Picasa, photo album applications, and our personal memories

I have noticed a few wishlist items that are not yet included in Picasa. Iwork on both PC and Mac platforms, but this statement should also be taken to include Linux platforms as well.

One of the long standing issues of digital photography management has been been related to tagging, file naming, and captioning of photos.

What is really needed is an open, published standard for the handling of captions, file names, and titles. Users invest a ton of time and energy into labeling their photos, and if you remember that the annotations on the back of physical photos are very useful for identifying to historians and descendants who is in a photograph, likewise, captions and labels are equally important and deserve a level of care which is not yet present in the tools available today. Furthermore, since we are all embarking into the realm of introducing video and audio media into our personal lives and histories, we should consider applying a similar open source standard framework to applications that display or host these file types.

The goal should be that where ever the image file is sent, the image is accompanied by the relevant captioning data, and is securable by the sender or creator.

One thing the latest Picasa 3.5 does do reasonably well is apply (c) copywright text information into the image itself so one can post it to the internet, and at least have demonstrable evidence that the photographer did attempt to protect their intellectual property rights for the image. It's only drawback is the file management, locating the originals and duplicates is a bit confusing to say the least. You also have to "trick" the program into actually labeling the photos, since the option only exists when your are attempt to upload the photos to the picasa site forcing you to follow a convoluted work flow to label your photos uploading, then downloading them locally for later use.

As for captioning labeling etc, I noticed this was a problem when I migrated FROM iPhoto to Picasa. I had hoped that Picasa would serve as a conduit so I could migrate from Mac to Windows and keep all the captioning information for the 5000+ photos in the library. Picasa ignores the captioning and albums in iPhoto. Picasa only imports the file name and the folders. All of this information in a XML file which could, in theory, be read by another application. The API is published since iPhoto plug-ins for Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa all allow the captions to be exported to the related web photo servers. Picasa's local client simply ignores the information.
iPhoto itself also ignores this information since if you back up your photos, suffer a catastrophic failure, then resotre, the XML file often does not work with the restored data.

On Windoze, Picasa has a better excuse since there are endless photo album/management software applications, it can not really be expected that Picasa would interact with any of them very well since there are so many. However, Picasa on Windoze and Mac does not recognize if you have Picasa web albums online already, and then match up your pre-existing local photos accordingly. It assumes you uploaded the photos from that Picasa location. You can download an album, but you end up with duplicates and a lot of work sorting them afterwards.

PDA Meltdown - Sync and Destroy!

Excuse the rant.. but.. really..

Is really too much to ask the software development community to come up with a standard for PDA/PIM data interchange?

(Join the movement! Join our FaceBook group!
It is not as if PDA functionality wasn't already working as long ago as Outlook97! Why do they ("they".. not "them", a totally different group with a different agenda!) insist upon breaking things that really should consistent and reliable cornerstones of our daily work environment?


Why haven't Outlook replacements been better adapted? Evolution as an example.. great project.. very robust application.. then inexplicably went nowhere except to the deep6 section of Novell's website.

How hard could it possibly be to create a framework where all of your PDA components interoperate? Tasks, Notes, Contacts, Calendar, and then link to your emails? How hard could it be to make reminders, vcards, and event invitations work across the various gadgets?

It is not as if the record label "home address" or "work phone" needs to be different in each place, or does it? I guess some people think it is useful to call the data records different things.. just to make life interesting?

Just try to integrate a CRM system in the following mix.. pure joy.

Gmail... no tasks in the calendar.. no notes either.. unless you do some arcane backflips using email drafts or blog entries.. and then they would not sync to your mobile tool, so what is the point of bothering? The google sync tool is "broken" between various data locations like Mac Apps, Entourage, and Outlook. There are 3rd party solutions, but my survey shows them to be a rogues gallery of other inadequate solutions.

Plaxo.. When the Plaxo Sync tool does not make your system do a three-legged race during pollen season.. it works fine.. if fine is defined as no Notes or Tasks Synced except with Outlook, and your gmail contacts is a one way sync that ends up forcing you to delete your gmail online address book every few months to remove the thousands of duplicates!

Blackberry.. does go a along way.. but still has issues with stand alone calendar invites to people outside of your organization, creating duplicates.. Over the Air (OTA) syncing doesn't exist, unless you have the Enterprise server, and then have set it up.. why wasn't this available from our phone carriers? We have data services on our phones, why not use them for something that reduces our workload!

Apple Apps - just plain stink. Ever tried to use cut n paste inside of Address Book? Pure fun. AB selects ALL the text as soon as you finish what you intended to select! It has been doing that for 3 years now.

iCal and Outlook? Totally different file formats.

How about using a different email app from Mac Mail? If you do, there is no way to tell Address Book NOT to use Mac Mail. There is no Notes application, at least not one that syncs to your mobile devices without the need to buy 3rd party software.. and if you read the reviews for MissingSync, you dodged a bullet by not using it! Oh. Lest I forget.. Tasks do not sync to anything outside of Apple Apps, Plaxo ignores them. So.. useless.

Entourage on Mac? It is a cul-de-sac for your data. It is the Hotel California of PIM Software. Once you have migrated to it, you will never leave, at least not with your Categories intact. Try it sometime. Try going to Outlook FROM Entourage. I guess that is what Microsoft considers to be end-to-end cross platform compatbility touted by it's Mac Office Business Unit. Have a look at their own words

Outlook has great features. One of my favorite features is when Outlook is not crashing trying to use IMAP with gmail... Too bad it runs on Windoze.. so you are left wide open to attack if you an average user who is not savvy enough to set up all your security apps the "right way" or have a resident geek in the family to make sure you are all buttoned up. As for Vista being secure.. just keep on clicking every 5 seconds. are you sure? Are you really sure? No really really really.. are you sure? Then you still might be able to run something on your own system without fiddlin with it, or calling the resident geek in to fix it. I am that resident geek, and I simply can't get away charging my relatives for my services! It is not kricket to bill family!

Just try sending a vcard from your computer to your blackberry. It cant read it. Yet, vcard standards have been set in stone since for over a decade.. unless it is true that vcard 3.0 just broke everything in the name of progress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard

Geez.