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Net Gains (Apr 17, 96)
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With the hectic lifestyle we lead in a city like ours, not all of us can escape from our keyboards and computer monitors to just "stand and stare" (as a great poet put it). And if you're one of those lucky ones who have a computer monitor with a fantastic resolution at your disposal, you have an option of sitting & staring instead. The web is full of sites from where with just the click of a mouse button, you can get your own electronic copy of a picture, painting, or a digital creation for that matter.
Here's where the numerous photograph giants on the Net come into the picture. Kodak, Fuji, Nikon all have their own home pages, and each have links to pictures that demonstrate what their equipment can do for you. Kodak is, by far the site with the best and most amount of pictures. Kodak's Sample Digital Images presents the web - surfer with almost a hundred pictures in groups of a dozen each. Their "birds of a feather" series features herons, gulls and owls. "City Places" have a collection of major tourist attractions all over the world - the Big Ben, Notre Dame, Sydney Harbor, among others. There's a special section of light playing on different objects like a transparent jelly fish, the niagara falls, and even fireworks ! As if these weren't captivating enough, there are landscapes : a rainbow here, a meadow there, rocky mountains to name a few. But the images that take the cake are the Natural Patterns These are, by far, the most captivating of the lot. You could lose yourself watching their Sunset Silhouette, Sunset Clouds,Cloud Patterns or the Autumn Stream at this site.
Another fascinating site is A HREF="http://paris-anglo.com/zoom">Paris - Zoom , an interactive photographic journey on the Internet. There are 51 images at this site, and a click on any one of them gives you that picture alone on your screen. You then have the option of zooming in and getting a blow-up upto two levels. At any point in time, you could click anywhere on the picture to get a another of their 51 pictures chosen randomly. A unique idea well carried out, and interesting photographs of Paris go hand in hand towards making this site a cool site to visit, if you don't get the opportunity to actually go to Paris !
Last but not the least is the mother of all sites - Yahoo! . Photography is listed under the Arts catagory, but you'll have to go down to the Exhibits level if you want to see the pictures Besides the four major groupings of Landscapes, Military Aircrafts, Personal Exhibits, and Photojournalism, you have a host of links to other sites like A HREF="http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/beershots">Beershots which shows what different brands of beer from around the world look like under a microscope !. My personal favourite at the Exhibits site is the landscapes site featuring seas, deserts, ravines, the grand canyon, pictures of frozen Iceland ... basically nature in all its glory. I promise you hours of captivating beauty if you travel through this magic pictureland on the Net.
Once you visit some of these sites, and find pictures, images, and paintings that you like, you can download them. Most browsers offer the "download this image" option that automatically saves the image on your hard - disk. You could then use these images as a background pattern on your monitor instead of the usual dull grey to make your monitor a pleasant object to stare at, when you get tired of all those numbers, figures, and documents. A friend of mine changes his pictures daily, and his monitor gets a lot of visitors daily to see what the "picture of the day is". Have fun !
There is an Internet Seminar being held this coming saturday at the World Trade Centre, with Ravi Database Conultants technical head Shuvam Mishra, and a net buff - Ketan Sanghvi talking all about the Net - what it is, how you could get on the net, how to use it, and the business applications of the Net. The cost of the seminar (11 am - 6 pm) is Rs. 1500/- per head. If you're interested, get in touch with the organisers - Multinet Systems - for more details at 4229014/ 4229941 or via e-mail at hareesh.tibrewala @ gems.vsnl.net.in.
Till next week then, chal...