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Google Acquires Picasa, Improves Blogging Tools
clandestine writes "It appears that our lovable search engine has again expanded its horizons - the internet wasn't enough; now you can search and organize your own pictures. I don't know about you, but I use Google for nearly everything; heck, I found links about their acquisition of Picasa through Google News! Any slashdotters going to benefit from this tech, or already do? And yes, the addition of Picasa to their arsenal is a couple of days old, but they just started linking them on the homepage today."
Seems like Google is expanding to more areas of our internet lives... Would this be another Microsoft coming?
Yet a faster way to find pr0n... thanks google!
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
This might be awesome, or it might not. I'm not overly impressed with Google's web picture search, so I'm not gonna hold my breath on this one. Their forte is search of text, and sure, you can put a million keywords or a clever description on each picture, but that doesn't really help me. I want to be able to sketch a rough version of the picture and have the system find all images which match it. Or how about identification of individual people? So that I can outline a section of a given picture and it'll find all other pictures which contain a similar section (AKA a given person).
Then I'll get excited...
~i = an imaginary being~
When microsoft "expands" we all bitch and whine, but then google goes out and devours companies and services, and its suddenly "cute".
Can anybody tell me why on this page I get the link to Picassa, but on this one, I get nothing.
Sorry their warehouse full of Ph.D.s isn't working hard enough on R&D for you. Hopefully Google will pull their heads out of their asses and start innovating in some area.
</sarcasm>
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
A: When they go public. :-/
How many of you (probably would have to be not-so-wet behind the ears) have joined a truly excellent company, gotten your hopes up that "This is the company to last the rest of my career!" -- it's that good -- only to watch it go psycho when the board decides to take it public?
No, the madness doesn't happen overnight. You slowly begin hearing about the symptoms as the pressure begins... "But it's the end of the month! This (shit) has to ship!", etc.
Sad, but true and (by my experience) inevitable. I wish there were no rules which forced a company to commit what is essentially "fiscal lobotomy".
- When I Google my name, I can see most of what I've been doing publicly on the net for the last 10+ years. Fair enough, I had no privacy expectation, but still scary to realize I actually said some pretty lame things I didn't remember.
- Google has indexed 20 years worth of newsgroups. Again, I can't say I'm too pleased with some of the stuff I posted once (think "alt.binary."). But okay...
- Google now "offers" 1G worth of email storage, and warns that they "may" use their searching technology on it. Now they don't even make the effort of ferreting info about you anymore, they plain and simply lure you into giving it to them
- And now the personal information releasing trap widens with this new photo storage thing. hmmm...
What next? in 5 years maybe I'll be able to google my name and see a private mail of mine saying "hey look at that d!rty picture of the secretary on my picasa account! (don't tell anyone about this, hey...)" with a nice link to my private picasa pic? Thanks but no thanks.
I must say, google is cool, has cool technology and all, but their current trend of establishing 1984-ish new services and their tradition of extreme secrecy are starting to really disquiet and annoy me.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The user interface, while being modern and a bit playful is still very clear. The performance is quite good. What I am missing are many many keyboard shortcuts though.
I think its a classic example of building your business around your strength - the searching capability.
It shouldnt come across as a surprise that google wants to build components/lines of business around their core strength - be it news, images, blogs or whatever else.
Though what they do need to watch out for is the acceptance, usability and and value provided by these tools in the long run (~5 years). We have all seen numerous examples of companies that had a killer product, but failed to replicate that success elsewhere.
Like someone else mentioned, their image searching capabilities aren't as desirable currently. I haven't been so impressed with google groups yet (though I've heard that's going to be revamped as well). And then there's news and email in beta... so yes, they do have a lot on their plate, and given the poor run of tech industry at the stock market, all eyes will be on them!
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Has anyone downloaded and installed Picasa? As part of the install I get a ZoneAlarm alert saying sp7zFh5.exe is trying to use Picasa to access the internet.
I think it is questionable coding practice to have obscurely named subprocesses running around wanting to get to the net.
(This sig intentionally left blank)
nt
-- Boycott Shell
With this new version has google removed the adware and spyware that Picasa use to be known for?
They also use to be a big spammer mainly doing it on usenet, go ridance to that part of them.
"With the IPO, Google will have huge pockets. This could put Google in the market to buy a much larger player, such as AskJeeves or even AOL," he said.
