New Media Center

Picasa is a digital photo organizer and editor, and when you add to it the Picasa Web Albums service, you have a terrific all-in-one set of tools to make managing your digital photo collection very easy. It is available for Windows, Mac (Intel Macs only) and Linux computers, and it can easily replace, or at least complement the native imaging programs that come with Windows machines (Windows Photo Gallery) and Macintosh’s (iPhoto). And while Flickr is probably a bit more mature in the online photo sharing service market, Picasa Web Albums is at least competitive. There is even an uploader program that is stand-alone or works as an iPhoto plugin, which makes it a breeze to get your images shared on the web. You also have the option of making images private to only certain individuals that you designate via email. Picasa continuously scans your hard drive for new images that you add to your computer, and it also works as an importer for most digital cameras. It provides many of the basic features for editing images such as resizing, eliminating red-eye, and even straightening and cropping images.

If you would like to integrate Picasa and Flickr you can install a button to do a one-click upload to your Flickr account. You need to download the Flickr Uploader program from the tools page. Then you will need to install the picasa2flickr plugin. The installation (instructions are here) copies a file with a .pbz extension so you need to install Picasa and the Flickr uploader first. Picasa has quickly become a favorite program in the New Media Center. We think it should be part of your toolkit.

A combination of the online photo sharing site Flickr, and computer photo management software is all you need to get your digital photos in order.

Photo by dsevilla

Is there anyone out there not using digital cameras and managing their photos with their computer? If you still believe only in 35mm film, then you are a true die-hard. If you have not already realized the flexibility and the cost savings from digital photography, you probably never will. If you haven’t taken the plunge because of cost, anywhere from 7 to 10 more rolls of film should be all it takes to convince you that a digital camera will pay for itself by saving on film and development costs.

With that out of the way, we can now move forward and assume that you transfer your digital photos to your computer for viewing (if you don’t know how, here are some basic instructions). So how do you manage all those growing number of photos on your computer? Why, with photo management software of course. How much will it cost (you may be asking)? Well, as always, we try to find you solutions for free. We have two separate solutions for Macs and PCs. First the Mac. Can you guess what it is? Well of course, it’s iPhoto. It hardly gets any easier than iPhoto. Start up the program, connect your camera, and your photos are ready to get organized. iPhoto allows you to organize photos in many ways such as by date, assigned ratings (you give your photos up to 5 stars), and even assigned tags, which is a powerful way to categorize your photo collection. You can also create photo “albums” to create different views of your pictures.

So how about a program for the PC that’s as easy as iPhoto? Well some might argue that there isn’t anything, but several at least come close. We highly recommend Google’s Picasa (also available for the Mac) which is similar to iPhoto, offers similar functionality, and is free to download. For Windows there is also Microsoft’s Live Photo Gallery. It is different from the version that comes pre-installed on Windows Vista and it will also run on Windows XP. Live Photo Gallery is free to download and it shares many of the same features as iPhoto. We think it is worthy of being compared to iPhoto because it has a good amount of image editing capabilities and has a plugin architecture that allows additional functionality.

What about sharing your photos with others? We strongly recommend a site/service called Flickr. Owned by Yahoo since 2005, Flickr has grown to host billions of images. The obvious advantage of storing your photos on Flickr is that you can retrieve them wherever you have an Internet connection. Free accounts limit the amount of photos you can upload to 100MB per month, so you may want to consider a “Pro” account for $24.95 per year to store unlimited amounts of photos. Flickr’s advantage is its programming capabilities that have been made available to allow all kinds of tools for using Flickr images. Blogging software like WordPress allows easy use of Flickr photos in your blog posts, and Windows Live Writer has a built in Flickr plugin. Many other devices such as Apple TV and even the iPhone have programs to connect to your Flickr photos as well. Flickr also will point to services that will create books, calendars, posters, and even coffee mugs. Digital photography opens up almost limitless ways of publishing and sharing your photos.

