Google Photos Blog - News, Tips and Tricks from the Picasa team

Using Eye-Fi with Picasa - new album presets & video uploads

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 7:41 AM



When the Eye-Fi card was first introduced over a year ago, it quickly won fans among the Picasa team -- after all, here was an affordable piece of hardware that bestowed WiFi superpowers on almost any digital camera, and used the Picasa API to effortlessly upload photos to Picasa Web Albums (and with nary a cable in sight).

Since then, the Eye Fi team has steadily added features like geotagging, hotspot subscriptions, and more. There are new settings in the Eye Fi manager that enable some features that we think Picasa Web Albums users will particularly benefit from: the ability to specify which online album your camera should upload photos to when it connects via WiFi, as well as new options to auto-tag photos, preset description text, and so on. In addition, they've just launched a brand-new generation of cards which add the ability to upload movies from your camera straight to Picasa Web Albums.

For example, say you're heading out on a cross-country road trip, and want to keep a select group of friends and family up-to-date with photos and videos. Instead of having to wait until your trip is finished and your camera connected to your home computer, now you can share an unlisted album with friends as you set out, have your Eye-Fi Explore Video card upload to that specific album, and then hit the road. That way, whenever you're in range of a supported WiFi hotspot, your camera will upload your newest pictures and movies to your vacation album, allowing others to vicariously travel with you.

There's a nice video tutorial on the Eye Fi site that covers these features in more detail. You can also learn more about uploading video files from your camera's Eye-Fi Explore or Share Video card to Picasa Web Albums on the Eye-Fi site.