Easier uploads to Picasa Web Albums

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 11:20 AM

Posted by Shuangfeng Li, Software Engineer

We’ve made sharing and storing your images in Picasa Web Albums even easier by improving the image upload process. Now you’ll find a smoother upload flow, the five-at-a-time limitation has been removed, and you can upload HD video, too.

To get started from Chrome, Firefox or Safari click the Upload button, select an album and then choose the images and videos you want to upload. After your images have uploaded, you will see large thumbnails where you can easily add a caption, zoom in or delete right from the upload screen.

If you use Internet Explorer, you can continue to use the basic uploader or use the plug-in for drag-and-drop bulk uploading.

Another easy way to upload to Picasa Web Albums is from Gallery on an Android device. For example, with Android 3.0, Honeycomb, you can capture an image or video with your tablet's camera and upload directly to Picasa Web Albums to share with friends.

We’re always working to improve Picasa Web Albums, please share your feedback in our forum. Happy uploading!

Where in the world are my photos?

Tuesday, February 15, 2011 4:20 PM

Posted by Ping Chen, Software Engineer

For some of you, many of your memories are based around a place. It could be a cherished family cabin, an iconic landmark or a trip to an exotic locale. In Picasa Web Albums, you can leverage the GPS technology built into many cameras and mobile phones to tag where your images were taken. This makes sharing images of your trip to Yellowstone even more interesting by showing where inside the park they were taken.

Until today, you could manage the visibility of geographical information at the account level - you chose whether to display location information for your entire account. Now, you can control whether or not to include location information for each individual album rather than at the account level. Whenever you add a new album, location information will not display by default. Existing albums will follow your previous selection. You can easily change this setting for existing and new albums by checking or unchecking the box below the map on your album.

This way, you can show your friends the geographical location of the photos in your Yellowstone album, while keeping the location of a favorite beach your secret.

As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Please share your feedback in our forum.

More “I do”s, less “to-do”s: wedding planning simplified

Thursday, February 10, 2011 9:03 AM

Posted by Lisa Conquergood, Senior Product Marketing Manager

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Google Docs Blog

For many, your wedding day is one of the biggest, most momentous days of your life. The perfect dress, the right tuxedo, the proper shade of blue, the three-tier cake with chocolate fondant, and all of your closest family and friends—these are just a few of the many things you might think about for your special day. Although there’s much to consider and a lot of work to do, the payoff is great: it’s one of the happiest days of your life.

To help you plan this important day we’ve created wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik, and gathered tips and tricks for using these and other Google products at google.com/weddings. From wedding websites to save-the-date cards, these tools simplify wedding planning, letting you focus your time on the fun things—like tasting cakes!

We teamed up with renowned wedding planner Michelle Rago, who provided her insight and creativity to guide the designs you’ll find on this new site. Michelle also shared her experience to provide tips and advice to keep your guests comfortable and you sane.

We’re also hosting a wedding sweepstakes, so if you’re getting married in the next year you can enter for a chance to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding (see Official Rules). Plus, Michelle Rago and her team will advise the winning couple on location, flowers, food and other design elements to create a day that is uniquely their own. (Update: The Google Dream Wedding Sweepstakes is closed and is no longer taking entries. Thanks for your interest.)

Visit google.com/weddings to start planning, or share the site with your favorite betrothed couple and help them on their way to wedded bliss.

Take your photos with you anywhere

Monday, February 7, 2011 11:35 AM

Posted by Tammy McLeod, Software engineer

Picasa Web for mobile lets you view and share your photos, browse photos from people you follow, or search public photos from our Picasa Web community. All on the go. Until now, there was a limit to how many photos you could view, but that limit has lifted and you can view all your photos right from your phone. Browse multiple pages of albums and photos by clicking Next and Prev. Just visit https://picasaweb.google.com from the browser on your smartphone and enjoy photos anywhere.

We'd love to hear what you think. Please share your feedback in our forum.

Software downloads for Iran

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 5:11 PM

Posted by Neil Martin, Export Compliance Programs Manager

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

During the protests that erupted in Iran following the disputed Presidential election in June 2009, the central government in Tehran deported all foreign journalists, shut down traditional media outlets, closed off print journalism and disrupted cell phone lines. The government also infiltrated networks, posing as activists and using false identities to round up dissidents. In spite of this, the sharing of information using the Internet prevailed. YouTube and Twitter were cited by journalists, activists and bloggers as the best source for firsthand accounts and on-the-scene footage of the protests and violence across the country. At the time, though, U.S. export controls and sanctions programs prohibited software downloads to Iran.

Some of those export restrictions have now been lifted and today, for the first time, we’re making Google Earth, Picasa and Chrome available for download in Iran. We’re committed to full compliance with U.S. export controls and sanctions programs and, as a condition of our export licenses from the Treasury Department, we will continue to block IP addresses associated with the Iranian government.

Our products are specifically designed to help people create, communicate, share opinions and find information. And we believe that more available products means more choice, more freedom, and ultimately more power for individuals in Iran and across the globe.

Kick off the year with updates from Picasa Web Albums

Monday, January 10, 2011 12:00 PM

Posted by Lisa Conquergood, Photos Team Marketing

We are starting off the year with a few new features in Picasa Web Albums. From metadata, to security, to a new way to zoom, there is a little bit for everyone.

More metadata
For those of you who can’t get enough of the technical side, we expanded the EXIF metadata (information stored inside of your image file) you can view for each photo. You can now get over 200 EXIF tags that are available from your photos including Metering Mode, White Space and Color Balance. From the individual photo page -- where you currently view ‘Photo Information’ like Camera, ISO, Aperture and Exposure -- click on “full details page” to view this new metadata information.

More security
Picasa Web Albums now supports https access. The https protocol encrypts your data as it travels between your web browser and our servers. Using https helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public wifi hotspots like a library or a coffee shop. We are working to make https the default but for now, to access Picasa Web Albums using this secure protocol, type “https” into your browser instead of “http,” so “https://picasaweb.google.com instead of “http://picasaweb.google.com.”

More oohs and ahhs
Now, you can view images in their full resolution splendor by clicking on the magnifying glass on the photos page. This will bring up your image in a lightbox view, from which you can zoom into the image, up to its full resolution. You will need flash to take advantage of this new feature. This works great for panoramas too.

Thank you to Mike Wiacek for this beautiful image.

How to easily share photos online (and 52 other things you might want to teach your parents)

Monday, December 13, 2010 9:45 AM

Posted by Adrian Soghoian, Product Marketing

My mom recently made a commitment to start photographing things – all sorts of things, to be exact. Everything from my cat’s latest napping spot, my recent college graduation, to my father’s 70th birthday has been captured by my mom’s (recently purchased) digital camera. My four older siblings and I have certainly been grateful to know that we have a designated family photographer taking pictures back home, except with all of us spread out around the country, it’s been difficult to keep track of and share these priceless photos.

I doubt that my family is the only one that has unshared photos lying around. With the holidays coming up, I think there’s no better time to show my mom how easy it can be to share photos online, through services such as Picasa Web Albums.

That’s where TeachParentsTech.org comes in.  A handful of us at Google decided to create a site where “kids” can select basic how-to videos to send to their moms, dads, uncles-- whomever.  Here’s a video I did that shows how to share photos with Picasa Web Albums:

For more videos or to send videos to your loved ones, visit TeachParentsTech.org. Happy holidays!