The first picture is not out of focus. I took it with my Canon Digital SLR camera. It's a very good camera, with a very good lens. It's a fact of digital photography that, where two different colors come together, it blends them slightly, giving it a soft look. The 'sharpen' command finds those 'edges' and increases the contrast. I find that every photo can benefit from one click of the sharpen effect, so here's the real kicker: in Picasa, if you click on the Picture menu and then 'Batch Edit', you can sharpen all selected photos at once! If you decide you don't like this effect on any given picture, you can always 'undo' it!
For a video that shows how to do this, go to the Picasa tutorial page and click on 'Improving Photos.'
