Kick off the year with updates from Picasa Web Albums

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)

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!

HD quality videos in Picasa Web Albums

Posted by Detlev Schwabe, Software Engineer - Photos
 
More and more, people are capturing videos (and increasingly high-definition videos) with their cameras and phones. Understandably, we’ve been hearing from a number of you who want to upload high quality videos to your Picasa Web Albums, so your photos and videos are organized in one convenient place. We’re happy to now support uploading high-definition (HD) videos, up to 720p1080p, from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums. Whereas before you could upload, store, and share videos shot in 240 or 360p, now you can do the same for your 480p, and 720p, and 1080p (HD) videos too. 

Just like with photos, more pixels means a sharper video picture and a better viewing experience. Clarity and sharpness continue to improve as you move from 240p up to 720p or 1080p.

Now your photos and HD videos can all be stored, organized and shared in one convenient place. To upload your videos make sure to use Picasa, if you don’t have Picasa you can download it from here. We’d love to hear what you think. 

Update 12/13/2010:  Now Picasa Web Albums supports HD videos up to 1080p.

Panoramio Stats: Where are my photos viewed?

Posted by Gyuri Dorko, Software Engineer

Panoramio is a community photo-sharing site for geo-located images. Photos uploaded to Panoramio show up on its website, as well as other places such as Google Earth and Google Maps.

We’re excited to announce that detailed statistics are now available to users directly within their Panoramio account. Think of Panoramio Stats as a photo-specific version of Google Analytics for Panoramio - in other words, a powerful web analytics tool that helps you measure the performance of your photos. With this new feature, you can track the sites from which your photos have been viewed in visually appealing and intuitive reports.

These statistics are available for every photographer and surface granular information about each photo. For example, a reports for the last 30 days can be broken down by referral domain so photographers can see how many times their photos were viewed within Panoramio, on Google Earth, Google Maps, and through Panoramio’s Widget API.

Additionally, Panoramio Stats helps you identify your most recently viewed and most popular photos, and lets you know about new referral sites so you can track the latest online activity around your photos and figure out what types, styles or genres of your photos generate the most interest and help you improve your craft.

As always we’d love to hear your thoughts on this cool new feature, so feel free to leave us your comments in the Panoramio Forum.