ESRI and the US Department of the Interior announced a new website today that makes it easy for anyone to view 30 years of global satellite data and changes in vegetation world-wide. Called the ChangeMatters Viewer, the project democratizes access to the multi-billion dollar, multi-decade, multi-agency project of monitoring global ecological well-being from space.

ESRI, a giant geodata company that works closely with government, is the clear leader of the Geo 1.0 technology world. It believes the 30-meter resolution imagery will be helpful for mapping regional trends in climate change, agriculture, wildlife habitat, forestry, regional planning, coastal zones and national security. It certainly makes me want to ask the people behind planning at the Portland airport (pictured above) why there's been so much vegetation lost along the river north of my house over the last 30 years.

Developer Ben Newman added a post this afternoon titled "Something new that you can do," featuring a large photograph. His post, first spotted by The Next Web, was received with a flurry of excitement, although Newman says it's a "work in progress."

A Change in Direction or a New Feature?

In some of the responses to Newman's post, commenters said they had hoped that Quora would become more like Tumblr or Posterous - a place for media-rich sharing. But that seems to run at cross purposes of a question-and-answer site.

Quora has had great adoption within the tech community, becoming a key resource for people to find out more information about companies, entrepreneurs, and investors. It doesn't seem as though the lack of images has impacted that adoption, although the addition of photos may be something that helps spread Quora's usage beyond Silicon Valley.

If nothing else, it could be a boon for all those times that, in response to a question you say, "Well, let me draw you a picture..."

To be clear, this update is for universal image results only - not Google Image search itself. "Universal" results refer to the search results you receive when doing a traditional search on www.google.com. Introduced back in 2007, the term refers to the combined search results from multiple verticals, including image search, news, video search, and the other specialized engines linked from the top of Google's homepage. With universal search, you only have to refer to one set search results page to see all the relevant information on a particular topic. The page serves as the jumping off point for whatever knowledge you're after - whether that's a photo, a video, the latest news, or just good ol' fashioned information.

The updated image search results represent a minor change to Google's interface and one that many mainstream users may not have even noticed. But every little tweak that Google makes is only done after extensive testing. In this case, the update allows for one more image to appear in the universal image results box. One image may not seem like a major improvement, but it could mean the difference between a user clicking through to see more or abandoning their Google Search altogether. (You would be surprised how quickly some users give up on a non-productive search. Forget refining queries, they just go elsewhere or stop their search entirely!).

Google Announcement's Timing Aimed to Deflate Interest in Bing

It's also notable that Google is announcing this change around the same time as Microsoft plans to make another announcement regarding updated features for Bing, the company's new search engine. Since its launch earlier this year, the Bing Search Team at Microsoft has been busy rolling out updates that have included things like a revamped mobile search, improvements to maps, integration with math engine Wolfram Alpha, Twitter integration, and a new visual search interface. As most of these announcements were made, Google would make an announcement of their own - for example, how they were planning on adding Twitter to their results, too. And when Bing announced Visual Search, Google posted to their blog about a Google Experiment called "Fast Flip" which lets you visually peruse print articles online.

There's no doubt that the timing of this latest, albeit minor, news about Image Search improvements has to do at least partially with the upcoming Bing announcement. Clearly, we have entered a new era of "search wars." As angel investor Ron Conway noted earlier this fall at the TC50 conference, this time war is a good thing: "I think the huge winner here will be consumers because competition breeds innovation, and this nice little battle between Google and Microsoft is fantastic for consumers."

All iGoogle users in the U.S. will get access to these gadgets over the course of this week and Google plans to expand the reach of these social gadgets beyond the U.S. and Australia in the near future.

iGoogle as Google's Social Hub?

On the surface, this doesn't seem like a major announcement. However, while Google is slowly building out its repertoire of services that leverage the OpenSocial platform, the company never really tied all of these services together. With this announcement, though, it looks like iGoogle could become the central hub for social activities on Google's ecosystem. After all, iGoogle already knows who your friends are because it can tap into your Google Contacts, where you can manage your friends by adding them to the "Friends" group.

Keeping Up With Your Friends

iGoogle currently offers two interesting ways to keep up with your friends' activity: a timeline and an 'updates' feed. The timeline even allows users to post Facebook-like status updates. The good thing about the update stream is that users can see their friends' activity on iGoogle, even if they don't have a specific gadget installed themselves.

