The Download Blog

Once again, Google has embedded new features into its free desktop photo management app for Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7), Picasa, after first launching said features on the online Picasa Web Albums.

This time around Google is offering collaborative Web albums. Since August, you've been able to let friends upload photos into your Picasa Web Album, and vice versa. The way you grant permission on the Web is with a subtle icon next to the name of the person with whom you've already shared the album. Your friends can then quickly add their own photos to the online mix without having to first send them to you. They'll also be able to edit photos in the album. We immediately see the appeal for those who are working together on a project, like creating a family reunion album.

Click a tiny icon on PicasaWeb to let friends contribute to your album.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

On Tuesday, Google baked this album-building tool into Picasa's upload process. When you upload photos from Picasa 3.6 to a Picasa Web album, you'll be able to grant those with whom you share the album dispensation to work with your shots. After choosing the pictures you'd like to upload, you'll choose a group you want to share with and check that box to let them contribute to your work. You can also click the "Share" button in an album on Picasa for the desktop to type in e-mail addresses for individuals.

The benefit? Assigning collaborative rights on the desktop as part of the upload process keeps you from having to log into Picasa online to grant permissions for albums and photos you've already shared.

Similarly, if others have given you the green light to meddle in their albums, you can also upload photos from Picasa 3.6 directly into albums under their control.

Tick the box on Picasa 3.6 to kick-off collaboration.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Picasa 3.6 can now also suggest contact names in the "People" tab for the app's name-tagging feature, which helps you speedily put namea to the faces in your entire photo collection. There's also more control over which photos get scanned in the Tools menu. Other additions include being able to save custom crop sizes and an option to keep a JPG photo's compression metrics when uploading to Picasa Web Albums.

(Credit: RIM/BlackBerry)

BlackBerry Media Sync is a straightforward desktop app for Mac and Windows that has historically let you sync music from your BlackBerry smartphone using iTunes and Windows Media Player. On Tuesday, BlackBerry-maker RIM has added new functionality to give the Windows version of the syncing app access to your photo library as well.

RIM leaves the Mac version out of the photo access equation this time around.

Like other media management software, when BlackBerry Media Sync 3.0 detects your smartphone, it will scan for photos, displaying them on a separate tab within the syncing application. You can switch between your desktop and smartphone libraries.

If you're transferring photos from your computer to your smartphone, the sync manager also lets you shrink photos to take up less space on your BlackBerry.

BlackBerry Media Sync 3.0 for Windows works with XP, Vista, and Windows 7. The music sync element is compatible with iTunes 7.7.1 or later and Windows Media Player 10 and up.

Google has cut the price to store photos at its Picasa Web Albums site by a factor of eight.

The photo-sharing site offers 1GB of photo and video storage for free, but now going beyond that limit costs less. The options now range from $5 a year for 20GB to $4,096 a year for a whopping 16 terabytes.

"Today we're dramatically lowering our prices to make extra storage even more affordable. You can now buy 20GB for only $5 a year--that's twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera. Since most people have less than 10GB of photos, chances are you can now save all your memories online for a year for the cost of a triple mocha," programmer Elvin Lee said in a blog post Tuesday.

A lot of us have well over 5 megapixels per shot to contend with, but it's still interesting. When Google introduced the option to pay for extra storage in 2007, it cost $20 a year for 6GB.

The move is the latest to indicate that Picasa, although not a high-priority Google project like Chrome or search, does have a pulse. Last year, it added face recognition to the Web site and followed suit this year with the free Picasa photo editing software the company offers. And in March, Google started adding advertisements to the Picasa site.

Picasa is gradually getting more sophisticated, but as far as I can tell it has yet to dethrone Yahoo's Flickr as a preferred hub of at the center of a lot of photography activity on the Web. Picasa is fine for sharing snapshots with the family, but it's not really the place to join groups, chat on forums, and discover what the photography world is up to.

Picasa's more modest scope isn't a problem--plenty of people just want to share some photos, after all, and Google generally tries to offer services with broad rather than specific appeal--but Flickr has more vitality in this more social era of photography--at least among its "pro" subscribers who pay $25 a year.

Another interesting comparison is Facebook, with an extraordinary 2 billion photos uploads each month and a well-used system to identify who's in a photo that Flickr only just began offering. While Facebook has a strong social angle, though, it cuts down photos to a lower resolution and really is more a place for sharing snapshots than for digging into the world of photography.

Picasa's price cut raises an interesting prospect for photography enthusiasts, though. If it's going to set its prices to try to match some portion of the dropping prices of hard drives--not just this week, but regularly--it'll gradually become a more appealing place to back up photos in the cloud. Of course, like Flickr, it's chiefly for JPEG files, not the larger and more awkward raw files serious photographers often use. But even a JPEG backup is useful, especially with synchronization tools built into the Picasa software.

