Picasa 3.5

When I first saw face recognition on a mac, I thought 'I've got to have that!' and now, using wine, picasa 3.6 and a few of my pics, I have it!

Picasa 3 linux beta was good. It had Google integration(upload, Blog this, Sinc) but this is even better. I'm dying for the day when picasa on linux works with it's movie maker!

So, how did I do it? 3.5 for linux hasn't been released yet. So, I installed Firefox 3.5 for Windows, downloaded picasa 3.5(or was it 3.6?). I installed it and, depite all my suppositions that it would be slow and cranky under wine, it ran perfectly!

Web Apps and Security

When I first heard of Web Apps, online storage and web integration, I thought "WOW! Cool! No Installs, downloads or carrying CDs around!".

But what about security? What does Google do with my account? Does it encrypt it with my password so that nobody apart from me can use it? Does it scan through it and fill in Adsense forms? Unless I know for sure that my personal details are going to be kept private, I don't put them on the internet. So the difference is, you have control over your information when it's on your computer, which means that you have to be more weary when storing data online.

I love web apps. The idea of being able to access my files whether I'm at home or on the other side of the world is a nice idea. But, you can't fully trust something which has stored your data for free and has full access to it.

Ok, maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic here, but security does matter and unless we can have some kind of grantee that our data isn't going to be seen by the wrong people, our data is not secure and online storage may not be so good.

gOS

I was browsing around, looking at all the linux distros and I find this operating system, gOS. This is what I though Chrome OS would have been!

It is based on ubuntu and has a clear, simple look. It looks a bit like OS X but also has it's own simple twist to it.

Ok, so far through reading about this, I thought 'I'm going to get this' but then I found Out this:

• It uses avant-window-navigator(maybe you dont, but I hate the way this sucks all my CPU)
  
• The last update was ubuntu 8.04(slightly old!)

Now that's a shame! It's a brilliant OS, works simply and fine and google gave up on it. Please google, if you're reading this post, keep building!

Google Wave!

Google Wave was made to compete with facebook, twitter etc. But I'm sorry to say that it's not going to compete. It's going to bash them through the floorboards!

Ok, so far, Google Wave is like ChromeOS, new and undeveloped. But the little part that is developed, originated from a good idea, and that's good enough for google!

Now, what is a wave? An email? A chat? A wiki creator? A brainstormer? A game player? All of them together. A wave is the most simple and flexible form of collaboration and contact(you can even have video!). Now, that is cool!

Ok, there are problems with wave and here, I will name the ones that I spotted:

• The Settings Wave is not finished.
• When, you mark a wave as read, it does not instantly go out of your inbox.
• There are too many wave directories(By ME, trash spam? why not view them as extras?)

Ok, now for extras:

• Wave should Have themes(blue, red, classic, forest...) like gmail and I-google
• Wave should recieve and send emails + chat and of course waves as well(that would put it faaaar ahead of facebook!)
• There should be two types of wave, settings and add-ons wave and a normal wave
• You should be able to 'delete', not just trash them.
• You need more extensions: chess...
• You should keep it simple if you're going to take aaallll this advice!

Well, that's wave preview. I'm just waiting for wave 1.0!

Chrome OS conclusion

Ok, all the disputes have died down now about Chrome OS and I wanted to send out a last reminder of what it was all about before we all close the tab and read something else while we wait for 010. When... it will appear drasticly different and well approved, in position and ready to become the sole or secondary OS of all the users worldwide!

Ok, so far, to be blunt(atleast with the version I was running!), Chrome OS is a slow locked down operating system that will not work for my net-book unless I have a network cable!

Obviously I think that! Google released the source code, they asked for help. They did not release a beta and they did not want to send it into war against windows(that's all ther gonna be fighting by te way, Mac will hopefully still sit up there as the high quality OS and the other linux distros will just improve their allready brilliant desktop quality), they were just asking for help.

How can I help? Was actually the first thing I thought. Well, I can't edit the source code or do anything flashy like that, so you can just learn to use JavaScript, Java or flash and develop web-apps.

