On Thursday, Google released their long-rumored Checkout service. This new service allows shoppers with a Google Checkout account to pay for merchandise at a long list of retailers. This isn’t quite the PayPal killer (at least at this time) that it was rumored to be. It’s more of a shopping cart system that can be added to your merchant site so you don’t have to directly deal with credit card processing. It’s probably most similar to what Amazon does now when a merchant sells their merchandise through them. A buy has the confidence that the business is legit because Amazon is behind it, and they don’t need to register a login at 100 different places since their one and only Google account has all the credit card information built right in. So in that sense, as a buyer, I think this is a good thing. Hopefully they eventually move this service into the PayPal online wallet/bank account type arena as well. Lord knows PayPal needs the competition, since they’re really one of the only games in town when it comes to buying items in online auctions. Like every new Google venture, it’ll be interesting to see where this one goes.

Not 99, not 100, but 101 FREE Games on the internet. These are the cruddy flash games you see everywhere (there have got to be WAY more than 101 of those). Computer Gaming World has put together a pretty extensive list of actual decent games to download free from the net. So, if you were just saying to yourself, “Self, we need to find something to do this weekend… I wish we had a new game or two to play!” worry no more, 101 free games list to the rescue!

For the 50th anniversary of the Twinkie last year, Hostess released a cookbook full of recipes using Twinkies. It includes some weird stuff like a Twinkie Burrito and Twinkie Lasagna (some of the recipes are available here).

I think Perfetti Van Melle (the brilliant company behind Mentos) need to get their act together and make a Mentos cookbook. Maybe when I retire I’ll write one. Anybody have any ideas for Mentos recipes?

Last week Google came out with a new service called Picasa Web Albums. It is the online photo album for Picasa users that has been rumored to be coming out for some time now. It is still in “Test,” which is odd since everything else google puts out there is in “beta,” so there are probably some features that are still coming. Digital Inspiration does a nice job comparing the new service to flickr (and how if falls short) in several key areas. But again, more features could still be on their way.

I got a test account with the new Web Albums and it gives you a new beta version of the Picasa application to download with some nice new features. The about screen shows this as version 2.5. So, while the web albums may be lacking, the new features that they’ve put into Picasa are actually pretty useful.

The first new item that jumps out right away are the new buttons along the bottom, where an appropriately named “web album” button has been added for your to upload your photos to the web. This button prompts you for your web album login/pass and then asks you for an album name, or allows you to put the photos in an existing web album. You’ve also got options to resize the photos for the upload, which is something you’d probably want to do based on the size limits in place for web albums.

Another nice organization feature is in the upper left corner of the program where they’ve added a couple new buttons and categories. First, you can organize your image folders and collections much easier by moving through them, or by clicking the new button to create a new one. There has also been and addition to the top of the album and thubmnail columns. There are now two new categories called Screensaver and Starred Photos. The Screensaver category will add any photos in that category to a screensaver that shows up in the Windows display properties. You can chose what photos you want to rotate through the screensaver. The other new category is the Starred Photos. Starring photos has always been an option in Picasa. You can add a star to the photos that you like the best or want to set apart from the others. In this new version, you can easily view all the photos that you’ve marked with a star in one place instead of digging through hundreds of thumbnails trying to find the ones you’ve marked.

The new Picasa also has a few new menu items added. Under the Tools menu, there are a few new items. The first is an option called “configure buttons” that lets you add, remove and rearrange buttons in the bottom menu. Right now there aren’t any buttons that don’t display by default. I hoping that down the road Google might open up this area for other developers to create buttons that will allow Picasa to be plugged into other applications. Another new menu under tools is the “Geotag” option. It pulls up Google Earth with a little cross-hair letting you find and mark where the photo was taken. Right now it seems to be a bit limited, but I can see this taking off more down the road as Picasa Web Albums become more widespread. Similar to what you used to be able to do with Flickr, you’d be able to see all photos geotagged in the area you’re viewing in Google Earth. The last new item in the Tools menu is the “Experimental” menu, which includes several options. Publish via FTP, should actually be called “Export as html page” since that’s what comes up when you select that option. At least in this version of the software (from what I can find) it doesn’t really do anything via FTP. Show Duplicate Files finds duplicate photos you have in your collection. Search for, brings up a list of colors and finds all the photos that have a large portion of the color selected in them. The last item in experimental is upload to google video, which again does what you’d expect it to do.

I’m sure I missed some of the new features in the special beta version of Picasa, but the ones that I noticed were definite improvements. There are a lot of little things that just seem to work smoother too. I’ve been using Picasa for organizing my photos about a year now (after Adobe Album corrupted its database one too many times) and like the direction things seem to be moving. It’s definitely my photo program of choice and will continue to be.

I think the title of this one says it all. A survey was done of undergraduate college students and 73% responded that iPods were more “in” than beer. It is the second time that beer has been unseated as #1 in the annual survey. The last time beer lost was in 1997 when it lost to “the internet.” I guess this could show a couple things. Either college students really like iPods, or they’re alcoholics.

This year has brought another special date and time.

It is now 6:06:06 on 6/6/06

Happy 6-6-6-6-6-6 day!

101 two-liter bottles of Diet Coke + 523 Mentos = one awesome choreographed fountain display that I would say rivals the Bellagio (only because the Bellagio doesn’t use Mentos). I totally need to build a Mentos fountain! Hmmm, what else could be done with Mentos and Diet Coke sprays?

I just got my beta account for Farecast yesterday and was able to take it for a spin. Farecast is a different type of travel site than your typical dime-a-dozen Expedias and Travelocities. Those sites search the airlines for the lowest price right now. What Fareast does is try to predict how the airline fares are going to change. Since airline pricing is such a screwy thing, based on a million different variables, it’s hard to find good prices for airfare. Your seat could cost you $100 less than the exact same seat of guy sitting right beside you only because he bought it a day later than you. Farecast tracks prices over history to determine whether a price is going to go up or down (and whether you should buy now or wait).

The patent pending Fare History shows what the lowest fare was for your trip each day up to 90 days ago. We monitor price changes multiple times a day and store more than 50 billion observations and counting. We make a significant investment in data, hardware and storage costs to provide you with real prices based on availability.

The site is still in beta, so there were some features that weren’t quite ready for prime time. One of the biggest missing pieces for me was that it will only show you outgoing flights from Boston and Seattle (which doesn’t really do me much good). As for the functionality of the site, it’s pretty nice, and I have no reason to doubt the buying recommendations Farecast gives since the whole airline pricing scheme is such a mystery. I think once they get the site filled out a bit more (more markets and more buying options), it’ll be a nice weapon in my arsenal of travel sites. I’m not ready to switch to it all at once quite yet.

As a beta tester, I’ve got a few invites if anyone would like to give it a spin. Leave me a comment (with a valid e-mail address) and I’ll send an invite your way.

If I had some needle-nose pliers right now, I would totally build one of these.