Paying Google $256 per year for 1TB of Picasa storage space is getting in the vicinity of the $100 price or so a 1TB external hard drive costs. Of course you only have to pay once for the hard drive, and even a slow USB hard drive is faster to access than photos on the Net, but Google's price includes backup and some assurance that you'll still have your photos if someone steals your laptop or your hard drive fails. Plus, of course, you get to share your photos.

A big gap here is support for raw files, something that SmugMug offers in its Amazon Web Services-based SmugVault. But that costs 22 cents per gigabyte per month, a price that rapidly gets steep when you consider how fast a modern SLR can fill up a 4GB flash memory card. SmugMug, a subscription-only site, caters to the serious set, though.

Far more robust than Microsoft Paint, but nowhere near as loaded with features as Photoshop, Paint.NET occupies a niche perfect for users who want a free image editor that has more than resizing and inverting. Version 3.5 includes an enormous number of stability tweaks and menu adjustments, as well as a couple of new minor features and some Windows 7 love, too.

Paint.NET 3.5 includes better Aero-theme integration and a new Utilities menu.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

One of the biggest changes makes the program's installation far less obvious. The new version automatically downloads and installs the program's prerequisites, including the latest Microsoft .Net version and Windows Installer. It will update in the background now, too, so that you can continue to use the program until it's ready to restart. Longtime users should notice that the program starts up about 20 percent faster, according to the publisher.

The program has been visually tweaked to look better on Aero for both Vista and Windows 7. Mostly, this means that the menu bar appears offset from the Aero pane border, and it looks good. The Selection tool will no longer use the "dancing ants" that most other image editors use. Instead, a context-sensitive gray overlay appears as you make your selection. This works fine when using the lasso tool, but was hard to discern when used with the magic wand. According to the publisher, this change was made to reduce CPU consumption. There are three new effects, as well, for Surface blurs, Dents, and Crystalize.

The new Utilities option on the menu bar now hosts the Language submenu, Manage Fonts, which loads the Windows font control panel, and the manual Check for Updates tool. The full list of program changes can be found here.

(Credit: CNET)

Is the iPhone finally coming to Verizon? According to an article over at Apple Insider, sources in the Taiwan handset supply chain say Apple has contracted to produce a UMTS/CDMA hybrid iPhone, making it compatible with more networks worldwide. The sources say the move indicates that Apple is specifically targeting Verizon and that we may see Verizon iPhones by the end of next year.

Whenever I talk to anyone about the iPhone, they always say the same thing; they love the device, but wish that AT&T had better coverage. I happen to agree, because even where I work in San Francisco (a supposedly "hot" AT&T zone), I get really bad coverage at my desk and often need to walk to another part of the building to get decent reception. I even have to walk over to a window to send text messages! Maybe these new Verizon rumors will light a fire under AT&T to improve its coverage, because you can bet a lot of people will be jumping ship if Verizon gets the iPhone next year (including me!).

This week's apps include a free app to explore the latest NASA info and a game where you race at high speeds on a cushion of air.

View tons of images from several NASA missions including classic Space Shuttle shots

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

The NASA app (free) gives you all the latest news, images, and video of current space missions from NASA. Get up-to-the minute updates of current missions with this official NASA app and follow the path of your favorite spacecraft. The interface is extremely easy to navigate, with buttons across the bottom for current missions, images, videos, and news updates. The missions screen lets you sort by your particular interest with info and multimedia about the International Space Station; NASA's recently unveiled ship, the Constellation; the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter; and several others.

The NASA app is perfect for those interested in science and space exploration with plenty of images and video to get a window into projects NASA is currently working on. The ability to follow current and future missions is particularly interesting because if you hear about a launch, you'll be able to track a ship's progress and follow along with the latest news from the mission. Anyone with an interest in science, space exploration, and current NASA missions should definitely grab this free app. When the next mission comes, you'll have a free tool on your iPhone to follow along as astronauts trace their path across the sky.

Use the pedal on the right to boost when the outer (yellow) meter is filled up

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Ground Effect ($3.99) is a hovercraft racing game with beautiful 3D graphics and challenging gameplay. Tilt your iPhone or iPod Touch to steer your hover craft and use onscreen controls to accelerate and break. The game is set up with tracks laid out across a ring of islands in a tropical setting. Choose from 10 different styles of hovercraft and race through check points around 14 different tracks you will unlock as you progress. You can race to unlock new tracks or choose Ghost Race to try to go for your best time against a ghost of your previous best lap.

Ground Effect has excellent 3D graphics and a control system that's easy to pick up and play, but difficult to master. Your hovercraft automatically accelerates to it's cruising speed, but you'll need to use the gas pedal to get a momentary boost to push you past opponents. Once the boost meter goes down, you'll need to wait some time before you can initiate another burst. As the game progresses and you race on harder tracks, you'll need to use the brakes at just the right time to quickly navigate sharper turns. Anyone who likes racing games and wants something a little different than the usual auto-racing type of game should check out Ground Effect. Unfortunately, there is no multiplayer option at this time, but a solid Wi-Fi multiplayer might be the thing to make this game truly great.

