America At Home

Thursday, June 5, 2008 10:35 AM

Posted by Mark Geller, Product Manager

A few months back, you might've caught a promo link on Picasa Web Albums encouraging folks to participate in America At Home -- a project that asked amateur and professional photographers to try and capture the many meanings of 'Home' across the USA. As you might expect, the range of emotions and experiences associated with home and family life is a fantastic (and fascinating) subject for a collaborative photography book.

If you're interested in seeing the results, the America At Home book is out now, and you can flip through sample pages online. Cooler still, you can create a custom cover for your own copy of the book (and maybe make it a personalized Father's Day gift, even). The America At Home team implemented the Picasa Web Albums API, so it's easy to use any photo that you've uploaded to Picasa Web Albums as a custom cover. For more info, visit the America At Home website.

More Picasa-enabled products

Tuesday, May 27, 2008 4:59 PM

Posted by Jason Cook, Product Marketing Manager

From the start, we've designed Picasa Web Albums to be 'open' -- after all, your photographs belong to you, and you should be free to decide how to share them. For instance, if you'd like your albums to be downloadable, we make sure friends and family can grab your pictures at the full, original upload resolution, allowing them to print out great-looking photos at home. Of course, if you want to pay for professional prints, we also offer you a choice of print providers in both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums.

From a technical perspective, we offer a free and open API. In a nutshell, this makes it easy for other companies to build products that connect seamlessly with Picasa Web Albums, so you can do more with your photos.

Our team has seen some pretty cool product demos lately, and we're glad to see some of these Picasa-Web-Albums-enabled items are now making their way to store shelves. EyeFi, for one, announced a new generation of their wi-fi memory card, which not only lets any camera upload photos without being attached to a computer, but can also geotag your photos as you take them, adding location-based data that makes it even easier to put your photos on a map. (No dragging-and-dropping required!)

And if Panasonic's PZ850 Vieracast announcement at CES caught your eye, you might be interested to know that the official pricing on these Picasa and YouTube-enabled flat screen HDTVs has been announced: 46" for $3,100, 50" for $3,500, 59" for $4,300 and $8,000 for the 65 inch model. Head over to Gizmodo to see some video of the sets in action.

If you're an impulse shopper, we recommend you head straight to Tokyo and hunt down a Sony Canvas Online CP1 digital photo frame, which is currently available only in Japan. We were lucky enough to see this gorgeous wifi-enabled photo frame in person, and trust us, it's a beauty. Sitting stately atop a clear lucite base, this 7", 800x480 LCD frame can stream your favorite Picasa Web Albums directly from the internet.

Announcing the release of Picasa 2.7 for Linux

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 6:04 PM

Posted by Dan Kegel and Lei Zhang, Software Engineers

It's not quite Godot, or even Duke Nukem Forever, but the long wait for Picasa 2.7 for Linux is finally over.

If you're still using Picasa 2.2 for your Linux machine, you'll want to update to get all the 2.7 goodness, including web album upload and download, folder hierarchy views, better raw support, localization in many languages, and more. Check out the download page for a full list of improvements and known issues. If you have questions after installing, please visit the FAQ or support forum.

For those interested in the open source aspect of Picasa 2.7: we did contribute a few dozen Wine patches to support Picasa 2.7, mainly to improve Wine's support for non-English languages, but also to fix a number of bugs.

Thanks to all the Linux users who helped test the beta version!

More good news for mobile

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 10:30 AM

Posted by Joe Walnes, Software Engineer

We built the mobile version of Picasa Web Albums to support as many devices as possible; you can use it to see your favorite pictures on almost any Internet-capable phone. That said, having a high-end mobile device has the potential to make your photos really shine. That's why we launched an optimized-for-iPhone interface a few months ago, which took special advantage of its large, high-resolution screen.

Now we've got some exciting news for those of you with newer Windows Mobile touchscreen devices: Today, we're launching another specially-optimized mobile interface, one tailored just for Windows Mobile 6 touchscreen devices. You can enjoy Picasa Web Albums slideshows, community photos, and all of our other mobile features using an interface that takes full advantage of the advanced browser in Windows Mobile 6. To see the new interface, just visit picasaweb.google.com on your Windows Mobile device.

