One more quick thought about Google Wave

One of the projects that I am currently working with is the integration of communication between all of the sites that I work with to get our message out. I have integrated several application so that I don’t have to publish to quite as many site individually but it is still a chore to easily get all of the things that I am working on out there to the different places that people are following us are using.

Why do I care? If you are taking the time to publish and you think that the information you are publishing is something that your public wants to read and follow than you want to make sure that you make it as easy for them to do so as possible. By publishing to many different communications systems, whether it is your primary blog or something as simple as Twitter you want to try to drive people back to you. Google’s product hints at being able to do this easily and even take it a step further and make the communications more interactive as well as making them as public or secure as you desire. Any tool that can give you these capabilities is well worth a second look.

Google Wave Product – New Communication

A new communication tool that Google is developing to use on your computer systems and mobile devices. It is not  expected to be available to the public for several months but has been put into the hands of developers now to see what they can do with it before it's public release. A very nice overview is available on YouTube and can be accessed from cnet news Webware site.

Supports standard email functions as well as instant messaging. It treats the communication as an object so that it can be real time as well as providing standard email type access. It allows easy drag and drop capability to add people to the communication flow and to bring people in on the conversation at any point. You can easily put threads into the message, share the communication on a blog by adding the blog as a member of the conversation and withhold access to parts of the communication thread by making them private and assign the members to just that portion of the conversation thread. Also if you are added after the conversation thread had started you have the ability to replay the conversation as it progressed, piece by  piece.

They discussed how using this product you can use the editing function to collaborate on document creation. It again allows you to show the changes, but the most interesting thing is that it allows you to view the comments, and playback the order in which the document was worked on. It makes editing and revision control very well controlled. It promises “to become a very powerful document creation tool!”

A Linking function allows you to connect multiple Wave Conversations into lists. This allows you to bring together multiple conversations threads in groups to categorize them and make them easier to access as a group. They describe it as “very Wiki Like.” You group these conversation links by dragging them onto a new Wave Conversation and creating a Wave Conversation about previous Wave Conversations.

You have the ability to use search criteria to search your conversations for information very quickly and in real time as documents and messages are being created.

It is using a very strong context sensitive spell checker that they are providing API’s so that other developers can use them in their applications. The entire application lends itself to having developers create add-ins or gadget tools that create a richer set of functions to the application. Wave allows the developer to use extensions to connect to other communications applications as well. They demonstrated the interface with Twitter which connects your Twitter account with your Wave account and allows for instantaneous communication between the two product applications. They showed some other integration capabilities with an issue tracker application that allows you work within Wave and to have the updates automatically update in the issue tracker program as well.

Because Google and the Wave Project are providing the Wave product as an open API other companies can build their own Wave Systems and host their own Wave Servers that can interact with Google’s and other systems. Each of these Private Wave servers remain private and only the shared communications traverse between the two applications. Because of this you could implement your own internal Wave Server and host it on your equipment and have a private installation being used within your company and still have it have the ability to communicate with external systems as well.

Last but not least they showed an online translation robot that allows you communicate very easily in languages that you don’t know and be able to do so effectively.

Instant Netflix

A couple months ago I restarted my Netflix Subscription because of the ability to acquire instant availability of published TV shows and movies on my Xbox game system.  Unlike a lot of people the only use I have for my Xbox machine is the ability to deliver media from Home Network to our family room TV set.  Now with cable on-demand, cable DVR, DVD movies I also have the ability watch my Media Center video, music and TV recordings I'm adding what can be called Netflix on-demand as well.

To show you just how much Netflix is taking over the market share of the video industry there are so many ways of getting streaming video from Netflix you almost have no excuse not to subscribe to even their most basic subscription plan.  For $8.99 you get all you can eat streaming video plus single DVD Rental each month.  If they're a lot of old shows that you haven't watched you would like to RE watch this is a great vehicle that will allow you to accomplish this task.  So now I have Netflix available to me as a movie rental, which satisfies my need to watch newly released movies, and, instant streaming movies and TV shows instantly from my ex box to my TV or on my computer or from within by media center console.  Now all I need are more hours in the day.  Hey Netflix can you fix that also!

The Netflix Media Center interface has quite a few choices build into it.  Not only do you have Instant Queue, you can also you can add to your DVD Queue, take a look at what you have recently watched, view newly arrived movies and select them for either instant view if that's available or to be placed in your DVD queue, and they have categories that you can browse through and make selections as well. The search function works for movie and TV show titles only, this is something I would like to see changed to also allow you to search by actor and director as well.  I'm sure they'll get there.

