Nerd/Boffin Technical corner. Page 59
Yep, I've tried that but I currently have a problem with Adobe.
Thanks anyway, I'll try again.
Try Picasa and that's free and you can apply effects to photos. pixelation is a pretty basic one.
Fank you!
To do it on paint, you do it by stretch/skew ing it to 10% and then back up by 1000%.You can play with those numbers to get the desired degree of pixelation.
Thanks Nat too, I found it tricky (ok, it was my lack of patience that did it).
In the end the effects on Picasa worked best for my needs.
Mobile phone question – can anyone explain what these mean please:
SIM-toolkit
Remote programming (OTA)
MMS
GSM (band)
VCard support
SAR
3G
Memory card type SD micro
Quote: Booo @ August 7 2012, 11:14 AM BSTPixelate. I have an image I want to use for cross-stitch and need to pixelate it.
Have you tried beading software for this sort of thing? Some let you select a picture and the colours are kind of separated for beading. It could work.
Quote: Loopey @ August 11 2012, 2:32 PM BSTMobile phone question – can anyone explain what these mean please:
SIM-toolkit
Remote programming (OTA)
MMS
GSM (band)
VCard support
SAR
3G
Memory card type SD micro
Oooh you do ask some difficult questions!
Memory card SD micro, is a small removable memory card that fits in the side of various devices including smartphones. It adds storage memory for photos, apps, maps etc. Mine also holds those pre-generated text to speech sound files that I mentioned elsewhere.
3G stands for Third Generation mobile phone system. First came analogue mobile phones, then digital ones that were OK for speech but rather slow for data transfer, then came 3G which has reasonable fast (3.5 Mbps) data transfer but coverage is much less (fewer 3G transmitters around). You really notice if your smartphone is not in a 3G area. it gets quite sluggish when it is using only the slow signals.
SAR .. dunno at the moment.
VCARD support. V cards are visiting cards, i.e names, addresses, phone numbers. Vcards support, I guess means the ability to send your vcard to another mobile phone & have it go straight into contacts, and vice versa to receive such cards
The other items I need to cross check before I can write an understandable description.
GSM Global System for Mobile Communications.
GSM Bands are the radios frequencies allocated for the Global Mobile System, they may differ from country to country & you need the right one. Most phones handle many of the bands, so you get phones labelled 3 Band or 4 Band. Only relevant if you travel to other countries usually, since naturally in any particulat country they sell the phones that work in that country.
SAR could mean almost anything, without more context I don't know what it was in your case.
MMS means multi-media system. In the case of a phone I guess it just means that the phone can handle pictures, video and audio files and such files streaming from websites.
SIM toolkit.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_Application_Toolkit
The SIM is the removable card which you put in the phone to define its phone number and which mobile network it uses.
The SIM Application Toolkit is a set of commands which define how the card should interact with the outside world and extends the communication protocol between the SIM card and the phone handset. With SIM Application Toolkit, the card has a proactive role with the handset (this means that the SIM initiates commands independently of the handset and the network).
OTA
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-air_programming
I guess in this context it is the ability of the network provider to preset various parameters of your phone, so that you can acess their services.
Quote: billwill @ August 11 2012, 3:20 PM BSTOooh you do ask some difficult questions!
Memory card SD micro, is a small removable memory card that fits in the side of various devices including smartphones. It adds storage memory for photos, apps, maps etc. Mine also holds those pre-generated text to speech sound files that I mentioned elsewhere.
3G stands for Third Generation mobile phone system. First came analogue mobile phones, then digital ones that were OK for speech but rather slow for data transfer, then came 3G which has reasonable fast (3.5 Mbps) data transfer but coverage is much less (fewer 3G transmitters around). You really notice if your smartphone is not in a 3G area. it gets quite sluggish when it is using only the slow signals.
SAR .. dunno at the moment.
VCARD support. V cards are visiting cards, i.e names, addresses, phone numbers. Vcards support, I guess means the ability to send your vcard to another mobile phone & have it go straight into contacts, and vice versa to receive such cards
The other items I need to cross check before I can write an understandable description.
GSM Global System for Mobile Communications.
