Today Google has announced that they have launched Picasa 3.5, a new version of their very popular free photo editing software. This version of Picasa gives the user the ability to add name tags to their photos, using the same facial recognition technology that powers name tags on Picasa Web Albums.
Name tags have been designed to help the user easily organise their photos by what matters most. Picasa identifies similar faces and puts these into an “Unnamed People” album. From there, you can easily add a name tag by clicking “Add a name” and typing the person’s name. After you’ve added name tags to some photos, you can use your tags to do creative things, like quickly find all the photos with the same two people in them, make a face collage with just one click or upload and share people albums with friends.
Additionally, Picasa 3.5 has integrated Google Maps, so it is easy to geotag your photos and then view them according to location. Finally, Google has completely redesigned the import process in which you can now import photos from your camera and upload the photos to Picasa Web Albums in one easy step.
I came across a great little service this morning from one of our readers who commented on one of our other articles. They recommended that we check out the Twitter service called Geochirp. GeoChirp is a great web app that allows you to see who is talking about what in what location, all via Twitter.
With GeoChirp you input your location and then set the radius and the number of tweets you want to be able to see. Once that is all done GeoChirp finds people from that location and shows you their tweets. GeoChirp also hooks in to Google Maps which allows you to exactly see where that person is based.
GeoChirp is a very interesting idea however apart from providing basic entertainment purposes im not too sure why a lot of people who use this in their daily lives.
If you have some kind of mobile addiction and feel the necessity to constantly check your email with your mobile; I’m pretty sure that you usually get uncomfortable trying to use the small screen on your phone. Well this is not a revolutionary invention, but it keeps reminding me that Google is trying to keep things simpler: “Smart Links” automatically shortens long links and converts them into named links.
This is what you usually when you are reading an email with a long link:
And Smart Links converting it like this:
Of course these links, at least for now, will only work with Google related sites: Google Maps, Google Sites web pages and YouTube videos (but they are expecting to make it available soon for Google Docs as well).
There’s an important disclaimer about the use of this feature: only works with plain text emails.
Google has once again taken another step in the right direction. The company has done everything from managing our email, our documents, manages statistics, mapping the earth, and now provides us even more detail with regards to directions. Along with driving directions, you can now get walking directions to any of your destinations via Google Maps.
When you plug in your start point and your end point you can change from step by step driving instructions to walking instructions. The site assumes an average of 19 minutes per mile, and may alter the route due to you being on foot. For example, one way streets are not a problem because you are not on foot, and any walking trails that exist may not cut completely across areas that would have otherwise been inaccessible with a car.
I don’t really see this application useful for locals. Chances are anywhere you wish to walk you probably already know, and any further, you might as well take car or other form of transportation. These addition definitely seems useful for tourists. Perhaps you want to map the distance from your hotel to a point of interest, or perhaps you’re at a convention and want a place to eat off-site, this little addition can make a huge difference.
I find it funny though that the beta warns people to “Use caution when walking in unfamiliar areas.” Kinda creepy, but a justified warning I think.
This feature is new, so the beta version may not be perfect, but despite it’s flaws, the addition definitely seems worthwhile.
Today Google has announced that they have launched Picasa 3.5, a new version of their very popular free photo editing software. This version of Picasa gives the user the ability to add name tags to their photos, using the same facial recognition technology that powers name tags on Picasa Web Albums.
If you have some kind of mobile addiction and feel the necessity to constantly check your email with your mobile; I’m pretty sure that you usually get uncomfortable trying to use the small screen on your phone. Well this is not a revolutionary invention, but it keeps reminding me that Google is trying to keep things simpler: “
