engine counts. Google currently has the ability to provide you with most relevant content because it offers a lot of services which are intelligently weaved to its basic service the Google Search engine. Many other search engines are still miles behind Google in that case also.

Another cool feature you have to look out for is the consistency in search results. Search for something and if you got the same results consistently then the search engine can be considered consistent. If the results change rapidly then the search engine cannot be considered reliable.
The size and the diversity of the links definitely count. But the greatest database functionality of a search engine depends on its ability to support Boolean search. A good search engine supports searching using all the Boolean operators. There are three main Boolean operators you use while searching online. They are AND, OR, NOT. These are the basic Boolean operators. Most time we did not use Boolean operators but while searching for some specific kind of information you can use these operators. If you search for something using AND to say Cricket AND Football you got results related to both. If you use OR you got results related to anyone of them. But if you use NOT you got results related to just Cricket and not Football. This is how these operators work.

Google supports AND and OR by default. Yahoo supports AND, OR, NOT and also nesting of these operators. So you can use a combination of these operators while searching in Yahoo.
But instead of NOT you can use "-" in Google. So if you use "-" the results contain links related to the main keyword minus the keyword to be excluded. For example if you search for Cricket - Football you got results related to cricket and the results related to Football are excluded. You can similarly use "+" if you want to search for some additional results to be included while searching for something. For example you can search for Pamela + Jolly so that results related to Jolly will also be included while searching for Pamela. Google supports both operators. Search with these operators in search engine you want to test and see the results.
The other option you have to watch out for is how accurate the search engine is. All the above functionalities are used to improve the accuracy of your search. But there are some additional components you can use to get more accurate results. Ultimately these options also play an important role in determining the quality of a search engine. For example you can use quotation marks to search for results that contain a particular phrase. For example you can search for something like C++ "book" so that all the links containing books along with the term C++ will be included in your results. Another option is to use wild cards. If you want to include a large number of categories related to something or if you do not know the keyword to search for something you can use the "*" operator. For example you can search for Christmas * to get everything related to Christmas. It is a very useful option and it is also a key feature to look out for. Google supports all the above features. But it did not support truncation. Yahoo supports quotation marks but did not support search using wild cards. But it supports truncation.

The list of features you have to look out for to decide which search engine is the best is still not enough. There are many other search options that are very useful. They are the inurl:, intitle:, site:, link: etc. If you search for something using inurl: then you got results with that term in URL. For example search for inurl: download you will get links which contain download in the URL. Similarly also try other search options. All these options are supported by Google and Yahoo. But Yahoo supports an additional option which allows users to search for hosts and the option is host name. It is a useful option too. Ask as also supports these features in addition to some very useful features like geoloc:, last:, lang: after date: before date:, between date: etc.
These are some of the basic things that helps you determine which search engine is the best. Still there is some additional functionality that help you how useful a search engine is. Because the usability of a search engine also very important in deciding whether a search engine is best or worst. These options include spell checker, language translator, calculators, definitions, maps, phone books, stocks etc. Google supports all the above functionalities. Google Maps is the best map tool you can get. You can convert WebPages to about 50 different languages. Yahoo too is not behind Google in that case. It also offers additional search features like searching for ISBN patents, synonym, traffic encyclopedia etc. Ask also offers all the above features.

The quest for the best search engine still continues because there are lots of things that remain to be mentioned. Try to understand about more search options search engines support. Watch out for new features added to these search engines. Evaluate how useful they are. Search using all the options you know. Search and find other unknown options you can find. Search with them. Ultimately you will find the answer which search engine is the best. So until then the question remains unanswered.

How to search online collaboratively ?

Searching online is not a simple task. To get what you need require lot of skill and understanding about searching online. There are a lot of new technologies and tools that help to make your search efficient, like intelligent keyword prediction that many search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask etc have. I will tell you a new way to make your search efficient. You can search collaboratively with your friends online and this will definitely make your search efficient and entertaining. SearchTogether is a new search collaboration tool from Microsoft and it helps you to search online with your friends in real-time.
SearchTogether is available as a plugin for IE7. You also have a Live email ID to use this plugin. You can download the SearchTogether plugin for IE7 here. To get a Live email ID click here.
After you have installed the plugin, launch SearchTogether and enter your Live email ID. Now press the connect button. You are ready to start a new search.

