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Frequently Asked Questions What is Panraven's stance on member privacy and what does it mean to share publicly? In every regard, Panraven respects the privacy of its members. With Panraven, people have complete control over who can view their personal information and view and/or use their content. They can also rest easy knowing the company has taken a firm stance against SPAM. Panraven members can maintain privacy settings uniquely for each media file and story choosing from 4 different levels of sharing (i.e. with select non- members, individual "friends", groups, or the "public". Public is the term used to describe the entire Panraven community. Panraven also offers total flexibility with respect to email notifications. Members and non-members alike can specify how and when both the company and other individuals can communicate with them. For more information on how Panraven will serve to protect your right to privacy, please consult our official privacy policy. Which web browsers does Panraven support? Panraven currently supports Mozilla Firefox, versions 1.5 and 2.0 and Internet Explorer (IE), versions 6 and 7. The Safari (Mac) and Opera browsers will be supported in the very near future. Can I transfer photos from other locations? Currently, you can upload photos directly from Picasa and iPhoto (photo editing and viewing applications for PC and Mac users respectively). Very soon, you will also be able to import photos from websites such as Flickr and Photobucket. How do I choose which name to display next to my media and content? By default the display name you choose when you register for Panraven (and use when you log in) is shown next to your media and stories. You may switch this to your real name in My Life on the my account tab under preferences > privacy settings. Is Panraven a photo storage service? While Panraven offers far more than photo storage and hosting alone (i.e. on Panraven you can create, share and collaborate around your photos and content), rest assured that whatever you upload to Panraven will be safe and secure for a long time to come. Should I organize my photos prior to upload and if so, how? Organizing your photos before uploading them will save you time when you create a story. You may find it easiest to create a new folder somewhere on your computer and then place all photos you wish to upload inside of it. It is preferable not to include photos that are out of focus, too dark, too light, or duplicates of other photos. You should also be on the lookout for low resolution images that might not print well.
What guidelines should I follow in selecting which photos to upload and how can I tell beforehand if my photos will print well? Panraven accepts uploaded photos in JPEG format, the default file type used by almost all digital cameras. Photos taken with most digital cameras (especially those with at least 4 megapixels) will generally be high resolution and look fine in print. Bear in mind that using the digital zoom feature on your camera will reduce a photo's resolution. To play it safe, we recommend using the lowest compression/ highest resolution setting on your camera. Note: Photos taken with a cell phone are generally low resolution, as are those downloaded from an online photo services website, even if the original photos you took and uploaded were high resolution. Low resolution photos may be perfectly fine for online viewing but will not look good in print. To determine the resolution of a photo, follow the instructions below: Microsoft Windows - Open the folder that contains your photos. From the View menu, select Thumbnails. Move your mouse over a photo. Macintosh - Open the folder that contains your photos. Select the photo you wish to inquire about. While holding the 'apple' key, click 'I'. If the dimensions displayed are greater than 2300 x 1600 and/or the photo is at least 1MB in size, your photo should look fine in print. The maximum permitted size of an individual photo is 10MB. How can my photos look crisp and clear on a computer screen and then look blurry or grainy when printed? It may be counter-intuitive, but computer screens can actually trick you into thinking that a low resolution photo is high resolution. The rationale behind this lies with constraints imposed by most computer screens today, which are limited to displaying a certain number of pixels per inch. Printed pictures (or prints), on the other hand, can display many more pixels per inch than a computer screen. So much for high technology! As it happens, this is actually a good thing, because a print needs those extra pixels - actually 4 times as many - for a photo to look as good as it does on a computer. Now, considering that photos are two dimensional (i.e. they have height and width), in order to maintain the same level of image quality, a print needs 16 times (4 multiplied by 4) more pixels per square inch than the same photo on a computer screen. Can I use Panraven if I have a traditional film camera and/or prints? Absolutely. If you have a film camera, most photo developers (from professional shops to drug stores) offer the option of putting your photos on a CD. Then, all you'll need to do is copy the files from the CD to your computer before uploading. If you have old (or new) prints tucked away in a shoebox somewhere, you can scan them into digital format and save them as a JPEG (.jpg) file. If you don't have the time or equipment, there are a number of companies that can "digitize" photos for you. They'll even make your photos available on their website for you to download. Two such online companies are www.digmypics.com and www.scancafe.com. What are "labels", how can they help me, and how do I use them? Adding labels to your media is like categorizing and organizing pictures in a virtual file system. You are essentially compiling and arranging a collection of photos that can be searched and retrieved later on. Choosing the right labels is simple; just enter keywords that best help explain the media. For example, photos from your trip to Sydney, Australia in January 2007 with your friends Alex and Susan might be labeled "Australia," "January 2007," "Alex," and "Susan." A picture of a kangaroo on the same trip might also include the label "kangaroo." The more relevant labels you include, the easier it will be to locate your media when you need it. How can labels help me? Using labels on Panraven will help you find your media files for later use. Only you can create labels for your media and only you can change them at any time. As you collect more photos, you may wish to add additional labels to further distinguish them from others you upload and/or remove labels you initially added but now feel may not identify the files as precisely as you would like. Labels can also help you prepare for creating a story. Unlike most digital media sites, Panraven allows you to use a photo in as many stories - or in the case of other sites, photo albums - as you wish. In other words, a photo is not "dedicated" to a story, so you do not need to remove it from one to use it in another. For example, if you traveled to Florida with your wife and your one-year old son Zach, you might use the labels "Florida" and "Zach" for pictures of Zach on your trip. Later, if you decided to create a story about your family vacation, you could easily find those of Zach and include them. Equally as easy, you would be able to locate these same photos to include in the baby/ childhood story of Zach you have been working on. How do I use labels? You can add labels to photos or text in Media. Simply select the photo or text thumbnails you wish to label, and then go to label media on the lower right-hand side of the page. You can add labels to as many or as few media files at a time as you wish.
Another option is to label files when you upload them to the Panraven site using PicUp. This will save you the step of having to do it later on in Media. Can I share media files with one person, just as I can with stories? Yes, in addition to public and group sharing, you can share media with one person. While we plan to make this feature more intuitive in the future, at the moment, you can simply treat an individual as a group of 1. In other words, in Friends create a group and add to it the one friend with whom you wish to share. Then in Media, select the files you wish to share, and under "share media with", choose the group you have just created. Are there any bandwidth requirements? Using Panraven requires broadband internet access, such as DSL, cable, T1 or other high-speed connection. What software features and functionality will Panraven launch in the near future? Here is a short list of product updates we intend to release in the next few months:
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