I didn’t spend a lot of time on this.  I meant to do more to match the lighting on Aang, but with limited time to land a joke, I just quickly threw this together.  The sources are the first picture of Aang from The Last Airbender, and a picture I found of Lex Luthor from Smallville.

I’ve been researching camcorders to fit the following specifications:

• Less than $600 (Prefer around 500)
• 3CCD
• Great Picture Quality
• Editable in Premiere CS4
• Records to SDHC Memory Cards

This is for a series of youth group videos, and I was thinking of getting 2 when I thought I could spend about $400/ea. but research has been more than confusing, as people generally have so many various views of great cameras, and in certain budgets they compare a $600 camera to an obviously superior $1100 camera.  (Duh, the higher priced camera is going to be better… it’s nearly twice the price!)

I’m not looking for anything TERRIBLY high as all the videos will end up on YouTube and perhaps DVDs to give to the kids after the summer.  I also want something that’s slightly future-proof.

Anything from Panasonic? Canon?

I found the Panasonic HDC-SD9 that seems to fit the specifications, some reviews I’ve found have scared me a little.

Sony uses their own super expensive MemoryStick Pro cards… don’t know if that’s really within budget.

Anyone have some insight?  What would you do?

You can either comment here, or at Videomaker.com, or at Amazon.com

The bad news is the same problem that I had with ordering Fireworks CS4 was duplicated when I tried to order it again.  I had to create a separate order just to get it.  It shouldn’t have worked out this way, but it did.

I put the Production Premium CS4 upgrade into my cart, and followed that up with the Dreamweaver CS4 upgrade.  At that time, it asked me if I was in need of the upgrade of full version of Dreamweaver, to which I obviously answered with the upgrade.

I believe that is the root of the problem.  You see, it sets that option then, for every other individual software, or at least that’s my impression.  I suppose that if you were ordering upgrades for individual programs, it would save you a click or two, but it caused me to pull out my hair.  I would have liked to have an option to click OUT of that for other programs.  It would have made ordering the full version of Fireworks CS4 a breeze.  Instead, I put in my order for the other software (and selected the fastest shipping time available… hey, it’s free!).  Then I proceeded to the Fireworks page, and added the full version to my cart without a problem, submitting a second order.

At least the shipping is free on both.  But still, there’s an oversight that I’m going to report to Adobe at my earliest convenience.

I’m excited to check it all out, though, and to finally have Adobe software that makes use of the computing power that I have.  Now all that I need is Windows 7 64-bit (I’m skipping Vista), and instead of using only 3 GB of RAM, it’ll use all 4.  That’ll be a nice day.  Moving from 32-bit to 64-bit, and from 3 GB of RAM to 4 GB with a single install of what is reportedly Microsoft’s best operating system in years.

I’ve stuck with XP Pro, and have been anxiously awaiting the direction that was going to be taken with the next version of Windows.  Vista, we can all admit, was pretty much dead in the water, where Vista’s SP1 (first service pack) fixed most of the problems that were inherent there.

Now, Windows has released a list of many of the new features that will be found in Windows 7, which is supposedly releasing in the summer of 2009.  I must say, I wasn’t really expecting a lot, but some of these things are awesome and extremely exciting.

1. New Windows Taskbar

This is the strip along the bottom of the desktop that shows active applications. It’s been redesigned so that it behaves a lot more like the dock found in Mac OS X. You can drag applications to reorder them, and drop in icons that launch the apps that you use the most.  You can also view live thumbnails of what is inside of each open window, right in the taskbar, including individual tabs within a browser.  You can also jump straight to the tab that you want from the taskbar.  It will also provide you with controls for pausing and resuming playback on music or movies.

2. Jump Lists

These menus are definite time-savers.  If you’ve used Google Chrome, you’ve probably made use of the new tab feature that brings up your most frequently visited websites.  This is what the jump lists will be, only they will apply to particular programs.  Available for each program in your taskbar and start menu, you can click on, say Firefox or Internet Explorer, and see your recent browsing history or even choose from a list of your most-visited websites.  When you click on MS Word, you can see a list of your most recently viewed documents.

3. New Aero Features

I have to admit, Aero was one of those features that I thought was nice looking, but probably not very functional, was Aero.  That’s what makes this even cooler.  Microsoft has revamped the feature, allowing you to make all of the windows transparent by simply hovering your mouse over the far right side of the windows taskbar.  You can also use the Snap feature to expand and maximize windows by dragging them to different edges of the desktop.  You can also make great use of widescreen monitors by lining up any window’s edge to either side of the desktop and it will snap and fill that half of the screen.