I don't think the person who wrote this really understands Google's business. Google for the most part has been buying up innovative technologies which require relativley low overhead to run or integrate. I don't view AskJeeves as innovative, and don't view AOL as low overhead by any means.
I know this is nitpicking a small relativly not important part of the article, but it lept out at me as a "huh?" section.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
6. Google is free.
Google became a great company by sticking to its business plan; back linked search rankings with a simple interface.
Then came GIS, which still focuses on the main business, then came the toolbar which starts encroaching on the PC/ browser, then came IRC search... can you see where I'm heading
Which other company can we think of who add more and more functionality to an existing product... as long as this doesnt effect Googles core business, no problem, but this is very rarely the case.
Will we even recognise Google in 5 years time (or less)
.........and thought of downloading it, what stopped me was that i thought this company does not charge for there software, how do they make money. Are they making money buy selling info about what we are looking at on our hardrives. If this isn't the case then what motivated the purchase of this company, that doesn't haven't revenue streams that I can see of. Or are Google interested in the technology from this company.
We've seen google expand into other areas, generally involving search or adding search technology to something else.
This is understandable, they've saturated the search engine market, a company has to grow if it is to survive, with the market saturated, where *can* they grow?
I like and use google but have to wonder if they are (or will be) a threat in terms of making it difficult for companies to conduct business on the internet by hiding or "tweaking" the search results. Will the internet "sense this as damange and route around it" or, will people not even realize the results have been adjusted?
Right now, they don't seem threatening, it would appear anyone could compete with them since the internet is open standards based. As a company, they appear remarkably ethical (which can change as new managers appear..) the 64k question is, are they or will they become a monopoly?
Shouldn't call someone lame and lazy for overlooking something if you spell Picasa "Picaso".
From the screenshots and description it sort of looks like iPhoto for Winodws, no?
Okay, so I love Google like the rest of you. They are privately held, seem to actually have a sense of ethics, and tend to do things 'the right way'.
That said, Google is starting to get big. Really big.
As in big enough to throw it's weight around big. I'm not opposed to this, in fact I'd be first in line (or rather as close to the front as I could get) for a Google IPO, but at what point does the whole competition getting squashed thing become a concern?
I'll say it again, I love Google.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
when will google start providing content similar to slash based sites?
# Microsoft® Windows 98, Microsoft® Windows Me, Microsoft® Windows 2000, or Microsoft® Windows XP.
# Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.01 (6.0 recommended). If at any time you get an "unable to authenticate" error, you should upgrade to IE 6.0.
Seems a little one-sided to me...
- - -
I just finished my first book. Maybe tomorrow I'll read another.
Microsoft has plenty of ressources and offerings that Google isn't giving. For example MS can leverage their browser, they can package any picture software they want into their next OS or Service Pack, they have an IM which tells users when they receive an email from someone.
:
What Google needs to do is extend what it is offering and blow MS out of the water. If more companies join then MS will have to start playing fair or die.
Google, please
1. package Firefox 1.0 with added features as the GoogleFox browser
2. make Picasa run on Linux and Mac
3. offer an IM ala Jabber that allows us to get email notification like MSN Messenger does.
4. extend your Gmail offering to other people than the limited bunch currently seen
Then and only then will Google's offerings be competing with MS. All of this can be done very cheaply and unless Google get's moving MS will crush them with Marketing power and their market power.
Am I the only one who uses Google as a quick spellchecker?
--- Ban humanity.
Checking out the Picasa site looks like it only supports MS-Windows. No Linux or MacOS X support. Oh well.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I don't get paid for accuracy, timeliness, and relevancy on Slashdot. I do it gratis.
Aye, and you get what you pay for.
4. extend your Gmail offering to other people than the limited bunch currently seen
Looks like somebody didn't get a gmail invite. D'oh!
I mean, it's searching your local files... have you really gone to that much trouble to organize and classify all of your porn?
I'm guessing that at least some people won't, for fear that someone might find the kiddle porn folder, which you then can't claim 'I don't know how that got there'.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
With longhorn comming out and it's "uber" organization and searching abilities (please note sarcasm). I wonder if it would be possible through future webservices to have the exact same functionality provided by google but for the desktop? For example document storage and such through them. Based on a per user basis, or per group etc. I'd love to do all my backup through google, or store documents there that I can then get from home or on the road. Address books and calendaring would also be cool.
