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Google Chrome, Picasa & Bunnies.

These are all the things that have been consuming my free time lately.
First: I was miracuously able to install Google’s new browser, Chrome, on my computer at work (to which I have no admin rights). I’ve been using it all day at work in place of my normal browser (Firefox). So far, I think it’s pretty neat. It definitely feels faster. My work’s site is 100% flash and now I can navigate it a bit faster. There are a few neat things – like placing an icon of an “app” (webpage) on to your quicklaunch bar, incognito mode (does anyone else think that guy with the trench/fedora/glasses combo is creepy… they should have just named it perve mode), and its overall simplicity. Will it ever beat Firefox for my love? Only time can tell.

Something that I find even more exciting from the people at google is the new Face Recognition & tagging function in picasa web! It is somewhat similiar to the ability to tag people in Facebook, except it takes it a step further by actually trying to find the faces! At first, I let it scan my entire album collection. It took about 20 minutes to complete that (I have about 30 albums with people in them). Then it showed me groups of faces, and I could enter in names (also able to add in nicknames & email addresses). This creates the tag.  Then it goes through all the pictures, guessing which person it could be, and giving you a few options from your tag selection to pick from.  You can also ignore, skip or tell it that it’s not a face it’s captured.  So far it’s been pretty good. I’m quite impressed. A while back I had made the decision to go with picassa for a few reasons – but things like this are making it cooler!

Last, but not least… my bunnies! Huey has been settling in just fine.  He has gone on two “dates” with Chompy… and that was interesting!  You see, bunnies are territorial by nature and you can’t just throw two strangers into the same pen and except them to be ok with it. Combine this fact with their extremely sharp teeth and you have potential for major rabbit-injury. We have to slowly introduce them in territory-neutral areas until they seem to get along. It’s quite the process, and we did it successfully with Bukit & Chompy, so hopefully Huey & Chompy will love each other too! Here’s a ridiculous looking picture:

Chompy & Huey Cower together on the table

Picasa Web Albums Vs. Flickr

VS.

I’ve had a digital camera since November of 2004, and since then have been searching for adequate ways to host my pictures online. I used to host them on my site, or another free service called fotki, but that was too limited. It wasn’t until last year that I tried Flickr. I tried Flickr when I was in India, but the slow connection speed made me give up.

When I got back I installed the picasa software on my PC, and I loved it. Since you could easily upload to picasa web right from the program, it made sense to use that. I did a quickie comparison and chose google. I even looked up other websites (blogs) that had comparisons between the two, and it always just seemed to be a slight user preference… not real advantage or disadvantage to one or the other.

Now I have a mac, and use (and love) iPhoto, with my Picasa Web Album uploader plugin.

I was happy to use it, but didn’t realize that you could embed a Flash Slideshow into a website. With Flickr, I used a 3rd party site to achieve that, but with Picasa, it’s built right in. The only thing is I like the Flickr slideshow better as you can control the speed, and also see all the thumbnails. I don’t know what to choose!

I’ll have to do more extensive testing. For now, you can see examples of both on the Bukit & Chompy Photo Page

Tell me what you think!