JotSpot Photo Gallery

And today's acquisition by Google, is JotSpot, following their recent purchases of YouTube and Neven Vision.

JotSpot is a hosting platform for providing wikis, but it goes beyond the normal range of (mostly) text wikis, by offering a rich application platform, including a number of preprogrammed web applications that can be included within your JotSpot wiki.

One of these is the JotSpot photo gallery.

This offers the ability to

• Create albums and upload photos
• Thumbnail and slideshow views of your photo albums
• Comment on photos when they are uploaded
• View photo info (EXIF) for uploaded photos
• View a photo stream of recently added photos across all albums
• Read a comment stream of recently added comments across all albums

Hardly earth shattering I know, but the very fact that that list is so familiar is indicative of the fact that photo galleries are an intrinsic part of the wide collaborative platform that the web is becoming.  The ability to comment on photos in a gallery, and to get streams of information when more comments or photos are added is a very useful feature.

Picasa Web Albums offers these features of course, and I don't see that the JotSpot Photo Gallery will replace the Picasa Web, but the obvious "fit" for JotSpot's collaborative approach is within the "Documents and Spreadsheets" package that Google already offer.  Picasa Web has a foothold there already, appearing as a "photos" link within the spreadsheets and other documents, and I think that this move is likely to help make this a closer integration.  At the moment you can add just a short caption to the photos appearing in a Picasa Web Album, but close integration could see photos appearing as part of much richer collaborative documents - as cells in spreadsheet for example, or embedded within paragraphs of text in a word processor document.

Even just the ability to add more to the photo album pages themselves within Picasa Web would be immensely useful - I've seen a good number of requests by users to add counters or analytics code to the pages, and JotSpot is all about the ability to easily change page content, so would provide a useful model to follow.

Google makes acquisitions for a number or reasons - including to acquire technology, and to acquire people.  JotSpot certainly has some bright people, and although the wiki technology may be far from unique, it was packaged well.  I look forward to seeing the wiki ideals of easy collaboration making their presence more widespread in other Google properties, and Picasa Web looks a prime candidate for many of these ideas to show up first.

There's a number of posts from Google about this - the main Google Blog carries the announcement of the deal and a follow up that notes how Google have been pushing the collaborative angle for a while already, moving  "calendars, photos and documents onto the web".  Of course the JotSpot blog now also becomes another Google blog as well, and Ken Norton's personal blog also relates the news.

The PicasaWeb ActiveX Uploader control

Picasa Web Albums offer you a number of choices as to how you might upload images to it:

• using Picasa on Windows
• using the iPhoto uploader or the Mac uploader on the Mac
• using a "browse" button to select the file from the Basic Uploader web page
• if you are on IE, using an ActiveX based control

The ActiveX control provides a reasonable upload experience as follows:

• images can be dragged and dropped to it from an Explorer window
• images can be selected via the "Add Photos" button which brings up a file selection dialog.

In both cases, files of type jpg, gif, and png are accepted.  Any other filetypes (including movies files) are simply ignored.

Once selected, the files show as thumbnails within the uploader control - though many png files display simply as a red square, rather than their true contents.

To the right of the drop area, a drop down allows the selection of the uploading quality, choosing between largest size (original image size), large size (limiting the largest dimension to 1600), or medium size (limiting the largest dimension to 1024).

Below the thumbnail is a remove link, that removes the file from this upload.  Uploads are begun by pressing the upload button.  Once an image has been uploaded, the "remove" link changes to the word "completed".

jpg images are uploaded unchanged (subject to being reduced in size if the quality setting dictates), but gif and png files become jpg files after uploading - though retaining the .gif or .png part of their filename, but also gaining an additional .jpg part - thus example.png.jpg.

The ActiveX control shows up in the Downloader Program Files directory as the rather undescriptive UploadListView class, though if you then check out its properties, it does offer the further description of "PicasaWeb ActiveX Uploader".  As of the time of writing this article, it is at version 1,0,0,22, which dates from June 2006, when PicasaWeb was first made generally available.

