I was reading with interest numerous articles about Google’s latest version of Picasa earlier today. Coincidentally, I did have a few photos to edit and send by e-mail so I replaced the old version to try out some of the new features. The new Picasa (version 3.5) adds facial recognition, name tags, easier geotagging, and more seamless integration with Picasaweb. To those of you that take a lot of photos with your cellphone, or just don’t have the time to stop and set camera settings, I wandered across a feature you may want to try out. The redeye correction automatically finds the eyes ! While this may not sound exciting to you if you’re already using more elaborate commercial photo editing software, I found it pretty huge for a free product. Picasa’s right up there now for me with Microsoft’s Phototools and Paint.net. Give it a try. With gobs of photos now being uploaded from iPhones (and other camera phones) this one feature is an outright WIN.
Posts Tagged coding
One of my biggest beefs with Yahoo’s MyBlogLog’s latest blog widget was the ‘follower count’ …. but I missed seeing who was visiting the blog (and honestly I don’t care what the count is if you’re enjoying reading) …. It just looks lame to have double digits?! In reality, the blog world has significantly changed in the last six months, so even if I don’t blog every day like ‘the good old days’, I’m still here and I like the implementation Ian Kennedy oversaw at Yahoo! before heading to greener pastures (at Nokia). Ian, like many others, were frequent visitors here back then which helped the blog gain credibility. (Wow … Two mentions of Yahoo! in one day!? 
…. On the Google ‘Friend Connect’ front … It’s no secret that I have a lot of ‘Google’ in my portfolio. Same complaint here though … A little slow out of the gate with Friend Connect, and unless you spend a small portion of your life networking day and night, your follower count may look …well … cruddy. So … here we go again. They’re both back in the very lower right hand margin. Why? I’m curious what happens taking them back live at this juncture and combining them with the ongoing experiment with the very cool Wibiya beta bar at the bottom. Another day …. another experiment. Great weekend all. Charlie
A few days ago, Yahoo! announced the launch of Flickr Galleries . According to a press post this evening, over 25,000 galleries have already been produced by Flickr users. Even more interesting in the multifaceted weekend corporate post was the fact that Flickr now hosts over 3.4 billion photos. (That’s billion … with a ‘b’). Indeed, I have often told friends and colleagues that I use Flickr more for viewing than posting. Example: Looking at a particular travel destination? Why not look at a few photos from a few people that have actually been there? There’s a (very) good chance you’ll find them on Flickr. With the increase in mobile uploads from a variety of smart (and semi-smart) phones, it’s getting to a point where there’s a picture of almost everything on Flickr. (This may be getting a little creepy Some of the photos are interesting, some fun, others amazing, and while there are numerous competitors, it’s safe to say most professional photographers maintain some presence on Yahoo’s photo sharing website. Noted photographer Thomas Hawk recently blogged about his 30,000th upload to Flickr (despite the fact that he started his own competing site some time ago). Yahoo’s press piece this evening also makes mention of the retiring of all older versions of Yahoo! Messenger on September 30th with users needing to upgrade to version 8 or higher to be able to continue using the service. Details on the Yahoo! Messenger migration and ‘Yahoo! Messenger on the Web’ are now posted on the Messenger blog here . The late Friday post from Sunnyvale also includes Yahoo’s salute to pirates (Hmm…) ….. and a cooperative Yahoo / Kodak tribute to Hispanic Heritage Month. The complete post can be found here .