Here is a Glog that I created for the Spring 2009 Orientation session. Our “technology showcase” featured a service called Glogster.com where you can create online posters that include many different types of media. Here is the example that I used in the presentation:

The full resolution version is available at http://rushaw.glogster.com/new-media/

I thought about several ways to begin this post, and I was hoping the title wouldn’t scare people off thinking that I was going to vent. No, it’s not that kind of air. It’s actually Adobe’s AIR, or Adobe Integrated Runtime (yes, I’ll just use AIR from now on). AIR has actually been around for well over a year now. I first used it at the 2007 Faculty Academy here at UMW for a program called Twittercamp, which is a program that would aggregate “tweets” from Twitter and display them on a screen (preferably a large flat panel screen). Alan Levine and I have been using it for the conferences we’ve been involved in the past two years, including this year’s Faculty Academy and the NMC event in Princeton. AIR programs function like Flash programs do on the web, only you download them to your computer. You first need the Adobe AIR “runtime” program, then you can install and use all of the AIR apps you want, even use them simultaneously. There’s no need to open a web browser to use these programs.

The question for a while now has been is it worth downloading the AIR “player” and then installing the individual programs? Is there anything compelling out there to use? I can now say that it’s a definitive YES! The point of these programs is that they are small, and quickly installed. To use the programs, they require that you have a live connection to the Internet, but they function on the idea of working “in the cloud“. So after you get Adobe AIR installed on your computer, go install the following programs:

TweetDeck - I’m getting the feeling that this is going to be the next “must have” program, next to using Twitter of course. TweetDeck is one of the many (thousands?) Twitter intermediaries that pull in Twitter posts (tweets) and display them in a unique way. It’s still in early beta (0.151b as of this writing), but it already has some uniquely great features. It allows you to get a handle on how tweets get viewed. TweetDeck sets up as many columns as you need to view your tweets how you want to. The first column is usually the “all tweets” column, but you can move the columns around. You can set up groups by picking individuals that you follow and giving that group a name. Then you see their tweets in another column. You can create another column that is a search term. I used the term “edupunk” and now I get a column that updates automatically with tweets that have the word edupunk in them. You can have still more columns with replies to you, or direct messages. A recent new feature is the ability to collapse the view to a single column. I expect great things from this program.

Adobe Media Player - Now you might be saying, “who needs another media player?”, and you’re right. However, this is well done, and if you use Adobe software on a regular basis, there is enough Adobe content to make it worth it. Add to that clips from TV shows and some “HiDef” content, and it makes for a worthwhile download.

Destroy Flickr - OK, I don’t get why there’s the hostile name because DF is all about a pretty interface for viewing Flickr photos. Photos just look better on a dark neutral grey background, as opposed to Flickr’s all too white web page. Again, it’s a quick install of an Adobe AIR program and you have the many viewing options, called canvases. It remembers where you have been and saves those views in a history, called workspaces. You also have control of uploading and downloading photos to and from your Flickr account.

If you want to check out other AIR applications go to freshAIRapps and see just what the potential for the AIR platform is. Note: Because of a current negotiation with Adobe of the use of AIR in their website’s domain, another location for the FreshAIRApps may be at Refreshingapps.com.

With the web being so image-rich these days, it’s surprising that there isn’t more emphasis on having good image editing software on a computer. Microsoft has had MS Paint as part of Windows since the beginning of its existence, but it has barely changed since the version that came with Windows 95. Macintosh computers come with a program called iPhoto which can do some basic editing like cropping, resizing, and color manipulation. These represent two different approaches from Microsoft and Apple. While it is possible to create some terrific images using Paint, it really is an extremely limiting program (it’s really awful) that you should replace right away. Apple on the other hand has included a program that provides tools that are practical, and assumes that you will acquire a program that will enable true image editing, like Photoshop. Before we move on, we want to mention that there is an iPhoto-like program that everyone using a Windows machine should get called Windows Live Photo Gallery.

So let’s get straight to our recommendations for image editing software for your computer. If you use Windows, a program called Paint.Net strikes the right balance between features and ease of use. If you have an older computer with Windows XP you may have to install the .Net software on your computer to take advantage of Paint.Net. For the Macintosh we recommend a program called Seashore, again because it provides good basic features and it’s easy to use. Linux users will want to check out The GIMP, which is an open source program that calls itself a Photoshop replacement. I’d argue that point if it weren’t for the fact that there isn’t a Photoshop version for Linux, so that’s all there is anyway. The GIMP is also available for Windows and Mac computers, but I would start with the other programs first.

All of the programs mentioned above are free, except for Photoshop, which is the standard by which image editing programs are measured. For not too much money, especially if you are a student or teacher at the K-12 or College level, you can get a program called Photoshop Elements. An academic license is about $65 and the program provides some stunning features. If you find yourself needing to do copious amounts of image editing and can’t afford even an academic license of the full Photoshop program (currently almost $300), Photoshop Elements should fit the bill.