Picasa Public Albums to Show in Google Image

Beware! Your lovely family photos on Picasa Web Album might appear in Google Image search results. Google has recently changed its policy and to include public albums in Google Image Search. Here's the official word:

Integration with Google image search results

Get more exposure for the public albums you're currently sharing on Picasa Community Search. Now, public albums from users with 'Public Search' enabled may also be included in Google image search results.

So if you don't want somebody else to see your private photos, better unlist them.

News Summary

Bigger Attachments in Gmail
You can now send emails with attachment up to 20MB. You have to be aware, however, that this is also restricted by the recipient's attachment size limit (e.g. standard Yahoo Mail and Hotmail accounts only allows attachments under 10MB).

Related: Official Google Blog | Gmail Help Center

New Google Talk Smileys
You can now choose from a wider range of emoticons in the Google Talk gadget, the Flash-based gadget launchable in a new browser window, or embeddable on iGoogle and elsewhere. Switch between different smileys by clicking the smiley picker at the bottom right of the Google Talk gadget (there’s 35 smileys and icons all in all, from devil to broken heart to crying and shock). Google offers three basic sets: animated yellow round smileys , animated yellow square smileys and static black & white smileys.

Related: Official Google Talk Blog | Launch Google Talk Gadget

Google Calendar in Mobile Devices
Just visit calendar.google.com from your phone, and you'll see your agenda of upcoming events, complete with details like date, time, location, description, and guest list.

Related: Official Google Blog

Google Cross Language Search
Now, you can search for something in your own language (for example, English) and search the web in another language (for example, French). Currently, it only supports 12 languages including Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. This tool is designed for majority of Internet users out there who are non English speakers to the obtain the gist of information in a language you might otherwise be unable to access majority of the content on the internet which is still in English.

Related: Official Google Blog| Google Translate

Search for Faces or News only
Google Image now allows users to restrict search results to faces-related or news-related images. You can search for faces by adding &imgtype=face behind the search results URL and Google uses face detection technology to select only images that contain faces. If restricted to news related images, it will include only images posted to news sites like BBC or New York Times. Here is what you get if you search for "Google" but restricted to face-related images:

Try it yourself. Enter keywords below:

AllFacesNews

Google Image Labeler Updates Scoring System

Google Image Label allows users to label random images to help improve the quality of Google's image search results. When you and your partner's label matches, you'll earn 100 points. But it seems that people tries to score higher by submit too general tags such as 'men', 'people' and 'sky' so that the chances of matching two labels increase. Google, therefore, tackles the problem by differentiate the scores depending on how specific your label is and ranges from 50 to 150 points. Here is an example: sky (50 points), bird (60 points), soaring (120 points), or frigate bird (150 points). Here is the official word from Google:

Labels that are more descriptive receive more points than generic labels. For example, for an image of a red corvette, matching on "red car" or "corvette" would receive more points than a match on the label "car". This is because more specific labels are even more helpful in our efforts to improve the quality of image search results, so we wanted to credit players accordingly.

[Via Google Operating System]