Windows Live Photo Gallery’s Ten Minutes January 22, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in photo sharing.2 comments
What it is: Windows Live Photo Gallery is free Microsoft Vista-like software that imports your photos from a digital camera and lets you edit, organize and share them online.
My verdict: I found the software remarkably easy to use, and on the whole quite flexible in how I used it. It’s not as beautiful as some photo organizing tools, but it’s light and efficient and has some nice touches.
My ten minutes: Plug a camera or external drive with images on it into your computer, and among the usual list of file importing tools, you’ll see one for Windows Live Photo Gallery:
The next window will allow you to either organize your photo names now, or just import all the images in one go:
Alternatively, you can click on the More options link and find more choices about how you name the images and the folders. I was disappointed not to find a way to organise them by date without the hyphens, although that can be done manually later:
Once the photos are imported WLPG will organize them by date — a bit like the Mac’s event feature. I have to say WLPG did a pretty good job of anticipating how the photos might be organized, along with thumbnails of some of the photos in each batch:
You can then assign tags, and folder names, to the photos:
The importing process is pretty smooth. At any point you can select the Delete after importing button:
It wouldn’t be a Microsoft product if there wasn’t a little sleight of hand, though this one is minor; you’re asked at the end of the importing process whether you want WLPG to be your default tool for images:
The program itself is mercifully simple — folders on the left, thumbnails on the right, area for adding tags and whatnot in the far right — and will load thumbnails quickly (click on the pictures themselves and they won’t load quite so quickly.)
Another feature I liked about the program: You can publish to Flickr, a bitter Yahoo! rival, easily enough — unlike Picasa. (You can’t publish to Picasa yet, though.) The authorisation process to do this is simple enough:
And allows you to choose sets, collections and whatnot prior to uploading:
There is, however, a delay in connecting to your Flickr account, and the uploading process was somewhat slow:
A warning: Microsoft advises against using the software if you’re using tagging features direct from your camera. In other words, some metadata from the camera may be corrupted. The note dates back to last July, and mentions no specific manufacturers, so be warned.
AirTalkr’s Ten Minutes January 14, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in messaging, presence, social networking.add a comment
The blurb: AirTalkr is a multi-protocol Instant Messenger that connects to MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, AOL and ICQ. Not only that, it also has connects to to various Web 2.0 services like Flickr and YouTube. AirTalkr runs on Adobe AIR, so you will need the runtime to use it. As of now, AirTalkr can run on Windows and Mac.
AirTalkr is the creation of Singaporean Hu Shunjie.
Installation:
First you need to install Adobe’s AIR software (there’s a Windows and a Mac version, 9 MB and 10 MB respectively.) Make sure you choose the AIR Beta 2 version, not 3, as it won’t run.
Once AIR is installed, download and install AirTalkr. The log in screen etc are pretty standard, though beauty isn’t the first word I associate with it. You’re then prompted to fill in your various IM account details:
The program:
All pretty straightforward, and it works well as a replacement for Trillian. But the idea of AirTalkr is to take all this a stage further: to build in people’s profiles and content on Twitter, MySpace, Friendster and Flickr all from the same application. So you could, in theory, right click on a contact and view all their latest twitterings, photos and Facebook blatherings, all from inside AirTalkr.
Of course, your friends would have all had to update their settings so this could happen. This is done via something called an AirCard. I couldn’t figure out how to set up one for myself in the alloted time.
Conclusion: AirTalkr has a homemade feel to it and requires quite a bit more work. But the idea is a sound one. I think it’s inevitable, and desirable, that instant messaging dovetails more efficiently with social networking sites, so it would be great if a tool like this could manage that better. (For a less convincing attempt see 8hands which I reviewed here.)
Xdrive’s Ten Minutes January 9, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in backup, file sending, file sharing, photo sharing, storage.add a comment
Xdrive, once a major player in online backup but a shadow of its former self under AOL) promise to have improved things, so I thought I’d sign up and see what it’s like. Xdrive describes itself as way to backup files, access your files from anywhere, and a way to share them with others.
Signing up was painful. Way too much information required (name, address, city, state, phone etc), and the assumption is you’re in the U.S. This even if you use your AOL account:
This is a problem I found with AOL’s other offering, BlueString.
When you are able to fool it with enough fake information (my name is Firsty Lasty and I live in a city called Hopeless in West Virginia; come visit some time) you can log in and start using the service (I tried the free 5GB option.)
