A friend of mine noted recently that when Microsoft wants to introduce a new product, it announces it a year in advance, spits out a variety of alphas, betas and PR releases, and then holds a big party. When Apple wants to introduce a new product, it first holds the party, creates a media furor so strong that its fans are queuing up 24 hours before the announced sale date, and then runs out of devices so there'll be even more demand. What does Google do?
Google waits until a holiday weekend, sends a comic book to a few selected journalists, and announces it will release the download the very next day. Yet somehow, without the year of preparation, without the huge party, without the lines, it has managed to create a major furor with its introduction of its Chrome Web browser.
This isn't unusual for Google. As a steady user of several of its Web-based apps -- including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar -- I've discovered that I need to be alert and check the "New features!" link frequently, because it's very likely that something interesting, innovative and perhaps even useful was introduced overnight.
Take, for example, one of Google's less-touted applications, the Picasa image manager and its online version, Picasa Web Albums. On the same day that Google released Chrome, it quietly announced a new public beta of Picasa 3, and introduced some rather revolutionary new elements to Picasa Web -- including "name tags," a feature which I find simultaneously fascinating and a little frightening.
What this new feature does is go through your Picasa Web image albums, find what it identifies as faces, group those it classifies as similar, and ask you to type in their names. If a name is similar to one of those in your Gmail contact list, it finds it, and you can click directly on the name. Otherwise, you can create a new entry with name, nickname, and email address.
The result? Any of the people in your Picasa Web image gallery can now be identified by simply passing your cursor over the photo. Want to find more pictures of that person? Click on the name on the side of your gallery. And you can go to the album of anyone listed as your favorite (i.e. friend) and do the same.
I haven't fully explored this feature, or the new features included in Picasa 3 -- like many of my colleagues, I've been too caught up in Chrome fever. But the idea that you can quickly and easily identify and label people within an online photograph seems to me to have a huge amount of potential. Potential for what? Easier identification of friends and family? Easier and faster ways to violate people's privacy? I'm not yet sure.
Google waits until a holiday weekend, sends a comic book to a few selected journalists, and announces it will release the download the very next day. Yet somehow, without the year of preparation, without the huge party, without the lines, it has managed to create a major furor with its introduction of its Chrome Web browser.
This isn't unusual for Google. As a steady user of several of its Web-based apps -- including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar -- I've discovered that I need to be alert and check the "New features!" link frequently, because it's very likely that something interesting, innovative and perhaps even useful was introduced overnight.
Take, for example, one of Google's less-touted applications, the Picasa image manager and its online version, Picasa Web Albums. On the same day that Google released Chrome, it quietly announced a new public beta of Picasa 3, and introduced some rather revolutionary new elements to Picasa Web -- including "name tags," a feature which I find simultaneously fascinating and a little frightening.
What this new feature does is go through your Picasa Web image albums, find what it identifies as faces, group those it classifies as similar, and ask you to type in their names. If a name is similar to one of those in your Gmail contact list, it finds it, and you can click directly on the name. Otherwise, you can create a new entry with name, nickname, and email address.
The result? Any of the people in your Picasa Web image gallery can now be identified by simply passing your cursor over the photo. Want to find more pictures of that person? Click on the name on the side of your gallery. And you can go to the album of anyone listed as your favorite (i.e. friend) and do the same.
I haven't fully explored this feature, or the new features included in Picasa 3 -- like many of my colleagues, I've been too caught up in Chrome fever. But the idea that you can quickly and easily identify and label people within an online photograph seems to me to have a huge amount of potential. Potential for what? Easier identification of friends and family? Easier and faster ways to violate people's privacy? I'm not yet sure.
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