Checking the web page source code suggest that the ability to pause and resume the upload may be planned for the the next version of the control:

• "When we get the pause upload in place we'll need to switch..."
• <!-- the following two buttons require changes to the ActiveX component -->
  <!-- STATE: Uploading
  <input type="button" value="Pause Upload" onclick=""/>-->
  <!-- STATE: Upload Paused
  <input type="button" value="Resume Upload" onclick=""/>-->

Picasa Web reviewed as a serious Flickr contender

Robert Nyman has reviewed Picasa Web Albums, and considers it to be a serious Flickr contender.

He gives a reasoned runthrough of what's good about the service, and in particular, for him, one of the best bits is the ability to view albums in thumbnail view at one of three sizes - small to get a good overview, medium for more detail, or large which for him means he sees all he wants without having to view the detailed views of individual pictures.

Perhaps what's more interesting is what he considers bad points of the service.  These are:

• No way to have (totally) private photos.
• No way to share specific albums/photos with certain other users.
• No groups.
• A fixed 6 GB storage; it’s actually not that much. For the Flickr Pro account, one has a 2 GB monthly upload limit, but no storage limit whatsoever.

Furthermore, he's worried about what happens when he stops paying for additional space - contrasting statements from Picasa Web which says that when you stop paying, your additional photos beyond the free limit may (my emphasis) be deleted, with the statement from Flickr that says that if your paid subscription expires, you simply drop back to a free account, but that your photos are safe, and can be accessed again by restarting your paid subscription.

In all, he considers that there is room for improvement in both services.

Using recorded macros in Picasa

Squelly has an interesting set of blog posts about using recorded macros to automate repetitive processes in Picasa:

• Using Picasa and AutoHotKey to scan Photo Albums Part 1
• Using Picasa and AutoHotKey to scan Photo Albums Part 2

These both talk about using AutoHotKey to record a macro for a task to be repeated, assigning it to a key, then using it to make light work of doing the repetitive bits of the larger task.

Part 1 covers importing multiple pages of a physical photo album from a scanner, and Part 2 covers cropping individual photos from the album pages.

Both parts have clear simple instructions, and include a video to show the technique in action.  A useful technique indeed.

The same blog also had an earlier post about Backing up your digital photos with Picasa which is a similarly well written tip about using the program to do a task that many people neglect.

Inspiring Ideas: Picasa in Education

Via Mark Wagners blog, Educational Technology and Life I was directed to the wiki he created for his recent Picasa in Education training session.  The wiki itself is very sparce at the moment, but it does link to a PDF handout which provides a list of ways of using Picasa in school, entitled Inspiring Ideas: Picasa in Education.

The list is under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License, and consists of the following suggestions:

1. Slideshows for Back to School Night or Open House
2. Slideshows of Performances, Celebrations, Assemblies, or Field Trips
3. Photo Yearbooks (For a school, a class, or a club!)
4. Photo Journalism, Documentaries, or Dramatizations
5. Time Lapsed Photography (Especially in science!)
6. Class Books (Think big books!)
7. Story Books (“Digital Story Telling”)
8. How-To Guides (Address non-fiction standards!)
9. Exercises in Classifying, Categorizing, or Compare and Contrast
10. Photos as Anticipatory Sets, Writing Prompts, or Review
11. Document Learning (Great for parent conferences!)
12. Photo Portfolios (Can be used for student presentations, too!)

Some graphic skills that could do wonders to Picasa

Via an entry on the Google Code blog, Announcing OpenVis3d, which pointed out that Google is "very interested in computer vision and graphics", I was led on to this Google job opening for a Software Engineer, Computer Vision and Graphics.

There's an impressive list of technologies listed there, and although I rather think this is position is about Google Earth (the clue is perhaps in the question "would you like to build the largest image ever, a petapixel multi-resolution 3D mosaic of the earth using a few thousand computers and millions of source images?"), more than a few of them could be applied to Picasa with good effect.

