RSS feeds are a great way to keep up to date with your favourite blogs and websites without having to visit the sites every day.  In Firefox you can subscribe to RSS feeds from your favourite sites without having to use additional software.  In this tutorial I will show you how to subscribe to an RSS feed in Firefox 3.

The first thing that you need to be aware of when using Firefox is knowing when a website has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.  In Firefox 3 this is simple.  In the main address bar at the top of the screen, to the right hand side in the address bar you will notice a small RSS icon.  Click this icon to view the pages feed.  Sometimes a site will have more than one type of feed (for example atom and RSS), so here you can choose which to use.

The feed for that page is displayed on the page, which in Firefox will be a list of page titles and a small excerpt of what each pages content is.  At the top of the screen you have the option to choose which program you want to use in order to subscribe to that feed.  Make sure that the selection box says “Live Bookmarks” and you can then press the subscribe button.  Firefox 3 will then ask you where you want to store the feed.  You can either store this in your bookmarks toolbar or in the bookmarks menu.  Select where it is to be stored and press OK.

Thats it.  Go to that feeds bookmark that you have just created and then you will see a list of all the articles or updates from that feed, which keeps you up to date when there has been a new article written.  Really easy and very very handy.

For a while now I have kept seeing stunning panoramic photos on the web and wondered how on earth those photos were taken or created.  Well after a little more extensive research today I have found out that they are really simple, thanks to Photoshop CS3.

The image above was created by merging together 8 photographs from the garden.  We have been working in the garden for the last 6 months or so and wanted to find a way in which I could showcase the whole job in one photograph, which is what got me looking at panoramic photography.

The process is simple.  You basically take all your photos, panning around your subject.  It is best to take them in portrait format because your image will end up capturing a lot more of the subject.  You then take your photographs panning around, making sure that you give them plenty of overlap.  The more overlap the easy it is for the software to get a good match.

Upload the photos to your computer and then in Photoshop CS3 you simple select the Automate from the file menu and choose the Photomerge.  Then select all of the photos that you have taken and simply press go.  Photoshop goes to work importing your photos together and produces the finishing touches.  Somethimes to tops and bottoms of the photo are not level as Photoshop has had to move them up and down to get things aligned up correctly so I usualy just crop the photograph down slightly so that the top and bottom edges are straight.

That is all there is to it.  Export your file in a suitable format and size and you have a lovely professional looking Panoramic photograph of whatever you want.