Today I learnt that Google is testing a new web service: Picasa web albums. This service will allow Picasa users to upload photos to a online album from where others can see and download the photos much like Flikr is offering for quite some time now.
First I did submit a request to obtain an invitation to use Picasa Web Albums which is bound to try the new version of Picasa as well. A bit longer than 1 hour took to arrive a reply from Google with the invitation email. I followed the link given in the email and got the presentation message offering to download the latest Picasa beta verion. Right after downloading it, I installed it. The installation was easy and I guess it is exactly the same installation process if you already have Picasa in your computer or not. I run Picasa beta and the first thing it did was updating all the thumbnails photo of my huge collection, so it took some time to get the job done.
At first glance there are some minor changes on the program interface. The most noticeable is the added button at the left side of the Email button: the Web Album button. Oohh! Also there have been included two new albums within the Albums folder: Screensaver and Starred Photos. The icons used for the album folders are also new.
The upcoming new version of Picasa also has the following improvements:
- The caption entry line can now be edited by moving the cursor. No more ahving to delete everything to correct a speel mistake.
- Picasa has a new option to GeoTag photos using Google Earth, althought I didn't manage yet to make it work.
One of the first things I tested was the HTML export option. This option let the user export an album or selection of photos to a web page by means of HTML templates. I have created my own Picasa template to export my photo to my personal webpage. Yes, I know its a bit stupid having a personal webpage with photo album and Picasaweb, but I like redundancy :P The point is that I complained about Picasa adding extra blank lines after every HTML line of code in the template. Google replied that such a "feature" will addressed in the next Picasa version. Well, it isn't at all. So I still get those extra blank lines in the HTML files produced by Picasa. Om!
Okay. Bored of so much text, then have a look to some screenshots.
This is all I wanted to say for now. Stay tuned for an update on Picasa and Picasaweb.