Social Gadgets

The current crop of gadgets is interesting in its own right. The ToDo gadget, for example, allows you to share a list of chores with your family members. Electronic Arts developed a nice version of Scrabble for iGoogle and the NPR gadget allows you to share news stories with your friends.

Another outstanding gadget is the YouTube gadget, which allows you to easily share interesting video clips with your friends. The problem here, though, is that the gadget doesn't directly tie in to your activity on YouTube itself. When you share something on the actual YouTube website, it doesn't automatically appear in your iGoogle gadget. This seems like a missed opportunity and exemplifies the problems Google still faces as it tries to centralize its users' social activities across the large variety of services it offers.

The fact that there is no social Google Reader gadget for iGoogle so far also feels like a missed opportunity. While the Google Reader team has been adding more social features to its product, a stronger integration with iGoogle would really take this to the next level. We can only hope that an enterprising gadget developer will soon create this link between iGoogle and Google Reader.

Lots of Potential

Overall, we get the feeling that these social gadgets have a lot of potential, but it will take some work from third-party developers to really make the most out of this opportunity. The 18 social gadgets Google released today definitely make iGoogle a more attractive start page and it will be interesting to see what gadgets developers will come up with. Google itself, however, still has to work on creating a more integrated experience.

While most people visiting the site right now will be interested in the unfolding events in Iran following an alleged fraudulent presidential election there, you can search virtually any subject you choose. There is a dedicated "breaking news" search right below the search bar, as well as other more "nifty" searches for things like "WTF", "funny", "Vegas", "OMG", "love", "Obama", "beach", etc. But beware, if you are more of the adventurous sort then try to search for something like "boobs" but remember this; you can't unsee what might appear before you and that could be quite disturbing. Better just stick to current international events and tech stuff, people. Trust me.

Be sure to follow @picbrk updates on Twitter for more information.

Aviary's products are stunning and we expect that many people will be very surprised to find new image editing tools now available on their favorite websites.

Aviary is a fascinating company. In addition to offering multiple tools that effectively offer a collaborative version of Photoshop on the web, for free or with a subscription plan, the company just published a book about how to create visual effects using its software.

While other image editing services would form selective partnerships with a handful of big image hosting websites and then issue a big press release, Aviary is different. They've opened a free API, made a blog post, and will likely make a much wider impact than traditional business development methods would probably have allowed.

A new API makes perfect sense in this context and we're excited to see how other sites decide to integrate it.

The project is so cool we couldn't help but post about it, even though very little about it is known yet.

The results can be an imaginary panorama made up of a logically combined set of images from different photos, or a zoomable 3D world reminiscent of game rendering engine output but built out of photos uploaded to the system.

Designate one image as the front of a zoomable space and another the back and Infinite Images can assemble a whole continuous landscape between them.

Check out this video demonstration below. The action starts at about 1:00 in. We're not sure what kinds of use cases this might lead to, but it's very exciting. It's just one more example of the kinds of exciting things that can be done with semantic data; who knows what people will think up next?

The internet has not only impacted this last election, it has forever changed politics in America.

Please enjoy this flickr slideshow of what we saw last night - the election, as seen on the web:

Like most of its free rivals like FotoFlexer or Picnik, Aviary can import pictures from most of the popular online photo-sharing sites, including Flickr, Facebok, and Picasa. Its features, however, go far beyond the functionality of these free online applications and the Peacock application allows you to experiment with images in ways that no other online application has allowed you to do so far.

Discount Offer

Overall, Aviary is definitely worth a try. You can sign up for a free (but limited) account here, or follow this link to claim your $55 discount if you decide to go for the paid version before November 3rd.

Crunching Numbers and Stripping Out Metadata

Smush.it works on two different levels. First, it strips all the metadata out of the file. For small files like logos or buttons, this data can make up a large part of their size and very few users will ever care what editor you used to create a button. After this, Smush.it applies a number of non-lossy, open-source image optimization algorithms to the image. Smush.it will also transform GIFs into more efficient PNG files when necessary and optimize PNGs and animated GIFs.