The difference between them an MS in this case being that I trust google, and I trust them to get it right.
(No.) Here are the minimum system requirements for Picasa: Personal computer with 300MHz Pentium® processor and MMX® technology. 64 MB RAM (128MB recommended). 50 MB available hard disk space. 800 x 600 pixels, 16 bit color monitor. Microsoft® Windows 98, Microsoft® Windows Me, Microsoft® Windows 2000, or Microsoft® Windows XP. Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.01 (6.0 recommended). If at any time you get an "unable to authenticate" error, you should upgrade to IE 6.0. Microsoft® DirectX 7.0 or higher (8.1 ships with XP, 9.0b recommended). Optional: 56K Internet connection speed (for access to any online services and picture sharing via Hello). Works with JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, PSD, AVI, MPG, ASF, and WMV files No, it doesn't run on Linux, nor on Macs, nor my old 486sx running windows 3.1 that I still keep half my photos on (early digital camera adopter).
One of Google's primary strengths is its software, no doubt they're trying to capitalize on that. Do I see Google becoming the Apple within Microsoft? Isn't their other product a search application that you download and run within windows, effectively competing with Microsoft's explorer? Now this program, which reminds me of iPhoto (download from the camera easily, print, organize, etc). This is a competitor to Windows XP's built-in photo management.
Google is competing with Microsoft, and using their own operating system against them!
hopefully they will note the massive number of linux clients hittin' it and decide to release the source so we can port it.
I took at look at their website and FAQ's but i can't seem to find any information on how much space you get? Does it cost anything?
tnx.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Notice that the title of the story is "Google Acquires Picasa, Improves Blogging Tools." Blogger did revise its application yesterday, but where is that mentioned in the article?
Dear michael: you suck. Sinc me.
how wrong you are. :) I've been using Google now for a while and I love it! :) The only thing I dislike about it compared to Hotmail is that I don't get email notifications. I think this is a big plus for Microsoft and it is the only thing that I find missing from the otherwise superior webmail.
But not the companies that are suggested here. What Google could look to do is aim at the "traditional" companies that are currently under-valued to provide it with a solid non-search engine base.
Basically what AOL did when they merged with TimeWarner... who got the best in that deal ?
Hell, buy Ford and turn them round as a hobby.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
that google is not a convicted monopolist.
feh. stuff.
The link to the Picasa software is right there on www.google.com. Open your eyes and read instead of resorting to flames. You just look like an ignorant moron.
For those missing a Linux version, PhotoMesa is a nice image browser, though while it doesn't have the meta-data stuff Picasa likely does, it is a very nice way of browsing images. And coming from one of the best HCI labs around, it's pretty useful..
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa/
the link to google.com shows that the newly integrated service is posted on the front page. Unkike yahoo or slashdot placing an item on the google front page is a 'big deal', they rarely add anything to it. Granted it's a common link, but 'links are our friends'.
Google's usefulness is also being expanded by third party developers using their APIs to develop kitschy hits such as Google Fight and Googlism. But there are useful apps too... A recent release is Copyscape which uses Google to find people who have plagiarized your web content. It's from the same guys as Google Alert and works like magic. I reckon it won't be long (after the IPO?) before Google expand their APIs a lot further, to make image, news and group searching available to third party apps. Then things will get really interesting.
That was a cleverly crafted anti-GPL troll.
Clever, yes. Still a troll, though.
feh. stuff.
I just tried it and couldn't find any spyware or ads. I ran AdAware and Spybot after installing and they didn't have any complaints. Didn't find any references to Picasa being spyware on Google Groups either.
Overall I like it. It's very similar to Adobe Album, except the interface is more minimalistic and cleaner. Compared to Album 2.0 Picasa is a real speed daemon on my older Athlon 800Mhz, 512MB RAM, machine. Album chugs in both the thumbnail view and viewing a single picture full-screen is atrociously slow, easily the slowest image viewing program I've seen in years. I mean you can see the damn thing loading the pictures progressively as if it was downloading the pictures. Adobe should buy the ACDSee viewing engine or something. Picasa is pretty slow at importing stuff but after that it's real speedy.
