Autumn Adventures & Picasa3.1 from Google

If you haven’t already settled on a photo management and editor program, consider Picasa from Google. On the PC side, they rolled out a brand-new version of Picasa, with a slew of new tools like effortless web sync, movie editing, and photo-retouching capabilities. On the web, they launched “name tags,” a new feature that automatically helps organize your photo collection based on who’s in each of your pictures.

If you’ve been waiting to try the new photo-collage feature in Picasa, or been curious to see how clustering technology can automatically find similar faces across your photo collection, now’s the time to download Picasa 3.1 or opt in to name tags on Picasa Web Albums.

Having a truly global audience sharing and commenting on photos is one of the things that makes Picasa special. The people and places you’ll spot on our Explore page attest to this, as do the multilingual comments users receive on their most popular public albums. They also launched automatic comment translation on Picasa Web Albums, which harnesses Google Translate to make sure you know that “美麗的落日” means “Beautiful sunset!”

I posted some pictures using the new version of the application. Adventures include three Halloween costumes and some cotton candy.

Sam's First Autumn

BRIGHTCOVE 3, EA Take Two

ELECTRONIC ARTS (NASD: ERTS) deadline to acquire TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE (NASD: TTWO) has come and gone again. The video game manufacturer is expected to extend its $2 billion bid for Strauss Zelnick’s GTA-4 money machine, which has been holding out for more money. Take-Two has already shipped 11 million copies of Grand Theft Auto 4, which should give Take-Two some negotiating leverage.

BRIGHTCOVE has gutted and rebuilt its streaming video player for better long-form capabilities. Brightcove, which is popular with news content producers and short form producers like TMZ, is making a move to acquire more long-form content partners. The move is directly targeted at competitor MOVE NETWORKS, who provides the player for ABC, FOX, the CW and ESPN