Google Earth

Today I will be discussing Google Earth.
Google Earth is a program that uses satellite imagery to create a navigable globe.
You can zoom into to any point on earth and see structures, houses and more.
Following are several of the features I find most useful and interesting.

1. Address Searching
Google Earth can instantly locate and zoom in on almost any address. You can see your house or school from a satellite view. You can also look up close at places you are studying such as Songhenge or Rome.

2. Layers
These layers allow you to see relevant items in the location you are searching. One of my favorites is Street View. In certain places (like New York City) the roads have been systematically photographed. You can zoom in even further and explore a city from the street level. There is also 3D, as well as many other layers like "pizza shops" and "hotels".

3. Sky
Google Earth 5.0 (and later) incorporate a feature called Sky. This allow the user to turn around their viewpoint and explore constellations.

4. Mars
This feature turns Google Earth into Google Mars. You can zoom in and use satellite imagery or you can see early maps made of the Martian surface.

5. Planned Routes
You can set Google Earth to fly along planned routes, giving a "tour" of various locations around the globe.

6. Flight Simulator
O.K. I admit, this one actually isn't that useful, but it's a feature that I enjoy very much. (For controls, go here.)

For more info on the Mars portion, watch this tutorial from Google.

Google Calendar update

This is just a quick update for those of you who use Google Calendar, Google has just release Google Sync for the iPhone and iPod touch. This will keep your calendars and contacts synced automatically over the Internet to your device.

Google Sync also works with many other devices:
Go to http://www.google.com/sync for more info.

Tutorials

As of today, I will only be creating tutorials upon request.

My reason for this is that my mission is to provide information to teachers and students. Instead of spending time writing specific steps and methods, I would much rather be writing about the latest and greatest technology.

Most of the technologies I discuss are user-friendly. I believe that most things I discuss you will be able to learn easily, and that most questions can be answered by a quick Google search. However, I realize that some will still like tutorials. I have no problem writing a tutorial if I know it is going to be used. If you would like me to describe in detail how to do something I discuss in a post, feel free to post a comment or email me at blog@ezaptechnology.com.

(Any previous tutorials will be left available)

Picasa 3 Beta for Mac

This is just a quick update for my Mac readers.

Google has just recently (today) released Picasa 3 Beta for Mac.
You can download it at picasa.google.com.

This program largely matches the features in Picasa 3 for Windows, says Jason Cook, Picasa's marketing manager. This will be a boon to those who, like me, use a Mac on a regular basis.

Picasa Web Albums

This posting goes hand in hand with my Picasa posting. Picasa Web Albums is a photo sharing web service (similar to Flickr) that integrates excellently with Picasa. It allows you to post photos online for everybody to see, or for only selected friends to view. If you have a Google or Gmail account, then you already have a Picasa Web Albums account. Simply go to picasaweb.com to get started.

Following are some of the features that I have found useful in Picasa Web Albums:

1. Album Syncing
This is a feature that will let you sync a particular Picasa Album to a Picasa Web Album. This is excellent because if you make a change to an album, the changes can be uploaded without requiring you to upload the entire album again.

2. Facial Recognition
Picasa Web Albums has the ability to recognize face in pictures and associate them with names. When a new album is uploaded, you can select to tag photos and Picasa Web Albums will automatically sort together all the pictures of the same person. This is especially useful because after tagging is done you can find your friends or students easily. If you need to find pictures of John, log into Picasa Web Albums and click John, and you will see all the pictures of John that you have.

3. Selective Sharing
Until recently, you share your albums with the whole world - or nobody. Now, you can select which albums are available to the world, which are available to only select people, and which are available only to you. This would be useful in sharing pictures of students and making sure that only the parents see those pictures.

4. Video Hosting
Though typically for photos, Picasa Web Albums will host videos. This is a great feature because you can apply the selective sharing to the videos as well, making this an alternative to places like YouTube.

5. Slideshow Embedding
In a Picasa Web Album, one can view the photos within as a slideshow. You can embed this sideshow straight into your website to make your photos easy to share with others.