The list includes

• image stitching - [yes please, it would be great if Picasa could help form panoramics and other stiched images easily]

and a whole load of techniques to help understanding what the picture might contain, to make searching images more precise

• structure from motion or shading
• object detection
• document image understanding
• pattern recognition

Picasa has a couple of "experimental" menu options that allow for searching based somewhat on the content of the images - the search by colour, and the "find duplicates" options, but these are fairly easly attributes of an image to work out.  Deeper understanding of what an image contains, such as objects or text, will add considerably to the search abilities of the program, and indeed at the time of the Neven Vision acquisition, the stated aim was that this facial and object recognition technology would find a place within Picasa.

More quick tips on using Picasa from Hin Man

Hin Man continues to add posts to his tech blog about using the various tools available in Picasa.  He now has specific posts on:

• cropping
• focal black and white
• straighten

These add to his earlier post simply titled Picasa which covered the use of a number of these techniques.

Even more cool (Mac) applications are underway

Greg Robbins, a well known Mac developer in Google's Kirkland office writes a fair sized post on the Google Mac Blog, in which he notes the Mac applications he's been working on at Google:

Though I had worked in large and small companies prior to joining Google, the rapid pace of development here still amazed me. Within weeks, I was helping the Mac developers working on Google Earth get it talking with Sketchup, making Google Video player keep itself up to date, and turning a photo uploader that had been an impressive, experimental 20% project into a polished, easy way for Mac users to take advantage of Picasa Web Albums.

So, a reminder there that the Picasa Web photo uploader started out as a 20% project, but was embraced and turned into a full product.  He then goes on to note that:

Of course, even more cool applications are underway.

I'm sure Mac users are anxiously waiting to see what those could be! 

URLs in captions and comments at Picasa Web Albums

Google are now turning URLs that appear in captions and comments at Picasa Web Albums into clickable hyperlinks.  Unfortunately URLs in album descriptions don't get the same treatment.

The matching picks up the following examples of text and turns them into clickable links

• full URL - http://www.picasa.com
• URL without the http - www.picasa.com
• secure URL - https://www.picasa.com
• email address - support@picasa.com
• URL with parameters - http://picasaweb.google.com/documentingpicasa/DocumentingPicasa/photo#4973650529123762194

Certainly doing this for captions is a very good idea (and I don't see why they don't do it for album descriptions as well in the same way).  However doing it for comments is a double edged sword - it can lead to more spammy comments being left.

Picasa for Educators

As part of their new Google for Educators site, Google lists a whole load of Google features that may be of use to teachers.

They have put together teachers' guides to 12 Google products, including one on Picasa. This notes that as Picasa is a downloaded program it will need to be installed on all computers in the class, then goes on to say:

For use in your classroom, you can organize photos of your class and special events, and make each of your students a photo CD. You can also create Web Albums for students to access from home, and integrate photography into your courses by having kids take lesson-related photos, post them to their Web Albums and present oral reports.

Journalism students can keep all photos for each edition of their newspaper or magazine in one location, so they're easy to see and find. And students of all kinds can use Picasa and Picasa Web Albums to supplement their research and presentations in almost every subject they study. Or, just to organize and share their personal photos with friends and family.

There is also a testimonial from Amber F. Price, Instructional Technology Resource Teacher, Suffolk Public Schools, Suffolk, VA, talking about how her students have used Picasa:

Using Picasa, my students have created slideshows from scratch at the click of a button, created timelines and picture collages of famous Americans, and they have learned how to crop, edit and add effects to photos they have taken with the digital camera. Students can also create an instant web page with their photos, and with the Picasa upgrade students can create a web album of photos. What a great way for students to share their learning!

See also my previous post on Using Picasa for student creativity.