So if you have Vista Home Premium or Ultimate this is another great addition to your Media Center application. Enjoy!

June Issue of Laurel Mountain Post is out…

 If you don’t toot your own horn who will?

The new issue of the Laurel Mountain Post is out this week and this issue’s primary theme is on golfing. See my article on golf gadgets on page 26. There are few things listed that aren’t too expensive but the one that caught my eye was the Shadow Caddy. Not too many places where it is available here in the US, it was first introduced in Australia. I can see it having a big splash over here as well.

See the new issue at: http://laurelmountainpost.com/Archives/LMP-May-June-2009.pdf

Hope you enjoy!

Gizmodo-How to install Windows 7 On Almost and Netbook

If you are interested in trying out Windows 7 and just happen to have a Netbook laying around here is an article showing you the step by step procedure for doing so. I found this posting originally through Veronica Belmont’s Friendsfeed page this morning when I began playing with the site.

http://gizmodo.com/5257386/how-to-install-windows-7-on-almost-any-netbook

Bob

FriendsFeed

 Social Networking has become the WORD for a lot of us lately and I am as susceptible to trying out a new service as any other. While  listening to a recent TWIT podcast they discussed their use of this site for their sharing of information rather than using a site like Twitter. I must say this is much cleaner than Twitter and has the ability to allow more in depth commenting and sharing. And isn’t sharing information what it is all about? Anyway, I have setup my site at http://friendfeed.com/bappleby and if you want to subscribe you can find me there. Some of the benefits of this site is the ability to place your contact subscriptions into groups to make it easier to sort out the comment flow. You can make as many different categories as you like to make this useable. It comes populated with Favorites, Personal and Professional to get you started but after you have played around for awhile I am sure you can come up with many different groups.

I have posted a picture of my startup page to give you an idea of just how simple the interface is. You can add a favorites link to your browser that allows you to post a site and/or photos to your comments easily. This is what you see in this photo.

You can use this site as an aggregator for all of your blogs, Facebook, photo galleries (Flickr and Picasa), Gmail/Google Talk, Yelp, YouTube and others. So if you are around a lot of  sites with your postings this may make it easier to share the information around without reposting.

Bob

AVG Free 8.5 Download

If you are looking for a good Antivirus program for your home machines consider the free home basic version of AVG. This product provides basic antivirus support for you machine but if you want something that covers spyware, spam and other types of malware you will want to consider the paid subscription product.

To obtain the free version go to: AVG Free Basic Home Antivirus Software

For better protection and free support consider AVG Internet Security - Antivirus, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Spam, Safe Searching and Safe Surfing on the Web, Identity Theft Protection & Firewall

Prevention is better than cure! Comprehensive cyber threat prevention for Windows-based home users from one of the World's most trusted security companies. Enjoy your online life free from worry with AVG Internet Security.

• Easy to download, install and use
• Protects against viruses, spyware and online threats
• NEW Prevents identity theft
• Real-time security makes your online surfing, searching and chatting safe
• Top-quality protection that does not slow your system down
• Free support and service around the clock and across the globe
• Compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Microsoft Response Point

 We have made our first foray into VOIP market with Syspine’s Response Point System. We are setting up our system  using Syspine’s DOS-A50 4 Port System and 16 phones. It gave us the opportunity to upgrade our Switches with SMC’s Programmable units. We placed a POE switch to support our upstairs systems and to power our phones over the Ethernet connections. We want to try the phones in line with our computer connections to see if there is any significant traffic increase (which translates to network slowdown) with the addition of the new units. When you consider adding 16 new devices to the network infrastructure it is quite possible that there might be some change in how the network functions. It is going to be another week before the system goes into full production and we really see what kind of traffic is generated.

The reason we jumped so quickly on this change in our infrastructure was caused by our focusing on the renewal contract from our current phone line provider. They were requesting that we sign a new contract for a new contract that would lock us in to a two year period to gain a certain rate. We were not very happy at that cost and so we decided to look for alternatives. Since part of our business is providing business class phone systems we have a lot of resources to choose from and the one that looked the most promising to us was converting our standard phone service (PSTN) to digital IP Trunk Line Service. The cost savings is tremendous. We plan on retaining two PSTN lines for backup and for other primary services (Fax, Credit Card and Emergency Services) our primary phone service will now be through the internet. Our provider Packet8 is giving us 12 lines and with the cost of the two PSTN lines we are keeping, we will have about a $500 per month savings by moving to the new service. With the cost of the Syspine equipment purchase we will be able to upgrade our phone system and have it pay for itself from the savings inside of one year. Now part of the reason the savings was so great is the number of lines that we are using but even for a smaller installation your cost savings could be just as significant.

