Well, it looks as if Google has finally gotten on it. They are stealthily removing copyrighted audio from user made and uploaded videos (like ninjas). Bam. There goes the YouTube way of getting music for free.

I suppose it's really the right thing to do, but it does also take away that quick and easy way of checking out a new song: YouTube it.

Oh wells.

I have to say I am very impressed with the new Picasa. It seems to be faster (I think) and has gained a lot of polish. I don't really want to write a review, so I'll just list some improvements and additions.

• improved - full screen slideshow: it is a lot faster this time around. Much more viable for doing quick full screen showoffs to people clustered about your laptop or curious family members. Extra transitions have been added (take that, Windows Photo Gallery!); Cut (I think all the old one did was Dissolve), Pan and Zoom, Wipe, Circle, Push, and Rectangle. And a exit transition/animation. Very pleased with this.
• addition - tags: nice to see this in there. I don't use tags right now, but I'm sure it could be useful.
• improved - search: now does a sort of auto-complete/suggestions drop down thing. Also, you can just start typing, instead of having to hit up the box.
• improved - folder/album buttons: added some stuff: a slideshow button (labeled 'Play'), movie button, and gift CD button (that's better… I guess the old place for that at the top was kind of *out* of place).
• addition - faces filter: now you can search for photos with faces in them. Great. Also appears in the folder/album buttons. I heard you can tag people, too, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
• improved - folder/album bar: now it has transparency, which varies fluidly, depending on where you're scrolled too. Picks up the folder/albums button bar as you scroll by. Kind of cool.
• addition - Projects: a section for projects you do in Picasa. Appears if any exist. Useful if needed, I guess.
• addition - retouch (under Basic Fixes): it's like a magical cloning tool. Animated and very cool. I like it.
• improvement - Picasa Web Albums integration: I can't actually say much about this, as I haven't ever logged into Web Albums from Picasa, but just from looking around the app, it looks tighter… stuff like Sync to Web and Share buttons on the folder/album bar.
• addition - Geo-Tag: uses Google Earth. I think this might have actually previously been an experimental feature, so maybe not quite "new." Didn't fully try it out, but looks good so far… I suppose a direct lat-long entry might be nice (on a guess).
• improvement - Collage: still at home on the bottom button bar, but vastly improved. Launches in it's own tab, so you get a lot more room. Adds a Frame Mosaic option, which has one bigger picture in the middle. Better format (size and shape) options. Pictures are now draggable, and can be scaled and rotated in the Picture Pile. Multiple Exposure has an animation to tell you it's working and a x out of y progress meter (nice, because the old one could take seemingly forever if you dumped a big load on it). Also, it appears you can save drafts of your collages… do I hear photo gift projects coming on?
• addition - tabbed interface: Sometimes… not quite like Firefox tabs. But some actions bring down a tab bar and give you another tab with a working screen (and we find out the main view is called 'Library'). The ones I've found so far are Collage and Movie Maker. And yes, you can have more than two tabs open. And Ctrl+Tab switching works (yay!).
• addition - Movie Maker (or could the old Picasa do movies? I don't remember…): quite impressed with this. You get some transitions from the slideshow and some different ones. Lots of other nice stuff, including broad dimension support (320x240 to 1920x1080), slide duration (fit to music included… sweet!), MP3 & WMA soundtrack support, text slides, basic video clip support, and integrated YouTube upload. Playback in edited mode is pretty fast and smooth.
• improved - movie playback: lots better. No longer are we stuck with a play button. Now we have a seekable progress bar and what looks like editing via start and end points. Also, there's an edit button for videos with saved projects. Woot.

 

Well, that's all for right now. The only other thing is the Picasa Photo Viewer, which is pitched to you at update/install or first run (I don't remember which… it gets installed even if you don't set image file associations to it). I declined then tried it out later. It's pretty cool… filled with Picasa tricks (starring with Picasa closed, anyone?) and pretty quick to boot. The interface is a nice full screen overlay with pretty effects (though you can get it into a window with Alt+Tab). It's not replacing Windows Picture and Fax Viewer for me right now, but it's definitely a keeper.

First, a easy way to block ads in Chrome… it's from Lifehacker Australia… I haven't tried it, but it looks like it could be a pretty tight solution and work for other browsers, too, since it uses a local proxy. [link]

And second, Chrome themes seem to be broken now… with an update to Chrome… not sure when this exactly happened, but it did. Likely enough some themes have been updated, but not you won't put a hole through your monitor when Chrome keeps crashing when you use a custom theme.

In the tradition of Grand Stream Dreams, I bring you our very first Linkfest.

Boston.com - World Series game could be delayed for Obama pitch - You might have heard that Barack Oboma had purchased an half hour time slot on at least some networks to promote his cause. Clever of him. But possibly delay the World Series? It's only by a few minutes, I know, and I'm not a big baseball fan… but still, let's hope people get mad at him for this…

Fox News - Obama Ads Invade Video Games - Obama billboards show up in Burnout Paradise on Xbox Live… hmmm… ok… I didn't know their were ads, but hey, I suppose if they pay for them… but a little weird anyway.

Newsweek - Who Are the 10% Who Think U.S. on Right Track? - A viewpoint on who actually thinks things are good. Meh. Not extrememly persuasive.

Schlissel's blog - Some of My Best Friends Are Sarah Palin - A good post about Sarah standing on what she believes and representing us as Christians… and being us.

LA Times - Greenspace blog - Bottled water not so pure - Really? I would have never guessed…

PC World - Microsoft Sues DHL After Train Dumps 21,600 Xboxes - Ummm… ouch? Not good, DHL.

Ars Technia - Revenues rise as Google says hard times will drive business - Woot for Google! They seem to be doing pretty good as the world economy melts down… that's my kind of company. Kinda like our local banks: they are still going strong since they've invested wisely (read: with discretion… *cough* Citibank et all *cough*).

MercuryNews.com - Q&A with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla - Pretty good interview. Nothing ugly. Lilly thinks Chrome isn't exactly competition… it's just Google helping Mozilla out with their mission: making the web a better place. I like that Firefox slogan, by the way: "Take back the Web." Pretty sick. Anyway, also some stuff on Firefox Mobile, of which alpha versions are coming soon.

Sioux City Journal.com - Senator's lawsuit against God is tossed out - This feels like it should be on the Drudge Report, but, LOL, what were you thinking?

redemption in a blog - Optimize Firefox’s memory usage by tweaking session preferences - If you're a heavy heavy tab user in Firefox, you might take a look at this if things have been slowing down.

Matasano Chargen - Detecting Anonymizing Proxies - An interesting blog post on detecting the use of a proxy server. Technical and hopefully helpful illustrations. A good read. Edit, October 24, 2008: The link is still 404, but I looked up the Google cache. No pictures, I'm afraid, but it's better than nothing.

In case you haven't heard about it yet, Google has released a searchable index of the web in 2001. In other words, it's like searching Google in 2001. And you can view the old pages from archive.org Internet Archive. Gnarly.