One thing I like is that you don't have to use the import feature in Picasa as you do in Adobe Album. You simply mark folders to be watched for changes and the program figures out new additions for itself. Album never does this for me, I have to manually run import every damn time I've imported new images with Photoshop or some other application.
What I don't really like is that Picasa uses your real folders on your HD for categorizing images, and it likes to place picasa.ini files all over the place. It's ok, but the Album way of attaching metadata, very rapidly attaching labels, and allowing a picture to be in multiple categories is in my opinion superior as you can perform very neat queries on the data. On the other hand, most users probably never use either categorizing feature and just dump everything in one place. Heck, I do too, I have about 6GB of uncategorized pictures at the moment and I'm not about to sort them anytime soon. In that sort of usage Picasa is probably better since the thumbnail view is much more responsive.
It's got some newbie friendly features like mailing (and automatically resizing the pictures to some predetermined max resolution, no more 10MB attachments from Mom) pictures that my parents might use. Unlike Adobe Album Picasa works perfectly with Mozilla Mail or Thunderbird. For some reason the slideshow feature looks like total ass. I'm guessing the interface is done in some fixed resolution and it's scaling it up (poorly) to my 1600x1200 resolution.
Overall I like it. The download is small and it doesn't try to hijack your system in any way. Unlike other software it didn't even want to associate itself with every picture extension known to man.
It's like deja vu all over again.
If you consider that picture to be private, then what are you doing sharing it with others ?
Especially on the internet.
Not to mention through a third party product that doesn't come with some reasonable expectation of privacy such as e-mail (in which case you would still have to trust that the recipient doesn't forward the information to others).
I think rather than getting 'scared' of Google, perhaps getting scared of your own actions would be the proper recourse. If you realize that you made some pretty stupid posts in the past, then in the future you may think twice before posting, and post anonymously if in doubt.
In the end, that information is out there. Google is just making it easier to find.
The website doesn't tell you much, or have any screenshots or a tour etc.
If you'd clicked the support link, you'd find a link to the tour. (Requires flash)
The link to the Picasa software is right there on www.google.com. Open your eyes and read instead of resorting to flames. You just look like an ignorant moron.
... any moreso than someone who doesn't seem to comprehend that one of the most trafficed sites in the world is not served from a singular machine and may not always be the same for everyone. (Changes take time to propogate sometimes)
Actually, it doesn't seem to be there everywhere. Google is actually load balanced, so it may depend on what server you're actually getting served from.
So when someone says there's no link, it doesn't immediately qualify them as an 'ignorant moron'
Does it concern anyone else that Google is going the way of Yahoo? Trying to become the end-all-be-all of web services seems a sure way to make all your offerings mediocre at best.
Back in 1997, Yahoo was the cool kid on the block, and was both buying and building every feature under the sun. People lapped it up, and thought it was wonderful to have all their internet needs under one umbrella. Then, reality set it. Yahoo stopped enhancing and in some cases (Yahoo Groups) even maintaining the services. Quality has deteriorated, and the once proud Yahoo brand had withered and crumbled into what is now the K-Mart of the internet.
I guess Google wants to be the Wal-Mart.
Please bid on this Karmann Ghia! Please pleas
I tried Picasa out, and was underwhelmed by it's functionality.
I wound up buying iMatch for categorizing/organizing my photos. It's an awesome tool. If you're a windows user on Slashdot, and want to organize your photos, it's probably the software for you.
I literally tried dozens of programs over the span of a week or so, and found fault with each one - until I found iMatch. I was so impressed with it's abilities, I bought it less than a day into my 30 day trial.
I do IT in an art gallery, so this could potentially be really cool. Useful to me would be the ability to store captions (dimensions, title, materials etc.) along with the artwork. I'll definitely be checking it out.
I agree. Trying to compete with Microsoft by making products that only run on Microsoft is not a good idea. By offering products compatible with most or all platforms means you can always come out on top, no matter which platform becomes the most popular. Tying your products to one company ties your success to that company.
I don't know how much of a monopoly Google may become, but I worry about what will happen after the IPO.
Remember Netscape? When that company started up, it's employees described it as a cool place to work, at the forefront of Browser development, fighting goliath (and winning). It didn't take long for it to become corporatized, lose it's luster, and get bought/sold out to AOL, where it became an aging, neglected, and evetually abandoned stepchild, with real development from Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird/Camino.