For most web pages we tested, Smush.it reduced the total image size by anywhere from 10 to 45%. For most sites, logos, buttons, and icons saw the largest improvements (often close to 90%), though we also noticed a lot of sites that did not optimize their screenshots and other images, which Smush.it was usually able to compress by anywhere between 10 to 30%. If you are a web developer or publisher, using Smush.it could potentially reduce your bandwidth bill significantly.

We only wish that Yahoo had picked a slightly less unfortunate URL for the service...

Resizr is an online image resizer that does just about everything any desktop image resizer could do. Upload a JPEG file from your computer or provide a link to an image on the web and Resizr will do the heavy lifting. The service automatically keeps the image proportions. All you'll have to do is pick a maximum image width. Carry the easily accessible functionality of Resizr to every webpage you visit with their Firefox extension. We promise you won't regret it.

Shrink O'Matic for Windows and Linux

Shrink O'Matic is a great AIR app for quickly resizing any image. Simply drag and drop an image into the app and Shrink O'Matic will take care of the rest. Resize your images with custom size settings or by ratio. You can also save an image as the original file type or another. Since resizing is made to be quick and easy there are some limitations with this AIR app. For example, it only handles JPEG, PNG, and GIF files. Also, there are no other editing options. This app is all about resizing and does a great job of doing so. Since it's an AIR app, it should work on both Linux and Windows OS.

ResizeIt for Mac

This tiny Mac app may be small, but it packs quite the punch. ResizeIt is the perfect app for Mac users to quickly resize images and swap file types at any given time. Unlike the drag-and-drop interface of Shrink O'Matic, you're prompted to select your image upon opening ResizeIt. ResizeIt also allows you to rotate images, which Shrink O'Matic doesn't do. However, Windows users won't have to worry about this feature due to Windows built-in image editor. You can also create presets for common actions. Essentially, ResizeIt is a great on the fly image resizer for Mac users.

Some of these sites focus more on mainstream users and photo-finishing, while others stand out because of their extensive social features. Note: we've included a full table of features for the services listed (see below).

In our last round-up, we noted that there was a wide gap between mainstream photo finishing services with a social component like Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly, and more advanced photo sharing services like Flickr or Picasa which focus more on the social aspects of the experience. Today, that gap is still quite apparent, although Flickr, our favorite social photo sharing service, is starting to make some inroads with mainstream users since it replaced Yahoo Photos. Most of the mainstream services tend to emphasize photo printing over sharing, which becomes quite clear when you take a look at the feature sets of the services.

Click here for the full-size version of this table.

Flickr

Yahoo's Flickr is probably the most well-known photo sharing site in the Web 2.0 world. In terms of its social features and user community, no other service even comes close. However, development has been slow over the last two years and some of the newer services have surpassed Flickr's feature set. Also, while Flickr has no storage limits, you can only upload 100 megabytes a month. If you are looking for a free service, we still recommend Flickr over its competitors, not the least because it is supported by almost every desktop photo application.

Pros: active community; easy sharing; groups; Creative Commons licensing; RSS feeds for everything

Cons: might still be a bit too complicated for some mainstream users

Picasa Web Albums

Google's Picasa Web Albums profits greatly from its tight integration with Picasa, Google's popular desktop photo management application. Picasa also benefits from Google's minimalist design philosophy, which has kept the service extremely easy to use, even as Google has added new features over the last two years. The latest update to Picasa also added a lot of social features to the site, but we think it still doesn't match the feature set and active community of Flickr.

Pros: easy to use; face recognition; integration with Picasa; Creative Commons licensing

Cons: only 1GB storage with free account

SmugMug

SmugMug is our recommendation if you are willing to pay for your photo hosting. You do indeed get what you pay for. SmugMug is incredibly easy to use and is also one of the few services that accept uploads in the RAW format (if you enable the SmugVault). SmugMug courts professional photographers, who will especially like the fact that they can theme their accounts. Also, out of all the services we looked at, SmugMug had the best selection of theme templates.

Pros: easy to use; lots of options; rich feature set

Cons: not free (but worth the money)

Me.com

Apple's Me.com is a bit of an outsider here, as the gallery feature is only a small part of an extensive productivity suite. Thanks to its tight integration with iLife, its image gallery feature represents a good alternative for those who already subscribe to Me.com. We would not recommend Me.com to Windows users, by the way, as it integrates poorly with both Vista and XP. If you just want an easy way to share some pictures from iPhoto, you could do worse than using Me.com. If anything, the galleries are very well designed, even though the functionality of the service is quite limited.