Picasa Web Albums adds videos

As if there hadn't been enough news this week concerning Google and videos, I noticed that the Picasa Web Albums' new features page notes:

Upload videos (only for those who've upgraded to 6GB of storage)

Do any American readers who have upgraded have an example of this they can share? The second class citizens in the rest of the world are stuck with just 250MB, and now they lose out on a video feature as well :-(

I've had a quick look through a number of Picasa team members albums, wondering if any of them had been testing out the feature with their own account, but not spotted anything yet.

Update: Many thanks to haochi in the comments who has provided an example uploaded video. Not surprisingly, the appearance within Picasa Web Albums is of an embedded Google Video player.  The album view shows the thumbnail with a video still, incorporating the same marker icon as Picasa on the desktop uses to mark videos.

The pages still have the same options as for photos: Share video, slideshow, and download. The slideshow plays the video effectively full screen, the share button sends out an email (with fortunately just a thumbnail and a link back to the Album, not the whole video!), and the download button starts Picasa on the desktop, which gives a popup "This album only contains videos. Videos cannot be downloaded at the present time."

Showing Powerpoint presentations via Picasa slideshow

Google have brought together spreadsheets and word processor documents into a combined online service at Google Docs and Spreadsheets.  When compared with a full office suite (ok, or maybe this one), the obvious omission is a presentation module.

However, Google already have a service that partly provides for this - in the slideshow built into Picasa Web Albums.

To illustrate this in use, I took a very well known Powerpoint presentation, and processed it as follows:

• Load the Powerpoint file in Powerpoint
• Select "save as", and select Jpeg as the format, electing to convert the whole presentation when asked
• Upload the individual files to a new album in Picasa Web Albums (either via the Picasa desktop program, one of the Mac uploaders, or simply via the website)
• I then chose to add some "speaker notes" as captions to the individual pictures - unfortunately Picasa Web Albums limits the length of captions to 1024 characters, so you do need to be quite concise.

The result is:

Update - I've removed the direct embed of the slideshow here, since this seems to have stopped working unless you are already logged in to Picasa Web Albums - which is not a very good user experience for many readers of this blog

With many thanks to Peter Norvig, who grants permission to use his presentation in an educational presentation.

 

Yes, the result does lose the slide transitions where they have been used, but in general it seems pretty usable to me.  The speaker notes (captions) can be turned off if desired by the viewer.

Picasa Web Albums exits test phase

Picasa Web Albums have dropped the "Test" designation from the logo, and added a few more features.

The new features include:

• A single page to edit the individual captions of all images in an album (a feature that Picasa calls Bulk Caption Support - which is rather misleading since that suggests updating the captions of many images to all be the same)
• The embed in Blog or Myspace link now has a twistie, which can open or collapse the HTML fragment

The caption editing page is accessed via the new "edit captions" button in the album view when you are logged in.

As well as its intended use for editing captions, it provides a convenient layout for printing, since you get a full set of images, with their captions alongside.

Amusingly not all pages are in sync yet - the What's New page gets to mention these new features, yet still has the "test" rider in the logo.  It also links to a FAQ - which is actually the Picasa Mac Tools FAQ, rather than the general FAQ you might expect from its position in the footer of this page.

Google buys YouTube

There has been masses of comment on the Google purchase of YouTube for $1.65 million in stock.  There is some thought provoking stuff at Geeking With Greg, to choose just one site of many.

Another well thought out piece is Facial Recognition in Videos which considers:

I wonder, however, if part of Google’s technology strategy is to find a way to index and search videos in a whole new way. Google acquired Neven Vision without too much fanfare in August. Neven Vision develops face recognition technology and Google presumably has plans to integrate face / person recognition into Picasa, their photo management and editing application.

...

Could it be that Google has also recognized the potential of a true visual search for information - or pictures - or videos. Could Google have plans to enhance the Neven Vision image recognition technology to apply it to video?