To make things even more interesting, our Windows Mobile 6 interface also includes support for viewing your favorite photo albums even when you have no network access, thanks to the new beta release of Google Gears for mobile. We're very excited about the possibilities that mobile Gears technology will ultimately enable for Picasa Web Albums users. Being able to store your photo collection in the Internet 'cloud' and also having that data copied on your local device will allow for some nifty scenarios, like having the ability to flip through your photos much faster, or being able to show off your favorite pictures in spots where the mobile Internet doesn't reach (like an airplane cabin, subway car, or overseas trip, for example). And with Picasa using the latest version of Gears you can now add a Picasa icon to your Program Files folder and have instant access to your favorite photos offline or online.

If you're a software developer, we'd encourage you to visit the code.google.com blog to learn a bit more about our recent Google Gears for mobile announcement.

Thomas: not your average bear

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 4:09 AM

Posted by Thomas the bear on behalf of the Picasa team

It has been speculated that Google has a history of leg-pulling around this time of year. In the spirit of silliness, we wanted to share a warm and fuzzy true story about how a bear named Thomas made Picasa his home.

As you may know, Picasa has many helpful keyboard shortcuts to save you time and clicks. But there's one shortcut you may not have heard about: the Thomas shortcut.

Back in 2004, the innovative photographer and photoblogger Noah Grey was working with the Photos team on developing Picasa. He contributed a great deal to the design and evolution of the software, but one of Noah's most unforgettable contributions can be seen by pressing Control-Shift-Y while in Picasa. Continue pressing it, and watch what appears all over your screen. Given to Noah as a gift by an old friend, this bear has had a special place in Noah's life for over 15 years; and Noah decided to return the favor.

That's Thomas. And that's his bear. And that's how he became part of the Picasa story.

Taking your favorite shots further with photo books

Thursday, March 27, 2008 5:53 PM

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager

In what could be considered the next evolution of scrapbooking, photo books are quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to creatively glorify your pictures.

One of our main goals in developing Picasa and Picasa Web Albums has always been to provide an open platform for you to do whatever you want with your photos. That's why with Picasa Web Albums as a launch pad, you can easily create stunning photo books using services such as Shutterfly, Photo Works, Kodak, Tabblo and Allbeli. These sites, among many others, can help you can turn your favorite photos into a professional looking, customized photo book -- sure to please any gift recipient.

For some, the art of photo book-making can even become a more serious endeavor, as the folks over at Blurb can attest. They have just announced Photography.Book.Now, a competition that celebrates creative self-published photography books. Those of you who have a creative book to share can submit it by July 14, 2008. This contest also includes a half-day symposium exploring the modern photography book movement. If you're interested, Blurb is reserving 50 spots especially for Picasa users at one of the Photography.Book.Now symposia. Just email your name and email address to info@photographybooknow.com, including Picasa Symposium Reservation in the subject line to reserve your spot.

Photo books are great for storing your family vacation photos, maintaining a portfolio of your artwork, creating a recipe book... the possibilities are endless.

Sleep soundly: Back up your photos

Thursday, March 13, 2008 8:31 PM

Posted by Mark Muse, Consumer Operations Strategist

Has it been a while since you backed up your photos? Wait, have you ever backed up your photos? Your computer will fail sooner or later -- that’s just how it goes. What matters are the steps that you’ve taken to prepare for that day.

Picasa doesn't automatically back up or even store your photos. It's more like a play list, in that it takes photos that already exist on your hard drive, and displays those photos without moving or altering them. So if your hard drive is suddenly beyond repair, Picasa won't be able to help you recover your photos. It's up to you to back them up.

In the Picasa Help Group, our most experienced users recommend backing up your photos to an external hard drive whenever you make changes. They even suggest keeping another backup in a separate location in case of fire or flood. The level at which you protect your photos really depends on how valuable they are to you. But one thing is certain: they are valuable, and they do need to be protected.

The good news is that Picasa makes it easy to back up your memories. You can always upload your photos to Picasa Web Albums - choose 'Slowest upload - largest size' in the upload dialogue box to secure your photos in full resolution. In terms of offline options, there are a couple of ways you can go about it, both located under Tools > Backup Pictures:

1. Back up to an external hard drive: For larger collections, this may be the way to go. Once you’ve initially backed up your entire collection, Picasa will then only back up the recent changes that you’ve made. This saves you time, and ensures that your entire collection will live on. Using an external drive with Picasa’s backup feature is also a great way to migrate to a new computer.
2. Back up to CD or DVD: Burning your photos to CD or DVD is a convenient option. Should your hard drive ever fail, or should a power surge hit your external drive, you will thank your lucky stars as you recover all of your photos and edits.

So take a few minutes to secure all of those memories that you’ve spent so much time editing and organizing -- it's worth it.