Well, to set all the lines straight, lets all just wait, develop and change to the next tab in our tab bar!

Picasa

For a while I have used Picasa, it's like a google version of Photobucket that comes with a free program. Originally, it was just for Windows, but then Google made a linux version using wine hacks. It works well and it is well integrated into linux.

On the right, you can see me running it in ubuntu karmic koala. It automaticly picks up any file in your user folders, it can be reconfigured (as I did) to auto-scan the whole file system or removable devices.

Compared to F-Spot, Picasa is a Brilliant Photo-Manager with crop, zoom, filters and several other good image tweaking tools. In linux, the movie feature does not work but the blog, upload, college and all the other features work.

If you want something like F-Spot that with more flexibility, tools and sleekyness, picasa is distributed freely by Google for, Windows, Linux and Mac.

Google Wave: I'm dying for it!

Every single product that google has made has been brilliant: Gmail, Google Apps, Sketchup, Search(The Obvious One!), Earth... all of them are products that have been done by groups of clever people.

And now the new wave is coming, Google Wave, it sounds fantastic, it works in an entirely different way to mail, facebook, twitter and I bet that in one years time, there's going to be very few people not using it!

Here I'll tell you what I do know and have heard from places. First, it's going to be extremely popular(sorry for repeating), it'll bring out a completely new way to do it all using 'waves' of information instead of just small snippets sent to you which will mean that they'll be the only one, so unless someone makes an even better one at that time, there'll be no competition so it will become the only good 'waving' product.

I'm absotutely dying for it and seeing how it will affect Facebook, Twitter and All the others...

My Googly Theme

I've been reading up on gnome themes and I have put together a really nice one. This is on a small screen so it may look different on a desktop.

Here is a step by step tutorial of how to get exactly what you see in the picture(even chromium!)

First, you need the window theme which you can download here.

Then, you'll need to install it by going System > Preferences > Appearance. Then click Install an browse to the tar.gz theme file you downloaded earlier. Apply It. Then, before you exit, click customise and make the:

• Contols: glossy
• Icons: Mist
• Pointer: Whiteglass

Then, close that and go to background and get this background and set to zoom. Then, go into fonts and make it look like this:

Interface: 

Show Icons in Menu: Ticked

Editable Menu Shortcut keys: Unticked

Ok, from now on is for perfect twitching and chrome with the theme:

Download Ubuntu-Tweak (2 posts ago)

Install it and then open it up, tweak to your hearts content, add chromium to third party sources, install it and get this theme for chrome. And if flash does not work yet in chromium, do this.

The Four Fighters

Apple, Microsoft, Google and the Open source world are the four competitors in this big electric game. All competing to be better than the others. Not so much the open source world but definetly Apple, the old shiny one, Microsoft, the middle age dusty dying one and Google the young, big and growing fast one.

This post is made mainly to point out that google is growing fast and Microsoft is being over-run. You could put it into a sort of dinasour analogy where Microsft is the big Braceasourus, Apple is the smaller herbivore(the one with the horns, I forgt what it's called) and Google is the Velociraptor family with the rest of the small selection of dinasours being the open source world.

Sorry about yet another short post but that's all I wanted to point out.

The Simplicity of Google (and the chrome OS)

Have you ever realised that everything that google makes: Google Search (the obvius one), google chrome, google sketchup(I love it!), Mail, imag... is so simple.

The Search with classic home is just a white page with links above the top and the logo with search in the middle. Easy to understand and easy to use!

And that is why I can't wait for the new chrome OS coming out in january(if I remember correctly!). The first version may not be so good but after a bit, google will jump off and its new product will start competing with Microsoft and Apple.

The nice thing I like about what I hear about the new Chrome OS is that it is going to be based on Unix(Linux is based on Unix) and it will become open source. Which may give Microsoft the ability to copy it but, one there will always be copying, two It will shine it up anyway and three, people will probably stick to Google at that stage anyway!

Google has a lot of things on the go, chrome, wave, etc. and it's working in a very clever way becoming a big company. It will be interesting to see what kind of choises it will make in the future!