Rafblog - Jake Cohen's Blog

Picasa Duplicates

I searched high and low for evidence that someone else out there had run into this particular problem, but I was unable to find anything. So I am writing this in the hopes that the next person who faces this particular problem will have an easier time.

I had just used Picasa to import about two thousand photos from memory cards onto my new Windows 7 computer. I then noticed that these files were stored in C:\Users\Jake\Pictures, not the "My Pictures" folder like I expected (On my system I set up "My Pictures" to be on a larger drive since my boot drive is a relatively small SSD). I changed the location in Picasa's settings, but this didn't move any of the files it had already imported.

I closed Picasa and copied the files to the My Pictures folder, then re-opened Picasa. Then I started to notice that every file now had a duplicate (both in Picasa and on disk). For whatever reason, Picasa created an extra copy of each file. For example, IMG_5435.JPG now had a twin, IMG_5435-1.JPG.

I searched high and low for an easy way to use Picasa to remove these duplicates. However, it does not appear that Picasa's search feature offers wildcard search. The way it handles characters like - and . and ? is a mystery to me. Searching for "1.jpg" will return results such as "IMG_3145.JPG".

So in the end I used Windows Explorer to find the duplicates, as it is happy to search for wildcards. Since all the duplicates ended in -1, I just searched for *-1.JPG and it showed the 1,982 duplicates. I then hit Ctrl-A to select all, and Del to delete them. Close and reopen Picasa, and boom. No more duplicates.

Product Registration

I have been trying out Ableton Live for the past few weeks, and last night decided to buy it. (I should write a separate article on the virtues of full-featured but time-limited demos). The product registration process for Ableton Live is very easy to use, and I think more commercial software vendors should adopt this process.

After making the purchase, you simply start up Live again, and instead of clicking the button to get a trial usage authorization for the demo, there's a link to the Ableton web page to authorize the product. Since I was still in the same browser session as when I just bought the product, I was still signed in and it was able to determine quickly that yes, I had in fact just paid for a copy of the product, and it gave me a link to use to authorize my copy of Ableton.

Clicking on this link took me to a file type that opens directly in Ableton Live (you know when you get that Save / Open with dialog when clicking a file - this one had pre-selected "Open with Ableton Live"). Opening the link authorized my copy of Live.

This was fast and easy. No need to wait for the box to arrive, no need to cut and paste auth codes or type in a lengthy CD key. They have found an easy way to link the fact that I paid for the software (their web site) with the software that is installed on my computer.