Thursday, July 9, 2009 3:35 PM
An engineer on our team, Ping, has over 700 Picasa Web Albums Fans. Each of these Fans has signed up - by clicking "Add to Favorites" - to be notified each time he uploads new public content. In this way, the uploads Ping wants to share publicly are broadcast to the people who care about his photos.
"Add to Favorites" has been around for awhile, but up until this point it hasn't always been easy to know which of your friends and family use Picasa Web Albums. Enter "Suggested Favorites." Similar to the way chat contacts are handled in Gmail, we'll suggest friends and contacts who you may want to add as Favorites, allowing you to easily keep track of what they're sharing with the world in their public albums.
Of course Favorites is a two way street. While you can find more photos from people you care about, this means that they can find you too, which isn't always a good thing. For this reason, we're also introducing the ability to block certain users. With three distinct levels of sharing, Picasa Web Albums already allowed you control over exactly who can see your photos. The addition of Block helps you ensure that the activity in your public albums isn't marred due to unwanted activity from a specific user.
Blocking a user immediately removes them as a Fan, preventing them from receiving future email notifications about your public albums. It also cuts off their ability to comment on your photos and deletes all their old comments across your gallery.
