Picasa Now Has Twitter, Buzz and Blogger Sharing

Google’s photo sharing platform Picasa has received a small update today allowing visitors and album owners to share photos with users on different social networks.
Now, if you visit a Picasa photo album, you will instantly recognise the three new sharing options; Twitter, Google Buzz and Blogger.
Users simply have to click one of the icons and a small pop-up will appear that facilitates the sharing of an album or singular photo to the chosen social network.
Ping Chen, Software Engineer at Google posted:

Like many other things in life, photos are best when shared. I share the majority of my photos on Picasa Web Albums, but I also sometimes tweet about specific photos or share them on my blog. Today, we’re making it a little simpler to share your PWA photos to whichever destination you want, with the launch of easy share buttons for Google Buzz, Blogger and Twitter.

Google understand that album owners may not want to share their albums publicly so a  feature has been added enabling an owner to share single photos without revealing the whole album. Chen writes: “We’ve now made this possible, by updating the “Link to this photo” URL so that the album name is hidden on the viewer’s photo page (the “Share” button still works as normal).”
It’s a feature that has been long coming but might not be enough to tempt users of Yahoo owned Flickr to switch photo hosts just yet. Flickr users have had Twitter functionality and a URL shortener for quite some time.
Google’s addition, at present, is almost half baked.
[Via - Google Photos Blog]
Source: http://asurl.net/kTD

Google integrates virtual keyboard into Search

Google’s taken strides to make their search engine easier to use for non-English searches.
Where it was once very difficult to perform searches in non-Roman script without a specialized keyboard, now it is relatively simple. Google rolled out language-specific virtual keyboards in 35 languages, from Albanian to Uzbek. This move, it is hoped, will help make Google easier to use for the six billion people in the world that don’t speak English.
While this seems like a small step, this could actually be a boon for Google.
Google’s had some difficulty gaining traction in certain non-English markets. While Google’s clearly got the best algorithm for searching, they often face local competition from better entrenched competitors in the non-English world.
By providing the virtual keyboard, which is a feature that will likely appeal to expats and others who’ve been forced to use an English-language keyboard, they hope to remedy this. This provides some users a useful reason to switch from their local alternatives and start using Google.

Source: http://asurl.net/kPR

Microsoft cancels the Courier, the Internet sheds a tear

The Microsoft Courier will never make it out of Microsoft’s labs and into consumers hands. The project is dead. Kaput. Finished. At least that’s what two sources told Gizmodo.
Apparently the Courier team got an email from Microsoft execs that stated the project will “no longer be supported,” which pretty much means the project is dead. Even though it’s somewhat surprising that the project was axed seeing as it was reportedly close to completion, it’s not unheard of in other industries for companies to spend untold fortunes on a concept just for the hell of it.
The auto industry has been doing it for years. Some of the concept cars that are rolled into auto shows are fully-functional models, complete with advance drivetrains and electronics. But yet they never hit the streets in a mass-market form. Perhaps the Courier was always designed as such, a technology research project and/or marketing ploy. It always seemed like a “don’t forget about ol’ Microsoft” item anyway.
But it doesn’t matter any more. The Courier that we came to know from a series of orchestrated leaks is no more. But it makes you wonder what else Microsoft is working on…(that’s what Microsoft wants us to think, btw).
Source: http://asurl.net/kMs

Call of Duty 7 to be Set in Vietnam

The next Call of Duty game will be based in Southeast Asia, and is tentatively being called Call of Duty: Vietnam.

Activision’s in-house development team, Treyarch, are poised to release the next in the series of those “other” Call of Duty games. But it looks like this year might see the end of the tried-and-true (and tried again) formula of World War II that has dominated the Call of Duty franchise right up until Modern Warfare showed that there was money to make away from the historical settings. Lots and lots of money.

According to Venture Beat, the next Call of Duty entry, due out later this year, will be based in Vietnam. This will be the seventh game in the Call of Duty series, and the third from Treyarch. The series has seen one game released per year since Infinity Ward’s original Call of Duty debuted in October of 2003.

Treyarch’s last offering, the World War II based Call of Duty: World at War was released in November of 2008, and quickly became a best seller.

It has been a big week for Activision. From the lows of lawsuits and accusations of prison-like conditions, to today’s game-changing announcement of an exclusive deal with Halo creator’s Bungie, the company will likely be discussed to pieces for months to come.

Vietnam games have rarely done well, but the risk may be necessary since the World War II setting has been mined so deeply, and by many people. It has almost gotten to the point that it can be awkward for the average gamer to meet a German person in real life knowing they have probably slaughtered thousands upon thousands of his or her digital ancestors in increasingly fantastic and graphically pleasing ways.

Yet, even though the choice of Vietnam, or at least the Vietnam era, is something of a logical step between the exhausted World War II era and the next Modern Warfare setting that will be out next year (lawsuits permitting), it is still likely to garner some controversy to set an action game in the middle of an unpopular war that still resonates through America more than 40 years later. Gamers that are burned out on the standard war shooter will likely wait and see what Treyarch offers before judging, but Activision might have difficulty in convincing the average person to play a game set during the Vietnam War.

Details are still scarce, but the game is expected to debut at the end of the year. Assuming it follows the traditional pattern set by the last few games, expect a heavy emphasis on multiplayer, and an engrossing, but short single player experience. Expect to hear more about this game (and hopefully see a playable demo) at E3.

The game will officially debut with a trailer on Spike TV, and on GameTrailers Friday night or early Sunday morning.
Source: http://asurl.net/kI2

Google tweaks Image Search for iPhone and Android.

Google is making some hefty changes to Image Search for the iPhone and Android platforms.  According to the Google Mobile Blog:

• The thumbnails are square to maximize the number of images we can get on the screen at one time so you can scan them quickly
• You can swipe to see the next or previous page of results, or tap the large, stationary ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ page buttons
• We optimized for speed so that the images appear quickly when you browse

More details, and a video after the jump.
So far the search is available in 38 languages, with enhancements that extend into the full image viewer as well.  You’ll notice images on a black background, with swipe-to-next controls available.
And what would a feature release from Google be, if it didn’t include a video?




Source: http://asurl.net/k1i