Ideas from Mark Stout

Getting a new computer for Christmas or anytime, gift or not, is like buying a car with some assembly required. You really can't just fire it up, and take off.  There are a host of irritating little jobs you need to do before that new computer is truly useful About once a year it seems, someone here gets a new computer.  Since there are three of us, that's about right.  Rotating your computer every three to four years isn't extravagant, especially for the two here who carry laptops out into the world--that's rough on a machine. My son and wife truly want the power up and go experience from a new computer, so I've gotten rather used to prepping a new computer.  If you are giving a new computer as a gift, perhaps my little workflow can help you. Note : This is going to assume a Windows 7 laptop with wi-fi as an example PC. Take Notes Before you even take it out of the box, open up either a paper notebook, or if you have another computer close by, open up...

I expanded on my earlier thoughts on Picasa 3.5's facial recognition in this week's Family Tech column at InsideNova.com .

For years I've used Thumbsplus to organize my digital photos.  When Google first released Picasa, I downloaded it but didn't find anything in it I liked better than Thumbsplus. Two days ago Google upgraded Picasa.  The new version has facial recognition in it.  The geek in me just had to try that out. First it has to make a pass through all your photos on your hard drive and isolate out each face it can find in each photo.  While it is doing that, you can begin telling it who the person is.  Once you identify a face, it finds other photos with that person in it.  If it isn't confident enough in its match, it sets the photo aside and asks you if it really is who it thinks it is. This takes a bit of time; it has been churning away now for over 24 hours and isn't even half done.  I do have thousands of photos going back over ten years though. It is spooky how good it matches up faces.  I identified my son in a photo when he was 18, and it l...