4. Unified Search

This feature learns as you use it, by bringing things that you use the most to the top of the results.  It’s a simple search box that is located in the start menu.  It brings up lightning-quick search results as you type.  The results extend beyond programs into contacts, e-mail subjects, document names, playlists, songs, and even names of settings in the Windows Control Panel.

5. Fewer Security Pop-ups

Microsoft has worked hard at scaling back the number of yes/no prompts for approving system status updates. You can now change preferences to let only the most important messages through.

6. HomeGroups

This is the feature that makes me the most excited.  If you have multiple Windows 7 PCs on one network, they will all find and connect to each other.  Users can then browse all of the media stored across the PCs as if they were all on the same hard drive.  For security reasons, you can disable sharing on any folder.  Not only that, but when you click on print, the system is location-aware, so it will pick the printer that is closest to you.

7. Device Stage

This is the new device manager that gives you a single place to interact with your gadgets.  When you’ve plugged in your cameras, MP3 players and printers, you’ll be able to see them all in the window, and see the details on the status.  From battery charge, to available storage space, to the date and time of your last sync, etc.  You’ll also be able to manage the content stored on each device, and do device specific tasks.

I was asked by Dr. David Denbraber to put together a video for the song, on Sunday evening.  I worked on it over three days with my only instructions being: use this song, he’ll be focusing on some key words from the song.

I spent some time looking through my pictures from World Youth Day (Sydney, Australia, 2008).  I started putting the pictures together, and then I worked on getting all of the lyrics in, and timed with the song.

I used Adobe After Effects CS3 for the entire project.

There are a few slight hiccups in the final video, but those are very miniscule and you’re probably not really paying as much attention to detail as I do.

That’s where the problems begin.

They offer four CS4 bundles, and none of them suit my specific needs/wants.  All of them offer great products, and one offers everything and more (far more than I would ever use), and that’s CS4 Master Collection.

I currently own Adobe CS3 Production Premium, and Adobe Dreamweaver CS3.

So, I’m at a loss when it comes to upgrading.  I was thinking of upgrading Dreamweaver, buying Fireworks, and upgrading to Production Premium CS4.

But when doing a comparison of Adobe Creative Suite 4 editions, you notice something funny at the bottom of the list:  Adobe Version Cue® CS4 is a part of every collection except for CS4 Production Premium.  Why not, Adobe?  It could be fun to give it a shot, and it’s included with every other bundle.  Not to mention the fact that there is no price tag associated with it.  Granted, I would be getting Adobe Dynamic Link with Production Premium, and that’s a really great thing.  But still, what’s up with leaving that one program out of only one bundle?

Another thing that happened, as I was adding things to my cart on Adobe’s website, to see if upgrading to Master Collection was worth doing.  I added the upgrade of Dreamweaver, and then when I went to add Fireworks, it wouldn’t even let me select that I didn’t want an upgrade.  I don’t currently have any previous version of Fireworks, so getting the upgrade wouldn’t work, as the Fireworks upgrade details require me to have Adobe Fireworks CS3, Macromedia® Fireworks 8, or MX 2004, of which I have none.

But there is some good in all of this.

There’s a site that is pretty new (only a few weeks old), which gained the attention of Adobe within 24 hours of its’ launch. That website is Dear Adobe. There, you can agree with, disagree with and post your own gripes about all of Adobe’s products.  You can also mark certain gripes as inaccurate.  Adobe got in touch with the site’s owner, and quickly began working with him to devise a way for him to package the gripes in a way that Adobe can use them.

So there is hope that the most popular of the gripes will be addressed in the future, and we have a voice that we can use to help Adobe to better meet our needs.  Today, they’ve responded to the top 25 After Effects gripes!

CS4 is really impressive, though.

I am thoroughly impressed with the CS4 line, so far, and can’t wait to get my hands on the software.  I’m really hoping that the improvements to the software really do help with performance.  I’m also looking forward to the new CSS features in Dreamweaver.

One thing that I would love to see in Dreamweaver’s code view in the future is something that Textmate has (I’ve only seen it second hand, I’m on a PC).  The ability to highlight code in columns and rows, without highlighting everything in each row.  Then, when typing, it types the same thing in every line that was highlighted.  That would save a lot more time when working with code.

Either way, though, the code finder stuff in Dreamweaver CS4 is going to be very fun to use.

I’m looking forward to it.

CS4 will be revealed on September 23.  Come on, Adobe, don’t let us down!

-via CreativeTechs