The Creative Inspire T6160 is a simple looking 5.1 channel PC speaker system with a clean design. The system puts out 50 watts of RMS power - 6 watts from each satellite and 20 watts from the sub. It has a frequency response of 40Hz to 20Hz which is reasonable for a budget system. Each satellite is powered by a single driver which is incorporated with Creative Image Focusing Plate (IFP) design for better imaging and focusing. The satellites are magnetically shielded and they sport similar shape and design. They are lightweight but their plastic enclosures also make the build quality feel a bit shabby. Unfortunately, there is no wall-mount option which makes placing the two rear satellites difficult. Each satellite's front has a thin-and-delicate grill cloth fabric which makes their durability questionable - one of the satellite's grill was already torn when we unpacked it for review. The subwoofer is well-built and weighs 3.5 kg. It has a down-firing woofer and a flared port tube design. The bass level control and connectivity ports for satellites are at the back. A wired remote control and the audio-in cable are also fixed at the back. This is inconvenient as it restricts sub placement due to the limited cable length. The wired remote has one green LED and a volume cum power on/off switch. There is no aux-in, no headphones-out and no option to up-mix the stereo audio to five channels as in the Logitech X-540 which falls in the same price range. So there are more grumbles than grins on the features and design front. Sound Quality As usual, we started the audition with Creative's own Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic with our reference FLAC files queuing up on the Foobar2k player. In music playback, the Inspire T6160 delivered smooth highs and sufficient amount of upper mids. Cymbals and high hats sounded bright and but still could have been more articulate. This was audible while playing tracks like Jack Johnson's Horizon Has Been Defeated or Radiohead's High and Dry. Vocals and guitars could have sounded richer with more depth as the lower mid range was lacking. The Logitech X-540 which falls in the same price range performed much better in this regard. But for higher frequencies, the Creative Inspire T6160 has bright and sparkling treble. The Creative Inspire T6160 plays mid-bass well but is not able to reach the deep low-ends. The bass is punchy, warm and has good timing which is good for a budget system. But once again, the Logitech X-540's subwoofer has much more depth, detail and impact. The bass on the Inspire T6160 is just enough for playing music at moderate volume but towards the louder volume they tend to become boomy. In short, don't expect an earth-shattering bass from this budget system. Be it a classical piece, smooth jazz, hip hop or heavy metal, one thing is clear, the Creative Inspire T6160 has bright highs but lacks details, articulacy and depth for the rest of the frequencies. Besides, they sound best at moderate volume as going beyond 80 percent of the maximum volume caused the sound to become badly distorted and painful to the ears. In gaming and movies, the Creative Inspire T6160 failed to deliver. Movie and game dialogue was not as sharp and crisp as we heard on the Logitech X540. Further, the subwoofer failed to cope up with most of the action scenes incorporating huge explosions, and in one scene the roaring of a plane engine made the sub literally shake. Imaging and soundstage was good at moderate volume. However, it fails to deliver distinctive sound across the whole frequency range. For immersive gaming and explosive bass experience, the Logitech X-540 is a much better bet.

Websites need movies because they attract attention, increase customer retention, improve SEO ranking, and help funnel projects. Free animation software is so important because making explainer videos for your website is usually very, very expensive. By the time you calculate the production costs and the scenery costs, as well as lost work time (or paying for actors), many people just give up on the idea and scrap the whole project. This is where animation comes in! 2D animations are quick and do not require locations or setup. A professional animation studio will charge upwards of $3, 000 for a one minute animated video, which is still much cheaper than doing a live action movie. But can it be done for free? Better yet, can it be done for free and still look professional? Introducing PowToon! PowToon offers a free animation software tool that runs on windows or mac processing systems, and the best part is that you don’t need an animator to use it! Making a Flash animation takes an expert, plus you need to buy an expensive software. Flash is a great program, but for business owners, marketers, and basic users it is just too much, and it is definitely NOT FREE animation software. PowToon is the first company to offer a free, simplified alternative to Flash. With PowToon, you can easily create 2D animations in just a few hours. It is so easy! Choose your characters, props, and scene, drag and drop them into the PowToon editor, and select the animation you want to apply. Presto! You have a free animated video for your website. Since the PowToon program runs on the web, Mac and Windows users can use it freely to animate their videos without worry. As it stands, PowToon is the best free animation software on the market! What can you do with animations? Lot’s of cool stuff! Here is a partial list of basic examples: Animated Homepage explainer video Post animated tutorials to your website Easily prepare different versions of your explainer video for content personalization Give amazing presentations that really engage Play animated video at your trade show booth’s Increase SEO (Google likes videos) Create viral videos about you or your business Socialize PowToon works on a freemium model. It’s free for anyone to use with the PowToon logo on the video and the PowToon outro at the end of your video, but you can remove both of these things, and gain access to fantastic premium characters, for a very reasonable price. If you are an animator or want more graphics the premium account is definitely for you!

