As usual, Google rocks the socks

This time it's Picasa (that hotlink will take you to "Picasa Web Albums - Josh Rosenberg") which is Google's picture sharing program. I say program because it isn't quite like Yahoo's Flickr; or, if it is like Flickr then it is much easier to intuit and to add photos to online albums quickly.

First it was useful because any photos that are hosted on Blogger are done so through the same server, so the one hundred ninety pictures on this blog were on the Picasa site under a "My Photos" tab; this tab also includes all the photos on your computer. Since these are not on the "Public Albums" page yet, they are quick to load and to manage. So after seeing the usefulness of having all my photos in the same place, I downloaded the actual Picasa software. This is where Picasa and Flickr seem to separate: Flickr also has something you download, but it's basically just a photo uploader, not the organizer and interface. So what this program did first was have me load the photos on my computer into the programs interface, which then allows me to view these online under the "My Photos" tab like I just mentioned.

To step back for a moment, the reason I'm writing about all this is because for the Warren Wilson freshman orientation this forthcoming week, the BE group that I attend (well, not to mention the BE suites that I'm living in, but another story for another blog (what to call this "article"? entries? bloggettes? blog entries? blogtries?)). Anyway, the group hosts a session for anyone that has that time free, and also is possibly interested. For that meeting we planned a five part slideshow of what the group does (If you're still wondering what BE is, take a look at the blog here); for this slideshow we planned to use one computer and to create a slideshow that would be easy for each of the five corresponding presenters to navigate; we also then decided that having all the photos that we would use online under the same name would be extra-useful, furthermore that having all the photos for posterity is better yet.

Go to the Picasa link at the beginning to witness the fruits of my labor!

Back to Picasa; using the downloaded program I made five albums for each of the parts of the presentation, using the presenters first name and the topic of what they're going to present. Next, I accessed the group's blog and easily downloaded from the online interface to my computer all of the photos posted on the group's blog, which were a good enough sample and would have at least one photo that would illustrate each topic. Then I chose the right photos and uploaded as a "Public Album" each of the five topics as albums under the "Picasa Web Albums - Josh Rosenberg" hotlink mentioned at the beginning of this blogtrie (that will certainly not catch on).

There is something humorous about scribing admiration for all that Google does, but everything that I do online related to Google is a step ahead of every similar product or software. My universe of online and off line computer tools has become about all Google, and with that comes more forward and backward compatibility that makes stuff easier to do, like email and chat, web publishing and photos, and Youtube and blogging. Three cheers for Google - and for the ease with which they allow me to spew forth and publish unedited, geeky writing just like the above. Eh. I need help.