Day: September 3, 2008

Google is in an Anniversary spirit as they release new projects and upgrades one after another. This time it is Google Picasa 3.0 Beta and Google Picasa Web Albums.

I’ve been a long-time user of both products (other than being a Google fan) and I can say that these products are now better and up-to-date. First is Picasa Web Albums new features:

Name Tags

“Gives you the power to quickly label and organize your photos based on who’s in each picture.” It uses face recognition technology to detect who’s who in your photos so you can tag easily.

Creative Commons licensing

Finally, I think I’ve emailed them 10x already for CC licensing in Picasa Web Albums (and I’m sure millions more are bugging them for this feature). However, I still can not find a way to search photos in Picasa Web Albums based on its “license", similar to what Yahoo!’s Flickr offers.

Just a fair warning, if you do not own the uploaded material, do not forget to change its license to Copyright/All Rights Reserved if in case, your setting is CC by default.

Email Upload

For those whose online lives revolves around their Email, or maybe you want to upload photos you’ve taken with your Mobile Phone, this is good news for you. After you setup your Picasa Web Albums account for Email Upload, you can just send photos to YOUR-GALLERY-URL.YOUR-SECRET-WORD@picasaweb.com. Photos will then be places in your ‘Drop Box’ folder unless you specify an existing album’s name as the subject of your email.

Explore Page

The Explore Page shows the latest uploaded pictures in the Picasa Web world, featured photos, popular tags, and even a mini game wherein you have to guess where the photo was taken!

This is a great way to discover new photos and friends, however, I suggest that they add more features and make this the default page of Picasa Web Albums - and add a Creative Commons section.

Picasa 3.0 Beta

Currently, Picasa 3.0 Beta is only available in the US but I got a copy The new features are:

• Sync to Web - automatically updates online albums when you add or edit photos on your computer
• Picasa movie maker
• Totally-revamped photo collages
• Powerful retouching tool
• Watermarks/Text tool
• Picasa photo Viewer
• Instant Screen Capture
• Print captions
• Drop Box to upload quickly to Picasa Web Albums
• Control Picasa Web Albums settings from Picasa 3
• Move around folders right from Picasa 3

Picasa 3.0 and Picasa Web Albums are more closer this time than Picasa 2 and the old Picasa Web Albums. The Synch to Web itself was what I want to suggest to Google (but never really did) to make it easier to synchronize my local copy and online copy. Picasa Web Albums is my desktop’s (online) extension. Another new feature that I really like and wished - (Picasa) Photo Viewer, see the screenshot below:

Here’s another new feature related to the screenshot above - Picasa Screen Capture and Picasa Watermarks/Text tool. After you are done with retouching, editing, watermarking, just upload it or move it to a folder in auto-sync with your Picasa Web Albums and voila, you are done!

There are more into Picasa 3 and the new Picasa Web Albums than what I have presented. I myself is once again a new student of Picasa, so just keep watch on the official blog as they will start their Picasa 3 series.

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Download Picasa 3.0 Beta NOW!! (via Picasa 3 Google Groups)

Google launch their FLOSS (Free/Libre Open-Source Software) Browser called Google Chrome based on (FLOSS) WebKit, the same underlying layout engine of Safari 3.1. It is powered also by Google Gears and Google V8 (Google’s FLOSS JavaScript engine). We can assume that websites will appear similar as it is in Safari 3.1, however this isn’t the case after testing it out myself (more on that later).

On the positive side, kudos to Google for including a Filipino UI-language for Chrome, a second kudos for using the legally correct language name “Filipino” and not “Tagalog". But they should have asked a Filipino to do the translations (more on this).

So let’s begin to dig deeper in to Google Chrome, things you may not read anywhere.

Import from Firefox as default?!

I do not know if it’s just me but upon installation of Google Chrome, it asked me to import from Mozilla Firefox but never with other browsers especially Internet Explorer. Is this intentional? If it is, then it shows that they are targetting Firefox users and not Internet Explorer. Just weird ^_^

Oh noes… Chrome using an old version of WebKit? or not..

Theoretically, if Google Chrome is using WebKit as its layout engine, then it should display websites using CSS3 the way these are displayed in Safari 3.1. However, one will wonder why it isn’t, as shown in the screenshot below:

Compare it with Safari 3.1:

Here’s a list of CSS properties that are not working perfectly or not-at-all:

• @font-face - not working
• border-radius - not working perfectly
• box-shadow - not working perfectly
• text-shadow - not working

Could it be that the WebKit version Chrome was built upon is an old version of the layout engine? Then it is only right that we expect Google to use the latest WebKit for Chrome’s next release. Or maybe they just disabled support for those properties?

Google got it right… ‘Filipino’ not ‘Tagalog’

If you go to Options -> Minor Tweaks -> “Change font and language settings” -> Languages, you can change the default UI-language of Chrome to your own language. In the Google Chrome language drop-down, it is listed there ‘Filipino’ and not ‘Tagalog’.

This is a good thing because ‘Filipino’ is the legal and official language of the Philippines not ‘Tagalog’. A Filipino may argue that the said language is ‘Tagalog’ mostly but this wasn’t the plan of the Government and until now, it is still being ignored (it was supposed to integrate words and phrases from other major Philippine dialects not just Tagalog dialect). But let’s not go to that topic.

Here’s what you get

Let Filipinos translate Google Chrome for you..

That is my suggestion, let Filipinos do the translation for you. Here are examples:

• “Please close all Chrome windows and restart Chrome for this change to take effect.”
  
  • Google: “Mangyaring isara ang lahat ng Chrome windows at i-restart ang Chrome upang makaapekto para sa pagbabago.”
  • My translation: “Mangyaring isara ang lahat ng Chrome windows at i-restart ang Chrome upang umepekto ang mga bagong setting.”
• “Downloads”
  
  • Google: “Mga download”
  • My translation: “Downloads” (there is no need to change this really)
• “Clear browsing data…”
  
  • Google: “Limasin ang pag-browse data…
  • My translation: “Linisin ang browsing data…” or “Linisin ang data ng pag-browse…”
• “Options”
  
  • Google: “Mga pagpipilian”
  • My translation: “Options” (no need to change this also)

And many more… Let’s be fair, we can assume that the Filipino translation was made by a machine because if you have noticed, the translation is word-by-word instead of meaning-by-meaning. There are also translations that doesn’t really need to be translated like ‘Options’, ‘Downloads’, ‘Help’ (translated as ‘Tulong’), and ‘Exit’ (translated as ‘Lumabas’) to mention a few.

(* I am not saying I am better with doing the translation, I am not, but I can say that Filipinos can do it better than a machine )

To Google Chrome team, hire Filipinos to help in making Chrome’s Filipino translation better. It must be a translation based on a casual day-to-day Filipino conversation.

Thank you very much for the Filipino support and for using the legal and official Philippine language name. Kudos!!

Recently closed tabs…

I like the way Chrome presents the “recently closed tabs” - it is under the “Recent bookmarks” when opening a new empty tab, as shown:

This is a built-in feature of Chrome, something other browsers lack or is available only via addons/extensions.

Detailed History

Google Chrome offers for you to track down websites you visited in a long list, divided by days, and each website labeled with the time you visited it.

No Unicode-URL support

It is sad that Chrome’s first public release does not offer Unicode-URL support like