For Family and Friends, Near and Far

An early Christmas greeting to my readers who celebrate -- and a Happy Festivus to everyone!

How did I make the lights on my tree twinkle in the photo, you ask? It's done using an app called "Photos" on my Android tablet. If you have an Android device, you probably have this app on there -- the icon looks like a primary-colored pinwheel. The effect is called "Auto Awesome". When I uploaded my tree photo to my Google account, the program recognized that there were lights on the tree and it automatically created a photo with the lights twinkling.  There are a few other interesting effects available (like capturing the best smiles on faces, creating panoramic photos, etc.). My son is on the engineering team working on the app at Google, and he tells me that the app is not available for Apple products; however, if you have a Google+ account, you should be able to do this to photos that you upload there by just using the web, not an app. No smartphone or tablet necessary.

If you want to learn more about Google+, here's a link with info, and if you want to learn more about the photo features, click here.

Merry Christmas!