Pros: tight integration with OSX and iLife; gorgeous galleries; very easy to use

Cons: very limited functionality; almost no social features

Photobucket

Photobucket is incredibly popular, but it also has some of the more stringent restrictions for its free accounts. Your pictures, for example, can't be larger than 1024x786. Thanks to its integration with Facebook, Photobucket is a popular spot for sharing pictures from college parties, but we wouldn't recommend it for regular use over Flickr.

Pros: easy to use; very easy to share pictures on social networking sites

Cons: lots of ads; limited functionality; no upload client; free account very limited

Kodak Gallery

Like many of its mainstream brethren, Kodak Gallery is squarely focused on getting you and your friends to print your pictures. Its feature set lacks depth for advanced users, but Kodak Gallery is easy to use and does have some surprisingly useful image editing features, including red-eye removal and photo cropping, as well as a limited range of effects and borders. As long as you make one purchase from the site per year, you get unlimited storage space and uploads, which makes it a good service if you tend to print pictures anyway.

Pros: easy to use; unlimited storage

Cons: no social features; limited sharing functions

Shutterfly

Shutterfly is also aimed at mainstream users, though it sets itself apart from some of the other services by offering a wider set of options for printing, including stickers, books, and cards. Its user interface is also very well designed.

Pros: unlimited storage; great printing options; easy to use

Cons: limited sharing options and social features

Webshots

Webshots sits somewhere between the mainstream and social sharing market. The site offers a good number of advanced features like tagging, groups, site-wide search, and a large number of sharing options. At the same time, it is also very easy to use for less tech-savvy users and features a wealth of printing options. Its upload restrictions are similar to Fickr's, though it allows you to upload 1000 pictures in your first month (5000 for pro accounts) and then 100 for every following month.

Pros: easy to use; lots of features; large user community

Cons: upload restrictions; lots of ads on the site

Snapfish

Snapfish is squarely targeted at mainstream users, though its interface could be more intuitive and the service has not really improved much over the years. The social features of the site are limited to sharing links by email.

Pros: themed galleries; lots of choices for prints, including books, stickers, mugs etc.

Cons: no social features; convoluted interface

Phanfare

Phanfare turned out to be a nice surprise, thanks to its extensive feature set, including a good selection of gallery themes, the ability to import photos from other online photo sharing apps, an iPhone app, and a well designed user interface.

Pros: easy to use; nice shared galleries; geotagging

Cons: just 1GB of storage with free accounts; unlimited accounts are pricey

Bonus: Gallery

Menalto's Gallery is a bit different from the rest of the sites featured here, as it is a self-hosted application. However, thanks to the large number of plugins and themes being developed around Gallery, it is worthwhile to consider for those who are comfortable installing it on their servers. Thanks to the copious amount of storage that often comes with hosting accounts these days, Gallery can be a good alternative for those who don't care too much about the social features on the site itself.

Pros: free (if you already have a hosting account); extremely flexible; great themes and plugins; no advertising; easy to set up

Cons: self-hosted; no social features

Did We Miss Something?

Did we miss one of your favorites? If so, let us know in the comments.

Logo courtesy of Flickr user Penmachine.

Windows Only

When Microsoft first publicly showed a demo of Photosynth in 2006, it almost looked too good to be true. Now, getting started with it couldn't be easier - as long as you have a Windows machine - there is no Mac version available yet. You first have to install both a browser plug-in and a desktop application (all done through just one installer). The installation was as standard as Windows installations get and finished in less than a minute. We tested the plugin in both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 without any problems.

One interesting aspect of the uploader is that you can choose a license for your creation. You can either choose a Creative Commons license, put the pictures in public domain, or mark it as 'All Rights Reserved.'

Desktop App

The desktop application does most of the heavy lifting for creating the 'synths' and seemed to make good use of all available cores. You only have to pick your photos, give your collection and name and click 'Synth.' After it has finished, it will create a score telling you how 'synthy' your photo collection was. Obviously, your photos need to have common areas for Photosynth to be able to stitch them together. While Photosynth does a great job making these connections, it can't work magic and our first attempts with relatively unconnected images were futile.