GSM Bands are the radios frequencies allocated for the Global Mobile System, they may differ from country to country & you need the right one. Most phones handle many of the bands, so you get phones labelled 3 Band or 4 Band. Only relevant if you travel to other countries usually, since naturally in any particulat country they sell the phones that work in that country.SAR could mean almost anything, without more context I don't know what it was in your case.
MMS means multi-media system. In the case of a phone I guess it just means that the phone can handle pictures, video and audio files and such files streaming from websites.
SIM toolkit.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_Application_Toolkit
The SIM is the removable card which you put in the phone to define its phone number and which mobile network it uses.OTA
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-air_programming
I guess in this context it is the ability of the network provider to preset various parameters of your phone, so that you can acess their services.
Oh my goodness, that is a lot to take in. Thank you very much for going to the trouble.
I am trying to compare these.
http://www.doro.co.uk/Compare-products/?products=20237;21293;21118;21292
http://www.doro.co.uk/Compare-products/?products=21537;21177
http://www.alcatelonetouch.com/global-en/products/simplicity/ot-665-chrome.html
http://www.alcatelonetouch.com/global-en/products/simplicity/ot-292.html
Can you list your requirements for the new phone in priority sequence?
Quote: billwill @ August 11 2012, 3:42 PM BSTCan you list your requirements for the new phone in priority sequence?
Ok, I am having a think about it 
I think SAR stands for Specific Absorption Rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate
It's got units of Watts per kg so I assume a lower value is "safer".
Here is another link
http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/people-and-planet/emf-health/sar/sar-information/
I don't actually know an awful lot about mobile phones, as I merely use one for receiving calls (I rarely do outgoing) and sending receiving a few txts. I use Pay As you Go & only spend about £20 per YEAR.
However just to try find out what all the fuss was about, a month or so ago I bought the lowest cost Android phone that I could find. A BlueChip Android Neon from Tesco at just about £70. Mainly so that I could start to understand the Android operating system for phones. I do not yet use it as my main mobile, I keep my flip-open O2 phone for that, the Android phone is my new boy's toy.
There are as far as I know at present 3 main operating systems for phones, Apple (I think it is called IOS) various versions of it for iPhones. It only runs on iPhones and only iPhones can run it. Blackberry, which was the first smartish phone, but about which I know almost nowt. It is geared towards business use, getting messages & emails etc while out of the office & being able to get info from the office, plus Internet. The third is Android which is an operating system written by Google Inc and made available by them to many phone manufacturers. There are various stages of Android & the lowest version to be seriously considered nowadays is Android 2.2. Android is much more open than Apple's system so many more people are able to program Apps for Android than for iPhone. There is an attendant greater risk of malicious apps on Android than on iPhone.
For those who would like a mechanical keyboard (& I must admit that I find the touch kbd on this android phone a pain):
1) a Google search of images of iPhone showed none with mechanical keyboards, which I think confirmed my first thought that none of the Apple iPhones have mechanical keyboards, they are all touch screen units.
2) however I did see in Maplins a few weeks ago a small keyboard about 8" by 4" which can link by wireless (bluetooth) to an iPhone and perhaps to an Android phone that has Bluetooth.
3) any of the non-smartphones as far as I am aware only have very basic internet functionality, though I'm not sure. My 6-year-old flip-open phone only has WAP facility for internet, which in my opinion is pretty useless and I never try to use it. So for maps with useful overlays I think a smart-phone is needed. i.e Android, Blackberry or iPhone.
4) As far as I know only the £10 to £20 very basic mobile phones come without a camera, so you can't avoid getting one.
5) As far as I know all Blackberries have mechanical keyboards, but they are tiny.
6) Most android phones are touch screen only but I'm fairly sure there are some with numberpad keyboards and some with full alphabet keyboards but tiny keys.
7) I've not seen any Android phones with flip-open covers. Instead I keep mine in a natty little zipped bag with stiff back & front.
8) Google Maps is of course available on Android and there are many overlays available for it, including restaurants etc.
I feel sure that many BCG members have various smartphones so perhaps they can chip in here on the capabilities and whether or not I got anything wrong in this post.
These Androids all have physical keyboards: http://www.androidauthority.com/best-keyboard-qwerty-android-phones-2012-55315/
My wife had an Xperia X10 Mini Pro and the keyboard was fine. The charging socket melted during charging, but that's a different issue...
Dan