Neil Turner

Free audience tickets for TV recordings

by
Reef

If you fancy an evening of entertainment, for free, then one great way of doing this is by being in the audience for a TV recording. Many TV shows are recorded in front of a live audience and in the vast majority of cases the tickets for the audience members were given away free. Christine and I have been to a couple of recordings ourselves, and I have some knowledge to impart on the subject.

1. Find out where to get tickets

There are a number of different companies and organisations that offer tickets. Sometimes this is the broadcaster or the production company itself, but more often that not a third-party company will provide the audience and there are a number of such companies that operate in the UK.

They will list the shows that they are currently offering tickets for; you may also find that you can join a waiting list for tickets for their more popular shows, even if they are not due to be recorded for some time (remember that some shows are recorded as much as 6 months in advance of transmission).

The main ones to look at are:

  • BBC Shows – for TV and radio programmes made by the BBC themselves
  • Applause Store – for big shows like X-Factor, Big Brother, but also shows like QI as well.
  • TV Recordings – some smaller shows like Russell Howard’s Good News and Not Going Out
  • SRO Audiences – generally used for Channel 4 shows like 8 Out Of 10 Cats and 10 O’Clock Live
  • Lost in TV – game shows like Superstar, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
  • Hat Trick Productions – Have I Got News For You, The Kumars and Room 101

Many of these let you sign up to an email list, so that you are notified when tickets become available for new shows.

2. Most shows are recorded in London

London has more TV studios than the rest of the UK so the majority of recordings take place there. This is great if you live near London but a bit of a pain for us Northerners. You will find some in Birmingham, Manchester and Salford from time to time though.

3. The tickets are not for resale (so don’t buy or sell them)

Because the tickets are free, some people try and sell them on sites like eBay for a quick buck. Don’t do this – if the company offering the tickets finds out, you’ll find the tickets cancelled and you may be barred from future recordings. And, if you buy tickets this way, don’t be surprised to find yourself turned away if the tickets were cancelled, leaving you out of pocket.

4. You need to get there early

By early, I mean at least an hour or more before the doors open. This may seem extreme but empty seats in an audience looks bad, so the audience companies offer more tickets than there are seats, to compensate for no-shows. Unfortunately, should everybody turn up, if you’re at the back of the queue you may be turned away if all of the seats are already full.

For this reason, I’d advise against making special trips to places just to be in the audience. It’s happened to me before.

On the plus side, if you do turn up but the recording is already full, generally you will be put on a ‘priority list’ for a future recording.

If you do get in, then be prepared to wait around for some time before the recording starts – so bring something to read if you’re easily bored.

5. If you can’t go, let the audience company know

When you book tickets in advance, there’s always a chance that, nearer the time, something crops up which means you can’t make it. In this case, contact the company that issued the tickets, tell them that you can’t make it and ask them to re-allocate the tickets. Whilst I mentioned earlier that these companies do compensate for no-shows, by surrendering your unused ticket, you may give somebody else on a waiting list a chance to go instead. Plus, it keeps you in good standing with the audience company – if you don’t show up, then they may decide that you’re an unreliable guest and you will be less likely to get tickets in future – especially for the more popular shows.

6. If you attend regular shows, you may get priority tickets

If you build up a good reputation with a particular company, by showing up on time regularly (and surrendering unused tickets), you may be issued with ‘priority tickets’. This means you’ll be let into the studio first and will probably get the best seats, and often allows you to jump the queue. However, it’s still not a guaranteed seat, and generally you will have to turn up even earlier.

7. Don’t expect to be treated like a paying customer

When you pay to attend an event, you will have some expectations, such as comfortable seats and being treated nicely by staff. The opposite applies here – by attending on a free ticket, you are doing the programme makers a favour. You may find that you’re sat on an uncomfortable wooden set, and you will be expected to follow the instructions given to you by staff at the event. In particular, this includes turning off your mobile phone during the recording (in case there’s interference with radio microphones), keeping quiet when you’re told and also laughing or applauding when required. Hopefully the show will be enjoyable, but if you’re at a comedy recording your role is to laugh at the jokes regardless of how funny (or otherwise) they are.