That's a interesting question, and I'm certainly very keen to see what the Neven Vision technology can bring to Picasa and other Google properties.  Video search is hard - even more so than images, since the video may cover many subjects throughout its length, so automatically gathered metadata may not be particularly targeted.  The tags on YouTube go some way to addressing that - and by now controlling the largest chunk of user generated video content available, Google have access to a huge training set for their automatic recognition programs.

Picasa 2.5 build 32.95

There is no indication as to what may have changed (the readme and release notes have not been updated), but current downloads of Picasa are being served the 32.95 build, dated 3rd October 2006.

The previous build was the 32.94 build, from the 15th September.

Update: Presumably the new version was needed to add support for uploading videos.

Picasa and the Mac

Google is reminding its users that it really does quite like the Mac, and so has created a Mac Blog.  They've also put together a page that showcases Google's software downloads for the Mac which includes the Picasa Web Albums Uploaders, which were introduced at the beginning of August.

Picasa also got a further mention on Google's blogs, with an entry on Helpful Resources, which talks about the U2U (User to User) groups which provide support for a number of Google products - including Google Desktop, Toolbar, Picasa, Maps, Calendar.

Picasa on FreeBSD

Google produce Picasa for Windows, and also provide a version that runs on Linux.

The Linux version is the same code that runs on Windows, running using a technology called Wine, that allows Windows programs to be run unchanged on other x86 based operating systems.

It's not all that surprising therefore that some people have tried to run Picasa on other operating systems, for which Wine is also available.

How to install Picasa to FreeBSD is an entry on a Japanese blog that gives instructions how to achieve this for FreeBSD.  Although the title is in English, the instructions themselves are in Japanese.  I think the main point that is made is that (despite the similarities between FreeBSD and Linux) the installation uses the Windows download of the program, not the Linux version.

The command to do this is

% wine /tmp/picasa2-current.exe

Google can be used to give an automatic translation of the page - which gives a page that's still rather difficult to follow.  I think the instructions also list a number of problems that were found with this method - when installed the slideshow does not work, and there is mention of problems with sending emails.  I've not got FreeBSD to try this out on, so can't check out these problems myself.

It's been reported that the Windows version of Picasa also mostly works when run using Crossover Office for Mac (a commercial package based on Wine) on Intel Mac OS X.

What does unlisted mean to Google

Google have 2 major products which offer "unlisted" options - Picasa Web Albums, and now Google Video.

Unlisted on Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums are created as either of

• Public (default) – This album will be listed in my public gallery
• Unlisted – Not listed in my public gallery (but may still be viewable if someone knows the album’s name)

At the moment there is no way to search within Public albums, though their URLs may show up in a search engine if a page links to them.

Unlisted albums started out needing just the album name to access them, which was guessable, but have now been changed so that you need the album's full URL - which incorporates an authkey parameter.  This has improved security considerably, since the URL is not guessable, but URLs can be forwarded to people they were not intended for, or indeed leak into search engines - Google is currently listing around 270 such URLs.

If you view unlisted albums from someone who you have added as a favorite within Picasa Web Albums, then your favorite screen in fact lists the "unlisted albums you have seen" from that user.

Unlisted albums are not private - to do that they would only be accessible to authorized viewers - requiring viewers to sign in before they can see the album.  A half-way house would be to password protect albums - this still suffers from the fact that passwords can be forwarded to other than the intended recipient, but at least passwords are not part of the URL, so don't appear in bookmarks and search engine discovered URLs, and if a viewing password gets into the wrong hands, you can change it, and just tell the rightful recipients the new password.

Picasa gives more explanation in their Picasa Web Albums FAQ. They suggest thinking of unlisted albums like unlisted phone numbers - anyone can see them, as long as they know the URL, but they are not listed in the directory.

Unlisted on Google Video

Google Video allows you to specify options for videos you upload:

• Public - your video will be included in search results
• Unlisted - your video will not be included in search results

Note that this is slightly different from the Picasa Web Albums case, since videos do have a way of searching them, and so this is explicitly about whether they are indexed by that search or not.