To start a new search navigate to Actions> Start a new search. Now you will be provided with your MSN messenger buddies list. Select a person who is online from the list. You can start a search by typing a keyword. The keyword appears below the name or photo of the person who initiated the search. To start searching for a keyword entered by your buddy just double click on it. The number of keywords queried by each participant will appear under his name or photo. So if somebody joins the fun late he will be able to figure out what is going on. You can chat with other members and also comment on websites while searching online.
Another great feature of this tool is that it allows members of a group to monitor each others browsing activity. You can use the Follow option to view or follow the browsing activities of a buddy. You can even watch his or her browser screen in real time using this option. It is a great tool worth a try.
Reference: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/searchtogether/tutorial.html

The amazing world of Visual Effects.

The world of visual effects is fascinating that it became the most important ingredient of visual media. It is now the part and parcel of every movies, cartoons, or television serials we see. So now they are like the part of our life. We see a lot of visual effects day by day. We watch science programs in Discovery, then probably we see at least a few hundreds of visual effects in a single program. These effects make the narration more interesting and the meaning of it so clear that we really indulge in it for some time. It is the magic of visual effects. It can take us to the world of imagination and reality at the same time. Let us travel to the magical world of Visual effects...

What is a visual effect?
A visual effect is simply a computer generated effect that is blended with a movie, or animation to create an illusion of reality. For example, if we have a video of cloudy sky then we can create some lightning using VFX and blend it with our video of sky so that when people see it they got the feeling that it is actually lightning.
Where is it used?
You probably know where these visual effects are most needed and used. Yes, movies, television , and other entertainment media use VFX to create amazing visuals. But VFX is not just restricted to simple effects. You have seen lot of visual effects in Video editing and 3D creating sotwares. These effects are just a version of VFX. There are a lot of versions for VFX. The most dominant one is CGI or Computer Generated Imaginary. These are images created using computers. CGI is widely used in movies and games to create stunning backgrounds and life like characters. So you might have seen lot of CGI in your life while watching movies or playing games. These images are so inevitable to the entertainment industry that CGI is a multibillion dollar industry now. The availability of powerful computers and programs played an important role in popularizing CGI.
CGI and Hollywood.
CGI is widely used in Hollywood movies. So the history of CGI in one way or the other is also the story of Hollywood. The Hollywood movies especially scifi movies are a peice of wonder. Every movie will have at least one new visual effect you have never seen in your life. You go to the theaters not just to watch spiderman climbing the walls of buildings or the titanic sinking into the sea but also to enjoy the beauty of those buildings and effects that are purely CGI.
The first Hollywood movie that used CGI is "West World" released in 1973. It used 2D based CGI images to create visual illusion. Interestingly the second part of West World called as "Future World" is the first movie to use 3D based CGI images. This was just a beginning. The real VFX revolution is just about to start. The first movie that through which VFX became a buzz in Hollywood is the movie "Star Wars". It is released in 1977 and it introduced new trends in Hollywood. Then came a lot of movies that used CGI. But the movie that "rejuvenated" VFX was "Terminator 2-Judgment Day". It was a tremendous success, not because it is a fantastic movie but also it has lot of stunning visual effects. You probably might not forgot some of those effects. One of the unforgettable effect is the liquid metal and morphing effect that we meet through the villain T-1000.

The second movie that worth mentioning is Jurassic Park. After viewing the movie many think that the Dinosaurs used in that movie where real and they want those animals to be immediatly added to the National Zoo. Those dinosaurs where computer generated even though they look life like. They are animated and perfectly blend to the movie so that even a person with a doctorate in the study of dinosaurs think that they even exist now. Another movie that utilized the amazing potential of VFX is Titanic. There is no doubt that without those special effects the movie won't be so attractive and touching. More and more movies are added to the list that owe a huge part of their success to the VFX used in those movies. In short VFX has become an integral part of Hollywood.
Composting
The process of combining two or more images to a shot is called Composting. Composting is most commonly used to combine 3D images.It is not as simple as you think. When you do this the output must look real. Otherwise there is no meaning in composting. There are different techniques used in compositing. The most common are Bluescreen, Rotoscopy etc. Let us understand the most common compositing techinques in detail.

