Picasa 3

Picasa 3 is fantastic. It is typically Google; highly functional, easy to use and attractive, all at the same time.

And it makes a great companion to Google Blogger. You know, it is easy to use a product like Picasa and then leave it for a while. Life moves on. But in the case of Picasa I was delighted when I revisited it after being away for about a year. It was good in 2008. It is fabulous now. And it’s all free. If this was 1999 or even 2005 someone would be charging a good price for this software. After purchase, it would have come in a package in the form of a CD, maybe after a week’s wait. Now you can find it, download it, use it all in the space of under ten minutes. Picasa 3 does a fabulous job of sorting and filing your photographs and if you have a lot, this is important.

It does such a good job that if you have a lot of photographs you are almost bound to discover photographs that you forgot you had. That happened to me with some fabulous Norwegian Forest Cat photographs that Helmi Flick kindly sent me some time ago. How did I miss them? No excuses.

Well, what better way to explore Picasa 3 than with these photographs. Two simple to use but powerful features are the collage function and the video maker. A notable feature is the ease of use combined with speed. Both of these factors are very important particularly if you are working alone and trying to compete against websites where they have greater resources. Efficient blogging and speed blogging is important. And it is motivating if things go quickly and in a trouble free manner.

The video below of the Norwegian Forest Cat Family was made using Picasa 3. Please note that there are two aspects to Picasa 3. There are the Picasa Web Albums, which is air computing (everything takes place online using Google servers) and Picasa 3, the software for which resides on your hard drive and which links to the online albums as well as deal with a lot of stuff on your computer.

When you make a video you do it on your computer and then upload it to YouTube, for example.

The above video was made in about one hour from scratch during which:

1. I found and downloaded the software
2. I learned how to make a video using Picasa 3
3. I made the video
4. I uploaded the video to YouTube

This shows how intuitive, easy and pleasing the whole process is. For example, one of the complications with video is getting the formatting correct. In HD you need to select dimensions of at least 1280 x 720 but this is very easy to do as the controls stare you in the face.

Here are the steps I took from a cold start i.e no application/program on my hard drive to embedding the videos on this page:

1. Search for Picasa 3 using Google and you get a link to the free Picasa 3 download at the top of page one of search listings.
2. Download Picasa and simply follow the instructions to install the software. For people new to this process that means either saving the installation file to your computer and then running it or running it immediately. Either way produces the same result but one needs immediate action.
3. I always request that the installation process install a shortcut icon the desktop. If you miss this you can install a desktop icon by clicking on the start button (bottom left of the screen) and then searching for Picasa 3. Once it comes up as a search result simply drag it onto the desktop.
4. Click on the shortcut icon on the desktop.
5. Picasa 3 starts up surprisingly quickly and starts to collate and file all the picture folders on your computer by the date the photo was taken (recorded in camera). You can move photos from one folder to another by clicking and dragging. You can also tag photos by type and favourite, for example. Importing from a camera is intuitive. Plus all the usual editing controls to improve the photos are available. Sharing online is equality intuitive as the program will upload to your Picasa Web Album. The basic features are covered in the the video at the top of this page.
6. One of the great strengths of this software is the search facility, unsurprising, of course as it is Google doing the searches. When the search result are shown a full list of folders accompanies the folder that ranks as the most likely.
7. OK back to making a video. Select the photos that will be used to make the video. If they are all in the same place, you can click on the first photo and then click on one that is a long way from the first while holding down the shift key. This will highlight all the photos in-between.
8. Then click on the video icon on the bottom of the page.
9. The video is created. From this starting point you can create text pages, create captions, select the transition of choice (dissolve is default – a nice long dissolve), import more images or videos to incorporate in the new video and more including adding music. Music should be licensed for use under a creative commons license or royalty free for which you will need to pay a download fee but thereafter use is unlimited but there can be no resale etc. A Google search for “Royalty Free Music” will produce a list of providers.
10. When finished preparing the video, click create video and after that upload video.
11. For HD camcorders the dimension should be 1280 x 720 (720p).

That is it for creating videos. For collages, after you have highlighted the selected images as described above you select (from the menu) Create>collage and follow the simple instructions. You can see a collage I created for the Pictures of Cats org website here: Norwegian Forest Cat Family. The video below is another short video created with this software.