Over the next month I will be documenting different aspects of our new system and how we integrate it into the way we do business. I will talk about the IP Trunking Technology and how it has worked for us and some of the other products that are available for the system that you might want to consider. So be sure to come back to site to see how we are progressing and hear about what tweaks we have to make to get the system to perform to our requirements. I will be posting more detailed configuration information both on our Solutions Pages and creating a configurator on our Products Pages. For now,  let me give you some system specs of what we are using and what the system can do. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate contacting me.

Bob Appleby

How to add the Print Directory feature for folders in Windows XP and in Windows Vista

Had a recent request from a customer to be able to print a directory listing and other than using screen capture  techniques or applications like Jing or Snagit from TechSmith. I did a brief search and found a Microsoft Tech Article describing a method of adding in a batch file that can be called to print directory listing from within Explorer.

The Intro to this paper describes the process as: This article describes how to add the Print Directory feature for folders in Windows XP and in Windows Vista. After you follow the steps that are described in the "More Information" section, you can right-click a folder and then click Print Directory Listing to print a directory listing of the contents of a folder.

You can find this article at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/321379

Bob

Linksys has a new Power Line Ethernet System

I am ordering in  new product from Linksys to see how well it works. Let me describe the situation for you and see if it might sound familiar. I know that not many of you have setup a Media Center System in your home but we are using one to host up music and television to our kitchen under counter TV using a Linksys Media Center Extender. The problem is that it is connecting wirelessly and every time we turn on the microwave it disrupts the signal between the wireless router and the extender. The easy fix for this is to run a wire to the room and eventually that will probably be what I’ll do, but I don’t crawl through tight spaces as well as I used to so it isn’t that easy of a project.

So… Out comes Google Search and I begin to look into what is available in today’s technology using Ethernet connectivity through your household power grid. Linksys has several products that fit into this category but the ones I am particularly interested in are the new Power Line Series 300 products. These devices turn your existing electrical wiring into a digital network instantly. The PLE300 and PLS300 will dish out speeds up to a staggering 200mbps which is ideal for supporting HD content video.

The PLE300 is a single connection device for extending your network into those hard to reach areas and the PLS300 provides a 4-port switch to allow you to connect multiple devices to this box. The concept is great, next week I will report on how well it works. Wish me luck!

Bob

November 15 Scott’s beautiful Creation

We recently had the opportunity to build a system for one of our customers that gave us carte blanche on putting it together. The basics, a beautiful Samsung 26 inch screen, a quad-core Extreme processor, and Vista Ultimate tops the list. The only thing that we probably should have done was moved the customer to 64-bit and run up the memory. We were a little worried about driver availability so we hesitated on that one. Scott is going to put together a complete write up on this one on his site and I will update the pointers when he finishes. Scott’s site is: http://cid-c1df53b40a2f504d.spaces.live.com/?mkt=en-US&partner=Live.Spaces.

We put together a little movie on this as well that I will push up to the network when I get a chance as well.

Paperport – How to scan multipage documents

There are a lot of different products out there to help you manage your documents, and Paperport is one of the packages that have been out there for quite a while and is maturing quite well. I recently had a customer ask me how to scan multi-page documents and make sure that your pages stay in order. Here is a quick video showing you how to do it with Paperport 11 professional.

See video here.

New Windows Live Features!

If you are trying to keep up with the cloud computing onslaught, Microsoft has just release a new product updates that enhance your web interaction dramatically. If you are a media producer, photos, video, or written content, then you will love some of the new interaction within Microsoft’s Live programs. The new download is available for updating your current applications at: http://download.live.com/. I had originally heard about this new update on Windows Weekly, and finally this morning I decided to load it up and give it a little whirl.

They've added some functions for photos and movies in photo gallery and moviemaker. This new moviemaker program is not as extensive as the version that comes with Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate, but the one feature that I do like is its ability to post directly to Microsoft MSN’s Soapbox site. When you tell it to publish all of the information that you need to enter to publish it is presented for you to fill out in a nice dialog box and it very quickly and easily converts in uploads your video content to the site. Once it is there it is very easy to attach the video to your blog and voila! you have your presentation ready and available for all of your readers. Believe me, this is much simpler than the convoluted process you had to go through before. It also appears that if you are using Windows Live Writer, and you use the insert video function, this will also allow you to post the video up to Soapbox or YouTube. You can also connect directly to either your YouTube or Soapbox account to connect videos that you have already uploaded to the site's.