It’s almost Christmas and as such we wanted to bring you the last Beta version of Kodi 17. This means we have good hopes we have squashed the biggest and known issues and up next we will go to Release Candidates which in the end will result in the final release. However let’s not get … Read more 14 By now, you’ve probably heard that Plex has brought their experience to the Kodi platform, and now it’s finally in the repo! In case you didn’t know, Plex is a great way to organize and consume media on nearly any smart device you already have. Plex Media Server walks you through how to setup Plex … Read more 06 Since the dawn of time, or at least since 2008 each released version has received a code name next to the version number. Giving each development iteration a code name in a certain category is kind of a tradition that is not only applicable for software but also for hardware. Google does so for Android … Read more 04 Kodi has many hidden secrets and even team members don’t know the full potential it packs. One of those features you might not know is that Kodi also has a web-interface from which you can browse your library and start playback directly on your Kodi device. It’s something we’ve never really promoted that it was … Read more 30 Kodi 17 features a huge amount of work in areas like video playback, live TV and PVR/DVR, the music library, skinning and more. It features a new default skin, as well as a new default touchscreen skin, named Estuary and Estouchy, respectively. With all this work done over the months some bugs might slip through … Read more

Today there are many websites on internet which may provide you with best tutorials for free learning of Animation and VFX online. Few websites which you can visit for tutorials are :- You can always go for free online courses provide by many websites. (You may also pay a little amount and can go for their certified courses). To name a few:- Moreover if you want to check out what are the different types of Illustrated/Explainer Animated Videos which are made or you want one to be made for you for Business/Personal purpose. Contact us soon! Home Road Films : Home Road Films caters to a variety of clients (National and International) from all types of industries and provides them with customized illustrated animations. So if you're a software company, an education portal, an NGO, a solution provider, a data analysis, solar power, a mobile app company or anyone looking to get a film made to explain a service or product whose value is not immediately apparent, then we are your one-stop-solution to all your digital/social-media marketing needs.We would love to discuss all your queries .Email us on : For getting further ideas & help . You can also checkout our work

To design an elegant magazine, the first thing you should do it prepare the content. No matter what your magazine serves as, the content should be attractive. Different from the paper magazine, digital magazine could be more stunning. Normally, the magazine content is in the format of PDF. All of the content is static. But now, you can design an interactive magazine with multimedia content. Thanks to Flip PDF, everyone can convert PDF to flipping magazine in minutes. It also enables designers to add multimedia to make the content more interesting and engaging. To make the content more engaging, you are able to add YouTube videos, Vimeo, sounds, flash and images etc to enrich the content. For the fashion magazine, you can add the animation to display different clothes style or add the buttons to buy. And for the business marketing magazine, it is better to use a video to introduce your products or company. The digital magazine can enjoy a great large audience through the network. And the flipping digital magazine can be published as WordPress plugin, uploaded online and shared via emails. The most influential way is to spread out in the social media for that people all over the world can easily reach your digital magazine with their iPhone, iPad and other devices.

To view and print, you'll nead Adobe Reader: UB-20 Series II wall/ceiling bracket High quality cast zinc bracket, designed to provide unobtrusive wall mounting for Bose® cube speakers. These brackets allow both horizontal and vertical adjustment of speakers, so you can direct the sound where you like. Compatible with all Bose® 2-speaker and 5-speaker home entertainment systems UFS-20 Series II universal floor stands Slender metal stands elegantly display your speakers while hiding the speaker wires. Designed to optimize listening. Height: 38" (96.5 cm). Compatible with all Bose® 2-speaker and 5-speaker home entertainment systems. UTS-20 Series II universal table stand This cast aluminum stand allows your speaker to be elegantly placed anywhere there's a flat surface. A groove in the tubing conceals the speaker wire while providing quick and easy access. Height: 7 inches (17.8 cm). Compatible with all Bose® 2-speaker and 5-speaker home entertainment systems. The best way to receive additional support for this product is to contact us via the method(s) below.