The more pictures you have, the longer the process of creating your synths takes, of course, and depending on your connection, the upload to Microsoft's servers can also take quite a while. In the end, though, your patience will be greatly rewarded.

Online Viewer

The online viewer is quite intuitive and allows you to zoom in and out, move around the picture and also go through the pictures in a 3D slide show mode. One nice feature is that you can also go full screen, which is really the best way to showcase your photos.

You can also embed a copy of your synth on any website and email a link to your friends.

The animation in Photosynth is astonishingly smooth and our screenshots really can't do it justice. If you haven't seen it yet, you should watch Microsoft's demo of Photosynth at TED2007, which will give you a good impression of what the final product looks like.

Different Way of Shooting

It really takes a different approach to shooting pictures to make the most out of Photosynth. If you often stitch together photos, you are probably already used to this, but Photosynth also gives you more freedom, as you can zoom in and out, or walk around an object and still have Photosynth recognize the common areas.

In our tests, Photosynth performed flawlessly, but we would recommend that you have a set of at least 10 to 20 photos to create an interesting 'synth' and the more photos you have, the more interesting it will be.

Caveats

A couple of caveats:

• All synths are public - there are no privacy controls!
• Photosynth only runs on Vista and XP so far.

Verdict

Even though we only had a short time to test Photosynth, it has already changed the way we think about taking pictures. Suddenly, you can do so much more with your photos. But besides the cool factor, we can also see a lot of other interesting applications for Photosynth. A realtor, for example, could use it to create a more immersive virtual tour of a house.

If you already have Photosynth installed already, you can see a 3D view of Venice below - otherwise, clicking on the image will take you directly to the installer.

Cooliris' PicLens is, without a doubt, one of the prettiest browser add-ons currently available. When we first reviewed it in February, Josh Catone called it 'nifty' and 'gorgeous.' Both of these adjectives still fully apply to PicLens, but since then, the company has added a large number of new features. These include a stronger emphasis on displaying videos and integration with Amazon, as well as support for a few more photo sharing sites.

At its most basic level, PicLens, which is now at version 1.7, allows you to quickly browse through images from photo and video sharing sites on a full-screen 3D wall. This wall looks a lot like Apple's Cover Flow and the screen-shots here really don't do it justice.

One thing that might come as a disappointment to users is that PicLens doesn't work with every site. However, PicLens does support a wide range of photo sharing sites, social networks, and image search services, including Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, DeviantArt, Smugmug, MySpace, Facebook, and Google Images. In its newest version, PicLens now also supports searching for videos in YouTube. PicLens should also work on any other site that has a Media RSS feed enabled.

Cooliris has also made a plugin available that allows owners of self-hosted WordPress sites to enable PicLens' functionality for their blogs.

As for browsers, PicLens supports Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.

Window Shopping in 3D

One interesting function PicLens has added, is the ability to do a visual search through Amazon's online store. Scrolling through the covers of books, CDs, and videos, or even browsing the apparel section is surprisingly fast and actually turns out to be quite a lot of fun. Clicking on an item enlarges it and brings up the price and a short description. One limitation of this search is that you can't specify anything else but keywords. Items can't be organized by price or any other filter normally available on Amazon such as brand or seller. This is even more limiting because you can't do a search on Amazon and then have PicLens display the results of your search, making the feature quite a bit less useful.

It's Pretty, But Is it Useful?

Whenever a piece of software looks as good as PicLens does, the question that comes up pretty quickly is how useful it can actually be.

The Amazon integration is most useful when you are searching for a specific look or just browsing through books for the sake of it, but otherwise, it feels more like a gimmick than a useful feature.

PicLens is at its best when displaying objects from photo and video sites. Having the ability to visually browse through a large number of items gives it a clear heads-up over the functionality of these web services themselves, and, at the end of the day, it's also plain fun to use.

Collaborative digital collections

• Alabama Mosaic: Thousands images that can be searched by keyword. Images are from historical collections featureubg content from libraries, archives and museums from across Alabama.
• Alaska Digital Archives: More than 5,000 quality digital images of Alaska's heritage in a searchable online database.
• Calisphere: A free online collection of more than 150,000 digitized primary materials contributed by libraries, archives, and museums from all over California. Search for content by keyword, by browsing the alphabetized subject list and exploring theme collections, such as the Gold Rush Era and World War II. Lesson plans are also available for elementary and secondary schoolteachers.

