Google Storage At Cutrate Prices? Very, very tempting...

via pcworld.com

I'm an avid user of Google service. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Blogger--and even the now defunct Google Notebook. The only thing I'm not using? Picasaweb, which is Google's answer to online photo storage and sharing.

Don't get me wrong. I love the Picasa desktop application--especially now that it offers facial recognition and easy geotagging support. And the way it integrates with your photos on Picasaweb--it's just sublime.

Despite all that, I'm a full-on Flickr user. I put everything on there. Outtakes, short videos, scans, you name it. The site says I have 19,590 items posted at this moment. Flickr makes it quite easy to upload and share (or not share) your photos with whomever you please. And it's a snap to organize things however you like. Plus, it offers unlimited storage--and unlimited uploads--for a mere $25/year.

So why Flickr instead of Picasaweb? Up until now, the main issue has been cost. I have far more photos than can be contained in the free 1GB limit imposed by Google. And purchasing 10 more GB cost $20--again, far short of my storage needs. I estimate I would need at least 40 GB, which need will only grow over time, and I'm not prepared to drop $40/year or more on that.

This week, that all changed. Google drastically reduced its storage price to $5 per year of 20GB storage.

I would require the 80GB plan, which costs only $20/year--and that would last a good while before needing even more space.

I am truly tempted to migrate my photos from Flickr to Picasaweb--except that

1) Despite my love of Google products, I'm quite happy with Flickr;

2) it would be a HUGE pain to move all the photos over; and

3) my annual storage needs will undoubtedly continue to rise, eventually pushing me over the 80GB limit, at which time I would need to purchase 200GB at a cost of $50/year. Which, despite the cut-rate cost per GB, is still too much for me to consider.

Five years from now, I very well may have 100GB of photos stored on Flickr, and unless Flickr doubles its rates between now and then, I'll still be paying less than I would on Picasaweb.

All that aside, I may still pay Google $5/year for an extra 20GB of storage. After all, the limit applies to all Google services--including Google Docs, on which I'm amassing quite a few PDFs and Word documents. To say nothing of my ever-growing email archive.

Summary: Great job, Google, for providing an awesome storage option! I just won't be purchasing any today.

Picasa 3.5 - A Fantastic Photo Program Just Got Tons Better

I've long been an avid fan of Picasa, Google's free photo organizer and simple editor. No other application comes close to ease of tagging, simple editing and exporting of images. Now they've added two long-awaited and very desirable features: facial recognition and geotagging.

Picasa's online companion, picasaweb.com, has featured facial recognition for many months now. I find the service rather limiting, however, and it lacks much of the social aspect of my preferred online photo site, flickr.com. Now that Google has ported that technology into the Picasa desktop client, I can enjoy the feature with abandon. Because I have a lot of faces in my collection to be recognized. Nearly 20,000 photos worth.

The other new feature, geotagging, isn't really new with Picasa 3.5, but it is a vast improvement from previous versions. It offers a nice big Google Map right in the window upon which to drop whatever photo you please. Very slick.

What makes everything nearly perfect is the Picasa2Flickr add-on that I use. By simply selecting the photos I wish to move online, then clicking the Send to Flickr button, the photos are automatically placed in the separate Flickr Uploadr application, ready for upload.

The nice thing about the Flickr/Google combination is that they share the basic tagging/geotagging functions. So whatever data I give a picture offline in Picasa is automatically recognized by Flickr. The one drawback is that Flickr doesn't recognize the facial data tags it gives when recognizing faces.

In short, thank you Google for finally adding these features to Picasa. You definitely beat Flickr to the punch on this one--and you have retained at least one solid fan.

Cathedral Gorge

Just for fun, here's a photo I took on a recent trip to Nevada. It's at Cathedral Gorge State Park, near Panaca, about 3 hours north and west of Las Vegas.

Mmm...Burger

Here's a picture of my coworker's lunch. Yum!

Happy New Year

A clean white slate for two thousand eight.

tacked cherry

tacked cherry
Originally uploaded by Senor Velasco.

I took this picture yesterday, and it turned out quite nicely. What do you think? Log on to flickr and let me know!

Google's Picasa Set to Steal Momentum from Flickr

I'm a die-hard flickr fan. Far and away, flickr has long been the obvious choice for photo sharing, storage and organization.

I'm also a die-hard Picasa fan. As a desktop photo organization tool, it stands supreme, being far superior to Apple's iPhoto and even the new Windows Vista Photo Album (which is a very close second.)

Yet each application is lacking one critical element for a digital photo panacea: integration with each other. Of course, integration will never happen, as both tools are owned by competing interests (Yahoo and Google).

A while back, Google launched an online element to compete with flickr, called Picasa Web Albums. It integrates the desktop application with online storage/sharing. It was to be the perfect, all-in-one tool for digital photos. Unfortunately, Picasa Web Albums massively underperformed compared to flickr, which is light years ahead in nearly all aspects – community, capacity, ease of use and versatility. Flickr was seemingly impervious to all competition.

That may be about to change. First, as a result of being bought by Yahoo, flickr will soon require all users to sign in with a Yahoo ID. This means opening an account with Yahoo and dealing with the headaches of using the massive, unwieldy portal on a regular basis. It's not surprising that many flickr users are incredibly turned off by this.

But that's not all. Today, Picasa Web Albums recently increased its free storage capacity to 1GB. That's still far shy of what flickr offers, but it's a huge step in the right direction. It also incorporates many new handy tools, bringing it closer to parity with flickr in the versatility area.

Most importantly, the Picasa desktop application works seamlessly with Picasa Web Albums. Given that the online element is still many shades inferior to flickr, Picasa still isn't the panacea we're all looking for. But it's headed that way. Flickr had better look out and make some major advances soon. Otherwise, the way things are developing, they could be losing a lot of people to Picasa. Myself included.

Apple Zealots Are Borderline Psychotic

Florence.
Originally uploaded by *nathan.

A word of advice: never post a comment critical of any Apple product on a forum full of Mac zealots. If you're not careful, they chop you up into little bits and make a delicious you-flavored casserole.

It's obvious I'm no Apple fan. Never have been. And I speak from years and years of personal experience with Macs. In fact, my industry uses them almost exclusively.

But that's beside my point, which is that Mac zealots are lunatics. Who else devotes entire websites to "unboxing" photos of new Mac merchandise? Who else puts little computer logo stickers on their car? Who else HAS to upgrade to the latest little brushed aluminum piece of poop that Apple says you need to maintain your mojo?

Don't believe me? Just check out this single flickr group devoted to sharing pictures of Apple products. Reading the comments, you'd think you were reading about the cure for cancer or an Adriana Lima bikini photoshoot. And there are countless forums like this.

So when I post a less-than-complimentary comment about the iPod on a flickr page, the responses were immediate and personal. I kept my rhetoric in check, so I didn't get totally flamed out, but these Mac zealots take their iPod very personally. An attack on the iPod is an attack on them, plain and simple.

Anyway, I'm rambling. FYI, I'm typing this on a Mac. Woe is me.