Many may be unaware the service available via Google’s Picasa. For those of you uninitiated types Picasa is a free photo library manager and photo editor for your Mac or Windows PC. It continues to evolve steadily with new features and provides free online web albums for storage, sharing, and light weight back-up of you pictures.

One feature many are not aware of is that if you use the Picasa web albums feature you may upload your files from your Iphone via email. Login online and go to settings in Picasa and turn-on email upload. This will ask you to enter some secret characters which will be appended to your gmail account. ie….EmailID.Secret@gmail.com.

Another thing I did was add this new special email to my email address in my gmail contacts. See article on sync of gmail contacts and email on this site.

Now when you are out and about you can snap a photo with your Iphone and tap email, enter the email and it will upload to a drop folder in your web albums. You can control the view of this Drop Folder folder such as making it public or private and manage your pictures as you do any of the others.

Another bonus is slideshows…in Picasa web albums you can click a folder and click”link to this album” on the right side and there is options to link or embed the album(s) and you can even create a slide show that will update with pictures in the folder automatically. Below is an example…

Picasa is a neat application and the workaround for email adds by Iphone works great!

The BreatheNH fundraiser bike ride was yesterday and they had a wonderful turnout. There were some 198 riders and volunteers making the trek from Pease Tradeport in Newington, NH to Ogunquit, Maine.

This was the first event of this kind I have ever participated in and found it very well organized. Everything from the fundraising help online, through registration, and support on the routes was outstanding and top notch. Due to everyone’s kind and generous support I was able to raise $691.00 for the organization, and I am so very grateful for all your support and I thank all of you who helped!! Overall the bike tour raised nearly $35,000, you can see there website here.

BreatheNH Bike Tour - Getting Started

My chosen route was 43 miles, but my bike odometer was telling me I covered 45. I began in Pease and rode down through Greenland to Rye beach and up to Wallis Sands. Then the route went inland and down pass BG’s Boathouse out through and around New Castle and back to downtown Portsmouth. I crossed river over to Badgers Island and down through downtown Kittery and around to Fort McClary. The route followed along to York and along Long Sands and up to Nubble Light. They had a photographer taking pictures of the riders and will post as soon as I get it. From there it was up to Short Sands and up along the road that passes by the Cliff House to downtown Ogunquit. I ended at the Seafarer Hotel on Rt1 to much fanfare.

In for the Finish

Being a newbie to cycling I didn’t want to push it to much and chose the middle length route. I rode the legs to Fort McClary (25 mi) with various other riders at a very casual steady pace. The balance of the ride I rolled on my own and pressed quite hard. This later section was also much more hilly so there was more climbing and downhill sections. The ride took about 3 hrs including the many stops at the checkpoints for provided snacks and water.

I thank all of you for your support in the event and helping such a worthy cause

Well I did it…upgraded to a new Iphone 3G this past weekend and threw my old Motorola Razor in the drawer for well served tired electronics (and as a back-up). I went back and forth over the Blackberry Bold and Apple Iphone (Storm is only available on Verizon)

I must say when I read at the Apple website I could sync to MsExchange I was excited. When I discussed this feature with the “phone guy” i was told it was another $15 a month….NOT the right price. I think this may have been for the “mobile me” service through apple but regardless I wasn’t paying anymore than the bare bones price.

I purchased the phone and started my 30 day trial. The Iphone has been great through it initial break-in and feel out. I use Google Applications, Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Picassa the works…configuring the Gmail account was a snap, but i wanted a calendar that i could push sync as well. I don’t want to maintain many copies or need to transfer or sync manually.

Well low and behold you can sync the Google Calendar and Contacts easily without any additional fits or fees. There is a tutorial here on configuring the phone to interface with your existing Google calendar and presto. Leave it to Google to step up and get it done without fuss or expense.

It is key to have a central hub for and this configuration works like a charm providing updates and syncing via any computer browser or my phone. This configuration provides the best of all worlds. Google has an application in the Apple app store that provides a hub to ALL things Google for the iphone as well.

Once configured your email, contacts, and calendar are in sync and update automatically. You even can have simple task management all in one simple place all in sync over the air. Well done Google!