Rotoscopy:
Rotoscopy is a technique used in composting. It is an effective way of composting images. The first step in Rotoscopy is to project recorded live action film images to a frosted glass panel and then an outline is drawn around the objects. The device used to project images is called Rotoscope and hence the name Rotoscopy. The perfection in Rotoscopy based compositing depends on how sharp is the outlines drawn around objects to be included in the scene. Then computer generated images are carefully added to the background of these objects. The process of Rotoscopy is time consuming and need a lot of patience and talent to draw perfect outlines around objects because this ultimately affect the output scene. Rotoscopy is used perfectly in Star wars. The glowing wand in the hand of the hero is rotoscoped. The "actual" wand in his hand is covered with blue screen mat and a glowing wand is added to its place, which is CGI generated, using Rotoscopy.

Optical Printer:
Another technique used in compositing is Optical Printer. An optical printer has two projector heads. The important parts of an optical printer include film rate, lenses, camera finder, and adjustable shuttle controller. It is used to give visual effects like fade in fade out, slow motion etc to a movie scene. A combination of these effects can be added to a scene using Optical printers. They are widely used in the early stages of VFX, but now they are completely out of picture.

Match Moving:
The process of merging virtual objects to the footage of a already shot action movie is called Match Moving. Match Moving is a complex process that needs lot of precision and care. Match moving is entirely different from motion capturing where motion sensors to capture motion and blend it to the object to be animated. Here no motion sensors are used. Instead it is done just using movie camera. Match Moving is done by tracking the movement of the camera. This information is used to change the position of virtual camera inside the computer. It can be used to naturally blend the virtual with real scene in a movie. Match Moving is done using two popular software packages, Shake and Adobe After Effects.

Bluescreen:
Bluescreen are considered the basic element needed to create a visual effect. It acts as the backbone of VFX. Bluescreen is used to blend images to the background of a charecter. We can say that there is no VFX if there is no Bluescreen.
A blue or a green screen is placed behind the character. A character acts standing in front of this screen.The scene is shooted and the background is removed while editing. Now the scene is left with only the acting charecter. The background is rephotographed through a bluefilter to display just the background. A special kind of film is used to rephotograph the background to get a black&white negative film. The output will be a black&white image with the character at the middle of the background. This is called female mate.The background image is again rephotographed. The difference is that it is rephotographed using green and red filters instead of bluefilter. By doing this we get only the foreground image. This is called a male mate.
The background image is again rephotographed using male mate and the bluescreen shot is rephotographed using female mate. An optical printer is used to merge these two images into a single frame. But instead of optical printer we now use computer softwares to merge images into a single frame. Using softwares we will be able to give more charm and precision to each frame. We can also add different effects to these frames.

Motion Capturing:
The technology used to give life like movements to animated characters is called motion capturing. It is used in Hollywood movies, games,and cartoons to give realistic movements to CGI images.You might have been stunned and wowed when you see the war scenes in Lord of the Rings. Motion capturing is used to give life like movements to these charecters. In motion capturing sensors are used to record the movements of human beings and after that these movements are then given to 3D charecters. This is called Motion Capturing. With motion capturing you can create stunning animations. In motion capturing a man wears a suit fitted with complex sensors. These sensors are connected to a computer. The computer can read his motion with the help of these sensors and are digitally recorded. Then these motion files are imported to 3D softwares like 3D Max and these effects are applied to previously marked portions of a 3D image.
Motion capturing is the most effective way of giving life like movements to animated 3D characters. There are so many reasons for it. You can easily animate a 3D charecter. You can make him walk, dance, talk, or sit anything. But there are different "expressions" that you cannot easily create while animating. Facial expressions are one aspect. To create a natural facial effect for a 3D character is time consuming. Motion capturing can make this task easy. Facial motion capturing is used to do this. You might have seen the movie King Kong. The charecter touched our hearts. It is almost real and it fascinated us for a few days even after watching the movie. The character is not real, it is a 3D animated character and what makes it so real is its facial animation. These facial effects are done using facial motion capturing. Small sensors are placed at the face especially around the eyes and the lips to capture the facial effects of a humanbeing and then the captured motion is applied to the 3D character. It is the most complex form of motion capturing. Hundreds of sensors are fixed to the face of a man. Different filters are used in this kind of motion capturing. Marker tracker and markerless tracker are used to capture facial movements. High resolution cameras are used to track the facial movement of each marker fixed to the man's face. There are different marker technologies used in motion capturing. LED marker technology is widely used for real time motion capturing. Motionless trackers are used to track even the slightest movement of eyes and lips.
How it works?
Each and every movement of the actor can be recorded using high resolution motion camera. In motion capturing only his body movements are recorded and not his body.
Also the position of the camera is recorded while capturing the movements. This is to identify the camera angles to be given to the characters generated using computers. These data comprise a motion capture file and it is saved. Then this file is imported to a software like 3D Max and the motion is applied to the appropriate areas in the 3D objects. Thus a perfect animated effect is created.


