I used the pict you provided, cropped and resized to 96x96 with 96 DPI using PS7.
The picture will be small because it's intended to be a thumb nail.
I set crop tool to 1in x 1in and cropped closer to the subject.
Then, Image, Image size:
Set DPI first at 96 then set Image size height and width to 96
Checked the resample image bicubic
Is this what you needed? It's probably not as sharp at PJ's steps but it's a heck of alot quicker.