Video URLs, even the Public ones, include a long numeric docid, which effectively makes them unguessable.

The Google Help center has more to say on What are "unlisted" videos?

(More discussion on the Unlisted Videos at Google Video Adds "Unlisted" Option and Unlist Your Video.)

F-Spot adds export to Picasa Web Albums

F-Spot is a full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop.  It's written in C# on the Mono platform and released under the GNU GPL.

In essence its very similar to Picasa, as indeed they acknowledge on their Similar Projects page.

The latest version, f-spot 0.2.1, adds the ability to export to Picasa Web Albums (joining the existing ability to export to flickr).  As a first iteration of the function it works, but not without a few problems - it happily tries to upload say .png files to Picasa Web Albums, even though this only accepts jpeg images.

There's a bug open to cover this, where the suggested fix is to auto convert to jpeg on export.  That is what Picasa itself does, showing this dialog:

4 picture limit from Picasa to Blogger

A further issue has surfaced with the newly working Picasa to "Blogger in Beta" BlogThis! button.

The Blogger in Beta Known Issues now also lists:

There is a 4 picture limit when posting from Picasa. If you select more than 4 pictures, only the first 4 will appear in your post.

Since the known issues blog uses tags, you can get all Picasa related problems together on one page.

Using Picasa, from Hin's Tech Corner

As promised in his article which I already covered about using Picasa to improve his photos from the mall, Hin Man has followed through with a more technical explanation of how he used the features of Picasa on the photos.

The features he covers include

• straighten - which as well as being used on the surprising number of images that are not lined up, can also be used to deliberately adjust an angle to change the sense of perspective
• fill light - a lifesaver for pictures that are too dark (often by deliberately not using the flash which would have been ineffective anyway)
• conversion to black and white, and changing contrast - to adjust a poor photo into one that looks sufficiently "arty" to be used to illustrate a blog post
• focal black and white - a "special effect" where some of the image is left in colour, whilst the rest is changed to black and white.

There are flickr photosets of the before and after pictures and of all the mall photos.

BlogThis from Picasa to Blogger Beta

Finally Blogger have sorted things out and got the BlogThis! button in Picasa working against the new version of Blogger in beta.

The announcement on Blogger Buzz says:

One of the last features missing from the new version of Blogger in beta — posting photos directly from Google’s Picasa photo organizer — has been released today. Picasa’s BlogThis! button is the easiest, most convenient way to post photos from your Windows or Linux desktop to your blog, and now you can use this great (and free!) program with the new version of Blogger.

There are a few known issues that we are working to quickly resolve, but we know that Picasa users have been eagerly awaiting this feature and didn’t want to make them wait any longer. Happy photoblogging!

Those known issues that it refers to are detailed as:

The initial release of BlogThis! from Picasa to the new version of Blogger in beta has the following problems that we are working to resolve as quickly as possible:

• Errors posting from Picasa to Blogger if there are html validation problems.
• If you are signed in as a Blogger user, sign out, and then sign back in with your Google account (to post to the beta), you will receive an error. The work around is to close the window and repost from Picasa (signing in with your Google account).
• Once you post to beta, you will not receive a confirmation window. Once the rainbow progress indicator goes away in Picasa, open up your blog in your favorite browser to confirm the post.
• You cannot post from Picasa to Blogger in beta if you have backlinks turned on.

Viewing Picasa Web Albums via Google Gadgets everywhere

Google Gadgets, which provided customized display panels for the Google customized homepage, are now able to be placed on any page.

With this announcement, Google have also come up with some new gadgets, including one for displaying Picasa Web Albums content that displays either someone's gallery, or the pictures in an individual album.

The gadget, by Sophia B. (who has produced a number of Google Gadgets) is configured by giving it a Picasa Web Albums RSS feed - which are available for galleries or albums.  It then shows just one album or image, with click arrows to scroll to the previous or next album or image.  A check box allows for showing the image description - which uses the caption if present, or gives the image filename if there is no caption.

