Small Business Tech

Google Apps is going to the spotlight as the Los Angeles, CA city commission has decided to move their email system to the cloud-based collaboration software. Microsoft and Google were battling to provide services to the 30,000 city employees. You can read more.

I have compared both services and chosen Google for many users. I even attended a workshop by Microsoft where they pitched the product. The problems were that Microsoft was selling vaporware. Vaporware means that the products did not even exist, yet. The other problem was that Microsoft only offered 1 gigabyte of storage for $10 to $12 per month. Google Apps offered 25 gigabytes of storage for just under $5 per month. It has been an easy decision so far.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Google Apps, Microsoft

Today October 22, 2009 is being called Windows 7 day as Microsoft releases their latest version of their venerable operating system to the public. The tech and to some extent mainstream press have covered the subject to death, so I will offer just a couple of comments.

I have been testing the OS and even used it day-to-day for a period. I worked my way up through the beta releases as they flowed from Microsoft. The most nagging problem that I had was getting it to join a domain hosted by a Linux server. I hope they smoothed that problem out in the finished product. I have a copy on order so we will find out soon.

My overall impression of the product is that it is a finished version of Windows Vista. Enough said.

Labels: Microsoft, Vista, Windows

Google has released version 3.5 of their image editing software Picasa. For many years I have been a frequent user of Adobe Photoshop, but as Picasa develops more tools I find it filling my needs. Essentially when processing family photo's and such I just need to crop, rotate, and maybe adjust the lighting or coloring. Picasa is more than capable of performing these duties. Obviously I still need Photoshop for more advanced image manupalation including changing the color pallette to CMYK for print ads or create images using layers. Incidently, I have been playing around with the free GIMP to possibly replace Photoshop for these jobs.

One of the most noticeable new features in Picasa 3.5 is face recognition. This feature has been available on the web version for quite a long time, but it is easier to use and much faster on the desktop version. It does a remarkable job of picking out and profiling faces in your images. It sort gives you a bit of a chill how it connects faces to your contacts. I hope Google never decided to go to the dark side.

Labels: GIMP, Google, photographs, Photoshop, Picasa