Picasa Apr 11, 2007
Picasa is Google-owned photo-editing software.  It was actually created by someone else and bought by Google, but that's a different story.  I've known about it for a while now, but I always sort of dismissed it as "grandma software", i.e. software that's created for computer illiterate people like grandmas (no offense).  But a few months ago, Wendy was looking for some simple yet powerful photo editing software, so I recommended it (no offense to Wendy).  It turns out it's pretty powerful, and it has some awesome features that are easy to learn and use.  Wendy used it to do a sort of color focus effect on a few pictures I had taken.  Basically, it makes the whole picture black and white except for a select object or area.  It's a cool effect that makes the one colored object in the picture really stand out. 

And then just last week, I decided to get sick of my method of organizing pictures.  Ever since I got a digital camera in 2002, I've had a system of renaming pictures based on their date and event (e.g. "04-11 - Event.jpg").  The renaming process wasn't that big of a deal, especially after my discovery of Windows' built-in renaming capabilities.  The problem was that I would let several months worth of pictures accumulate on my camera before I transferred them to the computer, which meant I had to spend time renaming lots and lots of files.  Plus, the renaming system seemed a bit futile because the names didn't add much to the actual picture.  I know what a cat looks like.  I don't need to name my picture "04-11 - Cat.jpg". 

That's when I remembered Picasa has some good organizing capabilities.  It has the ability to add tags and descriptions that don't affect the filename.  In fact, it doesn't even display the filename; it displays the pictures in date order, which is exactly what my renaming system was doing anyway.  It seems to make picture organizing at least a little faster.  Plus, it displays and plays videos right along with pictures, which matches up quite nicely with my newfound love of videography. #entertainment
Google Reader Apr 11, 2007
Yesterday, I decided it would be a good day to move away from Bloglines and start using Google Reader.  This move was entirely superficial, and wasn't prompted by any sort of problem I was having with Bloglines.  I'm just a big Google nerd, and I wanted to start using their feed reader instead of somebody else's.  Google Reader didn't score too well in my ratings from long ago, but the Google people have been improving their product steadily over time, and none of the initial problems I had with it are still evident.  It's slightly different from Bloglines, so it takes a little getting used to, but I think I'm making the move permanent.  One added benefit is that Google Reader mobile is infinitely better than Bloglines mobile.  It uses keyboard shortcuts and just seems to be a simpler product.  Bloglines mobile tries to fit all the features of regular Bloglines into a mobile product, and it just makes things bulky and slow.  That's hardly a reason to switch, but it's worth mentioning. #technology