Design Diva Fabrics

Are you looking for great designer imported upholstery fabric? If you are then I have just the thing for you: Design Diva Fabrics! This discount designer online fabric store offers Kravet, Scalamandre, velvet, faux fur, and brocade fabric for your upholstery, curtain drapery, interior fabric needs at a great low prices.

The people behind the Design Diva Fabrics have been involved in the various design communities’ most prestigious organizations for the past 30 years. Hence their one true passion of interior fabrics is the major motivating factor in their worldwide search for the most unusual fabrics and trims.

They have everything you could possibly want, which ranges from the luscious Velvets of Belgium and the magnificent Brocades of Italy to the intricately Hand Embroidered Silks of the Far East. You name it, they have that. And as if that isn’t enough, almost all of their fabrics are normally available exclusively to designers and architects.

Please follow the link above for more information on Design Diva Fabrics.

This post is sponsored.

iTMS gets birthday makeover

Apple has celebrated the first birthday of the iTunes Music Store in style by launching a new version of iTunes that provides access to the third generation of the digital download service.

The revamped Music Store now features QuickTime music videos; allows users to upload, share and rate their iTunes playlists; and makes changes to the way that digital rights are managed. Purchased music can now be stored on up to five different computers (up from three), but the same playlist can now only be burnt seven times (down from 10).

The non-Music Store related parts of iTunes have also been improved, with a new feature allowing users to print CD jewel case inserts, a ‘Party Shuffle’ feature for creating automated playlists and a new lossless encoding format.

“iTunes has exceeded our wildest expectations during its first year,” said Apple boss Steve Jobs. “Our third generation iTunes Music Store just blows away any other online music service,” he added.

Sadly for UK Mac users, there is still no firm date set for a European roll out of the service, although Jobs did say that Apple was targeting a date later this year. Problems agreeing on licensing terms with the European music labels are understood to be holding the launch up.

Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, which charges 99 cents per download, in April 2003. Since then Apple has seen competition from a resurgent Napster, Microsoft and Sony. Apple’s service is buoyed by a catalogue of over 700,000 songs and has sold over 70 million downloads in its first 12 months, giving Apple a respectable 70 percent market share of the legal downloads market at time of writing.

Holiday Hypermarket

The concept of a hypermarket is where a place is considered a one stop center for a particular product or service. We have heard about a consumer daily products hypermarket or a hardware hypermarket. However, what do you think about a holiday hypermarket? Quite new to the market, but a great concept.

Holidayhypermarket.co.uk is a site where it could be considered a holiday hypermarket. If you are thinking of going to a vacation, this site is indeed a one stop center to facilitate to your needs. Their services includes package holiday bargains, last minute deals, cheap flights, all inclusive holidays, budget and luxury hotels and transfers.

I found the bargain ski holidays package in this site extremely attractive. Not only the package itself is exciting, the scenery and attractions in this place is daunting. You should proceed to the Holiday Hypermarket’s site and take a look at their amazing pictures that is featured.

This post is sponsored.

DVD Studio Pro 3

DVD creation app DVD Studio Pro has also had a makeover and moves to version 3. The application can now encode footage shot in HD to the MPEG-2 format, but there are also plenty of new features to get DVD creators excited, including 30 professionally designed transitions, QuickTime-based ‘Alpha’ transitions and support for surround sound DVDs.

High-end compositing and visual effects tool, Shake, also gets an update. Version 3.5 is optimised for the G5, includes new tools for shape-based morphing and warping, and improved network rendering management. More details about Apple’s new products can be found at www.apple.com/uk/software. Rest assured that iCreate will be reviewing the new releases as soon as they become available.

Credit Card Processing Company

The Internet e-commerce is becoming more popular by the day with more and more individuals from the general population accepting the idea and concept of shopping online. This is because the Internet provides a comfortable yet convenient way of transaction of products and services.

If you are a online merchant, the mode of payment for your products or services is critically important in your business. Your customers should be able to pay in the most convenient mode. The best would be that your site enables credit card payments.

The Merchant Consulting Group majors in the processing credit card payments. In fact, they offer most of the facility pertaining to the processing of credit card payments be it is in the real world or online. These includes credit card terminals, debit card processing, accept credit card through telephone and many more. Check out their low prices with rates as low as 1.32% to discover their fantastic deal!

This post is sponsored.