The Matrix Revolution
While talking about VFX it is a must that we should mention atleast a words about Matrix. Matrix revolutionized the way people think about VFX. There are a lot of criticism about the way visual effects are used in the movie. But definitely a large percentage of those comments were of appreciation. The effects in Matrix really stunned the viewers. The viewers are taken to a world of magical realism from where they cannot come out for some time. Matrix showed the power of VFX and the extend to which we can use it in a movie.
Matrix is considered as a classical example of using VFX in movies. Every scene in Matrix introduced new effects which are a pleasure to watch. These effects are the stepping stones to new vistas in the world of VFX. So when we talk about the effects in Matrix then we have to talk about each and everyone of them. But the most perfect and innovative one is Bullet time. It is a new effect in which the camera rotates in a 360 degree angle around the charecters in Matrix. This effect required the skillful and creative use of computer to control the movement of a camera. Bullet time can be used to create scenes with slower rates of motion than the Slow motion technology.


The process of creating this effect is a very complex one. At first an array of still cameras are placed around the object to which we want to give Bullet motion. Then a sequence of pictures of the object is taken using these still cameras. These pictures are taken from different angles. Then these images are arranged in the correct order one after the other. These still images are used to create the illusion that the camera is rotating around the characters.
While the camera is moving around the object, we also got the feeling that the object is also moving. In matrix the camera path is set as visualized by computer. A laser targeting system is used for this purpose. The cameras in the array are aligned using this system. The system controls the movement of cameras, which automatically skipped the control to each camera in the array periodically. Using this technique the shots are taken sequentially according to the movement of the viewpoint. Then the frames are scanned by the computer for processing. This kind of innovative technologies and a lot of creativity and hard work is behind the creation of each effect in Matrix. That is why it is said to be a classic in the world of VFX.
A green screen is used as the background of object to which Bullet motion is to be applied. This is used to give screen effect to the shot. The motion rate of Bullet motion can thus be effectively controlled to give more clarity to the shot. One difficult problem here is slow rates of motion which is much slower than what is needed. To rectify this softwares are used to increase and maintain a constant motion rate.Then background images are blended to the background of the image.


Morphing
Morphing is the technique of transforming one object to another. The first movie that used morphing effects was "Willo". It used a effect in which the face of a man is transformed into an animal. The potential of morphing was understood by the entertainment industry and a lot of morphing effects are created and used in lot of movies and animations from there on.`
The movie that took morphing effects to a new height was Terminator 2 -Judgment Day. The movie is full of visual effects and the morphing effects used in it were outstanding and will be remembered for ever. If you see that movie then you will be a little bit surprised about how the villain in that movie easily transforms his shape. And probably you also think for a moment that if you have that skill.Morphing effects are skillfully and efficiently used in Terminator to animate the villain character. He can easily transform his hand into a sword and all. These effects are created using different morphing techniques.
In earlier days cross fading is used instead of morphing. It can be considered as an early form of morphing. With the invention of morphing cross fading is discarded. Morphing makes the creation of morph effects easy. There are a lot of morphing softwares you can use to create morphing effects. Using these softwares you can create stunting morphing effects. To do morphing we need two objects, one is the object to be morphed and other is the object to be obtained after morphing. Points are marked on the key areas of the two objects. It is these areas that transform into the morphed shape giving us an impression that the object have changed into another object. There are lot of softwares using which you can easily do animations. One such popular software used in movie production is Avid Elastic Reality System. There are a number of free morphing tools that you can use at your home computer too. One such free morphing tool is WinMorph.


