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Bet Ya Can’t Download Just One!
2/16/2005
Then I downloaded Picasa and it did everything for me that previous iterations of this type of software promised but did not deliver on. For one thing, it went through my laptop’s hard drive very quickly and within an hour or so had identified and tagged every image on it.
The best thing about Picasa is that is offers so many ways to visually display and browse all your images. There are the typical--and in this case fast-moving--thumbnails in rows, but the feature for this I like best is called timeline.
In the timeline feature (see image) every folder on your hard drive that has images in it is displayed along a curving, aesthetically-pleasing curve of time. You can click on the timeline and move your cursor and it basically spins along, either in the direction of your most recent photos or in the direct of your oldest images. When it stops, or when you select a folder, the entire background image of the software g'es into a slow-moving, faded-back, black and white display of the images inside the folder. (While you can also see the first image in thumbnail.)
A few months ago I spent a lot of time trying to find five-year-old images of the SCUP journal’s executive editor and managing editor holding up office clocks to symbolize the fact that they would be working virtually with each other every day from locations three time zones apart. I never found it. Using the timeline feature of Picasa I had it within five minutes!
Picasa also has a very easy-to-use feature that allows you to quickly tag images with identifiers, key terms, and the like, as well as to rename them. It also has the easiest-to-use system of permitting you to print out standard-sized images, one or many to a sheet that I have ever seen. That’s a feature that my 67-year-old grandmother is going to love. She’s been complaining for years that PageMaker is too difficult to use for that purpose.
I hope you enjoy one of more of these new software tools. They are certainly making my life better, and that’s what software’s for.
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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