… we’re rolling out major technology upgrades to both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. As you might have guessed, these are largely focused on how we share and enjoy our photos with others.

So the Picasa team enhanced the technology. Cool!

But what technology was actually “enhanced?”

Syncing.

Now you can sync your library of photos directly from your PC to your Picasa Web Albums. “If you edit or add photos to the album on your PC, those changes will be automatically reflected on Picasa Web Albums. You can even specify who you’d like to share your web albums with from the Picasa software itself.”

That’s a really nice feature to have. It lifts a huge burden on those people who are anal about keeping things in sync (ahem, yes, I’m talking about me).

Here is a quick rundown of the new features in Picasa 3 [beta]:

• Sync your Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums edits
• Retouch your images
• Preview image files with Picasa Photo Viewer
• Make a movie
• Capture your screen
• Add text or watermarks to your photos
• Print captions
• Upload easily to Picasa Web Albums
• Control your Picasa Web Albums settings
• Manage folders on your computer
• Get more information about your photos

Also, here is a changelog of what has been improved in the new Picasa 3 Beta release.

• Collage
• Sharing
• Auto red-eye
• Cropping
• Screensaver
• Multiple word tags
• Importing
• Slideshow

Note: Picasa 3 Beta is only for Microsoft Windows.

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Google Launches Picasa 3

Google Chrome is a great browser. As one of my co-workers notes, “it’s really fast.” Indeed, it is really, really fast. With a brand spanking new JavaScript V8 engine, it certainly is very fast.

This new Google browser is taking browsing to the next level. Since Google Chrome is based on the WebKit engine and Firefox is based on the Gecko engine, they are by nature, very different browsers.

I overheard a conversation that “this is just Firefox 4.0″ and how the two browsers are so similar. But that is the farthest thing from the truth. Sure, they both have tabs. Sure, they both render CSS. Sure, they both let you use Google. But if you look at the bare bones, they are not the same browser.

Firefox is still it’s own beast and Google is happy to support it for the next three years. But, Google Chrome is ready to take a piece of that market share away from Mozilla, Microsoft, and Opera.

I’m a happy Chrome-user and I’m eager for a Mac release of the product. I’m using Chrome under a VM for the time being.

What are your thoughts on Chrome? Likes? Dislikes?

Looking for an open-source ad manager to serve your Google AdSense ads? Try OpenX today!

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Going for a Spin with Google Chrome

The press release was pulled.

Update 1:00pm EST: The press release is now available.

Shortly after, this is where it sends you:

But fortunately, there are press release partners like businesswire.com that will still carry the press release, even though Google may have taken it down. Here is what the press release said,

DoubleClick Serves Into Silverlight to Power Video Advertising for NBC Universal Digital Media

DoubleClick In-Stream Powers Video Advertising in Flash, RealMedia, Windows Media and Now Silverlight 2 Players

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, DoubleClick, a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, announced the new capability to serve video ads into Microsoft Silverlight 2 video environments. The move is part of DoubleClick’s ongoing effort to help clients maximize the yield on their advertising inventory as they deliver content into emergent online, video and mobile channels.

With this new feature of DoubleClick In-Stream, DoubleClick clients such as NBC Universal Digital Media are able to monetize video content played within the Silverlight 2 player. NBCOlympics.com, a division of NBC Universal, will be one of the first sites to open Silverlight 2 content up to advertisers with DoubleClick In-Stream. The solution carves out new video inventory across 2,500 hours of video content running as part of NBC’s Olympics coverage.

“Microsoft has always had a strong commitment to working closely with partners and the industry to enable them to leverage our tools and platform to deliver great user experiences. With Silverlight, we’ve extended that commitment to the advertising space,” said Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President, .NET Developer Division. “We’re pleased to see the investment DoubleClick has made to enable customers such as NBCOlympics.com to take advantage of Silverlight to offer compelling packages to their advertisers.”

