What are similarities and differences between Yahoo!Groups and Google Groups?

The best way of comparing similarities and differences will be obtained by inividuals who contribute to this discussion.

The email list in both have very useful features. If the email lists are set up so that only messages from members are sent to those in the list, then spammers will not be able to spam the list.

Let us think about this. If your email address is put on the web, or anyone gets it some other way, it is collected and sold to spammers who use it to send you all kinds of messages which you may or may not want. On the other hand, if the message is sent through the mailing list, as long as the message headers on the email do not include individual email messages, then spammers will not be able to send to the members unless they "spoof" a member's email address.

Another advantage of using a central list instead of a list of email addresses, is that some email systems, e.g. hotmail only permit a limited number of addresses in the To: and Cc: list, so if the list is too long, replies to ALL in the list means that some of the people will not get the replies.

In addition, when there is a centralized list, it is easy to maintain a list with additions of new and deletions of defunct addresses.

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What is a Google Group?

"A Google Group is a user-owned group created using the Google Groups service. Google Groups not only allows you to manage and archive your mailing list, but also provides a method for true communication and collaboration with group members. Unlike other free mailing list services, Google Groups offers generous storage limits, customizable pages, and unique management options. As always, Google Groups displays only relevant text ads (never banners or pop-up ads)" ... from Google Groups Help pages

"Google Groups is a free service from Google where groups of people have discussions about common interests. Internet users can find discussion groups related to their interests and participate in threaded conversations, either through the Google Groups web interface, or by e-mail. They can also start new groups. Google Groups also includes an archive of Usenet newsgroup postings dating back to 1981 and supports reading and posting to Usenet groups.Users can also set up mailing list archives for e-mail lists that are hosted elsewhere." ... from Wikipedia

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How does Picasa recognize faces?

Picasa has a facial recognition capability which attempts to match faces in different photos. Given an album of photographs and told to "Add Names", Picasa scans through the whole album or through all the albums looking for things that look like faces and groups the same face (as far as it can tell) together, and shows them to you in groups so you can name them, and identify those that Picasa identified incorrectly.

Please note that at this time, if you cannot identify a person from a picture, neither can Picasa, although it can try to make a guess and provide you with what it thinks are promising candidates. In fact there are situations when even if you can identify a person, Picasa is unable to do so. So, if you expect it to identify any face automatically, you will be disappointed.

Sometimes Picasa identifies as faces things that are not faces - for example, it has presented elbows, chair corners and even lighting effects as faces. In that case, you can tell Picasa that those are not faces, or to skip identifying them, or to ignore them.

It is of course possible to correct mistakes, and if you give two different names to the same person in different photographs, you may merge the pictures together to one identity. It is possible to associate email addresses with each face, and to identify the preferred photo to show for a given face. Finally, it is possible to find all identified instances of a face in the albums so you can find all pictures with a given face.

So, while it will not provide 100% accuracy for identifying faces, I have found that it has picked up on faces that we would normally skip over because they are small, in the background, or generally not the focus of the photograph.

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How to control Picasa Photo Slideshows?

The photo slideshows are actually hosted on Picasaweb, which is owned and managed by Google.
The high speed at which the pictures move is due to the default speed of 3 seconds per slide. Some slideshows start running immediately, while others require you to click the triangle in the circle in the middle of the picture. This behavior is not inconsistent browser behavior - it is behavior determined by the person putting up the slide show on the blog.

To start and stop, and go forward or backward manually, move the cursor over the lower edge of the picture, and a control bar will pop up and become visible. That control bar has buttons for pause, forward and backward.

To see a larger version of the slideshow on Picasaweb, click on the center of the slide show, and you will end up on Picasaweb, where if you run the slide show, it is possible to see it in the full screen. It is also possible to change the pause between slides.

If there are any questions or comments, or something is not quite right, please add it to the comments link at the end of this message.

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What is a Google Account?

Generally, searches can be done on Google from the Google home page without logging in.
However, Google also provides other services that require logging in with a login name and a password.

A Google Account is required to gain to access to some capabilities of properties and services that Google provides.

The login name must be a valid e-mail address that actually exists. It could be on any domain, not necessarily on gmail.com, so you can get a Google Account with a hotmail email address, a yahoo email address, your ISP email address, or with your company email address. However, if you use any of these addresses, Google sends an email to the address asking you to verify that in fact you have applied for a Google Account with that login name. If that email address is not yours, or if it does not exist, then you will not be able to verify the address, and so you will not be able to complete creating your Google Account.

The first time you try to log in to any property or service requiring a login for the particular Google Account, you need to accept the Terms and Conditions of Service before you can proceed. Some properties or services require you to log in before you can use any part of it. For instance, gmail provides email service, and a gmail email address is required to log in. Without a gmail email address you may not use gmail services. As an aside, I have found that associating a gmail email address with an existing Google Account with a non gmail address causes the gmail email address to become the primary login name (and identifier) for the Google Account.

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