Regardless of how useful Google becomes or remains in the future, with Google aquiring other companies and steaming towards an IPO, I wonder if it will lose the responsiveness, humor (www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html) and uniqueness (www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/) that typcally comes from a privately held controlled by a small number of individual entrepneurs or a family.
In short, I think people feel a kind of affinity/warmth towards Google which may evaporate if it becomes too "corporate." Maybe this is inevitable, but hopefully not.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Where is a version for OS X? Oh, wait... we already have iPhoto. Forget it.
---------------
---------------
-Adam
If anyone has looked at the program, you will see a component called hello. It is another part of the program that google now owns. One interesting thing about it is that there is instant messanging technology in it, so that you can send your pictures to other people. Is it only a little while till we have gim?
Sign 1 of the comming apocalypse ;)
Where is the improvement to Google's blogging tool? From what I can see (I haven't grabbed it yet) Picasa looks very similar to Apple's iPhoto or any other photo management software.
If Picasa includes the ability to create online photo galleries, linked to a user's Blogger account so he can publish them on his blog, then it would be quite neat. Otherwise, I don't see what this announcement has to do with blogging tools.
---- scrm
If you use Gmail, you'll see that every e-mail isn't shown as an e-mail, they're shown as conversations. So, if you're trying to click the checkbox next to a conversation then try to forward it, does that mean you want to forward the entire conversation, just the last sent e-mail, or one of the e-mails in between? It's ambiguous.
It makes more sense to open a conversation displaying each e-mail separately, then allow you to forward individual e-mails.
Maybe later, they will add functionality to not view your list as conversations and give checkbox forwardability. But, then again, maybe they'll just give us POP3 access.
Windoze only, eh? I guess I'm going to have to wait and see what Spotlight does for my iPhoto library.
Best read in good ol' Monaco 9 point.
Gmail notifier extensions for Firefox: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/doron/archives/0058 36.html
Eventually Google will expand to the field of mind-to-computer linkage, and before you know it, we will all be living in world similar to Asimov's Gaia or the borg, where there is no consumerism and i/we/Google will be working for a common cause, to lead the humankind to rule the galaxy, assimilating other species if/when encountered.
People seem to be worried that google's diversifying too much and may overstretch themselves (*cough* Yahoo). I, however, think they have a better plan. You see they're huge enough now that when they start to do something, even if they only do it in a small way, EVERYBODY (other 'net companies that is) jump on the bandwagon. Take the example of Gmail. It's still in beta- they haven't done a massive roll out and the cash invested (relativly speaking) is small. BUT because google _might_ be rolling out this crazy 1 gig email service every other free email provider and their uncle has to give out hundreds and hundreds of meg of free storage. So the net result is that google spends a tiny bit of money and everybody gets a shitload of email space more or less as a direct result. Plus everybody loves google even more 'cause now they've got all this shiny storage thanks to them. All the kudos, none of the cost. It's great- I can't wait to find out what google thinks we should all get next.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
Wait, you say, you use google all the time, and dont pay?
Sure you do. But you arnt a customer. You are part of their product.
Google's customers are the people who pay for the advertisements, NOT the people who use the service. The service is merely there to generate the audience that google then sells.
YOU ARE PART OF GOOGLE'S PRODUCT.
no
For the past month or so I haven't been able to access any of the blogs that I usually read, or even access/edit my own blog.
At first I thought it's just a tiny routing problem that would solve itself, but after a few weeks of timeouts I asked my ISP.
They responded saying that the Korean government has actually ordered all the ISPs to block most blogging sites like Blogger. Effectively making inaccessible (for South Korea anyway) tens of thousands of blogs.
The reason is that the Ministry of Information and Communication has found that some blogs hosted (or contained links to) video clips of the Korean guy (Kim Sun-il) being executed in Iraq.
They seem to be doing everything in their power to prevent the video from entering Korea. (but anyone deterimined enough to see it could still quite easily get it by Googling for Free Proxy,, or by tunneling through SSH to a friend outside the country.)
A thread discussing the issue can be found here.
This is seriously annoying to us foreigners living here, since many of us use American blogging sites such a blogger quite frequently.