DoubleClick In-Stream is a video ad serving solution used by online publishers to deliver exciting new advertising experiences into Flash, Real Media, Windows Media and now Silverlight 2 video players. As part of the DoubleClick Revenue Center, the product is completely integrated into DoubleClick’s core ad serving platform, DART for Publishers. The combined DoubleClick solution enables trafficking, targeting forecasting and reporting for video advertising. By working with DoubleClick to serve ads into Silverlight 2, NBCOlympics.com is able to leverage their existing ad operations workflow and staff to package video ads with other opportunities, such as online display and mobile ads. One platform for online display, video and mobile has made it possible for NBC to create compelling cross-channel packages for advertisers who want to reach the Olympics-viewing audience.

“With hundreds of advertisers, multiple platforms and large site traffic spikes, we needed to work with a partner that could provide an integrated, scalable, robust solution,” said Steven Gold, Vice President, Sales Planning and Operations, NBC Universal Digital Media. “Thanks to DoubleClick In-Stream’s new support for Silverlight 2, we are able to monetize our groundbreaking online video coverage on the same platform we already use for display and mobile advertising. This lets our sales and operations teams work together really efficiently.”

“DoubleClick’s vision is to help publishers grow their revenues by creating great user experiences and providing compelling value to advertisers,” said Google Group Product Manager Ari Paparo. “By expanding the capabilities of DoubleClick In-Stream to work with Silverlight 2, we can make it possible for clients to create unique entertainment and advertising experiences without increasing their workload or creating new complex processes.”

So, in short, Google announced that they will be integrating their ad platform into Silverlight. Woops, there goes the strong hand for Microsoft on advertising.

The advertising integration is [was?] planned to be an in-video integration and experience for the end-user.

This proves to be another great reason why the acquisition of DoubleClick was a good move for Google, but this announcement does make Microsoft look kind of silly.

Thanks to Mashable for initially running the story.

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Google Pulls Silverlight Press Release

Let’s talk about the first data set.

Google actually shows a small, but noticeable decrease in their stake of the search engine market. Still holding a hefty 61.5% in June 2008, but they do show a decline of 0.3%.

Microsoft shows an increase of 0.7%, bringing them up to a share of 9.2%. While this percentage still remains small, it does show growth which is a huge encouragement for the Live.com Search Team.

Next up, actual search queries.

This data set shows an increase for Google from 10.7 billion searches in May 2008 to 11.5 billion searches in June 2008m, a jump of 800 million searches.

Microsoft, however, still shows an increase of 15%, moving from 920 million searches in May 2008 up to a little over one billion searches in June 2008. Yes, it’s a 15% increase, but the actual jump in searches for Microsoft is still much smaller than Google. This 15% in real numbers is only a jump of 136 million searches.

800 million vs. 136 million; I will definitely opt for the lower percent change and an actually higher increase in searches (aka, the Google results).

Google still has a solid stake in the search engine industry and I do not see that changing any time soon, but other search engines are slowly making progress.

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Live.com Search Growth

The first of those tools is called Buzzword. After logging in, this tool is a fairly basis document editor, such as Microsoft Word (for desktop) or Google Docs (online). Here is an example of what it looks like.

It’s not much to look at really, just some fancy doo-dads here and there. Some nifty sharing capability which you can read about further down in the review.

My impression: Meh, ok, let’s see what else Adobe has to offer with this new suite of tools.

Next up in the suite is a product called ConnectNow. This tool is a screen sharing utility which may come in very handy with the other tools in this suite.

First up was a document editor, now a screen sharing utility. Alright, cool. The suite is decently useful so far.

Oh and so you know, the screen sharing utility, ConnectNow, actually downloads and installs some software to your computer. It’s a flash application of some sort, but I don’t believe it is Adobe AIR.

This third tool on Acrobat.com is pretty straight forward. It’s a PDF converter tool which will allow you to convert documents from your desktop into PDFs, online.