The world of Dinosaurs.
You might have been astonished after seeing the dinosaurs of the Jurassic period in silver screen and thought how these dinosaurs are created. The way the dinosaurs move, eat, act, etc are so realistic that we actually fell in love with them. Jurassic park is a movie that explored the potential of using computers and VFX. The dinosaurs in that movie are not just created using CGI. It also used another technique called animatronics, which can be considered as a combination of animation and electronics. The models of these huge dinosaurs are created using appropriate materials and then are moved using a animatronics device. The technicians that handle these animatronics devices are called as puppetries. The first thing that the puppetries do is to understand the model to be animated very well. Then only these models can be efficiently animated because different models need different areas of the body to be animated in a particular manner. A dinosaur never walks like a man. So understanding the model gives an idea about how to move the object perfectly and naturally. Then puppetries give motion to these models. For example to move the hand of a dinosaur the puppetry have to move his hand to which a telemetric device is attached. So when the puppetry moves his hands this device informs the circuit controlling the dinosaur. Radio Frequency circuits are used to control the models. The process of creating the models is tedious and also time consuming. The main difference between animatronics and motion capturing is that the models to be animated are not CGI generated.


The world of 3D Graphics.
3D Graphics is a word that does not need any special introduction. Even if you did not know anything about 3D Graphics you might have seen a lot of 3D movies and animations. 3D graphics is mainly used in computer games. You might have played at least a single 3D game in your life. 3D characters and scenes are a hot commodity in the world of games. A game is rated not just based on the ease of play or the game intelligence but also of its stunning graphics.
First to create a 3D movie or a game we have to create a 3D environment.Creating a 3D character might be easy when compared to the effort needed to create a 3D world. Then we have to decide the way it is to be displayed in the screen. Which portion of it will we see at a point of time, which portion to hide, the position and arrangement of pixels in the screen etc.

Then only we can create a nice 3D environment. Lot of things need to be taken care of while creating 3D graphics. The first thing we should understand is we are creating a artificial world, they are created using softwares and the process of creating the 3D environment needs a lot of care, patience, and creativity. You see only a portion of the 3D world created for a game at a particular time. It depends on the way in which the 3D scene is defined and viewed. The potential of 3D is so wide that there is virtually no limit for the kind of environments, or characters or effects you can create with it. All you need are some powerful 3D creating and animating tools and some creativity. You can create stunning and great looking charecters and animations.
A 3D object is composed of different image components. It is based on these components that the quality of the 3D object is decided. The most important components of a 3D image include textures, lightning, perspective, depth etc. A 3D object also is formed by combining different 3D shapes like rectangles, squares, circles, lines, curves etc. To create a shape the first step is to create a wireframe which is a combination of thousands of such shapes. The next step is to give a surface for this wireframe.
Surface Texture:
A 3D surface has different properties. The information about a 3D surface depends on these properties.The surface of a image has the following properties:
Color: The image surface has a color.What is the color of the image, its distribution on the surface of the image, etc are determined by this property.
Texture: The smoothness of the image can be determined by this property.
Reflectance: It determines the amount of light being reflected, its intensity etc.
These are the three important properties that can be used to create a life like character. It is these properties are to be most importantly taken care of while creating a 3D image.
Lightning:
The realistic display of a 3D image requires the removal of lines and surfaces which are not visible from a particular viewpoint. To obtain this we must use the correct lightning effects on the surface of the object. The amount of light reflected, its depth etc plays an important role in defining the "originality" of a 3D object. A very useful but computationally intensive technique called Ray Tracing is used for this purpose. It plays an important role in determining the quality of the rendered image. Light falls on an object from different angles. It then reflects from the surface which create some sort of "shadow effects" and these effects play an important role in determining the quality of the 3D object rendered. It gives us an ideas about the strength, depth etc of the object. Different objects reflect light in a different manner. So special care and skill is needed while creating lightning effects.
Perspective
Perspective can be defined as the angle of view. It is a kind of transformation. It
gives us the feeling that an object in a scene is concentrated on a single point away
from the object. Most common type is one point perspective where the object seems
to be moving concentrated on a single point. There are also other kind of perspectives like two-point, three-point perspectives.


