I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.
In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.
To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.
Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.
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Google is currently testing a new version of its photo-management app Picasa in private beta that will let users post photo albums on the web via an integrated, Google-hosted service. You can learn some more about the service or put yourself on the beta waiting list at the Picasa Web site. Rafe Needleman at CNet's Web 2.0 Blog has posted a quick review of the functionality. He says at first blush the Picasa integration is quite good and publishing albums "couldn't be simpler." Galleries have nice, human-readable URLs, albums' design is clean and easy to navigate, and other Picasa users can import your photos into Picasa if you allow it. However Needleman identifies a few "snags," including the lack of password-protection for albums you want to keep private and the mysterious absence of captions. His biggest complaint is the lack of synchronization between Picasa and Picasa Web: Once you've uploaded an album, changes to images, titles, etc. in Picasa don't transfer over. He's also unsatisfied with the amount of storage space--only 250MB for free accounts compared to Gmail's 2.7GB+. For $25/year you can get 6GB of storage, but Needleman doesn't think that's a good value, and I'd have to agree. Though he isn't overly impressed with Picasa Web's feature set, he does say, "I don't know of a simpler or faster way to share photos." If you want to see what Picasa Web's online albums look like, take a look at the demo gallery.
