Google, which just launched its free Wifi wireless Internet service in Mountain View but denies plans to create a national free Wifi network, has purchased a photo recognition company.
We’ve been working to make Picasa (Google’s free photo-organizing software) even better when it comes to searching for your own photos—to make finding them be as easy as finding stuff on the web. Luckily we’ve found some people who share this goal, and are excited that the Neven Vision team is now part of Google. [Source]
This means that in the future Picasa will not only search your harddrive for pictures but will classify them for you. Perhaps it will recognize all the pictures with granny in them and automatically label them "grandmother" and so forth.
In other Google news, they have released to beta the first major revamp of Blogger since its aquisition from Pyra Labs in 2003. (oops. That article is from May 10, 2004 Thank you Jonathan Hickman for point it out.) I still hate blogger and advise against using their service due to poor business practices. I was burned by Blogger and lost much writing and advise that you blog using WordPress on a hosted solution. I will happily help anyone setup their very own WordPress blog.
India has begun blocking Blogger and others such as Typepad. India following in China’s footsteps?
Update: The striked reference above may have been a typo in the date. C|Net has the same information with an August 15, 2006 publishing date. So, strike the strike. See also Update aims for friendlier Blogger (which they won’t achieve unless they have fixed their customer service issues). From the horse’s mouth at Blogger Buzz with an August 14, 2006 publishing date.
You do realize that article on blogger’s “new” improvements was written 2 years ago, right?
hehe. Nope! Guess I didn’t check my sources very well today.
I read the whole article, thinking “gee, these features have been there for a while….”
I think what happened was I say the RSS feed on C|Net and ignored it but I found the photo recognition company purchase interesting and decided to post the Blogger update simultaneously but couldnt’ remember where I saw the reference so I Blingo’d it and didn’t read thoroughly enough. The Blogger Buzz has details of the Aug 14, 2006 beta.