The earlier inbuilt gadget for Picasa Web Albums is not suitable for embedding in pages other than the personalized home page.

Noah Grey and Thomas the teddy bear

Noah Grey worked for a summer as a "creative consultant" for Picasa.

When Picasa 2 launched in January 2005, he wrote about the program, and noted the Easter Egg keystroke that remained largely unpublicized until I wrote about it again recently.  This brings up a teddy bear, which he identifies as his bear Thomas.

Noah has written again about Thomas, having been informed of his new found fame. 

"Frankly, I’m just surprised some where-are-they-now TV show hasn’t knocked on our door yet. His brush with Googledom quickly went to his head, and from his beachfront apartment in Los Angeles, he was soon partying every day and spending every night hanging out on the Sunset Strip with Tux the penguin. Then, of course, there was the whole dark turn his life took after leaving California — all those days of spiked salmon and hard honey weren’t very pretty. But I’m glad to say that he’s cleaned himself up now; he’s straightened his bow tie, and is currently working on his comeback photos, taking them around to other companies to be easter-eggified with... last I heard, he’s even in talks to do a reality show with Clippy."

There's also a link to a November 2002 story and photo of Thomas, from long before he was included in Picasa.

Wordpress plugin for Picasa Web Albums: mPicasaIntegration

mPicasaIntegration is a plugin for Wordpress that allows images from Picasa Web Albums to be included in Wordpress blogs, either inline within the blog posts, or as a gallery.

The author markezz explains:

This plugin requires the feed for each album, that should be integrated. It fetches the feed and saves everything into its own mysql-tables. (They are auto-generated - so no need to install.) When there’s a ‘request’ for an image the plugin grabs it (thumbnail 160×160 fullsize or scaled 640x?) and saves a copy in a cache folder. So we don’t touch the ‘terms of use’ of the picasaweb service since we don’t do hotlinking. Once it has the feed URL, there's an autoupdate function that checks for changes on the picasaweb album and synchronizes this with the locally saved data. Your image titles and descriptions given in picasaweb are used, too. Optionally you can activate ajax-rating (with IP check against double voting) and comments. The comments are spam-protected by a simple email validation (not really applicable) and a captcha (non-image) code.

For Wordpress users it's a familiar download and copy to the plugins folders, after which the plugin can be activated from the Admin Panel.  You also need to ensure that the cache folder is writable.

Albums and individual images are added to pages by a particular tag syntax.  The plugin reads the RSS feed from Picasa Web Albums in order to find the photos available.

The plugin was launched on 11 Sept 2006, and has been regularly updated over the past three weeks to reach a fairly stable 1.0 release.

Picasa processed mall photos

The "once in a lifetime" wedding days photos from James Mok represent a professional's use of Picasa in their work.

Hin Man represents a quite different demographic - someone who wants to improve the look of more casual snapshots gained from a trip to the shopping mall with a point and shoot.  (Actually I'm doing Hin Man somewhat of a disservice here - his photo blog shows that he's a passionate and talented photographer with a keen eye for a good shot - but he did blog about the mall trip which is sort of the point I'm trying to make).

The mall photos were taken with a Casio ex-z750, which Hin notes sometimes struggles with low light pictures.  To counteract this, he shot all pictures without flash, turning up the ev compensation to +3 and then post processed in Picasa afterwards.  The examples he shows have a number of Picasa's special effects applied - including converting some to black and white.

The article concludes with the comment:

When I find time, I will write up on Picasa in my Tech Corner blog page, it is a wonderful editing tool that everyone can grasp without a long learning curve.

I hope that comes soon - its likely to be an interesting take on the program.  For the moment there is just a short teaser in place on the tech blog which says

I find Picasa very useful in organizing photos and it provides a very complete suite of basic editing tools. I highly recommend it.
More details pending ...