First the company gave us CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity), an “artificial intelligence” tasked-array system with the personality of a 12-year-old girl and accompanied by its own homepage, YouTube channel, blog, monograph and versions of Google Earth and Google Maps. And to these, Google has added Google LOLCODE, Google Brain Search, Google Chrome with 3-D and a new Gmail auto-reply feature. The search giant also announced a new upside-down viewing option for YouTube and an automatic red-eye function for Picasa.

Overkill? Maybe, just a little. Google (GOOG), of course, wasn’t alone in pumping the Web full of pranks. Seems people with Web sites everywhere fancy themselves Don Rickles today. Hotels.com began taking reservations for rooms on the Moon. And Expedia (EXPE) began offering flights to Mars. Microsoft (MSFT) renamed its Kumo search product Omuk and unveiled Alpine Legend for Xbox 360. Some angry librarians staged a Kindle burning in a Los Angeles park. Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media appointed Gary Busey as Director of Human Resources. Torrent index The Pirate Bay partnered with the hopelessly litigious Warner Bros. The Guardian adopted an all-Twitter publishing model. Gizmodo was taken over by spam overlords. Amazon (AMZN) launched a brand new cloud-computing dirigible called Floating Amazon Cloud Environment, or FACE. Yahoo (YHOO) debuted an Ideological Search. And, finally, Qualcomm (QCOM) took convergence a bit too literally.

There are plenty of others, of course, far too many to mention here, and most of them unworthy of that mention in the first place. As Good Morning Silicon Valley aptly notes, “The sad fact is that pranks are like fireworks–once amateurs get to fiddling around with them, somebody’s going to end up lame.”

People rarely tag photos because identifying and labeling the people in them is an arduous, manual procedure. This week, I tested the new version of Google’s free photo organizing and editing software, Picasa 3 ( picasa.com) and an updated version of its free online-sharing component, Picasa Web Albums. The Web component tries to take some of the work out of identifying people in your shared photos using facial recognition. It automatically isolates faces in your pictures, invites you to identify them by name, and then recognizes these faces every time they pop up in future pictures so they can be tagged with one click and no typing.

New and Improved

Picasa 3, the Windows desktop application, includes a handful of new or improved features, including smarter editing tools, like cropping suggestions, and a one-step process to share photos from desktop albums. It also has the ability to create movies from still photos; to edit video clips and to upload those movies to YouTube. Personalized photo collages are a snap to make, and pictures can be labeled with text right on the image.

But my favorite feature, the ability to name-tag faces in photos, is found in Picasa Web Albums.

When photos are uploaded from a personal computer to Picasa Web Albums and a user enables Name Tags, facial recognition finds all of the photos containing faces and then groups together the photos it thinks are of the same person. The user must create name labels to go with each face. Once a face is labeled, the program does a pretty good job of recognizing that face in subsequent photos and suggesting a name to go with it. These labels can be seen by you or others, if you enable visible name tags when sharing.

In Sync

Another plus in Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums is that both now clearly label all albums to show which are public or private, and which are set to automatically synchronize with the Web-based versions of these albums. And these two programs are smart enough to synchronize with one another using a single mouse-click. Picasa Web Albums worked so smoothly that I often forgot it was Web-based and not a desktop application. But all photo editing and retouching must be done on Picasa 3, the desktop program. This led to many moments when I became absorbed in Picasa Web Albums and looked there for editing tools before remembering I needed to return to Picasa 3 to touch up photos.

Likewise, name tagging can only be done on Picasa Web Albums because photos must be uploaded and scanned for facial recognition to work. I found myself offline in the Picasa software, noticing a photo with a face that wasn’t name tagged and wanting to label it, but not being able to do so without using Picasa Web Albums.

Some Back and Forth

I eventually got used to this back and forth between Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, but it could be a deterrent for some users. Google (GOOG) says it is looking into how to integrate name tags with its Picasa 3 desktop software. As for making a Mac-compatible version of Picasa 3, the company says it doesn’t have any plans to report. However, the Web component, including face recognition, works fine on a Mac, and Picasa offers a free uploading utility for Macs that allows pictures to be sent to Picasa Web Albums directly from Apple’s (AAPL) iPhoto software.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the process of labeling photos with name tags. This provided a new way to sort images according to who was in each shot, and Picasa even found some hidden faces of friends I hadn’t seen in photos, giving me a new perspective on an old picture. Of course, the system isn’t perfect. A few things — including a lamppost — were falsely identified as faces in my photo albums, and it even requested name labels for the faces in photos I took of Renoir paintings.

There’s no way to completely turn name-tagging over to Picasa; you must manually assign a name to each face. But this discovery process grows smarter the more it is used, returning accurate, selectable name-tag suggestions below each photograph. A People page lists all the people whose faces appeared in uploaded photos, and I started relying on this as a quick reference tool. A photo name tag can include a nickname, full name and email. If someone is already listed in your Gmail contacts, these data are automatically retrieved and entered as you begin typing a name.

A Sync button at the top of each album in the Picasa desktop software assures users that any changes or edits made to photos in albums on the desktop will automatically be reflected in the Picasa Web Albums. I tested this many times, and uploaded photos changed quickly to match the desktop copy.