I use Windows Live Writer for creating and posting all of my blog entries no matter which site I'm currently posting to. We have added quite a few new features including an edit, preview, source tabs at the bottom of the screen too quickly change your view of the blog you are currently editing. You can turn on word count so that you can get a handle on how verbose you are as you are writing. There are quite a few more features included in the options tool that allows you to control your experience with the application as well.

There is a new toolbar add-on into Internet Explorer that gives you direct access to your Windows Live applications. This gives you direct access to your mail photos and calendar sites as well as quick search, mapping and translation buttons. There are new versions of Messenger and Mail which are quite interesting as well if you use these programs. It's worth a look, and these programs are all free. Can't beat the price!

Intel Project Submission

October 04

Intel Project Submission

Well, we had a busy evening on Thursday and Friday. I helped Scott, Ed and Chris put together video submissions for an Intel contest to show innovative ways of using Intel products by system builders. Scott used an Atom Board in his project. He installed all of his components into a model of the Millennium Falcon. He rigged up the hard drive LEDs so that they flash when the hard drive is being accessed. The left-hand side gunnery bay/observation deck is used as a docking area for the wireless mouse.The large antenna on the top deck is actually a wireless network adapter. The right side is where all of the motherboard connections are.

Ed's creation to the left, beautiful work of art that he created in his woodworking shop.  The top is a sheet of tempered glass so you can look into the system and see the different computer components that he used in the system.  He designed the system as a media center server that is being used for all his digital media functions in the family room.  He is running Microsoft's Media Center and is using the system as a DVR as well.  Looking at the front left you will see an area that houses a disk array that is used for both his programs and storing all of his digital data. The right front side has several components for controlling fan speeds and reporting on different conditions in the box. It also provides different connections for connecting different kinds of devices to the unit. Listen to his video for the full description.

Chris has a unique system as well. The Trogdor the Terminator is Chris's idea of the ultimate game machine.  He has lots of bright lights that will dazzle you when you are looking at the machine.  He had a friend who paints cars, custom paint the outside of the case, he has a side panel etched with a wonderful design. But the truly remarkable addition to his work of art is the addition of a fully functional Atari game machine in the top area of the case. The Atari cartridges are inserted into the top of the case and all of the game connections are located on the front panel during. Be sure to listen to Chris's video to get a full insight into all of the things he has done to his box.

It is great to see the ingenuity of our technicians and their craftsmanship to put together some very unique systems. I wish them all luck with their entries in Intel's builder's contest.

Other Interesting Hobbies...

Kathy and I visited Kecksburg this weekend for their fireman's festival. This is the third annual fireman's festival incorporating a car show and Kecksburg's  number one attraction: The UFO. The fire department had the typical skill and food booths that most fire departments have as well as some booths showing off local vendor's crafts. There was a native American booth (Teepee) with some "Natives" pounding on drums, chanting and dancing, a leather working booth and my brother Ed Appleby and John Stein were there with their club to demonstrate their skill with blacksmithing. They had an area setup above the fire hall with several different crafts being shown including woodworking, rope making and Ed and John were pounding away on metal making all sorts of useful items. My niece, Patricia was also there but I didn't get to see her demonstrate her skill. There was hardly enough room with Ed and John to do their work. I took some pictures of John putting together a flag holder and Ed making a candle stick holder as well. Kathy came away with some booty for their stash and bell from the leather maker as well. She loves to put these on the door handles.

According to an article in Pittsburgh Live this is the first year that the UFO angle is being incorporated with the festival. An interesting cover-up story that has some strange turns. There have been documentaries on this incident on the Sci-Fi Channel, Unsolved Mysteries and soon on the History Channel. The Crash occurred on December 9th, 1965. A lot has been written about this incident but interesting enough I hadn't heard a thing about that I can remember until this past weekend when John told me they were going to have a booth here for the fireman's festival. If you are are interested in these kind of things be sure to take a brief tour of all the articles on the Internet describing the incident. This should get you started.

Chrome! Do we need another Internet Browser?

Google is making a compelling reason for using yet another web browser.  After reading the comic book that is available that describes generally the reason that Google brought out a new browser product makes for a compelling reason to use their program.  The one negative that I've heard so far is that when you save your passwords that you are typing into the system for accessing secure areas, they can be easily viewed in the password area.  They are not encrypted, they're sitting there and standard text format for all the world to view who has access to your desktop system.