What's your favorite iPhone app? Are you excited that the iPhone may soon become available on Verizon? What other good science apps have you tried? What do you think of Ground Effect? Let me know in the comments!

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

After announcing an updated version of Apple TV early on Thursday, Apple released a new version of iTunes (Windows and Mac) to support the changes. The new iTunes update also adds an option that enables users to choose a dark background for Grid View and improves accessibility. You will need the iTunes update in order to use all the new features in Apple TV.

The Apple TV update adds more content and extra features to the set-top box. Notable improvements include a redesigned Menu to help you get to your content more quickly; iTunes Extras, which lets you buy behind-the-scenes content from your favorite movies; and iTunes LP support, so you can now view iTunes LP content while listening to music on Apple TV. The update also improves photo browsing, bringing face-recognition and image category sorting to the Apple TV.

Those of you who hate the recent arrival of Yahoo's logo on Flickr now have an easy way to erase it--and get a number of useful features--as long as you're using an edgy version of Chrome.

Fittr Flickr lets you click 'EXIF' to expand a box below the image to show photo details.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Chrome extensions let people customize the browser's behavior, and the Fittr Flickr extension from Gmail programmer Dan Pupius whips Yahoo's photo-sharing site into shape. Some people use extensions for using Delicious bookmarks, banishing ads, and filling out forms, but this is my favorite Chrome extension so far. You can also download Fittr from Download.com.

The Yahoo logo is ugly but not too bothersome in my eyes. Instead, what I like best about Fittr Flickr is its keyboard navigation options. Once the extension is installed, you can type "?" to see the options, but the two I now use a lot are "." and "," to navigate forward and backward through a person's photostream. Typing "s" will star a photo as a favorite, and in a nice Google touch harkening to the vi text editor, "/" will put your cursor in the search field.

Adobe Systems on Friday introduced a new Photoshop app for iPhone users that lets them edit photos from both their phone and their online library on Photoshop.com.

The app is free of charge and offers tools such as cropping, image rotation, color controls, and simple one-touch filter effects that can change the look and feel of shots all at once. It also features undo and redo controls so that if users make a mistake, or want to revert back to the original, it takes just a few taps.

As soon as users are done editing any photo, they can either save it back to their phone or upload it to their Photoshop.com account. The app also doubles as a photo-taking tool since you can simply take a photo, then have it upload right away.

What makes the app notable (besides from being from Adobe) is that the entire editing control set works off gestures. Instead of using dials or sliders, users just need to swipe their finger across the screen to change things such as brightness or color values. The same goes for its filters, which can be whisked from one end of the screen to the other instead of taking up more screen real estate or using a drop-down menu. It's one of the more intuitive control methods I've seen on a mobile photo-editing app, and can be quite precise once you get the hang of it.

The app is available now and is free of charge, although Adobe's free Photoshop.com service has a 2GB limit, which can be expanded with an annual paid storage plan.

Photoshop for iPhone lets you do all sorts of things to your photos, including beaming them back to Photoshop.com when you're done.

(Credit: CNET / Josh Lowensohn)

More pics after the break.

(Credit: CNET / Josh Lowensohn)

The iPhone has many applications that let you view Web cams from around the world, but what about turning your phone into a remote camera of its own? A new app called IP Camera (warning: iTunes link) does just that. This $1.99 tool takes a photo from your iPhone's camera every 12 to 15 seconds, then posts it to a local Web page that can be accessed from other computers on the same network.

All that's needed for setup is to make sure your phone is on Wi-Fi, then to jot down the special local HTTP address it gives you. It will keep running until you quit the application manually or get a phone call; although like any good iPhone app it starts right back up when you're done with a call.

While there are very few bells and whistles, this app worked really well in my testing with an iPhone 3G. Although one big thing that's missing is a way to archive the photos it takes. You can temporarily stop its stream of photos, then save whichever one it's on, but it does not keep a "recents" on its Web page, or on your phone's camera roll.

I'd also like to see a way to change the frequency in which it takes photos, which could keep it from zapping too much juice if you're using it while disconnected from a power plug. And a way to run it with the display off would be nice too, since hitting the sleep button freezes the app into re-sending the same shot over and over again.

Tip: the iPod universal dock and iPhone 3G dock are both angled in such a way that makes it incredibly easy to perch your phone on a bookshelf or on top of a coworker's cube and get a great view. They'll never suspect you're watching their every move.

Related: DIY home surveillance with a Webcam

The IP Camera app turns your iPhone into a mini server, taking photos every 15 seconds and posting them almost-live to a Web page.

(Credit: CNET)