6. Email Uploads
This allows you to add pictures to Picasa Web Albums via email. This can be used to allow others to add photos to your albums or to allow you to upload photos to Picasa Web Albums easily from your phone.

For more details and instructions about the topics discussed in this post please visit the companion website:
http://class.technology.googlepages.com/picasawebalbums.

If you have a question about Picasa Web Albums or would like me to go into more detail on a particular section, please leave a question in the comments or email me at blog@ezaptechnology.com.

Google Books Update

This is just a short post to provide an update to those of you that enjoyed my suggestion of using Google Books.

Google Books has recently reached an agreement with Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and others so that more books can be available.

Most out-of-print books in the Google Books archives were still under copyright and so could not be fully displayed. According to Google "This agreement will allow us to make many of these out-of-print books available for preview, reading and purchase in the U.S."

For more information on this agreement, you can read Google's post at http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/.

Also, Google Books has just added many magazine in full viewing mode to its archives.

As always, if you have any question please leave them in the comments or email me at blog@ezaptechnology.com.

Picasa

First off, I must apologize for there being such a gap between my last post and this one. I have no excuse other than to say I have been extremely busy. I will be working to remedy the lack of posts on my blog over the Christmas holidays.

Today, I will be discussing Picasa. Picasa is a free photo organization and editing tool, made by Google. Picasa is useful for a variety of reasons. Following are the features I find most useful. This program can be downloaded here.

1. Folder Scanning
Picasa has the ability to scan folders to see if you have added any pictures since the last time it was opened. Other photo management applications require you to import new photos constantly. With Picasa, all you have to do is set Picasa to "watch" a particular folder (such as "My Pictures") and every time you put a picture in that folder, it is automatically added in Picasa. This allows me less time dealing with files and imports and more time for dealing with my photos.

2. Album Creation
Picasa also has the ability to use Albums in the same way that Gmail uses labels.
This means that you can place photos in multiple albums without duplicate photos taking up precious hard drive space. So your picture of your kids last Christmas could be put in Family, Kids, and Holidays.

3. Photo Retouching
This feature allows you to perform some basic editing on your pictures. You can crop, change photo color and contrast, add text and more.

4. Movie Creation
Picasa supports creation of movies that can be burned to DVD, posted to Youtube, and more. Picasa can create a slideshow of pictures. It can set them to music and apply a "Pan and Zoom" effect to the video. Text slides can also be added for descriptions as well as captions for individual photos.

5. Tagging
Tagging allows you to place tags on photos for search purposes. For example, that picture of your kids at Christmas could be tagged with family, Christmas, Holidays, and a tag for each person in the picture. So when you are searching for particular photos, you can use these search terms to get the pictures you want.

6. Advanced Printing
Picasa has advanced printing controls, allowing you to choose how many pictures to print on a page It also includes frame selection, and can include captions.

7. Email
Picasa supports emailing photos straight from Picasa. Picasa will (if you want) compress the pictures so that they will be small and sent quickly, and still retain quality.

8.Exporting
It also can export photos using compression. This will help you create good quality compressed photos for use on a website or other Internet-based activities. This compression can also add a watermark, such as a copyright notice. This is a great feature for photographers.

9.Shopping
Picasa can integrate with other service such as Snapfish, Walmart, Walgreens Photo Center, and more so that you can get our digital photos the old-fashioned
print way.

10.Picasa Web Albums
Picasa connects to a photo sharing service called Picasa Web Albums. This will allow you to share your photos with friends and students, as well as publishing them for the world to see. I will go into much more detail on Web Albums on my next post.

These are the features I find most useful in Google's Picasa. I think they are applicable for both personal use and for school use.

For more details and instructions about the topics discussed in this post please visit the companion website: http://class.technology.googlepages.com/picasa

If you have a question about Picasa or would like me to go into more detail on a particular section, please leave a question in the comments or email me at blog@ezaptechnology.com.