Line up the freeware photo manager/editor combos and you'll quickly realize that Google's Picasa stands out in its class. The latest version, Picasa 3.5 (Windows | Mac), is no exception, offering one huge new feature and a few little ones, to offer you more choices for organizing and sharing photos from your desktop.

Facial recognition is the big news here, and Google's team has handily translated the face-tagging feature that it had implemented in the online version, Picasa Web Albums, to the desktop app. You can even download tags you used online into Picasa 3.5.

If you're starting out fresh, you'll notice that Picasa now displays an extra tab, one organized around the people in your albums, and not just the pictures. After naming your contacts (made slightly less laborious with a little help from your Google contacts list), you'll have a photo album dedicated to each friend. With it, you'll be able to find other photos, create a face collage, and plot photos on a Google map. How? We won't hold you in suspense any longer. To see Picasa's new features in action, check out the first Look video above.

There have been plenty of ways to view Flickr photos and upload to Flickr from your iPhone using third-party apps. But Yahoo's Flickr for iPhone app is the company's first official take.

How is it? We're sorry to report that for avid uploaders, it's only so-so. You can search, view your photostream, and also friends' photostreams. You can also take and upload photos or video--for the latter, only if you've got the video-enabled iPhone 3GS. Commenting, e-mailing a photo, and tagging are also present.

So what's the problem? Flickr for iPhone is missing some management basics like deleting photos from the photostream, editing tags, and zooming in on a photo. These may seem small, but they add up to an experience that isn't fully baked. Catch all the pros and cons in the First Look video above, and share your own opinion in the comments.

Related story: Smile! Flickr has an official iPhone app

Opera 10 (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is less than a week old, and the browser has already caused quite a stir among fans (just check out the comments). It has also inspired many a comparison with the more-often downloaded (and extension-rich) Firefox, and with the upstart browser Google Chrome which, despite its newness, has managed to unseat Opera as the fourth most popular browser.

That leaves you asking how Google's young Chrome browser, just a mewling infant in its lifetime, has already ousted a browser that's been publicly available since 1996. Is Opera really that bad?

Not at all. In fact, Opera pioneered some of the industry's features, including the Speed Dial feature that has since been adopted and adapted in Google Chrome. It also includes useful hooks to your Web mail, mouse gestures to help you navigate with that favorite of peripheral devices, and a built-in RSS reader.

How, then, does one explain Opera's uncomfortable fifth place in the consumer browser category? As with most situations of market share, there is a range of factors we could debate at length. One push factor, I'll argue, is Opera's lack of extensions support. True, it does have its own version of third-party apps for developers, called Opera widgets, which are mini standalone apps that float around the screen (here's a collection of game widgets rounded up by one of CNET's bloggers). However, widgets aren't the same as Firefox's popular, incredibly numerous, and quite inventive extensions. For a start, they pop up independently of the browser, so you need to keep track of them yourself. More significantly, they're limited in number. With my picks, performance has ranged from not-very-exciting to a letdown.

As for Google Chrome's ascendancy, its famous pedigree is an undeniable draw, and as Chrome grows in strength, Google will have even greater advantage to advertise its new browser around its network, as it does now on YouTube.com. However, Chrome's other great advantage, and one constant threat to its browser rivals, is its speed. For awhile there, Google made an intensive push to outperform Firefox, with the two leapfrogging each other in the final pushes of their beta builds. Opera, while working on its own back-end speed enhancements, hasn't produced the kinds of test results to steal the others' thunder.

Opera claims it has increased its browsing speed, and is offering an interesting solution to global users with fitful browser speed to boot. Opera says that Turbo, its compression engine, can increase browsing speeds up to eight times faster than on other browsers suffering from the same network holdup--but we still haven't seen independent test results on this.

Regardless, while browsing speed is important, on our fast data connections on multiple computers, Opera 10's performance never came into question in our tests. We suggest you try it out to see how you like its new look and its take on browsing enhancements, but for a view of its new features before you commit either way, check out the First Look video above.

The release of Yahoo's latest instant messenger for Windows (Yahoo Messenger 10 beta) got us revisiting two others that were updated in the more recent past: the all-in-one chat clients Trillian Astra and Digsby. We enumerated the program enhancements that went into Trillian Astra beta here, but after three years in the making (!), we were hoping to be wowed.

In terms of sexiness, that honor belongs to Digsby, which cuts a fine figure, but doesn't always smoothly deliver the performance goods. It also adheres to some questionable software bundling, and shady CPU practices while your computer runs idle. Users have since rebelled. At the very least, Digsby will change the way they alert you to these opt-ins and opt-outs, so we can all get back to enjoying a quality IM frenzy with friends on all our networks.

Don't get us wrong. Trillian Astra, with features like voice chatting and file transferring, by no means offers up a shoddy experience. There are, however, a few caveats to the service, including one of the most important--that some of Trillian Astra's best features are accessible only to those who have upgraded to the premium version. Luckily, we've captured Trillian's goods and bads on film. Check them all out in the First Look video above and see if Trillian is a better instant messenger for you.

Last week when it first updated, we related our first impressions of Facebook for iPhone 3.0. Now that's we've spent some more quality time with it over the weekend, we can confirm that the 3.0 update is huge. Sure, it takes up more room on your iPhone or iPod Touch, but that's not what we meant.

