Picasa for Mac – Better Late Than Never!

ByMike Moffit

On Monday, Google finally released a public beta of Picasa for the Mac. Picasa is a free desktop app for importing, editing, organizing and sharing digital images—particularly digital photos.

Picasa for Macs is a free download from Picasa.google.com/mac/. You need an Intel Mac running OS 10.4 or later.

Picasa has been a popular photo app on the Windows side for years. It shares some features with iPhoto, and adds some unique killer features. These include the ability to sync your Picasa desktop and Picasa Web Albums edits, screen captures, create and edit movies within Picasa, add text/watermarks to photos, manage folders on your computer, a collage creation, screensaver creation, and Facial-recognition technology. Privacy and sharing settings can be adjusted for individual photos, collections or for your entire library.

Preliminary tests show Picasa to be as fast or faster than iPhoto and easy and elegant to use. We’ll test further and review Picasa in detail in the future.

Google also offers Picasa Web Albums, which is an excellent web service for sharing and organizing photos. This has been Mac-compatible for years. There is an iPhoto plugin if you want to use Picasa Web Albums without necessarily using the desktop version of Picasa. Click here to download this.

Also, the new version of iPhoto ’09 looks amazing. News about Picasa for Mac has been swept under the rug with the announcement of iPhoto ’09.

Picasa Web Albums integrates tightly with Google’s Blogger service, along with many other blog platforms and web services. Picasa Web Albums is very easy to use, uploading is a breeze, and photos are nicely displayed online. Picasa Web Albums offers up to 1GB (“enough space for 4,000 wallpaper-size photos”) of photo hosting for free.

Flickr is still more popular and has deeper social network components then Picasa Web Albums. Again, we’ll do a detailed comparison in the near future.

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  • My First Impressions

    It just was not the same to see a Macworld Keynote without Steve Jobs, but I thought that Phil Schiller did an admirable job of showing off the latest from Apple.

    The top four innovations from my point of view were:

    1) iPhoto – the changes to iPhoto are simply astounding. It is the most advanced photo management system for consumers ever conceived. It will make your photo library more accessible, more manageable and more useful than ever before. iPhoto is reason enough all by itself to buy a Mac!

    2) iMovie – the new features in iMovie have me thinking about taking a video camera with my on my upcoming safari to Tanzania. The ability to manipulate your videos and the new tools introduced make video editing even within my capabilities.

    3) The Mac Box Set – The new package @ $169 of iWork, iLife and Leopard is a great way to get folks stuck back with Tiger finally into the modern age!

    4) DRM-free iTunes – YES, this will make managing your music library as easy as managing your photo library. It is a credit to Apple that the record labels have finally seen the light and dropped the requirement for DRM on music. Apple has demonstrated that they have the market for music no one else can touch.

    Plus, I like a lot of the features in the new MacBook Pro 17-inch, especially the new battery. While I know some will complain about the non-removable battery, I am sure that it can be replaced by Apple Service Providers and with a 1000-cycle life and up to 8-hours on a charge, you do not have to carry a spare battery just to get through the day!

    I was surprised to see Tony Bennett as the musical star at the end of the keynote but Artie was enraptured and applauded wildly.

  • iWork '09: New Features

    Some big changes were announced to the iWork suite of productivity applications at Macworld on Tuesday. Like iWork ’08, iWork ’09 includes Pages, Keynote and Numbers. Integration and sharing have been vastly improved across the suite, and it still offers excellent Microsoft Office compatibility.

    The addition of iWork.com is huge. Much like Google Docs, you will be able to collaborate on projects by accessing your files online. Apple has not launched this yet in its full form, but it is available as a public beta once you have purchased iWork ’09.

    In the following articles, you’ll find an overview of the highlighted new features. The Single User edition is available for $79.99 and Family Pack is available for $99.99. *Note that iWork ’09 includes all three applications which are not available for purchase separately.*

    iWork ’09 will ship in the next week or so; reserve your copy below:

    Single User Edition:
    http://www.smalldog.com/product/72887

    Family Pack:
    http://www.smalldog.com/product/72888

    “Read our full coverage of Macworld 2009 on our blog.”:http://blog.smalldog.com

  • iWork '09: Pages

    Pages received a bunch of updates this time around, most notably:

    * *40 new Apple-designed templates* (for over 180 total).
    * A new *full-screen view* option so that you can focus only on your writing!
    * *Dynamic outlines* allow you to organize your ideas as they come.
    * *Mail merge with Numbers* makes adding addresses, names and more really simple.
    * MathType 6 and EndNote X2 (both sold separately) integration allows you to insert equations or bibliographies (respectively).

    As always, you can open, save, and email Microsoft Word files from within Pages.

  • _Dear Friends,_

    I am writing from my hotel room in San Francisco at Macworld. I just came back from the nearest Starbucks for a grande black eye before I get on the plane to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. I walked outside and everyone seemed to be all bundled up with down coats, gloves, etc. It was 50 degrees out! I was proud of my tough Green Mountain blood in my t-shirt.

    This has been a very productive Macworld, although I only had about an hour to look on the show floor. I have been in meetings, one after another, every day. It is these one-on-one meetings, the dinners and social events where business takes place that I will miss with the absence of Apple’s presence at Macworld.

    There was a lot of reminiscing and talk about how we will preserve this personal contact in an increasingly impersonal business world. Everyone seems to be very concerned (and rightfully so) about the economy, and I must have heard someone say they are just “biding time” about a hundred times.

    I am very excited about the iLife ’09 and the great bargain that the Mac Box Set represents. I was able to take a look at the new iPhoto and had a chance to talk to the designer/engineer from Apple. I had an important question: would the new facial recognition feature, Faces, work for dogs? Unfortunately, the answer was “no,” but he said that it was the most asked question thus far!

    I’ll give you a short report from the CES show next week as Geoff and I search the floor for some new products. We have a whole new set of meetings before I fly back home on Sunday.

  • Grace gave me an advance 60th birthday present just before I left for Macworld. She is taking me to Tanzania to see hippos in the wild. After watching the keynote with the new version of iMovie, we have decided to bring along a digicam, too!

    Our friend Chet Newbold from Olympus is going to loan me one of their ultra zoom cameras, too, so I hope to bring back some great photos and video from this trip. I am so excited about fulfilling this dream and spending my 60th birthday in Africa!

    I think we are going to see a lot of new products coming out of Apple this year. When they are ready on schedule, I am much more optimistic than most about 2009. I think that Apple is well-suited to innovate its way through this economic downturn.

    Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team
    _Don, Kali & Ed_