8. To get tickets to the big shows, you may need to go to smaller ones

The bigger sites like Applause Store are contracted to find audiences both for the big, popular shows, and for new, less-exciting-sounding shows. To encourage people to go to these new shows, you may be offered a deal – go to relatively unknown show X, and get priority tickets to big show Y. Whilst this could mean sitting through a rubbish game show to be broadcast during the daytime on a little-watched digital channel, you will be doing the audience company a favour and so they will be more likely to offer you the chance to see the bigger shows.

9. Tickets for the big shows go quickly

And by quickly I mean within hours. A show like Have I Got News For You will fill up all of its audience seats for a whole series in less than a day, so join Hat Trick’s email list to find out what time the tickets go on sale, and then get them as soon as you can.

10. It takes longer to record a show than it does to broadcast

A half hour TV show may take nearly two hours to record – what you see on TV is the edited highlights. Before the recording starts, there is usually a warm-up act, and at the end of the recording, any bits that didn’t tape properly or were missed out will be re-recorded. Live recordings will fill the allotted time, of course, but bearing in mind that most recordings are done in the evening, it’s probably best not to plan to do anything afterwards. Also, make sure you eat something before, or whilst you are queueing, if you would otherwise miss a mealtime or you’re concerned at the prospect of not eating something for three-to-four hours.

First Thunderbird, now Sparrow…

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The logo for the Sparrow email client in Google's colours.

I’m not having a good time with email clients. Earlier this month we learned that Thunderbird would not get any major feature updates in future (development will continue but Mozilla has reduced Thunderbird’s resources). And now Sparrow, my favoured email client on Mac OS X and on my iPhone, has been acquired by Google.

This may not sound like bad news but, alas, this is a ‘talent acquisition’ – a bit like when Facebook bought Gowalla last year. In other words, the people behind Sparrow will be working on new projects at Google, specifically on the Gmail teams, and won’t be doing any further work on Sparrow itself – this was confirmed by a Google spokesperson to Macstories. We can expect ongoing support for Sparrow, but no new features.

The Mac OS X version is reasonably complete in terms of features – in fact, it has just been updated for the new Retina displays in Apple’s latest MacBook Pro, and presumably will work with Mountain Lion without any problems. As for the iOS version, it can do almost everything that the stock email client for the iPhone can do (and more), but with the notable exception of push notifications of new email messages. This was likely to be a premium feature due to how push notifications work on iOS with background apps. Presumably, today’s announcement means that this won’t be forthcoming; similarly, a rumoured iPad app is now unlikely to be released.

Whilst I’m happy for Sparrow’s developers to be recognised for their talent, and presumably Google were able to give them an offer that they could not refuse, this potentially leaves Sparrow’s users in the lurch. Of course, there’s a limit to what you can do with what was always intended to be a simple email client – part of the reason for the slowdown of Thunderbird development – but the iOS client in particular showed a lot of promise that now won’t be realised.

The likelihood of Sparrow finding a new home in Google was slim in any case; Google doesn’t tend to do much in the way of desktop software (Chrome, Drive, Earth and Picasa are the only major exceptions) and there’s already an official Gmail app for iOS, which has been updated recently and, crucially, supports push notifications. And keeping Sparrow going at Google whilst its developers focus on other things would have been a distraction.

I hope that, instead, Sparrow offer to sell the branding rights and source code to somebody else, to keep it going. Or, better yet, make it open source, so that the community can keep it going. On iOS, the jailbreak community have already written various enhancements, such as Sparrow+.

I suppose I’ll have to investigate Apple’s own Mail app in Mountain Lion. I tried to use it recently as an alternative to Thunderbird, but in Lion it feels over-complicated and poorly designed.

Addendum: There’s an interesting post from Elezea which I also agree with.

Schools deny girls cervical cancer jabs on religious grounds

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This was originally a guest post at Stupid Evil Bastard, re-posted here following that site’s demise.

It’s been almost three years (!) since I’ve written a Guest Post for SEB, but a recent news story here in the UK prompted me to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write something.