However, Google touts the new security functions that are built into the browser that disallows any cross talk of information between tabbed windows or from your local storage sources.  Each tabbed window is maintained as a separate thread which allows the processing of Web-based applications to occur simultaneously without interfering with processes occur in another tab.  You can easily detach a tab to separate a browser window from the current window that it resides in.  If you're doing a lot of research this makes it very easy to display information side by side from two separate tabs at the same time.

The default home page shows the nine most visited websites with thumbnails, in nine most recent book marks, and a quick search far too quickly jump to information pages that you may be looking for.  It allows you to add a quick link bar at the top of the screen for those sites that you want to be able to quickly get to on a daily basis.

Another new feature that I like is the ability to create an application shortcut that you can store on your desktop, quick launch bar or  start menu. (see picture at right).  This will display a very clean interface with only the site application in the window making it appear as though it is a true program application.  This delivers greater screen real estate for that application and make it easier to work with the online application as well.  If you're an avid user of programs like Google's document applications like Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Gmail etc..., You may make great use of this feature.

As in most applications there are many different features that can be accessed through easy to learn keyboard shortcuts.  Be sure to check these out. If you plan use this application it will help you to become more efficient with it.  The address bar that sits atop the normal Google Chrome window simplifies your Internet experience by doubling as a search box.  To open a new tab click on the plus icon next to the last open tab. You can reorder your tabs by clicking and dragging them to a new position and as I have mentioned above, you can't drag that tab completely out of the current window and create a new window for that tab where you drag a drop that tab. Because the tab windows are running as separate threads you have complete crash protection between tabbed window sites. To browse the web without storing a record of the session you can open a window in incognito mode by clicking on the page menu and choosing new incognito window. A new window will open that won't save and information from the Internet session. For more feature information go to Google Chrome's Feature Page.  If you want to download go to Google Chrome's Download Page.

Look for updates as we push this new program to it's limits.

250GB! Come on now Comcast! You had better rethink this!

Comcast is planning on instituting a 250GB limit to the amount of data users can send and receive beginning October 1st. I have received my email from them so we know this is what they are planning to do. Why do I think this is a problem? Let me show you an example of a heavy internet user, me, and how I compare to their model of an average user which they say never even comes close to 10% of the 250GB limit! Really?

Your Monthly Allowance:		250GB
Let's start with my new hobby that I have embraced so grandly. I have gotten a new digital SLR camera that takes pictures at a 10 megapixel resolution. Currently I am only storing in JPEG format but I will be collecting the images in raw soon and this number will increase dramatically. I am taking about 500 pictures per week and storing to my network drive. These images are automatically being transferred for backup to my Amazon S3 off site storage account. This backup is using bandwidth. Average picture size is 2.5mb x 500 x 4 weeks per month.	2.5*500*4=5,000	245GB
Now I am also taking about 1/4 of those pictures and posting them to a gallery account on line so that would use: 2.5 x 125 x 4	2.5*125*4=1,250	243.75
Still have lots of bandwidth. Now, about once a month I am taking some video which probably averages about 2gb per month throughout the year on average. December, April, May and June seems to be the heaviest months. On these months I will take about an hour's worth of video which is equivalent to 5gb. Again, I am backing this up to Amazon S3 and posting most of this to my galleries. Since we are talking about worse case scenarios, this would be about 10gb of data being posted	10GB	233.75
I have started watching a lot of my favorite television shows on HULU because it is simpler and these presentations have fewer and shorter commercial breaks. A typical 1 hour show (40-48 minutes real time) is using about 250mb per show. Let's say that I am watching 5 of these per week. (so what happens in a family of four, with kids that watch 3 hours of TV per day, 7 days per week? 3*7*250*30=157,500. There's a chunk!)	250*5*4=5,000 Or for a typical family that accesses their entertainment around 150GB	83.75

Most other browsing, email and even remote access to work probably wouldn't amount to much. But there are some people using the system rather heavily that I wouldn't call abusive that could come very close to Comcast's cap. Add things like movie downloads, High Definition Movies can be 8GB or more per movie, streaming music from online radio stations, music and podcast downloads from music sources like iTunes, Amazon, Audible and Microsoft Marketplace. The Internet is becoming a big source for our daily entertainment and even though Comcast doesn't think this cap can be reached easily in a true digitally oriented home it can be pretty easy to come close to that cap every month.

