Amazing (new) things with Picasa

Two new things worth mentioning about Picasa.

1. Face recognition: now I can put a name to every face in my photo collection. It automatically scans all of them and let's me tag them easily. Every new photo I upload will be automatically tagged. Now I get to search (yes, SEARCH!) for photos of Elvis and the Guru Pitka too. Couple that with my collection of (thousands of) photos, and you get... thousands of "meaningful" photos. Love it!
   
2. Upload photos by email: nothing revolutionary, but new for Picasa. Nice add-on, as I can now send photos straight out from my phone using MMS. Uses the secret key approach, e.g. nickname.secret@picasaweb.com
   
3. Picasa 3: a new desktop client which lets me sync up all my album edits on my desktop (e.g. changing captions) with my web album. Another item taken off the must-have list.
   

OK, that's three new things. It's been a while since I last posted something geeky (cool).

Make a comments widget in 10 minutes

I've updated the Recent Comments widget on the sidebar. Given the limitations of my Blogger template, I made use of the Blogger comments RSS feed + Yahoo! Pipes + Google Reader's clip. It now displays the author's name, followed by an excerpt of the comment (still dont' know how to extract X number of words from a feed element in Pipes - anyone know how?)



Is this widget better than the previous version?

Vote Wisely

I just came across this ad on my Gmail. Someone's taken the trouble create a website, and spend some ad dollars to promote it via Google.



It's a ONE pager. Definitely worth a read. Nothing but facts and figures, with solid references.

http://votewisely.blogspot.com/

Pretty sight on a Manic Monday

We get new flower arrangements in the office every other day. Just like Google.

Simplicity versus Complexity

This image shows homepage screenshots of Google and Yahoo! between 1996 and 2005. Google has maintained it's simplicity over the years, while Yahoo! has chosen to be a complex directory of links.



Take a pick, it's your cup of coffee.

Credit: MIT

To infinity & beyond

Just noticed that my total storage on Gmail has been bumped up to 3.4GB That's as much space as I had on my hard drive back in 1998. Thank you Google!

If the GOS report is true, then we're likely to see more storage in the coming months:

Gmail will increase the free storage gradually in the next days. On October 23, you'll get 4321 MB of storage, then the growth will slow down until January 4, when you'll have 6283 MB of storage. From January 4, you'll receive 3.3 MB every day, that's 10 times bigger than the current rate of growth.

I just wet my pants

The oh so lovable Google Reader has released a search function!



Read more: Find a needle in a feedstack with Google Reader

Why use Gmail?

Here's a whole series of Google-made videos that makes it easy enough to understand why they rock. Bravo, Gmail Theatre!

Act 1: Attack of the Spam


Act 2: The In-Boxer:


Act 3: The Isle of Lost Emails


Act 4: Chat In The Name of Love

Store up to 4,000 photos for free with Picasa Web

Just in case you missed it, Picasa Web now offers 1GB of free storage space for photos and videos. Enough room for about 4,000 photos. Moreover, there isn't any bandwidth limitation (does Flickr still do this?). Google has introduced lots of new features that makes it easier to manage and share your photos -- bravo!



Related links:

• Google Blog: Store and find even more photos on Picasa Web Albums
• PicasaWeb: New features
  

Introducing Gmail Paper

A new product from Google, introduced yesterday, in conjunction with Lirpa Loof.







Some memorable testimonials:

"It's paper, plain and easy. I sometimes find myself wondering: what will Google think of next? Cardboard?"

"Now that I have Gmail Paper, I understand the difference between labels and folders. I had one message with two labels, but when I tried to stick the paper version into two filing cabinets at the same time, it just wouldn’t go."

Related links:

• Google: About Gmail Paper
• Wikipedia: About Lirpa Loof

Bad, bad server. No donut for you.

Can you translate the title of this post in either Hindi, Indonesian, Tagalog, Malay, Thai, Urdu or Vietnamese?

How about this one?

Google's respect and affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. If you're interested, here's our official Dog Policy. We have nothing against cats, per se, but we're a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our campus would be fairly stressed out.

If that was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy for you, then you might be the person they're looking for in Singapore.

Related links:

• Google Jobs: Localisation Editor - Singapore

How Google Apps killed my Tuesday

I spent the last few hours trying to sort out my email accounts spread across a few domains. The objective was to centralise everything on Google Apps (now open to everyone), and then try and manage my assorted email accounts from a single Gmail / Google Apps account.



I'll spare you my headache, as I didn't achieve what I set out to do. So here's a list of things I wish Gmail and Google Apps could have told me much earlier:

1. You can't POP email from another Gmail / Google Apps account (SNAG!)
2. You can't use the slick Gmail for Mobile J2ME Java-app with Google Apps (SNAG!)
3. The only real mobile app that works with Google Apps is targeted at the BlackBerry (for now) (SNAG!)
4. Mirroring is possible by using Gmail / Google Apps' forward as a copy (JOY!)
5. The "on behalf of" bug is solved with Google Apps -- but you still won't solve it if you're managing multiple "From:" addresses within a single account (SNAG!)
6. The custom URLs for each Google Apps module (e.g. http://start.praveenrajan.com) works as a redirect to a Google domain rather than an actual alias (SNAG!)
7. It is possible to ask for more free accounts for your Google Apps domain. I now manage 2 domains, with 50 and 100 user accounts respectively (JOY!)
8. When importing / exporting contacts between two Gmail / Google Apps accounts, it forgets to take the Groups with it -- I had to create all my contact Groups from scratch (SNAG!)
9. Managing 300+ contacts on Gmail is a PITA! Why can't I duplicate an email address across contacts?(SNAG!)
10. If you've got over 1,000 messages, there's a simple way for you to apply an action on all items -- upon selecting all conversations on the page, the app reveals an option to Select ALL conversations in the Inbox / with a particular label (JOY!)

Final score -- 7 snags, and 3 joys!

I didn't achieve my objective of centralising and mirroring all my emails. However, I still maintain that switching to Gmail / Google Apps is a great way to boost your productivity. I've been managing my assorted collection of personal and work-related emails on Gmail since 2005 and there's no turning back to my days with Outlook and gigantic PST files.

By the way, Google Apps is a great suite of software for small/medium businesses, and I'd recommend checking it out despite the little snags published here.

Related links:

• Google Apps: Official website
• Digg: Gmail Sends Out Email "On Behalf of", Not "as" a Personal Email Address
• Gmail Help Discussion: Accounts "On Behalf Of"
• Gmail Help: Gmail options for your mobile
• Gmail Help: Does the Gmail for mobile application support Google Apps mail accounts?
• Chris Pirillo: Outlook 2003 Sucks Ass. Bigtime.

Google's sense of humour

Another example of how Google makes tough subjects like finance a whole lot of fun to understand. This animation describes some of Google Finance's newest features. Narrated by Vivi Costache, it reminds me of South Park, yet emphasises the key selling points of the service -- bravo!



Related links:

• Google Finance: New features
  
• Official Google Blog: There's more to Google Finance

List of Google products

If you're following Google this year, then bookmark this Wikipedia page which is frequently updated to keep track of their suite of products.

The content table does a good job in summarising how Google is innovating various different segments of the Internet-driven economy:



Related links:

• Wikipedia: List of Google products