Out of Beta and raring to go!
Posted by Simon Salvin on 28. Dec 2008 on TechnologyA few months back I wrote about Google’s new web browser "Chrome", and their photo editing software "Picasa".
I installed Chrome on my Virtual XP machine, although still in beta I only managed to use it for a few minutes before it crashed the machine, so I swiftly passed it by and moved onto testing IE8 also in beta.
There’s improvement in IE8 over its predecessor although while still in beta I have found it to also crash, I’m not sure if this is linked but I’ve found it to be slower too? And many sites won’t display correctly unless running in compatibility mode.
After reading so many good reviews of Chrome and now in its first release out of beta I’ve decided to make the switch, and WOW, what a difference, a much speedier browser, very neatly laid out and some great features, my only problem found was no facility to email a page link direct from the browser, a quick Google search and that was solved with a little java script added in to a bookmark! If you want to give it a try the download and installation is very quick and all your settings will be imported from your current browser including saved passwords. Get Chrome from here: Chrome
The developers at Google have also been busy with their free photo editing suite Picasa. The latest – version 3 is also now out of beta and brings a whole host of new features and major tweaks to make this the best release I’ve seen in a while.
One of my favourite features was always the free 1gb online storage and the upload & share feature. Improving on this is an automatic synchronise feature between PC album and web album, add, edit or delete photos and the online album is immediately mirrored without even touching a button. Rather than providing a link to the online photo album previously only available from the online album, you can now email the online album link directly from the program. And the new photo viewer adds a touch of Vista style for full screen previews before even launching into the full program.
I’m sure there’s even more to discover and I may cover that later in the New Year, but again, here’s the link to download: Picasa, if you’ve never tried Picasa then download now or if you’re still using a previous version download version 3 and install straight over the top.
Picasa is available for PC, Mac and Linux.
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