Regards
RefriedBean
One thing to note before rushing out to grab this thing: Picasa requires a mailing address and CC number to create an account (haven't looked into what the CC number is for, but I'm guessing the software is free but the service isn't). Since the address is no doubt meant to be a billing addr for the CC then you may not be able to just enter bogus values and according to their privacy policy they explicitly reserve the right to spam you (paper and electronic) and to sell your data to others. You can unsubscribe (link is in the priv policy) but it's strictly opt-out.
I'm a little disapointed in this as, despite all the hoopla about gmail and such, Google is usually good about at least not spamming and/or sharing the data they collect.
On that note, one more point: there've already been a couple of threads about Google/Gmail and the privacy armeggedon that some still seem to think they represent. I'd be interested in getting feedback on this piece that I wrote on the subject. Thanks.
Just checked, and yep, there's a "forward" link at the bottom of the message. Guess that arguement is shot...
Check their features status page for details on what they've been implementing since their initial release, and what they plan on implementing. It's very encouraging!
Eat my ass, fanboi.
I never could remember that damn number. I used to use ICQ back in 1999 but I forgot the damn number.
Cool. A better way to searching for Pictures.
Subzerorz
More Articles
It'd actually be very, very cool to click on a face in your album and have all similar faces in your collection located. In fact, I'd wager it'd be a killer app, massively suited to Google.
And it's not like this is unheard of technology, either. Face detection algorithms are extremely common.
--Dan
I was one of the original developers of Picasa (search, web export and other features). I've got to say, the former Kai Krause developers who work there really know their pixels. Even in the 1.0 incarnation you'll see a lot of attention to subtle details of animation, alpha blending and UI that is usually missing from commercial apps. Every last coder there has written notrivial Mac and Linux software, so it's up to Google to pull the strategic trigger for those ports, if any.
I'm pretty certain that those guys will be making iPhoto users jealous before long.
A click on the support link will take you to a Picasa FAQ, and within, you will find a page that lists a large number of keyboard shortcuts.
Enjoy, in moderation.
What were you expecting?
Well like the article title says, it's improve it's Blogging tools, but yet there is no mention of it. I acutally just noticed the update yesterday, becuase the old toolbar wasn't showing becuase I had way too many Windows open. Instead I refreshed and there was the new toolbar. It's pretty strange though that they've already accquired Picasa, when they just started offering the service on Blogger back in May, in a whole diffrent agreement, unless accquiring Picasa was part of it. Hmmm, maybe they might make a part of the Google Image search. Of course, for some reason, I can't access hello!, the Photo IM service that can be used to send photos to my blogs. Unless they're planning on rebranding it as Photoblogger.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
http://www.mesadynamics.com/frame_beholder.htm
Is this a similar type of thing for OS X. It's been out for a while, now.
From their product description:
Beholder(TM) allows you to quickly search for images on the web, whether you're using searching services such as Google(TM) or simply scanning web sites for images. Beholder also supports scanning of LOCAL IMAGE FOLDERS and iPhoto libraries. Thumbnails are displayed with link details and a zoomed preview courtesy of our patent pending Prism Zoom(TM) technology.
Best of all, Beholder is extensible: search engines can be developed for other sites and additional engines can be downloaded from our Search Engine Library.
Version 1.5 release notes can be viewed here.
As an active blogger.com user I noticed this almost 30-40 days back! Tool is cool for new bibs
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
Althought this app is interesting I am wondering how long it will be before getting ported away from IE requiremnents. Although I don't know how you would search the computer for files from the sandbox.
I am also wondering how long it will be before the tide changes and we see Mozilla and friends as the req browser?
Granted, I have a lot of pictures. Being a geek I've had a digital camera for the last 8 years, so it has to index a lot of pictures, but holy crap it's slow on my 2.4 ghz machine. And - I actually think my critisism is justified, because if this wasn't meant for people with many digital pictures, then who? If I only had a few pictures I wouldn't need an organizer tool.
Sorry guys, but this product isn't worthy of the Google brand just yet.
Picasa 2.0 was due out this summer. I wonder what will happen now? I use Picasa but am frustrated by some key features that were coming including archiving photos to CD/DVD.
Also, they've eliminated Picasa's user forums.
The article title says improves blogging tools. How? I missed it in the links.
When I click on the link in my competitor's ads at the top of my free blog that says "remove this ad" (which used to go to upgrade to blogger pro), I get 404 file not found.
It looks like I will be stuck advertising my competitors until/unless I shutdown my blog. Nice improvement.