Over here in the UK, some religious schools have opted out of offering free HPV vaccines to their students. HPV – the Human Papillomavirus – is linked to as many as 70% of cases of cervical cancer and is therefore offered, free of charge, to girls aged 12 and 13. Around 1000 women die from cervical cancer each year, so this vaccine has the potential to save hundreds of lives. And normally, it is up to individual parents’ to opt their children out, but these schools have made the decision to opt out of the vaccine for all of their students.

The HPV vaccine is controversial – not because of any side effects, but because HPV is a sexually-transmitted infection. Consequently, some parents opt their children out as they do not want to encourage sexual promiscuity, or feel that because their religion forbids sexual intercourse before marriage that this is incompatible with their faith.

The key problem is that a number of these schools have not informed local doctors that they have chosen to opt out. Consequently, should a child’s parent actually want their child to have the vaccine, it is not subsequently being offered by their doctor and so some children may miss out.

What is laughable are some of the reasons given by the schools for opting out, such as:

“pupils follow strict Christian principles, marry within their own community and do not practise sex outside marriage”

Because we know how likely that is. Regular SEB readers will know that abstinence-only sex education is not effective and actually results in a higher rate of unprotected sex – and consequently puts both men and women at risk of contracting the virus. Although the vaccination programme only targets girls, men can carry the virus and it while it frequently results in no adverse symptoms, carriers are at a heightened risk of other cancers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has some handy information if you want to read more.

Should schools be allowed to put the health of their students at risk in this way, in the course of religious observance? And if so, should such schools be forced to make the effort to provide parents with the information they need to seek alternative sources of the vaccine?

Tweetbot for Mac in Alpha testing

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After not quite officially confirming its existence, Tapbots have released an alpha build of Tweetbot for Mac. I talked about Tweetbot for Mac last week and how it would be awesome, so I now have a chance to actually test it.

Firstly, don’t let the ‘alpha’ tag put you off. It’s not a finished product, and there are some bugs (the Tweet Marker support doesn’t seem to work), but in my view it’s ‘beta’ quality at worst. This is from someone who has done a lot of beta testing in my time, and who also spent part of the week battling some paid-for software that acted like a beta product – but more on that another time.

Secondly, apart from being still in the testing stage, feature-wise Tweetbot isn’t finished. There’s not yet any support for synchronising your Tweetbot settings between your Mac and your iOS device, as this requires use of iCloud and is therefore only available to apps from the Mac App Store that Apple has vetted. This will be in the final release but not in any public test versions. Tapbots also intend for it to support Notification Centre on Mountain Lion, which, as well as being another Mac App Store-only feature, is also not available to test because only a few select developers have copies of Mountain Lion at present.

It’s also worth pointing out that, whilst this alpha build is free to test, there’s no support; furthermore, the final product will cost money, as with the iPad and iPhone apps.

So, with those caveats pointed out, what it’s actually like to use?

Well, it works pretty much like any other Mac OS X Twitter client, to be honest. The main difference between the iOS app and the Mac desktop is that, whereas on iOS, tapping a tweet brings up a bar with buttons to retweet, reply and favourite, these now appear when you hover over a tweet with the mouse. But you’ll be pleased to know that the swiping gestures from the iOS app made it to the dekstop, so swiping from left to right shows the tweet details, and from right to left shows the tweet in a conversation view with its replies.

‘Streaming’ support, where new tweets are automatically loaded as they are posted, is enabled as standard. Along the left column, all of the various views are shown, like on the iPad app, so there’s easy access to your profile, lists, retweets and saved searches. And this desktop version of Tweetbot retains its formidable support for third-party services, so there’s integration with Pocket, Instapaper, Readability, Pinboard and bit.ly as a ‘read later’ service (most other apps just offer the first two and Readability if you’re lucky), plenty of third-party image hosting services (but not a custom one yet) and a choice of URL shorteners. And curiously for a desktop client, you can add a location to your tweets.

