VS

So if you’re on the hunt for a new phone then it’s likely these two have caught your eye, The Samsung Galaxy S2 and the iPhone 4. Both are honestly fantastic phones. I’ve an iPhone 4 myself and a friend of mine currently has the Samsung Galaxy s2 I’ve had a bit of a play around on. What can I say, I’m extremely impressed by both! Each of the two phones has a heap of pros and cons to it, but mostly pros! Each also suits different types of people and different interests, so let’s have a look at the list of reasons each is good and why it betters its competitor..

The Samsung Galaxy S2

• OLED screen: Much brighter and more vivid in comparison to the iPhone 4′s LCD screen. This is a massive advantage in a lot of situations.
• Much faster data speeds: Higher theoretical max data transfer speeds over cell networks. This means it’s about 6x faster than the iPhone 4. Yes, SIX TIMES faster!
• A heap more standby time: Less frequent charging is required and it has about 2 and a half times more standby time. Yes, no more getting caught outside with 20% battery.
• Higher Res movies: Shoots 1080p video, as a pose to the iPhones 720p. 1080p is extremely high quality and is fantastic for all sorts of video projects.
• More RAM (memory): There is 1024mb of RAM on the Galaxy, and 512mb on the iPhone 4. Do the math and you’ll realise how much better that is.
• Much higher resolution Camera: 8MP vs 5MP. 3 MP higher.
• Newer Bluetooth support: 3.0 vs 2.1
• Talk time: 18.3 hours talk time versus the iPhones 14 hours flat. Yes 18 hours of straight talking. Most people don’t even use that in a month on their mobile. Unless you’re 14 and female of course.
• Much faster processor: 50% faster. This means things are all going to load quicker and work faster. Very nice benefit.
• Lighter: 21 grams lighter. This won’t really make a difference at all for most people, but it’s still a 1up on the iPhone.
• Thinner: 1mm thinner than the iPhone 4. Same as above. Not many people are going to care about this, unless you have tight pockets. Still however, worth mentioning.

The iPhone 4

• More internal Storage: 64 GB vs 32 GB, that’s double the space. The iPhone 4 can hold all your music, apps, pictures and media with no stress at all.
• Much higher PPI screen: 329PPI vs 218PPI: Meaning text and images are a heap more crisper in quality.
• Much higher screen resolution: 960X640 vs 800×480. That’s 60% higher resolution.
• More apps available: The apple app store is absolutely huge. It contains about 30% more apps than the Android store. That’s around 200,000 more. Yes! TWO-HUNDRED THOUSAND more apps.

As you can see both of the phones are absolutely fantastic. I’ve heard from a lot of people that the Samsung Galaxy S2 is ten times better than the iPhone 4, but you need to consider you’re no longer with Apple. Meaning no more connecting to iTunes, no more apple app store or any other cool features apple provide you with.

Either way, both phones are fantastic.

- Jonathan

Ever been on skype to someone and all you can see is a blurry outline of them with it only moving every 3 seconds? Does your webcam lag like no tomorrow and make you look more like a bunch of pixels than a person? Warcom is here to give you the tips to ensure your webcam works far better than it currently is. There’s nothing more annoying than having your webcam look like trash. The image is bad and you can’t skype with someone. You’d be better taking a photo of yourself every 5 seconds and emailing them one by one, that’d probably be faster than a slow webcam. Here’s some tips to avoid your webcam giving you such nightmares..

Invest in a good webcam

Firstly, if your webcam cost you about $2, then of course it’s going to be complete rubbish. Try spend a decent amount of money on your webcam to ensure it’s got good quality pictures. Sure it might not be the best, and I’m not saying to spend hundreds of dollars on one, I’m just saying to make sure it’s at least decent.

Don’t use your monitor as a light source

Make sure you have a few lights turned on or that you’re sitting in sunlight. If your webcam is using your monitors light only then of course the image quality is going to be horrible, and slow. Natural light is awesome for webcams and can give you a massive improvement.