Are you ready for The List of Authoring Tools: Part 2. I reviewed 40 more eLearning Authoring Tools (Total 90) for eLearning, instructional design, learning and training professionals. At the List of Authoring Tools: Part 1 I presented you a list of 50 Authoring Tools. At the List of Authoring Tools: Part 2 I will presented you a list of 40 more Authoring Tools!!! At The Ultimate List of Authoring Tools we will cover 200+ of Authoring Tools. So stay tuned! If you did not see your favorite Authoring Tools please leave a comment and I will added at the list! IBT Authoring: IBT Authoring is a Web-based authoring and editing tool for use even by authors with no knowledge of HTML or XML. ICE - Instructional Content Editor: Need to create multiple courses? Need to localize a large amount of courses? Knowledge Anywhere’s Instructional Content Editor (ICE) is a web-based rapid online course development tool with advanced workflow and translation management tools that enables rapid development of SCORM courses. Sign Smith Illustrated Dictionary is designed for everyone who wants to learn basic American Sign Language. Impatica for PowerPoint 5 makes it easy to create engaging narrated, animated online presentations for eLearning, marketing and other applications. Impatica OnCue empowers you to deliver effective online communications quickly and easily. It provides a simple solution for the production and delivery of synchronized presentations that include video, powerpoint slides, notes, table of contents, supporting materials... Instant Demo: Screen Recorder Software for Presentations, Training and Support. Intuto's Content Authoring Tools (CATS): The Intuto Content Authoring Tools (CATS) is a web-based authoring system that gives users the ability to create online courses rapidly. This is done by compiling text and multimedia resources into structured and reusable learning objects and courses. : iSpring’s revolutionary PowerPoint to HTML5 technology provides the most advanced PPT to HTML5 conversion in the market. iSpring Pro is an advanced PowerPoint to Flash converter with e-learning authoring functionality. : With a new iSpring QuizMaker authoring professional-looking quizzes and surveys is made really easy. : New iSpring Suite e-Learning authoring toolkit puts together professional products for creating effective Flash-based eLearning courses. : Izzui is a place for collaboration where you learn and share. Izzui allows you to post your online content and presentations, invite friends to check them out and also subscribe to other people’s Izzui posts. : Jackdaw is an e-learning development tool that is entirely free of charge. Price is not everything however because at Open Elms we are...