As to Picasa Web Albums that is equally impressive. All posts to a Blogger blog results in images being stored on a Picasa Web Album. It is very easy to create code in relation to these images and show them on your Blogger site. This means you can show bigger images and slide shows (big slide shows – see this page for example). The code can be accessed on the right hand side of the page and then copied and pasted into the Edit Html window of the Blogger input page. This is the screen shot where you can find the code to embed:

This image is linked from a Picasa Web Album.

Picasa 3 is well worth exploring and it is of real value to Bloggers. Here is another video I made in about an hour this morning, in bed! Of course it would be nothing without Helmi Flick photographs.

From Picasa 3 to Home Page

Tiger Reserves Ban Tourists

Well, at last the Indian government, in the form of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, are doing something about the inexorable decline in the tiger population in their country. This is happening at the eleventh hour, when the tiger is possibly within as little as 10 years of becoming extinct in the wild. They are going to ban tourists from the 37 reserves. The reasoning is that the presence of large numbers of tourists (as many as 40 vehicles surrounding one tiger in a reserve at one time) are habituating tigers to human presence thereby making it easier for poachers to kill the remaining estimated 1,411 (at 2008) tigers in India.

Big business, which has always been in charge is fighting back. The tourism business will be damaged and tigers are big tourism business in the form of hotels and excursions. However, it is argued that the tourism business has behaved irresponsibly, trying to get too much of the action after the body parts traders have had their first share.

It is claimed that tourism is changing the tiger’s breeding patterns and general behaviour. Sometimes tigers can be injured or worse by vehicles. A tiger cub was apparently run over and killed (total madness really).

The greatest threat will always be habitat loss, human activity increase due to human population growth and commercial activity including poaching for body parts to supply, primarily, the Chinese Medicine business.

Tiger body parts are some of the most expensive items per pound in the world, even more expensive than printer ink and that is saying something.

Tiger bone goes for £800 per pound and a skin for £7,500. Tiger penis sells for £3,755. Here is a comparison chart:

Item	Price per lb (£)
Tiger Penis	15,000 (estimated 4 oz per penis)
Gold	9,600 (£600 per ounce)
Tiger Bone	800

Er, as I guessed, tiger penis is one of the most expensive commodities in the world and it will go up and up as the tiger will inevitably become rarer and rarer.

What the Indian government is doing is undeniably good but it is nowhere near enough. There has to be radical change and complete commitment to beat the poachers. The tiger is too valuable to poachers. It is a great commercial product with a ready and huge market, Chinese medicine. Unless the Chinese government and the other Asian countries tackle tiger parts sales at the consumer end the tiger population will decline further without massive protection by the Indian authorities, which translates into much more than the tiger reserves banning tourists.

Update: the following video is interesting in that is tells us how scarse the tiger is in the Sunderbans one of the last refuges of the Bengal tiger. The reserves are apparently overcrowded with tourists looking for tiger but the last natural refuge/reserve is almost without the tiger. He has gone (almost); gradually eradicated through human population expansion and activity and global warming which has increased water levels.

Further reading:

• Bengal tiger
• Tiger Farms
• Tiger Roar

From Tiger Reserves Ban Tourists to Wild Cat Species

Cat Catches Bubonic Plague

When a cat catches the bubonic plague in the Truckee area of Nevada as reported by the County Health Department last Friday I hope that this time cats generally are not going to be unjustly persecuted.

When the famous bubonic plague (“black death” as it was called because black patches formed on the skin) hit London (from where I write this) in 1665 cats were slaughtered as it was thought they carried the disease. In August of 1665 in London, 31159 people died of the plague and in all 15% of the population of London died because of it.

There were probably a large number of feral cats in those days. There still are, in fact. We are wiser these days (are we?) and now know that it is flea infested rats and rodents that carry the disease. In the modern era, bubonic plague still occurs where rats are present in large numbers or are not successfully controlled.

In the USA where there are 10-15 cases a year (src: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)) and these usually occur at some hot spots:

• Northern New Mexico
• Northern Arizona and southern Colorado
• California
• Southern Oregon
• Far western Nevada.

