March 19, 2009

Google Adds YouTube Feature to Gmail Labs

When you get a link to a YouTube video to your Gmail account, wouldn't it be nice to view the video right then and there without opening a new tab or window? You're not the only one who thinks so. A new Gmail Labs feature enables just that.

Turn on the new feature by clicking on "Settings" in the top right corner of your Gmail page. Then look for "Labs." Previews for Picasa, Flickr and Yelp have been added as well.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 2, 2008

Google's Picasa Launching Face Recognition Software

At noon in Mountain View, Google will announce the launch of face recognition software in their latest version of Picasa, according to Cnet.com.

The software will help people tag names to their photographs - handy for that odd face in a group shot you are not sure of. Now I wonder how long it will be before one of the crime shows makes use of it in the field when they do not have access to their lab!

Hey it may not have access to police records yet... but knowing Google a collaboration no doubt will eventually come. Versions for small police departments would make sense and further ingrain the brand.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 13, 2006

Upload Videos To Google's Picasa

Philipp Lenssen reports that you can upload your videos to Google's Picasa web albums if you wanted to. Philipp links to this sample video of a kid doing chin ups. As an FYI, you can now upload videos to Google Video, YouTube (soon to be owned by Google) and now Google's Picasa. Options, options and more options -- too much?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:58 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2006

Picasa Web Albums: Google Goes Flickr

Threadwatch reports that Google has began "doing online photo storage" at Picasa Web Albums. I quickly tried it out and made a test album. It appears you cannot upload gif files from the web interface -- seriously. In any event, like Flickr, you get a certain amount of free space and then if you want more, you can pay. The Picasa learn more page says that you get 250MB of free storage and if you need more you can upgrade to an additional 6GB of space for $25 a year. Picasa Web also has RSS and other sharing features.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:11 AM | Permalink

August 17, 2006

Google Talk Gains Voicemail, Music Status, Photo & File Sharing Features

Google has announced that its Google Talk instant messaging platform now allows you to share files with other Google Talk users by dropping files or entire folders into the client. Photo files get special treatment, showing up in your client so you can talk about them with someone else, as covered more here. Listening to music? Another new feature, music status, allows other Google Talkers to see what hip (or embarrassing) song you're listening to, if you use one of these supported players. Along with music status comes a new Google Music Trends feature we mentioned earlier, which allows you to see what music is most popular across the entire Google Talk network of users. Finally, want to talk by voice using Google Talk but your contact isn't around? Now you can leave them up to 10 minutes of voicemail, through that new feature. Note that some Google Talk users already got these new features a few weeks ago. Now they are rolling out to everyone.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:05 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

More than Organizing Photos? Google Acquires Neven Vision

Adrian Graham, Picasa's Product Manager, made a post Tuesday morning on the Official Google Blog titled A better way to organize photos? in which he announced that the team at Neven Vision has now joined Google. His post tells us that Neven Vision's software will make it easier for people to find and organize their photos. But, is there more to the purchase? Looking around some blogs that discussed the acquisition holds hints to possibily more.

I first read about this acquisition over on the Google Operating System Blog, in Object Recognition Is The Future Of Google, where I learned that the facial recognition software developed by Neven Vision will run on the types of microprocessors found in mobile phones.

It sounded like more might be happening than just putting pictures in order, so I tried to see if I could find any clues involving the intellectual property behind the company, with a trademark search and a patent search on their name. I came up with nothing. No patents assigned to Neven Vision, and no trademark in that name. At the time, their site was still working. A visit now yields the following message:

Thank you for your interest. Neven Vision was recently acquired by Google Inc. and Neven Vision product information is no longer available on this site. Click here to learn more.

But the site was up most of the day, and it did provide some helpful information. A search at the patent office on Hartmut Neven, one of the board members of Neven Vision, showed patents assigned to Nevengineering, Inc. A page on their site also listed a number of patents that they had been granted, and the numbers from those matched others that I found from the patent office. The oldest was originally filed back in 1996, and was followed by a number of others. The company it was originally assigned to was Eyematic Interfaces, Inc., but the patent had been reassigned to Nevenengineering in March of 2004. It seems that at some point in 2003, Eyematic Interfaces, Inc., transformed into Nevenengineering, Inc., with a focus that may have been more aimed at mobile technology.

I made a list of the patents I could find and some of the details about them in Google Acquires Neven Vision: Adding Object and Facial Recognition Mobile Technology.

While I was digging through the patents, a discussion started up at Google Blogoscoped on the purchase, and the news spread to GigaOm in Google Buys Photo Recognition Company, which both mention previous attempts by Google to purchase Riya, another recognition software company.

