Google has just released a new version of Picasa! If you have not tried Picasa, or are not sure what Picasa is, I recommend you give it a go. Picasa is a photo viewing, editing and cataloguing application from Google.

A photo cataloguing program built by the masters of search is bound to have some neat features on how to store and retrieve you pictures. I love it - if like me you have thousands of digital photos stored on your computer. You probably rarely visit them, or when you need to find "that" photo it is really hard to find, and you resort to scanning visually through tonnes of thumbnails.

Enter Picasa - there are some seriously intelligent algorithms being used in this program - but the one I like the most is the ability for Picasa to recognise faces! This is a new feature and I am in love with it! I downloaded a new copy of Picasa from Google - pointed it at my photo collection and in just a little while (about an hour for my collection) I had a searchable photo collection.

Picasa showed me a selection of faces and asked me to identify them - once I identified my children, Picasa was able to match all the other pictures of them to that ID. I created ID's for all my family, myself and my friends. This might sound boring, but it was anything but. I spent quite a bit of time getting a great giggle at how people's hairstyles, clothing and expressions had changed over the years. It even jogged my memory at some of the people that I had either lost contact with, or just plain forgotten about!

I think it is amazing, that a computer can be taught to recognise faces, even colours (as it is possible to ask Picasa to show you all the pictures that are predominately red, etc), but you know what - I love it that I don't have to train God to recognise me, or my family. He knows me, and not just what my external appearance is either - He knows everything about me, and He is not confused, or tricked when I change my hair colour or I hide in the dark. In fact the Bible tells us that he actually knows us so well, that He knew us before we were even born, and even knows the number of hairs on our heads!

The people at Google are pretty clever, but even the greatest of mans wisdom is pale in comparison to what God can do!