The Roku 3 is a premium player with a superior feature set to rivals. The wireless headphones are a boon and the UK content selection is superb, although we experienced lip-sync issues and network media playback is too unreliable. Owners of the original Chromecast have very little reason to upgrade the new model. Google has improved the design with the Chromecast 2 and added better Wi-Fi. We also like the new app and, in general, the device is a bargain at £30. However, the Roku Streaming Stick outclasses it for less than £10 extra with more content available, a remote control and excellent user interface. Thanks to its powerful internals and nice interface, the Fire TV Stick is a great gadget for watching Prime Instant Video, Netflix, and UK catchup TV. The remote may lack a mic, but you can still use voice search in Prime Instant Video using the iOS, Amazon or Android app. We still prefer the Roku for its sheer breadth of content, but if you're a Prime member, this is one of the best ways to watch the Instant Video service. A brilliant, low-cost add-on for Android device users in particular, providing a blissfully simple way to beam video from your device to the big screen. People who want to stream their own media collection should look elsewhere. The Chromecast is cheap and easy to use, but there aren’t many apps that support it yet. This situation is bound to change over the coming months, but for now you might find your existing smart TV offers more. From a technical point of view, the Apple TV is as slick and neatly designed as you'd expect from Apple. However, its reliance upon iTunes and Netflix is frustrating for users outside the US, and the Apple TV won't live up to its considerable potential until Apple bites the bullet and opens it up to a wider range of online video services. For under £15 and various value bundles, the second generation Sky Now TV Box is a great budget media streamer. It not only allows contract-free access to a wide range of Sky content but also a number of other apps including BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub. It's just a big shame that Now TV is limited to just 720p. The Fire TV is an excellent set-top box which is powerful and well designed. The voice search works well too, and Alexa is coming, which will make it far better. The interface is slick and easy to use, even if it can be confusing working out what you can watch on an Amazon Prime subscription. The Fire TV is one of the best video streamers, but it really makes sense if you pair it with a Prime Instant Video subscription and use Amazon's other services. 4K content at no extra cost is a huge bonus but don't forget that many 4K TVs already have the Prime Instant Video app. This means it's going to appeal to people who want 4K Prime Instant Video (or Netflix) but their TV doesn't have it. If that's you, just double-check your TV has an HDMI port which supports HDCP 2.2, otherwise you'll find 4K videos won't play. For some people - mainly those with iOS devices and no 2nd- or 3rd-generation Apple TV - the new box is a great media streamer and games machine. However, there's no escaping the high price and limited selection of apps. And if you're not interested in gaming, you're just as well off buying a 3rd-generation Apple TV or Roku for less than half the price. Competition from other gaming media streamers is stiff, too, with Amazon's £79 Fire TV offering more UK catch-up TV as well as similar gaming performance, expandable storage and support for 4K content. Ultimately, the 4th-gen Apple TV has potential (Apple may even upgrade the software so it supports 4K at some point) but right now that potential is far from realised. We’re extremely impressed by the Nvidia Shield both as a media streamer and as a games console. The beautiful UI and game-streaming technology is powered by one of the most impressive mobile processors on the market at the moment, and provides an experience akin to playing a PS4 or Xbox One. The native 4K resolution that supports 60fps playback is better than any other offering in the UK at the moment, with the Fire TV only being able to support [email protected] GeForce Now has been coined as the ‘Netflix for gaming’ and although the library may be a bit sparse at the moment, the experience is great – being able to choose from a library and play it instantly is an intriguing experience and gives us a glimpse at the future of on-demand gaming. The only real disappointment comes with the selection of catch-up TV apps, as we could only install BBC iPlayer, leaving those who want to use the likes of All4, Demand5 or ITV Hub without any option. The Shield is so close to being the perfect media streamer but without access to popular apps like those mentioned, it’ll always fall short. The Roku 2 is yet another decent media streaming box from the market leader and we like the new Roku Search and MyFeed features. However, these are available on the other Rokus and the slightly high price means you'll want to pay the extra for the better remote which comes with the Roku 3 or save money by getting the similar Streaming Stick. The Nexus Player is a decent media streamer, but it’s not an unqualified success. It’s only truly good if you’re pairing it with an Android phone or tablet in order to stream a much wider selection of content. However, if you only want to do that, you may as well buy a Chromecast which costs as little as £20 these days. iOS users are better off with an Apple TV. If you want to play games, it’s a pretty much a toss-up between the Fire TV and Nexus Player. Adding the cost of the Bluetooth gamepad, which is a must, the price shoots up to £115, which is dangerously close to previous-generation games consoles. And we haven't even mentioned the Roku 3, which offers a heck of a lot of content for basically the same price. For those in the UK, the Roku 3 and Streaming Stick are hard to beat. A perfectly capable media streamer, with dedicated remote control, for only £10 may look an indisputable bargain. It's light on features and obviously geared towards Sky's content, but if you want an inexpensive, fuss-free way of watching the occasional football match or TV series, it would be just the ticket providing Sky sorts out its streaming servers. A poor impersonation of the Chromecast, which fails to get many of the basics right. Streaming video is choppy, screen sharing is awkward and there's no third-party app support. Simply not worth the £15 saving on Google's hardware.

Over the course of 18 months, journalists from the Center for Public Integrity and ICIJ, working with more than a dozen reporters across Africa, collected data, documents, video footage, and largely unheard witness accounts that uncovered links between Australian-listed mining companies and allegations of negligence, violence, environmental law-breaking, and other behaviors that would never be tolerated in better-regulated jurisdictions. With an abundance of rich materials, the team faced a significant challenge: how to present it all in a compelling way that would allow audiences to explore a variety of content as they engaged in a much larger narrative. The end result is an immersive multimedia feature incorporating strong human stories with stunning visuals, rare documents and innovative data analysis to reveal the extensive and sometimes deadly impact of Australian mining companies in 33 African nations. Here, multimedia editor Eleanor Bell and news developer Chris Zubak-Skees discuss the making of the Fatal Extraction multimedia project. Q. Why did you choose this storytelling mode for the story? Eleanor Bell: Initially, we intended to package our Africa multimedia into four separate video stories broken down by country. During filming, it became clear listening to our sources, on-camera and off, that there was a great deal of crossover in their experiences dealing with the practices of Australian-listed mining companies operating in Africa. Lead reporter Will Fitzgibbon had uncovered a mountain of primary source documents and recordings. We also had a powerful data story, hundreds of hours of footage and multiple memory cards of images from some of the most visually stunning places on earth. These artifacts could be coerced into a video timeline or added as sound files, video stories and documents to a traditional text piece. But with so much unique material, there was an opportunity to allow the content to tell the story. Our aim was to integrate all the elements into a “digital” experience that would deliver a compelling story without sacrificing the nature of the material. In short, we wanted to deliver these stories in their most organic form. We looked to NPR’s Borderlands and Demolished projects for inspiration. These are highly visual, engaging narratives that encapsulate the idea that stories can be “of the web and not just on the web.” Chris Zubak-Skees: We could have packaged this with a written narrative, but we wanted the multimedia to tell the story, not supplement the story.