There is an Acrobat trial desktop tool which will let you convert them directly on your desktop computer, but it likely costs money (hence the trial mode) and who wants to spend money just to convert PDF files, seriously.

Adobe - Create PDFs rating: 5 out of 10 Google Inside stars.

Fourth up to bat is Adobe Share. This is a, well, let’s call it a “module” of the suite, that lets you share files back and forth between users.

From what it says, it will let you easily maintain security and share your files while you still remain in control of the access. Alright, cool. I digg dig that. Makes the rest of the tools more useful since I can now share the content that I create with the other tools.

Let’s move on though to the last tool and see what the complete suite can offer consumers (or corporate).

Lastly we have My Files. This is as straight forward as it gets. This is the basic storage “module” that Acrobat.com offers to let you manage your files online and access them anywhere around the world.

So as a wrap up, let’s take a look at the overview of tools offered here.

Adobe Buzzword, the document editor; Adobe ConnectNow, the screen sharing utility; Adobe - Create PDFs, the PDF converter utility; Adobe Share, letting you easily and securely share files with other users; and Adobe My Files, letting you manage all of your files online.

Good set of tools? Looks like it to me. Seems like this has been an ace up the sleeve of Adobe for quite a while. Or….has it been? Below is a screenshot of http://forex.acrobat.com, what looks to be not a white-label version, but a corporate-specific version that let’s users within the organization use the system more easily.

We will probably see, very soon, a bigger push for company-specific versions of Acrobat.com now that they have released this suite of tools to the public.

[Hat tip to Adam Ostrow for the story]

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Adobe to Compete with Online Tools Suite

Some rumors come true, like the YouTube acquisition rumor. While others remain extinct.

What would Facebook be today if Facebook had decided to sell to either potential buyer of Google or Yahoo!? It would be a lot less, I feel.

Facebook came out as a strong player [and competitor] in the industry mid-2007, when they started their own strategy of acquiring other companies.

This bold statement by Facebook was something not to be looked at lightly, but to be taken very seriously as Mark Zuckerberg was not ready to give up his baby, at least not for anything less than USD$2bn — which now would be a bargain, comparing it to Microsoft’s 5% stake in Facebook. That 5% stake values Facebook at USD$15bn [Internet] dollars.

So does Facebook have a solid future ahead? I believe they do. I believe that Facebook has a very solid future, despite any social media or social networking changes that may occur in the next five years.

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Facebook to Sell Out? Certainly Not.

My response was, “hm,” after watching the video.

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Video: The Microsoft Sales Team Rocks!

I do not believe it will.

Microsoft is a very silo-ed company. They are made up of many different entities, companies within companies. For this very reason, I do not think that even if Microsoft does keep aQuantive, that this arm of Microsoft will have an “upper hand” on search.

Some of my contacts within Microsoft tell me that they are not even allowed to talk to some members of Microsoft for this very reason. Sometimes not knowing a bit of information is better when defending your position.

I think that will be the case with aQuantive.

But will Microsoft sell parts of aQuantive just like Google sold part of DoubleClick? That is the question we should be asking.

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Forbes on Microsoft’s aQuantive Acquisition

Article 1, the most recent patent application submitted by Google was in September 2007?

The Google Patent Search tool would be a great asset to have. But again, the issue is that it’s old. I mean, I guess it would be useful if you’re looking for old patents between certain years, but don’t bother for anything new.

Google needs to stay on top of these indexes and have them updated with recent information.

Tags: patents, patent+search, google+patents, google+search

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

Outdated Google Patent Search

This is a great move for the Google Docs platform as it will help ease the transition for users. Most of the world is already adapt to how Microsoft Office looks, feels, and how it functions. Moving towards that “standard” with Google Docs will only help their cause of trying to get more users to convert.

Tags: google+docs

This post has been brought to you by Google News, written by Jonathan Dingman. © 2008 Fireside Media, LLC

New Google Docs Menus