The other great thing, for me, about Tweetbot is its mute feature to hide tweets that don’t interest you, and this feature is also present on the desktop. So far, in this alpha, you can only mute specific Twitter clients, like Twittascope, RunKeeper, Waze, GetGlue or any other services which auto-tweet things that don’t really interest me, but eventually you will be able to mute specific hashtags or keywords, or put some users on mute – this is great when you follow someone who live-tweets a conference and would otherwise dominate your timeline. The mute settings will also be synchronised between clients when iCloud sync is enabled in the final release.

All in all, in my opinion Tweetbot as it is now – even in its alpha state – is still better than the official Twitter client for the Mac, and just beats out Osfoora which was my previous favourite (I reviewed it back in March). If you use Twitter on a Mac, and have Lion installed, give it a try whilst its free, and, if you like it, buy the final release when it comes out. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Thunderbird on life support

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Screenshot of Mozilla Thunderbird 13 on OS X

It is with a little sadness that Mozilla Thunderbird will no longer receive resources from the Mozilla Foundation. The decision has been made to focus on other products (mainly Firefox), and that there’s not much room for further innovation in desktop email clients – especially as many people now use webmail services exclusively.

I’ve been a long-time user of Thunderbird – right back to version 0.1 alpha (then called Minotaur) which I reviewed back in April 2003. It’s come on a long way since then, and is still my favourite email client on Windows – especially with the Lightning extension adding a calendar feature. A myriad of other extensions has also allowed me to customise it how I want.

That being said, in some ways it’s no longer meeting my needs. I use at work – officially we’re supposed to use Outlook but there are many people using Thunderbird instead, as its IMAP support is much better. This is fine for our email server which is Unix based, but if we ever move to a Microsoft solution then the lack of support for Exchange, even after all of these years, makes Thunderbird fall short.

I also no longer use Thunderbird at home; earlier this year, I moved to Sparrow which offers a much simpler and lighter experience. Thunderbird is great for an all-singing, all-dancing email client and great for the large volumes of mail that I get spanning different folders, but at home, I just want something basic that can stay in the background. It may have far fewer features but Sparrow suits my needs better. Thunderbird is still installed for the few times when I work from home, but I may now look into Apple’s own email client instead.

As I understand it, the next release of Thunderbird will be an ‘extended support release’, at which point it will receive fixes for major bugs and security issues, but no new features – at least, not from Mozilla themselves. It’ll still be hosted by Mozilla and, being open source, should ‘the community’ want to contribute patches to it then they will be welcome to. Postbox remains as a commercial fork of Thunderbird, although its £30 price tag is high.

It’s a shame to see Thunderbird fade into further obscurity but an understandable one. Many users just don’t need a desktop email client anymore, because they pick up their email on a mobile device or webmail. Outlook and Lotus Notes rule the corporate roost. That doesn’t leave much of a market for Thunderbird to serve.

On blogging something every day

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Siemens Desiro 380007

Today marks the 30th successive day that I have posted a blog entry. This used to be something that I could do with no effort – in fact, go back to 2002-2004 and I was often blogging several times a day. Nowadays, it requires much more effort.

Back then, there was no Twitter or Facebook. Consequently some of the posts I made were merely a couple of sentences – maybe a very brief commentary on an interesting link. Those sorts of things now go on Twitter or Delicious, with the subsequent digest of links being auto-posted on Saturday mornings. Unless I can come up with a few paragraphs of thought, I tend not to bother with blogging about one particular news item.

Plus I have less time to write blog posts these days. Back when I was at university, I had enough breaks during the day to post regularly. Now that I work full time, I only have lunch breaks, evenings and weekends to blog. Generally, I will write several entries in one go, and then schedule them to be posted on each subsequent day (I actually wrote this on Sunday afternoon, for example). Whilst I have managed to produce something every day recently, it hasn’t been easy and I respect those people like Dave2 who are still able to produce substantial blog posts every day, year in, year out.

I’m going to try to keep on with posting something every day for as long as I can. It isn’t easy, but hopefully keeping it as a habit will help, and you can also support me by commenting on posts to show that what I write is worthwhile.