It is funny how so many people on here love google without any critical judgement. Why? Their searches are not very good anymore. I get mostly linkfarms and very stale 1-page edu test pages for most of my google top results. Teoma is still better.
google bought this and is making it available free. if you don't like it, don't use it. yes, i have iphoto as well but this is a great free app for windows users and unfortunately i have to use windows at work.
I can definatley forward from my gmail account, it's the link right next to reply?
There is an "Archive" button, hopefully at some point they would let you access the "arcive" in bulk.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I understand what you were saying to pjt33 now. It originally sounded like you were confused even more and thought he was making errors.
Heh.
pure speculation - but i bet you within a few months the picassa software has an upload option to some google web page - "publish to gphotos" etc .
:D
msn has a photo site, but its limited by its terrible upload options (like all web based photo sites). having a client app would solve this.
10gb of free google photos space would be nice!
lol I just downloaded and ran Picasa on someone else's computer and found tons of p0rn. He is only 14 and I'm debating whether or not to tell his parents. I probably shouldn't.
Right of the bat it is pretty hard to use. The crippled interface does not let you enter the folders you want included. Instead, you have to do it the hard way: squint and click and wait forever navigating a tree. There are some things that a GUI does not do as well
Google is more than free. it saves countless time trying to find someting on yahoo or other search engines, like we did before google. thats money to me.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I started to get all excited about Adobe Album over the image-tagging and querying and stuff ("show me pictures with both me and my wife in the last month"), but then I realized there would be no way for me to get that information back out of the program again if I ever wanted to change to another picture manager -- it seems it's stuck in some proprietary internal DB. (Or am I wrong about that?) So I've held of, unsure about which way to go next.
Now, I got all excited because Google is putting out their own picture manager -- great, the search gurus will get it right! But...you're saying there's no image tagging at all? Arg. I hope they add it sometime soon. (And maintain it in some plain text file.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I'll use myshoots.com instead.
Would it be possible/desirable/sensible to make/sell a Linux based thin client that used Google services for data storage? Wonder if Google would ever offer a branded thin client?
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
http://forums.picasa.com/
I don't know if you read it anywhere, but Google are only making 10% of the company public. There's still a nice big chunk of 90% of goodness, so I wouldn't worry so much. Besides, have you heard how much that 10% is worth? It's a fucking insane shitload of money. I can't imagine how much the other 90% is worth! It's crazy.
i would like to see more work on the google directory. make the directory open source, which would really help classifies thousands of sites and help people sift through the internet by category.
Am I right or am I right? Picasa looks like an iPhoto clone. Same look and feel pretty much. Not as pretty tho'
Why would anyone want to use a text editor that is not vi?
But you're right, I don't metamod overrated. I haven't metamodded in months so I wasn't even aware it didn't show up. ah well. This will only be the 4th time I've changed my sig in 2 days.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
3. offer an IM ala Jabber that allows us to get email notification like MSN Messenger does.
Picasa makes an IM called Hello. Unfortunately none of my friends use it, but Hello has one very useful feature: it lets you post images to your Blogger blog -- unlimited image hosting for your blog.
Both are freeware (Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition). But you can tell Adobe has spent a lot more time on usability testing. Picasa won't let me sort newest to oldest, just oldest to newest. Also I noticed a confirmation dialog in Picasa -- something you won't see in Adobe.
I'm getting annoyed using Picasa -- I'm going to stick with Adobe until Google puts their usability gurus on the case.
Check out Google Watch Watch before believing anything Google Watch has to say. GW was started because the owner of the site disagreed with his site's pagerank. His obscure page about Donald Rumsfeld got a low PR, and he made a big deal out of it. Obviously, since it didn't give him the #1 spot, it's Google which is at fault, right?
Daniel Brandt (GW owner) has no credibility what so ever when it comes to Google. His site contanins several blatant lies about Google which I have pointed out in earlier Slashdot discussions. The purpose of the site is a personal vendetta against Google for not giving his useless and paranoid page a higher PR.
Watching big and powerful companies is a good thing. Spreading lies about them because you disagree with them is pathetic at best.
So no, I don't think Google Watch should be mentioned, as it is not a serious site. It is a pure joke, and the man who created it is a pathetic liar with a personal agenda.
Clever signature text goes here.