Here's the icing on the cake! Comcast is not even going to give you a method of seeing where you are on your usage cap! They leave that up to you. However, if you exceed it they will call you up and tell you that you have exceeded it and if you exceed it again you will be cut off for a year. If this is the only service available to you then this is plain unacceptable! I know that when I signed up for service Comcast was touting unlimited usage. Where has that gone?

I Can't work this way!

September 26

I Can't work this way!

I heard a scream from the adjoining office. What is that. I can't work with this in the way!

The image I have inserted at the right shows Jude's frustration with Microsoft's need to hold your hand in sometimes the most annoying ways. While the Paste Options Button can be helpful at times to control the format of the information that you are pasting, it can seem to get in your way when you are trying to see the underlying cells. If you want to turn off the Paste and/or Insert Options Button features it is very easy.

Click on the Office Button, then click on EXCEL OPTIONS button. Pick ADVANCED and then scroll down until you see the CUT, COPY and PASTE section. You will see three check box options. The first two when checked will display the options button you see to the right when you copy and paste. To turn it off, you will need to uncheck these boxes. Be sure to click on the OK button to save your changes.

To turn this option back on all you have to do is go back into the advanced options and recheck those options.

Here's a quick video  to show you to do it.

Power Tip: Launch Apps Quickly!

One of the things I like about Vista is the search function that allows you to quickly find an application that you can launch by quickly typing in a few characters found in the applications name. This works real well from the search function. You also have the ability to launch the RUN command dialog by holding down the Windows Key and pressing "R". Type in your command to launch and Voila. up pops your program if you typed it in correctly. In fact, you can drill down through your directories very quickly by typing in your starting point and let Vista prompt you for the directories that are on your machine. I put together a quick How to Series Video that you can see the Windows Key + Search function in operation.

Google's Picasa Application

I was very much impressed in the enhancements to the Google's Picasa program which I had to go back and review again for the article that I just finished for the Laurel Mountain Post. I reinstalled it on my Vista Desktop at home and it automatically found all the images I had on the local machine. I then redirected it to the Network Storage Drive I have setup and Bingo! it found all of those pictures for me as well. The Picasa interface is simple and easy to use and they have added quite a few enhancements that allow you to edit your images, post them to Google's Picasa site, create a self playing CD with the Picasa software on it to pass along your pictures to friends and family and to create a movie/slide show as well.

You need two things to get started. First and Internet account, and second, a Google account. With Google everything centers around having a Google Email account so if you don't have one go ahead and set one up. It is free so even if you decide not to use if for your general email, you can use it for all the other Google Apps that require know who you are. Click here to setup your own account. Once you have established your account go to Picasa's site to download the application.

As you can see in the picture on the right the program interface is simple and straight forward. The program once it installs will automatically search your local storage drives for pictures and will set them up in folders. The first time you send your pictures to the web you will be asked for you associated GMail information and once you enter that everything flows from there. If you have a lot of pictures and you want to use this space as a backup for you files you will want to upgrade your storage capacity. For $20 per year Google will give you 10Gbytes storage that is shared between your email, Picasa and Google docs locations. If you plan to be real active in all of these three sites and you have more than 10Gbytes of photos and videos you can go to the next level. The only problem that I see here is that you are given around 6GB by GMail and 1GB by Picasso for free anyway and the $20 is just giving 3GB to be shared between applications. If you are going to buy the extra space you may want to consider starting out at the 40GB level.

Picasa's import function seems to be slow if you have movies on your camera. It appears to read the file before it will give you the thumbnails of the contents of the the device for import selection and since movies are typically very large compared with snapshots the process takes a long time. Since the program has to read the entire contents of your memory cartridge before you begin to pick and choose what to import this takes time as well. Once it is up you can preview and choose the images you want to bring in. Using the Shift or Ctrl Key you can pick and choose which pictures you want to import. A button on the bottom begins the import process.  You get a dialog box that allows you to enter the directory to store the images, Meta Data for Date, Location and Description and the ability to delete the pictures off of the card when you are importing.

Once you have the images on your system, you will have many options to choose from to work and view your images. You can pick and choose a selection from same or different folders to produce a slide show, push the images to your Internet Picasa Storage Area or publish a GIFT CD to give out to friends and family. You can place a star on photos to select them as favorites and they will automatically be placed in a star folder as well that you can show in a slide show or produce a CD. If you right mouse click on a photo you have many options that you apply to picture very quickly, including, moving to a new folder, publishing to your Website, making it a screen saver, rotating the image and even deleting it from your system if you are getting rid of the "BAD ONES".

I have put together a little video overview of the image manipulation functions that you can access here: Picasa Video Overview