Motion Graphics For The Massess

According to Apple, Motion allows video editors to bypass the keyframing procedure by using a system called ‘Behaviors’. These use procedural animation techniques to simulate advanced motion effects, such as the effect of gravity or the elements. The program does features a keyframing editor, however, affording precision control to the more technically minded editor.

“With its revolutionary technology, breakthrough ease of use and low price tag, Motion may do for motion graphics what Final Cut Pro did for non-linear editing – bring the ability to create pro-quality results to the masses” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing.

The launch of Motion places a big question mark over whether Adobe will continue to develop a Mac version of After Effects or whether After Effects 6.5, also launched at NAB, will be the last Mac version. When Adobe launched its new Digital Video Collection last year, the lack of Mac releases for new products Premiere Pro, Encore DVD and Audition effectively signalled that Adobe was no longer prepared to compete against Apple.

Only After Effects remains – a legacy of the program’s large Mac user base. Regardless of the whole Apple/Adobe scenario, Motion is certainly generating huge interest. Steve Paris runs The Bristol Mac Centre, a Mac consultancy specialising in digital video. He says clients can’t wait for the new software. “With Motion, FCP, DVDSP and Logic, my clients will have everything they need to edit, design and create media for any format, all from one supplier. And they all want a look at Motion.”

Although Motion stole the show, several important updates have also been made to Apple’s other pro digital video applications. Videoediting solution Final Cut Pro has been rebadged as Final Cut Pro HD in reference to its ability to now handle footage shot in broadcast-quality high definition, without additional hardware. The update is free to all FCP 4 owners and costs £699 to new users.

Outsourced Colocation Company

If you own a fairly large company, there would be many departments that you would need to handle. From sales to support, from research to acquisition. The Internet remains a neccessity for advertising, media information and even communication with your customers overseas.

With the Internet becoming more and more useful, the cost of setting up your own servers is huge. It would be more advisable to outsource this department as it is confirmed that the cost involved would be minimized.

Momentum is a Canada Web hosting colocation facility where they offer you managed services, interactive services, business solutions and on demand consultation. They even provides backup for your mission critical data of your company. This company truly provides you a good outsource alternative in protecting and managing your web-based properties.

This post is sponsored.

Apple refreshes pro video line-up

Apple stole the show at NAB 2004 (National Association of Broadcasters) by unveiling updates for all of its major professional digital video applications and a brand new motion graphics program called Motion.

Speculation had been rife before the Las Vegas trade show that Apple would be making a major announcement after the firm issued cryptic invitations to the media containing the phrase “Moving Pictures. Moving Sound. Moving the industry.” Nobody was expecting to see Apple launch a rival to Adobe’s mighty After Effects suite, though, especially one priced at just £199.

Motion is designed to make motion graphics – a notoriously complicated subject – far easier to create. NAB showgoers cheered as the program was demonstrated.

The software allows users to create animated text, video and graphics; add and instantly preview multiple filter and particle effects to DV footage; and apply natural movement to type and graphics without the need for complicated keyframing commands like those seen in programs like After Effects.

Trading In Options

Do you normally invest in stocks and spend loads of time gaining information and hanging out in bookstores trying to gain more knowledge in stock options? What do you think of the idea of gaining knowledge online while sipping a cup of coffee beside your wife? Do it online as it saves time with a comfort.

OEX Options provides option trading information and training for those who have limited or zero knowledge in investing into options. Lessons includes investing into blue chip stock options, why index options are like fruit, leading and lagging indicators, futures index training, calculating profits and losses and pivot points in options trading. I found their training very informative with their information up to date and concise. You can try it too!

This post is sponsored.

Taking it further

The colour adjustments we’ve looked at here have largely been aimed at correcting or enhancing colours. But many of the techniques can be adapted to produce more extreme colour alterations. Using Photoshop, it’s possible to mimic many of the effects once generated in darkrooms, including solarisation, sepia-toning, cross-processing and more. Indeed, with a little experimentation, it’s possible to come up with effects never seen before – and sometimes effects you’ll never want to see again… Apart from the ideas we introduce here, you can try out Photoshop’s different layer blending modes, either blending two images together, or duplicating the current image layer then changing the way it interacts with the layer below. Don’t just stop with a single modification or filter, but try combining them. There are so many permutations in Photoshop that you may never exhaust them all.