Tweetbot for Mac coming soon

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A screenshot of Tweetbot running on a Mac desktop

A couple of weeks ago, the above image was posted by Mark Jardine, one of the developers at Tapbots, showing off his new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. What’s notable is that it shows an OS X desktop version of Tweetbot, my favourite iOS Twitter client. This is big news, and Tapbots later confirmed to The Verge that a full mac version is under development.

To which, my response is “yay!”. I really like Tweetbot on my iPhone as it looks good, works well, and offers plenty of features. It can do everything that the official Twitter for iOS app can do, but will also let you use third party URL shorteners and image upload sites, and offers integration with services like Tweet Marker and Readability which aren’t often available in other Twitter apps. There’s also the ‘mute’ feature, which easily lets you mute certain hashtags that do not interest you, or particular clients like Waze, paper.li, Twittascope and various other services that auto-post things on your friends Twitter feeds that don’t interest you. You can also mute users, and you have the choice of muting them for a short period or indefinitely – great for when someone you follow live-tweets a conference that doesn’t interest you.

I haven’t yet found a desktop Twitter client for the Mac which does all of these things as well as Tweetbot, although Osfoora, my current client of choice, comes close. What excites me most is that Tweetbot is able to synchronise its settings using iCloud, for those that use it both on their iPhone and iPad, and so I’m looking forward to this extending to the Mac OS X app when it launches.

We don’t know much more about when Tweetbot for Mac will launch – there’s nothing about it on the Tapbots web site yet – but I imagine it’ll be after Mountain Lion gets released later this month (19th July). I’ll be almost certain to buy it, although I’ll happily keep on with Osfoora until then.

Creswell Crags

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DSCF0264.JPG
Photo by branestawm2002, released under a Creative Commons License. My own photos will follow later…

Last weekend Christine and I visited Creswell Crags on the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. It is a limestone gorge with various caves along the sides, in which evidence for occupation by human ancestors during the ice age has been found. They are also the only caves in the UK to have cave art on the walls, which was only formally discovered in 2003.

The gorge itself was a beauty spot in Victorian times, and various archaeological excavations have taken place since then. Many of the finds are now in a museum and visitor centre, to the north of the site, which we also visited, and this organises tours of two of the more interesting caves. The caves are normally closed to the public, so it is only by going on the tours that you can see the cave art, which are simple animal depictions carved into the rocky walls of the caves. There’s possible evidence that these were painted at one time, like in other caves in continental Europe (I visited Lascaux, or rather the mock-up at Lascaux II, back in the 1990s), but nowadays just the carvings are visible.

It’s a very interesting site, and the museum explains how the area was in different periods in time – before the last ice age, there would have been hippos in the water and hyenas hunting. The museum was opened in 2009 and is an interesting piece of architecture in itself, and has the ubiquitous café and gift shop.

It’s worth a visit – you can wander around the gorge itself for free, but the tours inside the caves and the museum cost money – up to £13 for adults to do both tours, although this is valid for a year for any repeat visits. There’s a picnic area if it’s a nice day, and the gorge is very pretty.

Manchester Metrolink reaches Oldham

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Market Street Tram Stop

I’m going to engage my public transport geek mode once again and talk a bit about the latest extension to Manchester’s Metrolink tram network.

Firstly, a bit of history. Metrolink first opened in 1992 and took over operation of two formerly ‘heavy rail’ (regular train service) lines, combined with track through Manchester city centre. Manchester has two main railway stations in the city centre – Piccadilly and Victoria – and the tram service allowed these stations to be linked together.

Of the two heavy rail lines converted, one was the line from Manchester Victoria to Bury; this used electric trains built in the 1960s and non-standard electrification equipment that wasn’t used anywhere else in the UK. Furthermore, this equipment, and the trains, were life-expired, so this was a good opportunity to upgrade to newer equipment. The trams could use the same track, but instead run from overhead electric cables.

The other line went south of Manchester towards Altrincham. This line had a lot of stations over a relatively short line, so using heavy rail trains wasn’t particularly efficient, so putting trams on this route made sense, on the whole. That said, not all trains called at all stations and this lead to some of the faster services being diverted through to Stockport, which now has capacity problems. This is because, unlike on other light rail networks such as the Tyne & Wear Metro in the north east where trains and light rail vehicles share tracks in places, Metrolink is kept separate from the National Rail network.