Picasa 3 offers customizable photo collages and Picasa Web Albums uses name tags to label faces in photos.

Instead of uploading photos from Picasa 3 to Picasa Web Albums and then sharing them from there, users can now hit a Share button in Picasa 3 that uploads images and emails them in one neat step. Privacy status on all albums is clearly marked, both in the desktop software and online in Picasa Web Albums, so you know if your album is private or public. These options can be adjusted in Settings, where the language used to describe sharing conditions is very clear. I liked the useful editing tools in Picasa 3, including an automatic crop tool that generated three cropping suggestion previews per photo.

Getting the Red Eye Out

A new automatic red-eye removal tool returned accurate results; it was easier to use than most because it identified red eye for me so I could fix it with one click. “Fill light,” a standby in Picasa, is a movable scale that adjusted and brightened dark, shadowy photos that were originally hard to distinguish. I even found photos that I had not previously seen in their entirety — including shots of the inside of Notre Dame Cathedral and a favorite photo of me with friends in front of a sunset.

Along with these other features, Picasa 3 has a shortcut button for easy uploading to Google’s Blogger service and one-step Geotagging, which adds location tags to photos. This software also includes a nice-looking built-in photo viewer for looking at all images on your PC. Picasa Web Albums has a mobile component and a new way of finding public photos from around the world, called Explore, which reminded me of searching on Flickr.

If you’re looking for a richer photo-sharing service that doesn’t confuse users when it comes to privacy, Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums are well worth your time. And name-tagging will change the way you sort through photos, though it would be more useful if it was available in the Picasa desktop software, as well as on Picasa Web Albums.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

It’s a good time to be in the market for such a camera. According to research from Olympus, unit sales for these gizmos has grown about 30% in the past two years, while dollar sales grew at about half that rate, indicating declining prices and improved technology. In fact, digital-camera prices have dropped an average of $30 over the past 12 months.

This guide offers an overview of the basics that you’ll need to know when buying a digital camera. It also explains many of the fancy features that are popping up on these devices, such as facial recognition — a camera’s ability to detect when faces are being captured in photos, thus appropriately adjusting exposure, focus and flash. This guide isn’t geared toward hobbyists, but rather toward average users who want good quality photos but don’t want to struggle with confusing product specs and promotions.

Point and Shoot, or Flaunt and Pocket

As you begin looking for a camera, selecting a preferred size and shape will help narrow your choices. Like iPods and cellphones, stylish pocket cameras are fashionable accessories; some come in shades like Precious Rose or Noble Blue. These pocket models, designed with emphasis on small size, are as easy to carry as they are to use for taking good photos: most offer seven or eight megapixels each, a 3x or better optical zoom lens and a stunning viewing screen. Good examples include Sony Corp.’s $400 Cyber-shot DSC-T100 or Nikon Inc.’s $300 Coolpix S50.

If you don’t mind sacrificing style for a camera that’s sturdier in your hand but bulkier in your purse, point-and-shoot models will be more your speed. On average, these cost less than their showy cousins. They’re more likely to have protruding zoom lenses that don’t collapse entirely into the camera body and often feature larger buttons. More point-and-shoots offer optical viewfinders, which have become practically extinct on pocket digicams where real estate is scarce. Examples of point-and-shoots with optical viewfinders include Eastman Kodak Co.’s EasyShare C653 and Canon Inc.’s PowerShot A460-both cost $130.

A third category of digital cameras, the single-lens reflex or SLR, continues to be marketed to regular consumers rather than to the photography enthusiasts for whom they were originally intended. SLR prices have dropped a couple of hundred dollars in the past year, but many models still start around $800 and come with detachable lenses and flashes. Average users can steer clear of SLR cameras.

Megapixels

Most cameras today offer anywhere between six and 10 megapixels; cameras with four megapixels or fewer are rather rare. But while higher megapixel counts are easy to find for less money, such as Hewlett-Packard Co.’s $300 PhotoSmart R967 with 10 megapixels, such intense resolution is really only necessary if you plan to heavily edit or blow up your photographs for jumbo prints, which most people won’t be doing.

Zoom Confusion

While most camera makers offer clearer marketing strategies now than a year or so ago, some still try to dupe consumers by listing only a camera’s total zoom — the optical and digital zoom multiplied together to create a larger, more impressive number. The truth lies in optical zoom, an enhancement made by a physically moving lens, not digital zoom, which instead magnifies a photo using the camera’s digital circuitry.

This year, companies also created a new category for cameras with 10x or 12x optical-zoom lenses — these are often referred to as high zoom digital cameras. In reality, a camera with about a 4x optical zoom is sufficient for most people.

Facial Recognition

This category is likely to become more popular. Facial recognition makes the camera smart enough to recognize that the subject contains a face and must be captured with the correct balance of color and lighting. Sony’s Cyber-shot G1 can detect up to eight faces in one image; Canon’s technology can detect up to nine per shot.

