"This is Zach's room," his mother said. The room is pretty much the same as it was in April 2007, the last time Zach Clouser was home.
On July 18, 2007, Zach Clouser was kiled near Baghdad serving his country.
I remember covering Zach Clouser's funeral three years ago. Although the ceremony is a public recognition of the highest sacrifice, the scale doesn't compare with face of his mother.
All current Android Market photo editing apps size down the native 2592 pixel x 1936 pixel (5 MP) image before the app processes it. It is best to crop your raw image first using the Droid's native crop tool to maintain maximum image quality.
After cropping, the Droid automatically saves the cropped image as a new file.
You usually don't need maximum image size. For example: a 2592 x 1936 download to your Facebook gallery becomes 720 x 528 once it's sized down by Facebook.
I almost always shoot at 5 MP because it is always possible to trim down an image and quality will always suffer from making a highly compressed image larger by up-sizing. I also may want the larger original image for printing larger at a later date.
Options in the native camera interface also allow you to shoot a 3 and 2 MP image from the start.
Photo shot with a Motorola Droid using the macro auto focus setting under "settings" in the camera module and pixel zooming using the +/- zoom button in the camera module. The image was entirely processed in phone using the native crop tool, then edited using Photo Effects app obtained in the Android Market.
When cropping full-frame, full size images, crop your raw image in the Droid's native gallery crop window by either floating on the image to access a menu in the gallery or opening the photo and choosing crop from the menu key.
This way you are reducing the size of the photo with the optimum crop before shipping it to an image editing program or exporting to a website like Facebook.
Get even closer (downsizing) with a digital zoom
When you zoom in with a phone camera that doesn't have a mechanical (optical) zoom, the pixel size of the image is actually reduced. The larger the overall size of the original means that more image will be left when you zoom in.
When the camera is set at 5 MP (2592 x 1936) and the "lens" is fully zoomed, the image becomes (640 x 480) on the Droid. Excellent for a web posting.
Now you have gotten a really close, sharp camera phone photo.
Avoid using the virtual shutter button on the touch screen. It is nearly impossible to keep the camera from moving while depressing a button with no feel that is on the same plane as the lens and not in a natural position.
The mechanical button is perpendicular to the lens and can be "squeezed" between a finger and thumb bracing the bottom of the camera.
Also, a half push of the mechanical button will activate and lock the auto focus. A technique we will talk about later for stretching the focus range.
Widely used in camera phones for over five years now, the LED fash/video light in your phone can exhibit different lighting properties than the xenon gas tube flash used in a typical camera flash.
Although an LED has the potential to strobe faster than a xenon tube, I have noticed the flash duration is quite long as demonstrated in this night snowflake smear I shot with a Motorola Droid.
Using the LED flash can produce a flashlight painting technique with fast moving subjects, while slower objects are frozen with the flash.
On the Droid, you have an option to use the flash in automatic mode, which will fill-flash dim ambient light, and to force it to be on or off for each shot. The LED can be used as a light source to enhance video.
Also a must have for LED enabled Android smartphones is an app to use the light source as a flash light/ video light. Droidlight is free app, one of several in the Android Market.
To use the LED as a video light. Run an LED flashlight app in the background and roll your video.
Note: The battery will drain much faster while using the LED as a video light.
Although this article is five years old, it's an interesting read about LED phone camera flashes. http://www.ledsmagazine.com/features/2/4/1/1
A Penn State-York political science class discusses the passing of the health care bill.
From a rally cry for Capitalism, to a 32-year-old sophomore who left school for 10 years and worked three jobs to pay medical costs.
The home at 482 W. Philadelphia St. in York has been torn down because of a sinkhole beneath it. The home next door was also demolished.
The most amusing test for any voice recognition system is belting out a few foul words.
Android 2.x translation is surprisingly accurate, however, words like the f-bomb will result in ####. According to Google via gizmodo:
It's less about sanitizing users' speech and more about making sure curse words don't accidentally appear in transcriptions erroneously.
I recall standing in a South Carolina cemetery where an official named Mike Hunt was introduced to the media in a thick southern drawl. I can attest to the way different speech programs (my northern brain after not sleeping for a day) can translate things.
By adding ".com" after your #### utterance, the true word (####.com) is displayed quite accurately.
The ####.com technique becomes more useful on Android firmware updates over 2.0 where Text-to-speech is available (in any field) for personal communication like texting.
Key words
For web enabled searches, text-to-speech is quite useful for finding quick phone numbers.
Voice search is activated by holding down the magnifying glass key while in any combination of programs or from the desktop.
Speaking Standard Concrete York Pennsylvania will give me the link at right with a map and phone number.
Floating over a phone number calls the number.
Speaking Map of resurants will give you a Google map of all the restaurants within your GPS location.
Touch the push pins, or zoom in to see the names of restaurants with direct links to calling and navigation.
Keywords are unlimited.
It depends on how you define your searches. It's like searching Google on your desktop, only it's integrated into Google's Android operating system, services and utilizes your GPS.
Combining video/audio from a Motorola Droid, still photos from the phone and stills from a DSLR.
About 60 protesters at the state Capitol on Tuesday said the most dire predictions from five years ago were coming true and manifesting themselves in the form of toxic sewage sludge.
Many of those who gathered in the Capitol Rotunda for an hour of speeches and chants were from York County. Several sat on the steps beyond the speakers' podium, holding signs that bore messages such as "We Are Not the Toilet for Pa."
A few signs referred to "Toxic Tom Corbett." Residents of a number of municipalities throughout the state, including Shrewsbury and Peach Bottom townships, claim that Attorney General Corbett is forcing them to allow the spreading of sludge on local farmlands, which they maintain is an environmental and health.
You suddenly realize you need a data tether to your laptop in the wild and you haven't downloaded anything. It's PdaNet to the rescue!
I tried this on two different Windows XP laptops and it worked without a hitch. In windows it also supports text messaging on your laptop screen with inbound notifications.
Our IT guy has found CompanionLink Software successfully syncs Outlook 2000 calender and contacts into the native Android/Google calender and contacts (with all fields) on the Motorola Droid.
The Droid doesn't support this early Microsoft version through it's Microsoft Exchange option.
I had previously synced the Outlook 2000 server email via IMAP and Yahoo through the combined Inbox, however the contacts and calender weren't completely synced.
For one month, using my 3G connection exclusively on my Droid, I racked up 2.8 gigabytes. I never used Wi-Fi or a USB connection to transfer data.
The next month, I allowed my Droid to access any open Wi-Fi network and used secure Wi-Fi networks when possible. My 3G data connection metered 774 megabytes.
I am a good steward of my "unlimited" 3G data connection and use Wi-Fi when possible.
Thousands of smartphones pile on existing wireless networks every day. Using available Wi-Fi can help delay the inevitable need for expansion and passing that cost to you.
There are times, when leaving the Droid's Wi-Fi in automatic search mode, that the user experience can be annoying. A solution is to just leave Wi-Fi turned off during these scenarios.
Example 1: You are riding in a car using Google talk text chat and the Wi-Fi grabs open networks momentarily as you drive along. The app continually tells you and the person you are chatting with that it is switching networks.
Example 2: You are near one weak open network and the phone jumps between Wi-Fi and 3G. One reader had this problem in an urban setting congested with open Wi-Fi networks.
The easiest way to toggle between Wi-Fi and 3G is to install a free widget switch on your desktop from the Android Market. I use WiFi Bar Widget installed above.
Otherwise, you can access your network settings via Settings > Wireless & networks