Depth
The depth plays an important role in creating the illusion that the object viewed is
real. To create this different kind of optical effects are used. One such effect is depth
of field. There are different depth of field like shallow depth of field, deep depth of
field etc.
Frame Rate
Frame Rate plays an important role in determining the quality of your animation.
Animators often try to give appropriate frame rates to their animations to make then
look natural. The number of frames per second is high for some animation while it
requires only 21-30 frames for some other animations. It depends on the kind of
scene you want to animate. To animate a man walking 21 or a bit higher frame rate
can be used. If you want to create a man running then you have to use a higher frame rate. In most 3D games to give originality to their animation animators and
programmers try to include 50-60 frames per second. This is to overcome the blurring between frames.
Camera Effects
The 3D objects are often given camera effects. This is also done to give more
originality to the animation. We can view a object from any angle in a 3D environment. This is done using virtual cameras. A virtual camera is not a real camera. You might
have used a "miniature" version of these "virtual cameras' in games with which you
can view a 3D object from different angles. A virtual camera can be used to view
objects from an angle you like. It is implemented in most 3D graphics creating
programs. The rendered image depends on the angle on which you have placed the
camera in the 3 dimensional area while creating the objects. You can use this camera to give different effects like field of visual ratio, zooming, rotating, dolly etc.
The virtual camera in a 3D software allows you to give different effect to your 3D
object. You can view the object from different angle. What you have to do is to just
click on the camera icon and drag the mouse to get a particular angle of vision. You
can give different camera effects to different frames in a 3D movie. What you have to
do is to create key frames and then apply different camera effects to these key frames.In this way you can create and shoot your own "virtual movie" in a computer.
Rendering
Rendering is the final process of creating an animation. After you have done all the
hard work you can see the output of it. Rendering is a vast topic and even if you have created a great animation the quality of it largely depends on the rendering engine
used to render the animation. It is therefore also a very important stage in the
production of movies. We have given a lot of effects to our movie like lightning,
shadow, etc and all these will be perfectly rendered. Rendering is also a
computationally very intense process. In that sense it is expensive too. There are a
lot of rendering engines that are used in different 3D programs. The real quality of a
3D package depends more or less on the rendering engine it uses. Maya and 3D Max
in my opinion posses the best rendering engines.
Rendering is a very slow process. There are two types of rendering real time and
pre-rendering. Pre-rendering is most commonly used in the production of movies and
is extremely long one. Real time rendering is used in games. To render a 3D image
we need a good 3D rendering graphics engine. The whole rendering process is a long one and can be classified into different sections as following:

Scan line Rendering and Rasterization: Each image consists of primitives. A primitive
is a combination of pixels. Lines and curves are the primitives in 2D images while
rectangles and triangles are the primitives in 3D images. To render a 3D image pixel
by pixels is almost impossible because it may consist of lacs and lacs of pixels. So
3D images are rendered primitive-by primitive. Sometimes we have to render images
avoiding the portions of images without primitives. For such kind of rendering
rasterization is used. Rasterization is supported by most modern graphics processors.
Raycasting

Raycasting is used for the real time rendering of 3D images. It is widely used in
rendering 3D games and cartoon animations. There are different techniques to
identify the color value at different areas of a 3D image in Raycasting. Changing the
color values of areas where 3D points join to the actual color value of the pixel is one
such technique. Raycasting is the best way to render shadows and lightning effects in a 3D image.

I hope you have learned something new. Wish you all the best.

The evolution of Web 2.0.

The word Web2.0 is little bit controversial. The controversy is mainly around what it actually mean? The web is a service provided by the internet. So if the web can be called Web2.0 then the internet can also be called Internet 2.0. The web actually emerged as a way to share information. But the way we share information through the web has actually changed. The term Web 2.0 is coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004 and it represent that change.
The Web is now moving from 2.0 to even Web 3.0 and we can expect Web 4.0, Web 5.0 and so on in the near future. Lot of changes is coming to the web and the internet in such a great pace.


