New Fun Software

I've been playing with a couple of pieces of free software. One is all new and the other is just a new version. The all new software is the new browser, Google Chrome. I've been using it a couple of weeks now and I think I'm going to continue with it as my default browser. Years ago I used Netscape, then changed to Internet Explorer and the last couple of years had been using Mozilla Firefox. In Firefox and Internet Explorer, my home page had been the Google Search site for years, then Google brought out iGoogle, where I was able to customize my home page with any RSS feed, giving me instant news and genealogy information. I can still do this in Chrome, but it offers a few more interesting things. The default home page (and this can be changed to look like something more familiar to you) is a page of thumbnails of your most often visited web pages. You just recognize the page and can instantly click on it. No need to type in the web address, or even go to a menu and click on "favorites". Another big difference is that there are not separate bars for typing in addresses and for searching for topics. It just "knows" which you want. That took some getting used to. It is a tabbed browser just like Firefox and IE, so nothing is lost there. There are other new features, but I'll let you discover those for yourself. You can find Google Chrome here: GOOGLE CHROME

The software that is a new version is Picasa 3.0. Picasa is the software created by Google to organize, edit and publish your photos. Now it will handle your videos as well. This version has added new spot editing capabilities that compete with many photo editing software packages, for which you pay $$. Picasa is really an amazing piece of software. I suggest you give it a try. You can find it here: GOOGLE PICASA