Cats are susceptible to harbouring fleas because of their fur. Fleas will jump onto a cat (from the ground) having jumped off an infected rat or rodent. It is our beholden duty to routinely check for fleas on our cats and comb them out. This for me is the preferred way as it is benign and safe. Flea powders I think are dangerous. In fact any sprays (directly onto the coat can cause problems as cats will lick it off and ingest it) are unsafe. This is just my personal view. If the flea infestation is bad a chemical dropper like Frontline is invariably successful but even that should be administered with caution. These chemicals are rather potent so lets think of the cat.

When a cat catches bubonic plague it will usually be the fault of the local health department for failing to control rat populations not the fault of the innocent messenger, the cat, who should have been treated by us. In short it comes down to us again. Nearly all “problems” to do with cats originate with us.

Further reading about flea control:

• How to Control Cat Fleas (new window)
• Can Cat Fleas Bite Humans
• Cat Flea Life Cycle
• Homemade Flea Control
• Diatomaceous Earth (new window)

From Cat Catches Bubonic Plague to Pictures of Cats org

Picasa Web Slide Show for Your Blog

Picasa Web Slide Show for Your Blog. Picasa Web has improved significantly over the years. I just went back to it after many months without using it and it is mightily impressive now, very powerful and quick. It would be as it is made by Google. That’s enough Google worship. I have used Google Picasa Web for some time. I use it to store the pictures and in fact all the pictures that are uploaded to Blogger blog are saved in Picasa Web under a new folder automatically created. And that even applies to posts for your blog made with Windows Live Writer. I was surprised at that. But it is good news as images stored on Picasa Web Albums are included in a Google image search so this spreads the word a bit and gets you known a bit more on the internet.

Making a Picasa Web slide show for your blog is simplicity itself (as is, by the way, creating code to place images in your blog from Picasa Web). The code for the slide show and images are generated automatically.

First create a Picasa Web album and before that get a Google account, of course (if you haven’t one already). Once you have opened a Google account you can then begin populating your Picasa Web album with pictures. You can get to Picasa Web from your iGoogle home page by selecting from the menus to the top left of the page and picking “more” which drops down to a further menu to “Photos”.

Uploading images to your Picasa Web album is easy. Just follow the instructions. It is so easy it would be waste of time to go over it here.

Once you have at least a few picture in our album you can create the slide show (like the ones on this page, which I created in seconds, literally) by going to the right hand side of the page where you will see “link to this album” and a small arrow after the words. Click on the arrow (yes, you can miss that, I certainly did for a while). A drop down list of options comes up and select “embed slide show”. A series of options then comes up which are self explanatory and which includes image size. A great feature is you can make large format slide shows. The one below is small but the one on this page (new window), for example, is in the largest format and they run very smoothly and not slowly.

There are many other features that the Google people have added to Picasa Web over the time I first signed up to it. A Picasa Web slide show for your blog or any other website is one of the best, in my opinion. To create slide shows in the old fashioned way meant creating code. There are third party suppliers of slide shows but they have a greater commercialism meaning the supplier wants more out of it for themselves. Google provides Picasa Web free and it is less encumbered with commercialism.

From Picasa Web Slide Show for Your Blog to Home Page

You Tube is Down 4th June 2009

As far as I can see, at 21:00 GMT You Tube is Down 4th June 2009. I find it astonishing that this can happen. Allegedly, on an earlier occasion about one year ago, the Pakistan government somehow blocked YouTube from functioning as a video or videos insulted the Islam faith. Well I am not going to comment on that as I don't know if that is true.

But I wonder if it is true that a government (or an organization) can block YouTube and bring it down or stop it working. There are many millions of videos embedded in websites all over the world and they are all blank as at this precise minute. A disaster for millions of site. I don't rely on YouTube video but have a reasonable number on the site and it doesn't look good right now.

If this became a routine problem it would damage YouTube badly, maybe bring it down as there are alternative websites that host videos.

Can anyone clarify what is going on. Maybe Google are just smartening up the site but they usually warn of down time and it seems impossible to have YouTube down for any time as too many people depend on it 24/7.

Update 4th June 2009: It is back on. Down time lasted about 20 mins that's all. Is this just upgrading the servers? I find it odd that a site this big should go down at all at any time.

You Tube is Down 4th June 2009 to Home Page




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