Image Stabilization

Image stabilization, or IS, was once only available in high-end SLR cameras. Now, almost all of the top-name consumer digicams offer this because without optical viewfinders, users must shakily hold cameras out to look through viewing screens. Referred to as antishake or vibration reduction by some manufacturers, there are three kinds of IS: optical and mechanical image stabilization, which physically steady a camera even when your hand is shaking, or digital image stabilization, which can improve a shot when the photographed subject is moving.

Some cameras, like the $250 Olympus Stylus 760, offer dual IS. This means the camera is equipped with both digital and mechanical or optical image stabilization, the best of both worlds. If you’ll be using a camera specifically for shots of moving objects, digital IS will work.

Storage — on Your Camera or on a Web Site

The cost of memory cards has dropped by half compared with last year: one-gigabyte memory cards now only cost about $30, and $50 two-gigabyte cards are even more popular thanks to people who want to record videos for uploading and sharing on Web sites. Data can be transferred from these cards by plugging them into a computer using an adapter or a card slot, or cameras can be connected to PCs with USB cords.

Now, Kodak, Nikon and Sony offer cameras with wireless Internet connection capabilities, or Wi-Fi. This allows you to take pictures and, when connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot, upload them directly to a Web site for sharing or storing, saving you the step of transferring the images to a computer first. These cameras are the $200 EasyShare One from Kodak, Nikon’s $350 Coolpix S50c and Sony’s $600 Cyber-shot DSC-G1.

Although using Wi-Fi in a digital camera is a smart idea, it could be a real drain on your camera’s battery. Wi-Fi is by no means a necessary feature, but some people will find it a useful add-on.

Battery Tips

Camera battery life can be affected by new features like extra-large screens — especially those that can play slide shows of your photographs — built-in Wi-Fi and even in-camera editing, which requires your camera and LCD screen to be on for longer periods. If you rarely take shots indoors, your flash will likely be used less, which might help your camera’s battery life. A spare battery is useful, and some cameras will work with drugstore batteries for the sake of convenience.

In-Camera Editing

The large, bright LCD viewing screens on cameras — some of which measure up to three inches or even three and a half inches diagonally — encourage everyday photogs to share their shots. To make even these images look better, camera manufacturers are incorporating in-camera editing for fixing mistakes on the spot, without a computer.

Cameras from all of the major manufacturers now enable red-eye fixes either as the photo is captured or after the fact. Companies such as Kodak offer zooming, cropping and panoramic shot stitching, while H-P cameras offer touch-ups like blemish-removing and ways to make a subject look slimmer.

* * *

The digital camera category is exciting right now, as these portable devices become more like computers thanks to in-camera editing, greater memory and built-in Wi-Fi. But remember that your photos come first, no matter how many bells and whistles are added to a camera.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability. This week my mailbox contained questions about Internet security fears, red-eye elimination in photos and software availability for Macs.

If you have a question, send it to me at mossberg@wsj.com, and I may select it to be answered here in Mossberg’s Mailbox.

Are there any possible security dangers when a DSL modem is left on while the computer is turned off?

No, as long as it’s the only computer connected to the modem. The modem only fetches data from the Internet when a computer program, like a Web browser or email software, requests it to do so. If the computer is off, no such requests can be made, so no data, safe or unsafe, is being received. Similarly, if the computer is on but the modem is off, the computer isn’t connected to the Internet, and can’t receive any data, normal or malicious.

However, I feel compelled to note that, if you allow your Internet usage to be totally ruled by security fears, you may miss out on a lot. One of the great benefits of always-on broadband services like DSL is that your email flows in continuously; upgrades (including security upgrades) can be downloaded automatically, day or night; and you can take advantage of remote backup and file-synchronization services that work in the middle of the night.

I have a new Sony camera and need help editing my photos to eliminate red eye. I have small grandchildren who always have red eyes in my pictures. What software can I use to get rid of it?

Almost every photo software program I have tested has a red-eye elimination feature, and most are adequate. You just have to get the hang of it. If you have a Windows PC, try Google’s free Picasa program, or Adobe Photoshop Elements. On a Mac, you can use the built-in iPhoto software, or the Mac version of Photoshop Elements. You could also use a professional program like Photoshop, though that might be overkill.

I am thinking seriously that my next computer purchase will be an Apple. My question is: How prolific is the software that is written for Macs? I’m thinking of financial software like Quicken, but also the basic Office suite of products.

There are Mac versions of both Quicken and Microsoft Office. The latter can directly read and write to the same file formats as its Windows counterpart; the former cannot. Apple claims there are now thousands of software programs that run on the current Macs. So is there is a decent selection of software for general consumers.

However, there is vastly more software available for Windows, especially in certain categories like games, business software, databases and niche products for specific professions and hobbies. If you are likely to be satisfied with the main types of software — like office programs, Web browsers, email programs and multimedia players — you’ll be fine with the Mac. But if you are interested in any of these other categories, or in generally having the greatest selection, stick with Windows.

* * *

Because of the volume of e-mail I receive, I can’t routinely answer individual questions by e-mail, or consult on individual problems or purchasing decisions. I read all questions I receive and select three each week to answer in the column.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com