So that was the first phase. Its success spawned a second phase – a new line to Eccles, opened in 2000. This didn’t follow any existing railway lines, and served Salford Quays which has seen a lot of regeneration recently.

Getting the third phase – known as ‘The Big Bang’ due to it almost doubling the size of the network – built has been more of a challenge, due to money. It was denied central government funding in 2004, and so was split into two small phases – 3a and 3b – with work eventually starting in 2009. The first bit to be completed was a short 360 metre spur from the Eccles line to the new MediaCityUK complex in Salford which also better serves The Lowry and the Imperial War Museum North, and last year the first phase of the South Manchester Line opened to Chorlton-cum-Hardy – eventually, this will reach Manchester Airport. Although the South Manchester Line does follow the route of an old railway line, it was one that closed many years ago, as opposed to an existing line that was converted as with the lines to Bury and Altrincham.

The next bit to open was the line to Oldham, which I alluded to in the title of this post, and it is this particular line that I’m going to focus on. Like with the Bury and Altrincham routes, this follows an existing railway line that was converted – in this case, the Oldham Loop Line, which ran from Manchester Victoria to Rochdale where it met the Caldervale Line and looped back to Manchester. (I wrote about the Caldervale Line a couple of years ago – this is now the line I use to go to work every day, although not this particular bit)

The railway line closed in October 2009, and so it has been almost three years since Oldham had any public transport other than buses serving it. Opening last week, trams leave from a temporary station at the site of Oldham Mumps railway station, and head towards Manchester Victoria – they’ll then head through Manchester city centre and onwards to Chorlton-cum-Hardy. When the project is complete, trams will also serve Rochdale, new stations in Oldham town centre and continue through to Manchester Airport.

Trams will run roughly every 12 minutes – or five each hour – initially, but will increase to ten per hour (a tram every six minutes) in a few years time, once a second line through Manchester city centre has been built. This compares favourably with the old heavy rail train service, which ran four times an hour (but two of those only called at key stations), and once complete it will serve more destinations – there will be direct links to Deansgate railway station and Manchester Airport for the first time, plus there are extra stops on the new line serving places like the new Central Park development. The existing stations have all been rebuilt to be wheelchair friendly, and the trams can be boarded by wheelchair users without assistance, unlike the trains. And the trams are electric, so they won’t emit diesel fumes like the trains they replaced.

But arguably it’s not a complete improvement. The extra stops and slightly longer route means that the service is slower than the old heavy rail service, even with the improved acceleration offered by the trams over trains. The trams are smaller and have fewer seats that the trains, although they will run more frequently, and do not have toilets on board. Bikes also cannot be carried on board the trams, unlike on trains.

Tickets on Metrolink are not integrated with National Rail, so it’s no longer possible to buy a through ticket from, say, London to Oldham. And although the trams will serve more places than before, this does not include Manchester Piccadilly station, although they do call at Market Street which is somewhat closer than Victoria where the trains previously terminated.

On the whole I do hope it’s an improvement in service for the people of Oldham, and it will hopefully relieve pressure on the Caldervale Line which has been taking the strain from passengers displaced by the closure of the railway line. Issues like integrated ticketing with National Rail could be solved with computer and ticket machine upgrades, and there should be cycle storage at tram stops for cyclists. But converting lines to light rail like this, although providing many benefits, can also make things worse, especially for some groups of passengers.

Picasa vs iPhoto

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A screenshot showing iPhoto on the left and Picasa on the right, on Mac OS X
iPhoto and Picasa

A few months ago I decided to stop using Google’s Picasa for editing my photos and instead switched to Apple’s iPhoto. Doing so has been an enlightening experience and although (spoiler alert!) I prefer iPhoto, I also think it’s worth mentioning why I switched but also what Picasa has going for it.

