Pick of the week: Memeoirs.com

I'm not sure about you, but I suspect that I've written what amounts to several tens of thousands of emails in my life. That's a pretty remarkable amount, all things considered, and I imagine that set end to end, all of these messages would be several hundred pages of text. And there are times when I think that in the future, we will all be remembering that quaint technology called "email" and laugh. I say remembering because for all intents and purposes, all that text resides on someone else's computers and hard drives and no actual archive of this information exists. Until now, that is. Welcome to Memeoirs.

Memeoirs offers a very original service: they will compile all of your email into a book format. Yes, a real, paper-based book, that you can read at will, as often as you like. Now, before you laugh this idea off as being a little silly, let me ask you what you believe is the lifespan of digital data? Do you think that in a hundred years, that digital data will still be around. For all the advantages of the digital information format, with its ease of copying and other features, it still remains fairly fragile. That data is dependant on some mechanism to be interpreted. Paper does not.

The pricing model is based on the total number of pages requested as well as the option of printing a soft versus hard cover book. The process is fairly simple: pick an email address, pick a date and time period, and Memeoirs does the rest. The archiving process is quick, private and effective; Memeoirs strives to make sure that the printed content contains only emails of value. Account activation emails and spam are automatically filtered out and only your actual communications remain.

A fantastic idea in the digital age; old school archiving! Head on over and take a look! You might find a great gift idea in the making!

Online Tools review: WobZIP

Ever find yourself in a situation where you need to unarchive a file of one type or another, but simply do not have the tools, or privileges to install an application to do it for you? Well, here is WobZIP to the rescue! The tool supports numerous archive formats, including: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZHCHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS

There are several advantages to using this tool, as outlined by the makers themselves:

• Web-based means hassle-free: Now you can unzip your files in school, at work or anywhere as long as you have access to the Internet. No longer will you be limited by the inability to install programs onto admin-protected computers.
• Uncompressing online means safer: We scan your compressed files using an anti-virus scanner so any infected files will be removed before you download them onto your computer. 
• Uncompressing online means the freedom to choose: Our aim is to allow users to uncompress as many compressed file formats as possible. This means that you can compress your files using the compression format of your choice and send it to your friends. Tell them about WobZIP and uncompress on the fly.

A great addition to your toolbar, WobZIP is a truly useful tool!

The great RAW versus DNG debate.

Being a digital photographer, it has come to my attention that between my wife and I, we are using digital SLR from the same company (in our case, Canon), but both produce RAW files that are a little bit different from each other. And this is a pattern that repeats from device to device and manufacturer to manufacturer. This leads to some issues concerning the archival safety of digital pictures as a whole. If everyone is using a proprietary format, where will that leave us in 10 years? Or 20 or even 30 years?

Adobe has been working on this issue for a few years and the result of their work has been the creation of an open standard labelled DNG. It is Adobe's hope that by creating a well and publicly documented with readily available specifications will lead to greater adoption amongst manufacturers while allowing changes in the technology to be easily accommodated as they appear.

Adobe lists some pretty convincing arguments for both hardware and software manufacturers, including:

• DNG removes a potential barrier to new camera adoption, since raw files from new models will be immediately supported by Photoshop and other applications.
• The DNG format allows R&D savings by reducing the need to develop new formats and by simplifying camera testing.
• A common format allows greater control over the quality of conversions by third-party applications.
• The specification allows the addition of private metadata to DNG files, enabling differentiation.

For early adopters, Adobe has made an application available for both Windows and Mac platforms, to convert RAW image files into DNG, in batches and great renaming functionalities. If you are a digital photographer, you owe it to yourself and your images to read up on this debate, as it may have a greater impact than you may be aware.