Google Roundup for September 7th - 15th

Well folks, its been a busy weekend up here in Newfoundland, with events ranging from installing HE washers to afternoon bicycle rides. In the past week, Google has been just as busy, here another round of news:

• All English users of Blogger can now use the Blogger Following feature.
• Check out these cool Google Earth links: PC World Top 10 Amazing Add-ons, 51 Places You Can't See in Google Maps, and this link about a giant tribute to Lenin.
  
• Picasa Web Albums can be used to directly upload photos from one's email and phone, check out this post for more details.
  
• New features have been added to Gmail labs: reply with only selected text; default reply to all, ability to set start and end dates for vacation auto response, create own custom color combinations, and drag and drop items in the Navbar.
• In the mobile world, Google has introduced Search with My location, which will provide localized search results. Note that this is available in the US and UK only (for now) and only works on certain phones.
• For Blackberry users, Google has released Mobile App for Blackberry. This acts as a central point for Google services and can be found at m.google.com on the Blackberry device.
• Once again, old is new. Google is making old newspapers new by allowing them to be available online. These can be accessed by searching the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News.More and more newspapers will be added and the oldest newspaper, the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, is also available for search.

  

We're on the Moon!!!

Picasa 3.0: What an Update!!!

What a week for Google, on Tuesday they released their own browser, Google Chrome, which has already passed Opera in number of users (Microsoft, you better be worried), and on Wednesday an impressive update was provided to Picasa. Beta version 3.0 has a ton of new features, here they are:

1. The new Blemish Tool which is similar to the clone tool in Photoshop and Eyedropper in Corel Photopaint allows the removal of unwanted areas in a photo. Unlike Photoshop or Photopaint, a preview is given before the effect is applied.
   
   
2.  Red-Eye removal is improved to provide better color matching of pupils.
   
   
3. Picasa now has Video editing, although basic, you can do such things as add soundtracks, title cards, and place photos together with various transition effects.
   
   
4. Picasa now has its own Photo Viewer, and is much better than the Windows Photo and Fax viewer. 
   
   
5. Collages can be automatically produced from a picture folder and has a bunch of options. 
   
   
6. Cropping is made a lot easier. Picasa provides 3 automatic cropping selections, along with preview thumbnails, manual mode and other ratios are also provided.
   
   
7. The coolest feature is Face Recognition. Within the program Picasa 3, photos can be filtered by those having faces. In Picasa Web Albums, name tags are possible, a face in a photo is tagged and pictures with that same face are found. So unlike Facebook which requires tagging every person in a photo, Web Albums can automatically do it for you. 
   
   
8. There is a new sync to web feature that automatically updates online albums when photos are added/edited on the computer.
   
   
9. The program is much faster.
   
   
10. A new text tool has been added to easily add text to any photo. 
    
    
11. There is a new Explore page that allows viewing of public photos all around the world. 

As you can tell, this is a massive update. Unless your into some heavy photo editing, save your money and go with Google Picasa. 

Picasa 3.0: Impressive Update

Google Picassa

          Google Picasa is another piece of free software from the people at Google. This software is very easy to use, although I do get a bit confused with their photo indexing which collects and organizes all of your photos. Pics can be viewed as a slideshow, and also as a timeline, from oldest to youngest in terms of being added to the computer. 

          Now the good stuff, when a photo is double clicked on, the photo editing mode is entered, here you can do all sorts of quick, easy, but effective stuff. First of all there are Basic Fixes including adjustments for colour and red eye removal, next Tuning involves increasing highlights, adjusting colour temperature, and finally Effects can produce a black and white photo in one click, sharpen an image, and various focus options. Photos can be starred and then exported to an album, or uploaded to Web Albums which is basically an online photo storage solution that allows photos to be viewed by others and can be accessed through GMail and there are various gadgets that can be added Googles webpage development tool Google Page Creator. Through Picasa, photos can be quickly emailed, printed (prints can also be ordered), or blogged about. 

Before Picasa

 

After Picasa