OK, look, I was a Google+ hater from the giddy-up. I was (and remain) skeptical that the world needs yet another general interest social network. But Google+ has kind of won me over. Why? Pictures. It's doing amazing things with photography. Not only will it store them all, make them crazy searchable, and even pick your best shots, but it also automatically improves them by doing things like balancing color, and even makes them into GIFs. It calls this stuff Auto-Awesome, and, no joke, it truly is.
Today Google just rolled out a couple of new features to Auto-Awesome called Twinkle and Snow. Twinkle automatically adds twinkling, flickering lights to your pictures of sparkling things. It's like a less-tacky, fully automated version of Blingee. And then there's Snow, which adds falling snow to your pictures of winter wonderlands.
I love this kind of thing - using Google's amazing computational power to charm and delight.
Mat Honan is a senior writer for Wired's Gadget Lab and the co-founder of the Knight-Batten award-winning Longshot magazine.
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