The real growth spurt comes from the pile of new and improved features that Facebook has poured into the app. They range from the typical--support for landscape mode, capability to change your profile picture--to the powerful--such as creating photo albums and kicking off a text message or call from the Facebook interface.

That last point echoes a central thesis in a June 2009 Wired article ("The Great Wall of Facebook"): by storing intensely personal data about real people--their likes and dislikes, e-mail addresses, friends, activities, and even phone numbers--Facebook is creating a formidable "second Internet" to rival Google. Indeed, the SMS and phone call triggers on Facebook for iPhone 3.0 (and a similar feature on Facebook for BlackBerry that hooks into your address book) do influence, even facilitate, the way you contact friends in real life. Now you can rely on a Web-based network as a point of entry to your actual social life.

But that feature is just one of many. See the new Facebook for iPhone 3.0 in action in this First Look video. If you have used it, let us know how you like it.

Microsoft recently released Windows Live Movie Maker for Vista. Those acquainted with Windows Movie Maker for XP or Vista may be scratching their heads right now--is this an update? Actually, Microsoft intended for it to be a distinct new product for Vista and Windows 7, though you may not guess it based on the almost-identical naming convention.

At any rate, a few points set Windows Live Movie Maker apart from its cousins. Its audience, for a start. While the free application was always intended for the average Windows user (as opposed to a prosumer or professional), this edition strives even more toward simplicity. With the AutoMovie button on board, you're able to create a movie from start to finish--using your photos and video clips--within a minute or two. The software automatically adds transitions, zoom and pan effects, and a title page. It also prompts you to add music. True, your final product may not be particularly creative or personal, but it's certainly a starting point, and making adjustments and embellishments after the fact is fairly easy.

Second, the Windows Live Movie Maker team wants to get movies off the computer and to their final destination--YouTube, Facebook, your Xbox, cell phone, a DVD, friend's e-mail in-box, or your TV. The sharing features are fairly expanded, and accessible with a click.

What the application achieves in accessibility, it loses in advanced features. There are some light audio and video-editing tools like fading and splitting, but not much beyond. Its basics will polarize those intermediate users who are ready to go into slightly more complex editing territory. It is worth noting that there are a few more movie formats supported on Windows 7. You should also be aware that the app installs as part of the Microsoft Essentials pack, but you can opt out of all else to install Windows Live Movie Maker alone.

To review all this information and more, check out the full Windows Live Movie Maker review. To watch us make a movie (not this one), watch the First Look video above.

You've got time to cut and save one ringtone on your Android phone, but what about three or ten or twenty? If you're too busy to edit a bundle, check out Sharetones 1.0 beta, a new app that takes a clever twist on the concept of ringtone sales.

We'll leave you to our First Look video for the details, but let's just say it's legal and lightening-fast. Best yet, for a limited time, it's also free.

Documents To Go (with and without support for Microsoft Exchange attachments) is one of our favorite applications for turning your iPhone into a home office. But it's not anywhere near complete and it has some formidable competition in the form of Quickoffice Mobile Suite, another premium offering.

If you're in the market for a document editor and creator, this video will give you a peep at what Documents To Go can offer in its first application release.

TuneWiki is one of the most ambitious social music projects we've seen. It is part licensed lyrics spooler for your own songs and for streaming YouTube videos, and part network--you can see where else in the world other TuneWiki users are playing your track. What began as an Android app created for Google's Android Developer Challenge (and finished as one of 10 winners) grew into a Web site and is, as of Monday, a Windows Media Player plug-in.

TuneWiki for Windows Media Player has a few flubs and flaws, but on average, the lyrics and music maps add the utility and interest to make the free application a helpful addition to Windows Media Player.

Those familiar with TuneWiki's Web site will see the similarities right away. TuneWiki's interface reskins Windows Media Player's 'Now Playing' window. The top half of the screen displays either a music map of where else in the world songs are playing, a YouTube video, album art, or top songs nearby, depending on if you're playing a song from your library, watching a YouTube video through TuneWiki, or browsing the map.

The bottom half of the screen, below the ad space, is where you'll see the available lyrics stream, plus commands to translate into other languages, help TuneWiki resync the song, and expose the scroll bar for manual lyrics perusal.

The unskinned Windows Media Player playlist forms the right side bar unless you banish it. We suggest you don't--you may have a harder time queuing songs if you do.

(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)

TuneWiki has its share of rough edges. Some tools aren't immediately intuitive, like the resyncing button. Instead of clicking it to have the song resync itself, you click it, then click each line of the song as it plays to help TuneWiki time the lyrics more accurately. Unless you're an approved editor, your version of the time-synced lyrics will be stored locally, but may not make it into TuneWiki's larger database.

Also not obvious is the fact that only approved editors can edit existing lyrics. A text notice on the editor-only area would wipe away potential confusion and frustration. Anyone, however, can add lyrics to TuneWiki's wiki if there aren't any to begin with. (You can apply to be an editor at forums.tunewiki.com. TuneWiki currently tallies abut 1,500 editors.)

Some other issues we encountered were performance-based or preference-related. We'd like the size of the YouTube video to be adjustable, for instance. If the YouTube video stops, as it did once during testing, we want to refresh it without closing and reopening the app. When searching for songs, we'd like a more elegant display of the artist and album information returned in the results. TuneWiki's plug-in is good enough to use on its own, but in a few iterations from now, after a scrub-up, it should be even more promising.