Smart, Safe, Swift and Fun
Sound like you? If not, why? Now that I have your attention, what am I talking about? Well, I keep getting the same questions about most of these topics, one way or another, so I decided I would briefly comment on them before getting to the fun stuff. The first is easy…do you have an anti virus program? How about anti spyware/malware? (I use AVG by Grisoft, Spybot and AdAware, to name a couple). If your answer is yes, that's the partially smart bit! Now for the follow-up…are they up-to-date? And…do you use them on a regular basis? OK, a yes puts you in the safe mode. Of course phishing and how to avoid it are plusses, too. I see lots of ways that banks, financial firms and online merchants are trying to make their sites more secure, but the bad guys are working full-time to catch you. So, remember to heed my warning at the end of my columns, to be careful out there on the 'net. Swift involves the ways you can keep your computer running at a fast clip and takes some personal discipline. My system includes using a couple programs I have found to work real well. The first is Diskeeper-it automatically defrags your hard-drives and the second is Registry Booster which cleans up your registry for you. I've written about both in previous columns so if you need to check them out just review the list of my previous columns. Columns in the past have also covered the smart and safe topics, so you might want to do a quick refresher on them as well. BTW, some of the things you need to do are not automatic…
e. g. I usually do the Registry Booster,  Spybot, AdAware, etc. every Sunday afternoon, but I use my computer everyday and that includes going on the internet so you may be able to do yours less frequently, but I suggest a set time so you don't forget.

So, what about the fun stuff? Well, I just finished playing with a neat program that even I can get up and running with no problems. It's called Panorama Composer and it can take a series of digital photos you have taken and stitch them together into a panoramic view. It's really amazingly simple and looks great, too. Even an amateur photographer (like me) who just bought a digital camera can easily use it.

The main advantage of Panorama Composer 3.0 is its real-time preview that makes creating panoramas very easy. There is also a built-in image enhancing mechanism that fixes problems in the images you use. Panorama Composer 3.0 makes it possible to start a new project and save the progress as necessary. Once finished, the project can be exported to JPEG, HTML or EXE format, making it possible to use these panoramas as virtual tours. This sounds like the old, boring, come see the pictures we took on our vacation ploy, but trust me, it's much more entertaining {:-)
The program comes with an excellent instructions manual. Best of all, it can be downloaded and tried absolutely free of charge.

Some of the highlights include:

Any Photos
You do not need any additional or special equipment except your digital camera. Panorama Composer can use hand-held photos taken without a tripod with ease.

Automatic Lens Type Detection
The program automatically detects your camera lens type and focal length used for shooting. In addition all perspective and focal distortions are calculated and corrected automatically during the panorama creation process. You can get an incredible result even with photos that overlap.

Easy To Use
The product comes with a simple, 100% visual wizard-based interface with just three easy steps-Load your images into the application; place them in the correct order; preview and save the resulting panorama optimized for your needs.

Flexible Save Options
Different export formats combined with full control over the exported panorama size and image quality cover all possible ways to share your creation.

Single JPEG image
Panorama can be saved in it's original size, ready for printing.

QuickTime VR movie
QuickTime VR (for "Virtual Reality") is one of the most popular formats for sharing panoramas on the World Wide Web today.

Web ready HTML page with one of the following panorama viewers embedded: Adobe (former Macromedia) Flash viewer; Java viewer; QuickTime viewer; ActiveX based viewer (Microsoft Internet Explorer compatible only).

Standalone EXE application
This option is really handy if you'd like to send the panorama by email. It does not require any additional software and can be executed on any Windows computer.

Fine Tuning
You can manually correct almost all available parameters for the stitching starting from an automatic cropping of the result and ending with the image blending options. Even though the feature is available, you'll probably never need it.

Now that you have read about this fun program and have wondered why these 4 pictures are scattered around this article, visit this url: http://tinyurl.com/yvu8nv and see how a couple of clicks transforms them into a 360 degree panorama. I'm pretty sure you'll be as impressed as I was! (Note, there are two examples at this url, the second is the one that pertains to my article.)

Finally, Platforms
Panorama Composer 3.0 works on all versions of Windows including Vista.

That’s it for now, remember to be safe out there on the ‘net and enjoy all the goodies in the home entertainment and computer world.

Aloha, Lou