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!

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!

Windows 7 Alpha has been released and promises an change for Microsoft. A big surprise is many of the applications that have been stuffed into windows for years will be taken out. Outlook Express, Movie Maker, Windows Photo Gallery. The plan is to make the O/S a bit thinner. The applications along with other will be available for download via Windows Live.

It would seem Microsoft is positioning Windows Live to become a search and services portal and by somewhat forcing Windows users through the site there hoping some will stay and steer away from Google.

A key aspect of Windows 7 is it being coded in a more modular way. The same basic pipes are still there but the plan is by modular coding and testing they can have a more secure infrastructure and fewer bugs. This is really a result from the Vista burn that Microsoft is still shaking off today. A big feature set Microsoft is working with vendors on is faster booting and load times and improved accessory management (play DVDs without Booting the entire O/S).

I have to admit I am excited about the upcoming release. It seems Microsoft really gets it right about every other release so if things hold true it should be a winner. I read Steve Balmer is pressing the schedule of the release up nearly two years, if this is true and he pushes to hard not allowing time for testing it could be a disaster. Time will certainly tell.

GAG is a graphical boot manager for loading mutiple operating systems on a single machine. GAG allows for installing multiple windows installations on the same hard disk and operating systems off remote disks. It supports hard drives up to 4tb. The GAG configuration interface may be pasword protected as well as each O/S install may password protected as well. It is an excellent app and best of all it’s free. Get it Here.

If you are a person who uses many applications and leaves them open and hot-keys between apps and struggles with room and clutter on you’re windows desktop then Deskspace is for you.

Deskspace is a desktop manager that provides 6 desktops for your windows system. Hitting a hot key displays your desktops in a 3D cube which can be rotated easily by mouse or using arrow keys. You can drag applications to new windows and see all applications on all windows from the app utility in the tool bar.

The XP Power pack provides multiple desktops, but Deskspace provides a really refreshing graphical means to interact with the desktops and applications.

The application is fast, easy and highly customizable. http://www.otakusoftware.com/deskspace/

I’m creating a website where residents of Lebanon Maine may visit to share insight, exchange ideas, discuss topics, and post opinion all in an effort of improving our Town management, educating residents and hopefully reduce spending and taxes while improving services. I will be posting any of Lebanon information there as well.

I invite you to visit, register, and become involved. http://ourvoice.stadig.org

Security is or should be a concern to everyone. Although the information I am sharing here isn’t exactly new, I figured it might be good to point out, since the Switchblade / U3 platform is gaining momentum in the wild it’s important to educate the user.

Switchblade is a suite of applications that will automatically execute from any USB thumb drive and lift a systems password hashes, Internet account log-ons, browser history, product keys, instant messenger log-ins and more. The shell is completely customizable. It requires windows 2000 or better as well as the user to have administrative rights. To use simply plug the drive into the computer wait a few seconds and remove. When you get home open the drive and browse to the folder where the files were saved and view them and run a hash breaker like Ophcrack with Rainbow tables.

The weakness with Windows LM hashes is widely known but this tool makes it so ridiculously easy for anyone to use and compromise a machine it’s scary.  What can you do?    How do you protect yourself?

There are several things….

1. Disable Autorun / Autoplay (Use the shift key)
2. Use Least Privilege Use for applications and user accounts
3. Log out when leaving a machine
4. Use applications like DeviceWall or use Group Policy
5. Disable USB ports
6. Educate users on USB dangers.
7. Use long passwords 15 charecters or more (likephrasesstrungtogether)
8. Don’t save you’re internet accounts to you’re machine

Switchblade info may be found Here – DeviceWall Here – Antidote Info Here -

There is even a variant of Switchblade called Hacksaw which actually is a proof of concept USB thumbdrive worm that self propogates itself to other drives inserted and sends information via SMTP . See Here -

If this article raises the hair on you’re neck, then it did it’s job. You can readily Google switchblade and find more detailed information on protecting yourself.

I saw an excellent podcast over the weekend at http:/revision3.com Systm regarding the usage and configuration of MythTV. MythTV is an O/S extension that is coming bundled into several Linux distributions and provides Tivo like experiences in recording, streaming and storing all sorts of media. The set-up requires you to get you’re geek on, but not in an extreme way and should be easy enough for person comfortable with installing windows say to perform. The system doesn’t use extreme resources, any old Pentium class machine will work. They recommend getting a TV tuner card that does some on board processing to lighten the load. The MythTV box will identify UPNP devices automatically so you can stream to you’re PS3, Xbox, and media servers. The package I saw demonstrated looked ready for prime time and serves as an awesome way to extend the life of the old machines taking up space in the garage.

MythTV isn’t for everybody but it certainly is worth a good look. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythTV

I came accross a great tool called WOAS Wiki on a Stick. The wiki is a self modifying XML file that can run stand alone on a laptop, usb stick, or even a floppy. If you’re the Wiki type this is a great tool for keeping notes, calendar, or documentation repository. uses standard mark-up and allows embedded images and java script. it can be downloaded here WOAS