Make sure you try to soften the light

If you don’t have sunlight and are just using normal lights around your house, try soften them somehow. Whether it be putting something on them or whatever you please, if you can get the light softer it’ll be more effective.

Get rid of reflection

ESPECIALLY if you’re wearing glasses, you want to try to get rid of any reflection in the camera’s view. Try to turn down the brightness of your screen so it’s just visibly comfortable rather than extremely bright.

Clean your background and make it simple

Rather than sitting i na crowded room full of junk, objects and people. Try to sit against a single colour wall, or somewhere that there are less things going on. This lets your camera relax a little and not work as hard to pick up every little detail around you, this will also help you get better image quality as well as speed. Have a look at our range of webcams, some of the most high quality webcams won’t need you to do most of these steps, but you have a mediocre webcam or a semi decent one, doing all this is going to really help make those skype or msn video calls far more enjoyable and relaxing. Just make sure you invest in a decent webcam, don’t spend hundreds of dollars, but at least make sure it’s bearable.

- Jonathan

If you’re into animating at all you will definitely have heard of Flash. Flash is a program that is becoming increasingly popular with editors around the world. Many people have posted fan animations of their favourite mangas or movies, and then also made their own flash animation series. Whether it’s using sprites or drawings, flash is a fantastic way for you to bring your art to life and create your own fan or original series. Whether you’re making your own fan series from a manga you’ve drawn or you’re simply making a two second clip, flash can be awesome!

The Pros

• The look and feel of flash will be consistent across all platforms. Macromedia wrote flash for a bunch of browsers and platforms, so the program will always display itself the same no matter what browser you’re on.

Sony Vegas Pro 11 Review

So most people out there in the editing world have definitely heard of Sony Vegas Pro. Most people who use it would have been on Pro 9 and loving it. Well there’s news. Since the release of  version 10 (Ugh, yes we agree – What a let down) Sony has taken the time to improve on all the features we loved and hated from Vegas 9.0 in order to bring us Sony Vegas Pro 11, the new and far more improved version of the program. With everything from new presets to faster rendering times, everyone is sure to find something about the program they adore. Let’s have a quick look at what’s been improved in the program.

Faster Rendering

Vegas Pro 11′s rendering times are far superior to that of Sony Vegas 9.0, but why and how? Well what they’ve done is that they have actually given you the ability to connect the rendering force in the program to your graphics card inside your computer. This means that not only is the program working its hardest to render your footage in HD, but now it has the backup of your graphics card to help it out. The better the graphics card, the quicker and more efficient the rendering is going to be for you. This is a huge bonus on the old version of Vegas, where sometimes you had to wait up to 5 hours for something to render.

New presets

Anyone remember the text presets in Vegas 9.0 and 10.0? Yeah, rubbish. Now Sony has actually taken the time to make sure that they actually offer some decent content when releasing their program. There is a new feature to actually animate text as well. There are a good 20 odd text presets that give you awesome animations such as Action slow-mow, bouncing text and zooms. This is also accompanied by a heap of effect and transition presets you’re sure to love.

Search for what you want!

Much like Windows 7 does, you actually have the feature where you can start typing the name of the effect, transition or piece of media you want into a task bar and it will show up any alike options and the effect itself. This is fantastic for quickly finding effects and media to add to your project without scrolling through your content for minutes at a time trying to remember where that one awesome effect you loved was.

Codecs!

Finally Vegas has a heap more codecs it can work with, with the help of addons and the new version itself. Now you can actually use .AVI and .FLV’s without hassle. Thank god!

More powerful effects

Now you can actually create certain effects that resemble somewhat the ability of Adobe After effects. With now the power to create certain natural effects such as lightning and fire and awesome intros for your videos, it really is a treat!

The new version of Sony Vegas Pro offers you a huge upgrade. This software is to be enjoyed by anyone in the editing world. It offers an easy, fast, very effective and powerful path to take when creating your short films, youtube videos or any video production you please.

- Jonathan