Google is in an Anniversary spirit as they release new projects and upgrades one after another. This time it is Google Picasa 3.0 Beta and Google Picasa Web Albums.
Follow up:
I’ve been a long-time user of both products (other than being a Google fan) and I can say that these products are now better and up-to-date. First is Picasa Web Albums new features:
Name Tags
“Gives you the power to quickly label and organize your photos based on who’s in each picture.” It uses face recognition technology to detect who’s who in your photos so you can tag easily.
Creative Commons licensing
Finally, I think I’ve emailed them 10x already for CC licensing in Picasa Web Albums (and I’m sure millions more are bugging them for this feature). However, I still can not find a way to search photos in Picasa Web Albums based on its “license”, similar to what Yahoo!’s Flickr offers.
Just a fair warning, if you do not own the uploaded material, do not forget to change its license to Copyright/All Rights Reserved if in case, your setting is CC by default.
Email Upload
For those whose online lives revolves around their Email, or maybe you want to upload photos you’ve taken with your Mobile Phone, this is good news for you. After you setup your Picasa Web Albums account for Email Upload, you can just send photos to YOUR-GALLERY-URL.YOUR-SECRET-WORD@picasaweb.com. Photos will then be places in your ‘Drop Box’ folder unless you specify an existing album’s name as the subject of your email.
Explore Page
The Explore Page shows the latest uploaded pictures in the Picasa Web world, featured photos, popular tags, and even a mini game wherein you have to guess where the photo was taken!
This is a great way to discover new photos and friends, however, I suggest that they add more features and make this the default page of Picasa Web Albums – and add a Creative Commons section.
Picasa 3.0 Beta
Currently, Picasa 3.0 Beta is only available in the US but I got a copy The new features are:
- Sync to Web – automatically updates online albums when you add or edit photos on your computer
- Picasa movie maker
- Totally-revamped photo collages
- Powerful retouching tool
- Watermarks/Text tool
- Picasa photo Viewer
- Instant Screen Capture
- Print captions
- Drop Box to upload quickly to Picasa Web Albums
- Control Picasa Web Albums settings from Picasa 3
- Move around folders right from Picasa 3
Picasa 3.0 and Picasa Web Albums are more closer this time than Picasa 2 and the old Picasa Web Albums. The Synch to Web itself was what I want to suggest to Google (but never really did) to make it easier to synchronize my local copy and online copy. Picasa Web Albums is my desktop’s (online) extension. Another new feature that I really like and wished – (Picasa) Photo Viewer, see the screenshot below:
Here’s another new feature related to the screenshot above – Picasa Screen Capture and Picasa Watermarks/Text tool. After you are done with retouching, editing, watermarking, just upload it or move it to a folder in auto-sync with your Picasa Web Albums and voila, you are done!
There are more into Picasa 3 and the new Picasa Web Albums than what I have presented. I myself is once again a new student of Picasa, so just keep watch on the official blog as they will start their Picasa 3 series.
Download Picasa 3.0 Beta NOW!! (via Picasa 3 Google Groups)
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