My friend Loren, over at Search Engine Journal, draws some other conclusions from other pages found on the Neven Vision site in Google, Neven Vision & Image Recognition. Loren ties together information from my patent post, what Liz Gannes at wrote at GigaOM, and from a number of other sources into a thoughtful analysis of what the acquisition may mean for Google in the future. And it's more than just organizing photos in Picassa.

Robin Good wrote a post on his blog at the end of July which shows an approach one image recognition company is taking in Visual Similarity Search Engine Finds Images According To Your Specs. What might we see from Google?

There are a lot of possibilities that become available with software that can recognize faces and objects. It will be interesting to see how Google might use some of the intellectual property and the expertise that they acquired with the folks from Neven Vision joining them. One of the newest patent applications published from Neven Vision, Image-based search engine for mobile phones with camera, lists some possibilities:

Image Based Searches
Optical Character Recognition with Language Translation
Mobile Advertising
Print-to-Internet
Payment System (using barcodes and labels)
Learning Tool for Children
Treasure Hunt Games
Virtual Annotation

Another, Image base inquiry system for search engines for mobile telephones with integrated camera, adds even more:

City and Museum Guides
Providing Product Information
Face Recognition
Product Part Replacement

Adding the ability to sort and search photos in Picassa is probably just the start of what we will see from this union.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 2:57 AM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

Google Introduces Picasa Web Albums

Google has enhanced its desktop-based Picasa photo organizing program by offering users the ability to upload albums and easily share photos with others.

Picasa Web Albums is launching as a limited test that will be available only to existing Gmail users on a first-come, first-served basis—if you want to try the service, you should act quickly to try to secure your account.

Google has designed the service to be easy to use. To create a web album, select the photos you want to upload in Picasa and click the new "Web Album" button. Follow the instructions to name your album and specify whether your album is public, meaning it will show up in your "gallery," or unlisted. Unlisted albums can be viewed by anyone who knows the unique URL of the album but will not be displayed in your gallery.

Once an album has been uploaded, you can view images individually or as a slide show. Images are automatically scaled to fit the size of the monitor you are using, so you'll see smaller versions of a photo on a laptop than you will on a large-screen display.

You can also easily download an entire album making it easy to get copies of your own photos onto different computers, or to get photos from friends who have shared their images with you.

In addition to making it easy to share photo albums with others, Picasa Web lets users add comments to photos in your public albums.

Google is providing 250mb of storage space for photos (about 1000 photos) for free. If you want more space than that, during the limited test period you can expand storage to 6 gigabytes (about 25,000 photos) for $25 per year.

For more information, see the Picasa Web frequently asked questions page.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

June 7, 2006

Google To Offer Picasa Web Albums?

Philipp Lenssen reports that he found signs of a "Picasa Web Albums" feature coming to Picasa. Picasa is Google's desktop based photo management software, that they bought back in July 2004. Philipp has screen captures of a button that was visible on the Picasa homepage that read, "New! Picasa Web Albums." The button has now been removed but it did link to a dead page at picasaweb.google.com. Should we expect a Web based version of Picasa soon? I suspect so, especially with the release of all these other Web applications from Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:18 AM | Permalink

February 14, 2006

Google's Photo Application, Picasa, to be Ported to Linux

Picasa, Google's photo editing and sharing program, which currently is only supported Microsoft Windows 2000/XP is reportedly being ported to Linux. eWeek reports CodeWeavers Inc., a company that specializes in "bringing Windows to Linux" is working with Google on making Picasa for Linux based machines. eWeek says the program is currently in "limited beta test" and if all goes well, CodeWeavers will port Google's other applications to Linux.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:42 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2005

Google's Picasa Now Available in Many Languages

Google's digital photo management program, Picasa, has gone international. A post on Google Blog notes that Picasa, is now available in many languages including Chinese, French, German, and Spanish. Here's a complete list with direct links to each version:

Posted by Gary Price at 10:46 AM | Permalink

January 18, 2005

Google Releases Picasa 2 Photo Software

Last year, Google purchased the Picasa photo software company. Today, Picasa's now released the second version of its software. The SearchDay article Photo Search: Google Picasa 2 Vs. Adobe Photoshop Album 2 now posted looks at how the latest release measures up from a photo search and management perspective, with me pitting it against my current favorite, Adobe Photoshop Album.

It's still Album for me, though I'll be upgrading to Photoshop Elements for IPTC keyword export capability. IPTC what? Check out the story and get organized with your pictures!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:00 AM | Permalink

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