Introduction Adobe Flash was created in 1996 as a way to display rich media on a webpage. In the mid-90s, most websites were a collection of static pages that displayed only text and images. When Flash was introduced, it opened a new world of animation and interactivity to the Web. People were able to create moving animations and clickable interactive graphics that went beyond the capabilities of standard HTML and CSS. Flash was – and still is – owned by a single company, which is now Adobe. This means that Flash is proprietary software, and is not an open standard on the Web. Journalists wishing to use Flash for adding interactivity to a website must weigh the pros and cons and decide the best tool to use for telling a story. Here are some of the pros for using Flash on a website: Quickly create rich interactive graphics using a timeline-based software tool. Utilize a number of pre-built libraries and classes to build sophisticated projects that might otherwise take longer to build from scratch. A cross-browser compatible tool that works the same on Internet Explore, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera and Chrome. Good for construction of data-intense animated data visualizations that need to access an online database. Here are some of the cons when using Flash: Does not work on a multitude of mobile smartphone devices. Many touch-screen devices (i.e. tablet computers) require different types of interaction that aren’t often supported by most Flash projects. For example, the difference between a mouse roll-over, and a tap, touch or swipe. Issues regarding accessibility of content for persons using special tools like screen readers. In some cases, intensive use of Flash graphics can drain the battery life on many laptops and mobile devices. Not as optimized for search engines (SEO). Flash is a closed multimedia construct on most webpages making it difficult for some search engines to properly index. When deciding to build Flash project, we dissuade journalists from creating entire websites in Flash. Instead, think of Flash as a single embedable element on a webpage surrounded by text and navigation that is coded in HTML, like a video embeded on the YouTube page. Creating entire websites in Flash contradicts a lot of the standards of webpages, like a common navigation or the back button in the browser. While some of these can be mitigated, in most cases creating entire websites in Flash are often frowned upon by many web experts. Vector vs. Raster Image via Flickr creative commons: It is important to understand the difference between vector graphics and raster (Bitmap) images. Vectors are color-shape-based line art, while bitmaps are photographic images made up of pixels. Vectors are made up of lines called paths. These lines are connected by dots called anchor points. Vectors are not made up of pixels, and thus their size can be changed without losing any quality. Vectors don’t take up much memory, but they can be taxing on a computer’s processor the more complex they become. Vectors are designed to be simple shapes, graphics or animations. Bitmaps are photographic images that are comprised of tiny squares called pixels. Bitmaps lose quality when they are resized, especially when their size is increased from their native size. Newer algorithms in the way Adobe resizes bitmaps have allowed quality loss to be minimal in many cases where the percentage change in size is a small. Bitmaps take up much more memory (and increase loading time on a webpage) however, they are not as taxing on processing. Tools There are dozens of tools in Flash that one can use for many various purposes in creating art. We will go over a few essential tools to start with. The first are the two arrow tools; the Selection Tool (black arrow) and the Sub-selection Tool (white arrow). The Selection Tool is used for selecting and moving elements on the stage. It can also be used to bend and modify vector shapes. The Sub-selection Tool (white arrow) is only used for selecting drawing paths in shapes. The Selection Tool is generally used much more often and is the default tool for most tasks. The Sub-selection Tool is only used in specific cases when drawing or modifying vector shapes. The Free Transform tool is used to change the size of an object on the stage. When using the Free Transform tool, you must first click on an object on the stage to select it, and then use the eight black handle points that appear around the box to change the shape of your object. When selecting objects with the Free Transform Tool, a small white circle will appear, usually in the center of the object. This is called the reference point, and can be moved with the mouse. This reference point will determine how the tool rotates and scales the object. It is also possible to skew an object by moving the cursor just outside the bound of the box. The Lasso Tool is used for selecting object on the stage. It is done by drawing a circle around the objects you wish to be selected. It can also be used for selecting portions of a shape. The Text Tool is used to create text boxes for entering text. The tool can be used by simply clicking the stage once to create a default text box (which can be resized later) or by clicking and drawing a text box to a desired shape. Static text boxes can only be drawn to a specified width and always start out as one line of text. This means you won’t be able to give your text box a height. As you type, you can press return to create additional lines of text. Dynamic text boxes can be given a height.