If you don't have a digital camera yet, this is the year to buy one. Street prices have come down to match many "analog" 35 mm. film cameras, while features and resolution have gone up. There are even some models priced below $100.
The main point of buying a digital camera, at least from the Web design perspective, is to be able
to get pictures of anything onto your Web page fast, fast, fast (as they used to say in the old headache remedy commercials).
But sometimes one little picture just doesn't do justice to what you're trying to show or sell, especially when that something is big or 3-dimensional, like a mountain range or an entire street. The mistake many people make then is to use a big picture that takes up the entire screen (or more), throws the page proportions way out, or takes forever to load.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to take one of those panoramic photos that wrapped all the way around the horizon? Too bad that panoramic cameras cost $1000 or so, are almost impossible to find, and don't come in handy pocket digital form.
But what the human mind can invent in hardware, it can usually duplicate in software. That brings us to PixMaker Lite, a new free product (yes, free even for commercial use, but read the FAQs) from the cleverly named company PixAround (say it out loud if you don't get it).
PixMaker Lite assembles a series of photos taken from the center of a circle (imagine standing up, taking a picture, turning to the right a bit, then taking another picture, and repeating until you're back where you started) into a continuous strip, then makes it available for viewing on the Web as a panoramic movie.
www.pixaround.com
System Requirements
Microsoft Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000
Pentium or higher processor
VGA display with 256 colors or more
Reads JPG, Photo CD, and 24-bit BMP images
Stores as JPG or BMP
Price
For you...free.
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This article first appeared in May, 2000.
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