Firstly, a bit of background – I’ve been a Picasa user for quite some time (since January 2005 apparently) and used it prior to becoming a Mac user. In the early days of Mac ownership I used CrossOver to run it, before later running the Mac OS X version of it when that finally came out. I never really touched iPhoto until this year, when I bought the latest version.

I’m therefore comparing iPhoto ’11 with Picasa 3.9.

Price

Unless you have a reasonably new Mac, you probably won’t have iPhoto ’11. If you do, then it’s free; if not, it’s a £10.49 purchase from the Mac App Store. Picasa is a free download so it wins there.

Image editing

In my opinion, iPhoto wins here as it offers many more features for making adjustments to photos. Both will offer basic features for adjusting light and colour balance, and a one-click button (‘enhance’ in iPhoto, and ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ in Picasa – it is a Google product after all) to automate this. The one-click enhancers in both were a little hit and miss – I found iPhoto sometimes over-saturates pictures whereas Picasa makes them too bright. But iPhoto excels by also offering noise reduction and better controls for lighting pictures – I was able to fix a few of my under-exposed images much more easily in iPhoto than Picasa. On the other hand, Picasa also supports Instagram-style filters should you wish to apply those.

Speed

iPhoto is slow. Like, really slow. If you like seeing the spinning beach ball, then you’re in luck because you’ll see it a lot in iPhoto – especially when you have more than a couple of other apps open at the same time. Picasa is much faster – which seems odd, since Picasa is a cross-platform app written by Google, whereas iPhoto is native to OS X and by Apple. Apple didn’t announce any updates for iLife at WWDC earlier this week but hopefully efficiency improvements are on the cards for iPhoto ’13.

Sharing

If you want to share your photos with others, both apps will let you upload them to the internet. Picasa supports its own Picasa Web Albums service, with two-way synchronisation of photos between your computer and your Web Albums account, as well as Google+ and Blogger. iPhoto supports Facebook and Flickr, and users of OS X Mountain Lion can also share pictures on Twitter. For me, support for Facebook and Flickr is far more useful than Google’s own properties, but this depends on what you use.

Incidentally Google used to offer an Export plugin for iPhoto that would allow you to export from iPhoto to Picasa Web Albums, but this is no longer in active development and has been removed from the Picasa web site. You can still download it from MacUpdate though.

Interface

Of the two, iPhoto is naturally more Mac-like, although it does use a number of non-standard user interface conventions (in comparison to other Mac apps). Picasa feels like an app brought over from Windows – which it is – and the interface is thus less visually appealing. I also found that iPhoto presented its features in a clearer and more easily accessed way – Picasa has a habit of hiding things in menus.

Slideshows

Both apps will let you create slideshows from your images. To me, iPhoto slideshows look more professional, and allow you to easily import music from iTunes to accompany it. On the other hand, Picasa will let you export your slideshow directly to YouTube; iTunes merely saves a QuickTime file and you’ll need to either upload it manually or use Apple’s iMovie, sold separately, to get it on to YouTube.

Other bits

iPhoto will let you order prints and other printed items from within the app itself, which is a nice touch – with Picasa it’s necessary to export images first, and then use a third-party service. iPhoto also lets you browse your Flickr sets and Facebook albums from within the app itself, which includes the use of the slideshow features.

Both will let you tag people in your photos, so that you can also browse by person as well as folder or event; iPhoto uses contact information from your Address Book and Facebook, whereas Picasa uses Google Contacts and Google+. When you upload these photos to Facebook or Google+ then these people will be automatically tagged if you are friends with them or have circled them.

In my experience, Picasa doesn’t see, to get much attention from Google; version 3.9 was still the most recent version as of December 2012, having been out for 9 months; iPhoto has had several minor updates in that time such as adding support for Twitter sharing. Finally, iPhoto naturally supports full-screen mode in OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, which Picasa does not as yet.

Summary

On the whole I feel iPhoto has more to offer than Picasa, but by switching from one to the other I’ve had to sacrifice some features (and speed). Consequently I imagine that there are some people for whom Picasa will clearly be the best option – but, in my case, it isn’t.

This post was revised in December 2012 to add more information about slideshows, Twitter sharing, photo tagging and Picasa updates.

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