Google and digital image storage

MacSlash | Google Acquires Digital Photo Management Company Picasa

Today Google acquired Picasa, a company that makes digital photo management software. No specifics were given but Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of Product Management said 'its technologies complement Google's ongoing mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.' Perhaps this means that Google will someday allow you to use some of your GB of storage to host and showcase your digital photo library.

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Very interesting! Google has the power to crush the digital image store/sell industry. I wonder if they'll build Google extensions into Picasa then make it freely available. The Picasa web site has links to a tool that facilitates putting images into Google's Blogger blog. Photoblogging deluxe?

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Update:I downloaded both Picasa and Hello, Picasa's Chat/peer-to-peer image sharing application with the "bot" interface to Blogger.

Phew! Complex and innovative. I can see why Blogger went for Picasa. Very impressive. I may even pay the $30 for the app, though I suspect it will soon be free (I'll wait a few days before I buy, I'm on a 14 day trial.).

Here's a sample photo. I may switch to this mode of distributing photos to friends and families. I'll create a private photo blog just for that purpose.

Here's an old photo for test purposes ... (Molly, then aged about 3 months, now 14.5 years and on her 7th life ...)

Boing Boing: Sterling's Singularity speech audio

Boing Boing: Sterling's Singularity speech audio

Bruce Sterling's speech to the Long Now Foundation on the Singularity is a corker. He really is a *hell* of a speaker.

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I need to download this sucker then get it on my iPod.

Update: Bleah. I downloaded, converted to AAC, made it bookmarkable, and listened. Sterling caricatures Vinge and mocks much of Vinge's writing. I thought Sperling's arguments were simplistic and misdirecting. He never really deals with Vinge's fundamental theses, but he does well with simplistic rhetoric and humorous digressions.

Stupid and a waste of time.

MIT OpenCourseWare | HST.951J Medical Decision Support - Medical Informatics

MIT OpenCourseWare | Health Sciences and Technology | HST.951J Medical Decision Support, Spring 2003 | Home

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I scanned the syllabus. Definitely an MIT perspective on medical informatics! I'll likely use some of this material when I teach at the U MN again this fall.

Full text search in 10.4 and elsewhere

Daring Fireball: Spotlight on Spotlight

... Both metadata collection and full-text indexing depend on cooperating per-file-format Importers, either written by Apple or by third parties. Like Google, no matter how much text an Importer provides, Spotlight only cares about the first 100K of raw text.

Importers are fired on every file the moment it is created, saved, changed, or moved, including when files are made available through a newly mounted drive. Performance is said to be excellent in every case except network-mounted home directories, which are bedeviling on several levels and on which they’re still working.

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Interesting limitation of both Google and OS X Tiger's full text indexing ignores much past 100K. That's bigger than the raw text content of most documents, but it leaves books out of the picture. For my taste it's the right choice. I hope I can choose which folders NOT to index.

I imagine I'll stay with 10.3 on my iBook -- I just don't have a big enough drive on that machine. Tiger I'll get with my next machine.

Apple - Discussions - Replacement iPod is INDEED defective

Apple - Discussions - Replacement iPod is itself defective: "Ok, this is now is the third replacement. I've been through four 30GB G3 iPods now.

It arrived very quickly -- expedited service since it was my 3rd return.

I recharge it. Go to use it. The central button doesn't work. I can navigate the top menus, but I can't do anything else. I can reset it, no change.

If anyone wants to discuss this with me directly my email is jfaughnan@spamcop.net."

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Wow. This is very impressive. I'm pretty convinced by now that Apple really can't service iPods. Their entire service routine must be a clever scam. They know sooner or later I'll get tired of calling AppleCare for a return.

They are rapidly turning into a seriously scummy company. I'm going to use Minnesota's consumer protection process.

Update:

I called AppleCare and was good and patient. When I was asked to reset I said I'd already done it, but offered to repeat. That was good.

The first time I'd reset by myself I forgot to switch the hold toggle on and off. The hold toggle turns power to the buttons on and off. That was a critical step. With it the reset cleared the problem.

It appears some combination of pressure on the central button (perhaps in shipping) and power drainage can cause the button to be locked out.

So this iPod is now working.

I'll put a hold on my letter to the state attorney general until I see how this replacement does!

updateNope, it's really broken. Lock switch is malfunctioning. Now for replacement number 4, and the letter to the state attorney general.

Update 2: The problem is more subtle than just a bad lock switch. At varioous times, particularly when withdrawing a fully recharged iPod from the cradle, the buttons are totally inoperable. Reinserting into the cradle may restore functionality. I think it's likely a somewhat flaky circuit that can be perturbed by small voltage fluctuations.

Fix for SMB share mount problem for OS X 10.3.4

Mac OS X Panther (10.3.4): "SMB Share Mount Solution

Peter Stys
I have a solution to the problem submitted below and posted on your web site [Jun. 10 ]: 'I upgraded Macs machines running 10.3.4 with the latest Security Update 2004-06-07, and ever since I cannot mount SMB shares from our Windows 2000 server, with an error -36'

A colleague of mine suggested using the Keychain Access utility to delete all entries related to the problematic Windows server and this solved the problem: the share now mounts fine. You may want to post this for other readers who may experience this issue."

More notes on the negative scanning project

Google Groups: View Thread "Image management solution for a medium sized persona..."

Rec.photo.digital experts liked these tools for a negative scanning project:

Lupas Rename:
http://www.azheavymetal.com/~lupasrename/lupasrename.php
I've used it for just the purposes you describe, flawlessly.

ACDSee
IMatch at http://www.photools.com
Thumbs+ at http://www.cerious.com

I've also looked at Adobe Photoshop Album which is quite nice, but I fear it's compromised by Adobe's need to lock-in customers. Microsoft is supposed to have a very good image management product, but their lock-in needs are usually nefarious.

Since I'm burning the images to CD (burning twice, so I have redundant storage), I want something that will produce meaningful file names and write metadata to the JPEG EXIF headers. I need the EXIF date to reflect the date of image acquisition, with a staggered delay between each image (so rolls and images sort by date).

I want the file names to follow this sort of convention (probably need to use the renamer): YYYYMMDDDD_1_ROLLID_# where:

YYYYMMDDDD: is approximate date pictures were taken
1: is an roll number for >1 roll/date.
ROLLID: is an identifier for the roll of film if one is assigned by the scanner (may be null)
#: corresponds to negative number within a roll

The person doing the scanning will write a text note on each entry including roll description and comments. A copy of the entire log will be included in each CD.

Each CD will be labeled with a CD identifier of the form: YYYYMMDDDD_# where

YYYYMMDD: date burned
#: CD number burned that day

The text log will contain CD information as well as roll information, will be cumulative, and will be copied to each CD.

I have to do some playing around to get the workflow to be simple but efficient.