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.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
