The coffee-table book goes custom

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 9:13 AM

Last year's presidential campaign gave photographers -- professionals and hobbyists alike -- a fantastic opportunity to capture both the personalities and the process of politics in America. Between the cross-country whistlestop tours, the crowds flocking to party conventions, and motivated grassroots activity, it was easy to see why "all politics is local" -- and to snap a photo that captured that idea.

We've previously pointed to the crowd-sourced photography project America At Home, which used the Picasa Web Albums Data API to allow customization of the book's dustjacket. Now, the same publisher is releasing The Obama Time Capsule, which introduces a new (and we think interesting) degree of customization for a photography book -- along with the cover, you can add personal photos to a few interior pages, and personalize other elements, like the dedication page. The book itself includes some top-notch photography from leading photographers, along with essays penned by Joel Klein, Colin Powell, Arianna Huffington, and others.

Obviously, the appeal of this particular title may depend on your own political interest and leanings, but politics aside, we think this kind of customizable photography book is a pretty nifty idea for a keepsake, and a great example of how digital photography lets us do more with our photos. If you're interested, you can learn more about the book (and transfer photos directly from your Picasa Web Albums account) at TheObamaTimeCapsule.com.

posted by Brian Axe, Product Manager

Calling all students: Google Photography Prize

Friday, May 8, 2009 2:45 PM

Posted by Louise Rigby, Associate Product Marketing Manager, iGoogle

We just launched the Google Photography Prize, a global competition for students to create new themes for iGoogle.

The contest aims to find talented student photographers and will give them unprecedented online and offline exposure: Winning submissions will be available for millions of Google users around the world to display on their personalised iGoogle homepages, and will also be part of a special exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The overall winner will also receive £5,000 ($7,500) and an invitation to spend a day with renowned photographer Martin Parr.

It may seem brave to unleash student art on our homepage, but given the amazing talent of student photographers today, our esteemed panel of judges, and the draw of being able to exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery, we're expecting to see some great entries!

The Google Photography Prize is open to higher education students around the world, and runs until May 31. You can enter by submitting a series of five photographs at google.com/photographyprize.

The thirty-six top entries will be selected for the shortlist and made open to an online public vote on June 11. The top six vote-winners will then be flown to London for the opening night of an exhibition of their work at the Saatchi Gallery, and the ultimate winner will be decided by a panel of art critics and artists, including Idris Khan, Martin Parr, Michael Hoppen, Susanna Brown and Tim Marlow.

Millions of user are already adorning their iGoogle page with images, including original art created by Jeff Koons, Radiohead, Rolf Harris, Stella McCartney and Philippe Starck. We're excited to now be adding more photography to the mix, and we look forward to see how art will continue to develop online.

Good luck!

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

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 7:41 AM

Posted by Jason Cook, Product Marketing Manager

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.

New: Instant Comment Notification

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 4:56 PM

Posted by Simon Han, Software Engineer

Photographs are natural conversation-starters. And with online photo albums, the conversation can start the moment somebody comments on one of your photos.

That's why we just launched instant comment notification on Picasa Web -- now, instead of waiting for a daily or weekly digest that summarizes the comments on your photos, you can be informed of your photo activity as it happens. Plus, your friends will hear back as soon as you reply -- so it's easy to keep a good conversation moving along.

Here's how it works: By default, you're automatically subscribed to comments posted on your own photos, and when commenting on a friend's snapshots, you'll have a chance to subscribe to that thread, too. Because we want to make sure we provide timely notifications without overwhelming your Inbox, if you post a photo that's particularly popular, we'll still aggregate comments that are made close together into one mail. You can, of course, always opt-out of comment notifications altogether, or unsubscribe from any comment thread at any time, just by clicking a link in the notification emails we send.

Want to give it a try? Browse through your favorites (or check out some of ours ), leave a comment, and see where the conversation goes...

Now playing on YouTube: Picasa's Community Channel

3:11 PM

Posted by Dustin Cu, Learning & Development Strategist

Looking for helpful demos of Picasa? We've started the Picasa Community Channel on YouTube to showcase videos about Picasa and Picasa Web Albums created by users just like you. From basic overviews to closer looks at specific features, we've compiled our favorites into playlists that you can easily browse.

Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour gives you a quick look at the Picasa 3 collage feature. You can also check out the short how-to videos (like this one on removing red eye) created by the folks at Simple IT.





We'd love to see more videos from people who are passionate about using Picasa and helping other users. We encourage you to let your creative juices flow and contribute your own videos. If you have a video that you'd like to submit, upload it to YouTube, then send it to us via the "Send Message" link on the channel.

Share your own tips, tricks, and testimonials with the Picasa community!

Picasa previews in Gmail Labs

Thursday, March 19, 2009 8:23 AM

Posted by Stanley Chen, Gmail engineer

Links to Picasa Web Albums and photos get emailed around all the time. Now, if you use Gmail and turn on Picasa previews from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, you won't even have to leave your inbox to preview your photos -- instead, they'll show up right inside your messages, like this:



Recipients will see image previews whether you use the "Share" button in Picasa Web Albums, or simply include a Picasa Web Albums link in your email.

Check out the Gmail blog for more info, then give this new experimental feature a try, and let us know what you think.

Picasa for Mac (beta) progress

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 8:48 PM

Posted by Jason Cook, Product Marketing Manager

When we released our initial public beta of Picasa for Mac OS X at Macworld, we mentioned that early testers were likely to spot some rough edges on the beta. Since then, we've been (metaphorically) filing and sanding away -- with our latest beta build, out Monday, we've now fixed over 200 outstanding issues since our first Mac beta release.

While our immediate attention has been focused on squashing crashers and other obnoxious bugs, we're also trying to make sure that the refinements Mac users have asked us for are addressed, as well. For example, proper color profiles are now present in our latest build, which allow you to view your photographs with any embedded color information added to the photo -- giving you more accuracy as you edit and fine-tune your images, so you can show off your snapshots at their very best. In addition, a few of the features that were deactivated in our earliest beta builds, like 3rd-party prints and exporting as HTML, are now available, and a few minor UI niggles like text-spacing are fixed as well.

On the PC side, Picasa 3's beta lasted for about 2 months. Our Mac beta period is going to last a bit longer than that as we bring it to parity with its more-established PC counterpart -- but we encourage you to give it a spin now, especially if you're a Picasa Web Albums user wanting to sample advanced features like automatic sync between your PC and the web, or Picasa's integrated upload & sharing features.

As always, let us know what you think -- the team is actively monitoring Mac beta feedback in our user help forum.