What is a Web 2.0 website?
The websites in the olden days provide static content. The user can just only view the information and comment on it. He actually cannot digg it, stumble it, or write a blog about etc. Web 2.0 offers all these features. It allows us to create dynamic WebPages, and allow the users to interact with these websites in a different way. It allows online collaboration, and sharing of information among users. It gives users the ability to control data. A Webpage is not just a static html document, instead it is a dynamic application in which contents are added dynamically and the users not only can read the content on the website but also interact with it like an application either by adding and editing the content, or bookmark it in a social bookmarking site etc.
The interface of a Web 2.0 application is also dynamic. It is highly customizable. So we do not have to worry about the content while changing the look and feel of the website. The data is highly independent from design. This gives more flexibility in designing web applications.
The Web 2.0 not only allows the creation of dynamic websites. It also helps users to create content. The users can upload and share their photos, videos, documents, create their own websites etc. So Web 2.0 adds a social networking aspect to the web. It allows the users to become the consumer and the creator. So the users can efficiently participate in the creation of the largest medium in the world- the Web.
The content in a Web 2.0 environment is created in a collaborative environment. So Web 2.0 is more versatile and content rich. The content is shared between users. The applications used to create the content are web based and this allows more participation. Web 2.0 actually accelerated the growth of internet and the web as the ultimate entertainment and information medium.
What are the services provided by Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 allows the creation of dynamic content. So what are the kinds of services provided by Web 2.0 that we can use to create and share information? The most common types of Web 2.0 applications are the following:

1. Blogs: Blogs are one of the most dominant services provided by Web 2.0. The popularity of blogs comes from the fact that they allow the users not only to read content but also allows them to share what they know by posting their contents. A person who blogs is called as a blogger. A blogger can publish his thoughts online through blogs. A blog allows users to select templates and customize them. They can then add contents to it by just pasting it on these templates. It also allows a high level of interactivity because the users can comment about a blog, they can bookmark it online, subscribe to it etc. There are a lot of blogging website like blogger, wordpress, typepad etc which allow users to publish their thoughts online easily.

2. Social Networking: Social networking sites are another type of dynamic web applications which allows users with similar opinions to share their thoughts, and make friends with each other. These sites allow users to invite friends, join online communities, discuss current issue etc. So using the web as a medium for social activities is a new trend and is a part of the Web 2.0 revolution.

3. Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking allows collaborative bookmarking of websites. If you find a website informative and useful you can bookmark online. There are some websites that allow online bookmarking. Almost all Web 2.0 websites allow online bookmarking. This allows users to share information about good websites they come across while surfing the internet. They can also use it for future reference. It intends to make your surfing more collaborative and productive. Digg, stumbleupon etc are examples of some popular social bookmarking sites.

4. Video sharing: Video sharing sites are a new boom in the world of web. There are lot of popular video sharing sites like YouTube through which you can share your videos with others. You just have to upload your videos to a video sharing site and then others accessing the site can view the video you have uploaded. They can also comment and rate the videos you have uploaded.

5. Photo sharing: Photo sharing websites allows you to share your photos online. You can upload your photo collection to these websites. Then others can view and comment on it. Many photo sharing sites allow you to edit and tag your photos. You can also sent photos as e-mail to your friends and many more. There are lot of popular photo sharing sites which offer these services for free like photobucket, flicker etc.

6. Wikis: Yet another popular and one of the most useful and dominant service provided by Web 2.0 is Wiki. If you have visited a site like Wikipedia you know what a wiki is. It is a very popular way of sharing your ideas and knowledge. In a wiki you can not only read content but also edit it, write your own content etc. Wikis are a very popular medium of sharing information now. The wiki Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites in the web. This underlines the popularity of a wiki. The information contained in a wiki is free and can be edited by anyone. So wikis can be considered as user contributed knowledge houses.

7. File sharing: Online file sharing is another service provided by Web 2.0. Users can upload videos, pictures, music, and other digitized content online and share it with other users. There are a number of online file sharing websites. They allow users to upload and download files. The most popular file sharing site is Rapidshare. There are also other filesharing sites like Megaupload, Mediafire etc.
Conclusion
To conclude Web 2.0 allows users to determine the content of the web. Websites act as the interface through which users share their content. So a Web 2.0 site is just like an application than just serving information. There are certain concerns about this open structure of the web too. Because it may lead to illegal sharing of files, content etc. But ahead of these the benefits offered by Web 2.0 is so immense that it is definitely the future of the web and can rightly be called as Web 2.0.

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