Next problem for me was trying to download the (Windows only) Xdrive Desktop Software. The download link on the page didn’t work if I clicked on it
so I just right-clicked and saved the link. That worked, but didn’t give me a whole lot of confidence about where things were heading. The client started installing some other stuff, including something called a Loopback Adapter:
I kinda wish AOL would tell me what all this was about — my gripe with BlueString was it started doing things I didn’t really like, including putting stuff into the start-up process and generally behaving like a dodgy-looking gatecrasher at your party looking for the silverware.
You’re supposed to reboot after the installation is complete — once again without any word on what has been added, and whether I now have Xdrive in my startup folder. The next surprise is that the lines appear to be blurred between what is Xdrive and what is BlueString:
Confused? Yes. I still wasn’t quite sure what was going on as the client connects itself, but once it’s done things are actually pretty clear: You can customize backups to pretty much whatever you want, when you want, and you can also treat Xdrive as a separate drive, much like Omnidrive and other online backup options:
Moving stuff that was quick and painless (helped by a great connection) and the backup wizards work well. Reboot and you’re presented with a helpful screen outlining what you need to do.
Gripes? I had some error messages when I tried to do things, and the client takes a while to connect.
It’s not possible to tell whether Xdrive’s problems of lost data, downtimes and a general malaise in responding to customer issues are over. And I’m not a fan of the intrusive signup procedure and less than informative setup process. But Xdrive definitely looks like it’s worth a second try.
Google Talk’s Ten Minutes January 6, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in chat, email, organizers.2 comments
One of the most undersung corners of the Google empire, in my view, is Google Talk, the search giant’s chat application.
For one thing, it’s so uncluttered it makes every other chat application look like the aftermath of Christmas dinner. It’s smooth, fast and the sound quality is good. But what I think it’s best for are the features that aren’t really features. (Most of these won’t be useful if you don’t use Gmail.)
Google Talk as a Contact Database
For example, searching for a contact’s email address is faster in GTalk than other applications I can find. Outlook is so slow it’s horrible and Google Desktop won’t really help you since the email address you’re looking for, if it appears at all, will be via an email address or something, even if you’ve set Google Desktop to index your contacts:
Google Talk does this much better. So long as you’ve selected the Add people I communicate with often to my Friends List (Settings/General)
GoogleTalk will add these names to its list, so that when you start typing their name in the search line their names will appear below, even if they’re not a Google Talk user:
Move your mouse over one of the entries and their contact details will appear:
Clicking on the email address (in blue) will either create a new message in Gmail or a new message in your default email client, depending on whether you’ve selected Open Gmail when I click on email links or not in your Settings:
Now you have a quick way of scouring your contact book and creating emails. It’s possibly only marginally quicker than clicking on Compose Mail in Gmail, but I find Google Talk so fast it works well for me.
I feel Google could go further with this. What I’d love is if it could include in its search not just names but towns and other fields stored in your Gmail contact database. If I could quickly trawl through all my Gmail contacts for specific interests (who should I chat to about satellites and medical emergencies, for example) Google Talk would become a sort of first stop for organising my otherwise untamable contact list. (At the moment the best solution for this is my old favorite, PersonalBrain, which I’ve written about before.)
Still, even now, it’s an underused gem that I recommend you giving a shot if you’re a Gmail user.
Some other quick tips:
You can use Google Talk to update your Jaiku status messages (I can’t actually remember how to do this, but will try to find out). You can translate phrases via Google Talk (more here on that).
It’s not perfect, by any means.
Some gripes:
If you have more than a few contacts they slip off the bottom of the screen and there’s no way to prioritise them, or organize them into groups. (Removing the pictures is the best way to reduce the footprint of each contact. So if your list looks like this:
click on the View button at the bottom and deselect Show pictures
So your contacts will take up only one line (mostly; those who have set their presence will remain on two lines, but will still take up less screen space):
Another gripe: the built in Chat within Gmail seems to have features that aren’t replicated in Google Talk. Allowing you to include your AIM contacts inside Chat is one (unless I’m much mistaken this won’t work in Google Talk). The other is that when you add extra detail to your address book in Gmail — adding a photo, say — this information appears nicely inside the Gmail Chat:
but not in Google Talk:
I’d like to see Google improve on this.
You can’t select text within a Google Talk chat (you need to select it from the history of the chat.)
There’s no Google Talk client available for Mac or Linux, though you can load a “gadget” version that appears as a popup within your browser which does nearly all the things I’ve mentioned):
The other problem is that not many of my friends are actually on there. They prefer Skype, as, usually, do I. But if you’re a heavy Gmail user it may make sense to try to persuade them to switch.
For more information on Google Talk, check out the official blog, and an unofficial one called Customize Talk. Oh and if you’ve got suggestions for how to improve Google Talk, add ‘em here.