Calisphere

• Library of Congress American History and Culture Collections:  These collections began as a pilot project in 1990 to provide middle school as well as high school teachers and students with digital surrogates of collection material on CD-ROM. Over the years, the collection has become a "National Digital Library" with diverse institutions from all across the United States contributing content. Search or browse alphabetized subject lists, time periods, and geographical locations. American Memory Historical Collections features more than 100 thematic subjects ranging from advertising to maps to women's rights.
• Library of Congress International Collections: Access content from American Memory Historical Collections as well as international visual resource collections, such as the Abdul Hamid II collection of photographs of the Ottoman Empire and the Prokudin-Gorskii collection of photographs of the Russian Empire. Additionally, through partnerships with national libraries in other countries, you can access collections that highlight the history of the United States in relation to other nations, such as "France in America" and "The Meeting of Frontiers: Siberia, Alaska and the American West."
• University of Washington Digital Collections: Access to tens of thousands of digital images covering a wide variety of subjects, but with an emphasis on the Pacific Northwest. The digital collections include image-heavy resources, such as the J. Willis Sayre Photographs of actors, vaudeville performers, and movie stills; the Washington Women's History Consortium Fashion Plate Collection; the Dearborn-Massar Photographs of Architecture; and the Seattle Photographs Collection.
• Photomuse: A research resource for the history of photography. Features online exhibitions, a chronology of the evolution of photography complete with visuals and historical information, as well as an image database.

Photomuse

University digital image collections

• Duke Digital Collections: Featured collections are freely available on the Internet and include the Emergence of Advertising in America, Ration Coupons on the Home Front (1942-1945), and the 50,000 item William Gedney Photographs and Writings collection.
• Yale University Library Digital Collections: More than 100,000 digital images are searchable and viewable by the public.
• Harvard University Library: A Selection of Web-Accessible Collections: A list of visual resource collections that are unique to Harvard University, but reside in different repositories on the Harvard campus. Collections include the Harvard Daguerreotype Collection, the Hedda Morrison Photographs of China, Immigration to the United States (1789-1930), Legal Portraits Online, and the Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection.

Harvard

Digital image collections at public libraries and archives

• Historical Photograph Collections at the Arizona State Archives: 33,000 digital images of primary materials from the historical photograph collections. Most of the photographs available through the public online database date to before 1940 and include examples of all types of photographic processes, including tintypes, glass lantern slides, and photographic postcards.
• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog: Get access to more than 1 million digital images via one of the largest digital image databases in the world. Search for images by keyword, by browsing lists of alphabetized subjects, or by choosing a collection and looking through individual image records.
• Los Angeles Public Library: More than 60,000 images featuring the work of many notable photographers active in the Los Angeles area over many decades, including some contemporary photographers. Search by keyword or photographer.
• New York Public Library Digital Gallery: One of the largest open-access image databases available on the Internet featuring more than 600,000 digital images, including all kinds of primary materials, such as manuscripts, maps, photographs, prints, restaurant menus, sheet music covers, and much more.

NY Public Library

Digital image collections at historical societies

• Indiana Historical Society: An extensive collection, covering topics ranging from architecture to railroads to sporting events.
• Wisconsin Historical Society: A visual resource for Wisconsin history containing 35,000 photographs. Of special interest is the Wisconsin Historical Museum's Children's Clothing Collection where visitors may browse images of more than 2,000 articles of children's clothing dating back to the 18th century.

Other

• Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): Through this database, it is also possible to carry out federated searching across the hundreds of digital collections that received support from IMLS. Adding "image" to the keyword search will retrieve digital images and their corresponding metadata.
• OK, not exactly "deep web," but you can't leave this one out. The Library of Congress Photostream on Flickr: More than 3,000 images on Flickr. The Library of Congress is the flagship partner for the site's project known as The Commons, which aims to increase exposure to public image collections housed at civic institutions around the world and to facilitate knowledge about the collections.

Library of Congress

You can learn more about the history of these collections and get details on how to search them from the article here.