Python library for PicasaWeb GData API

Google's official Python library for accessing its GData API has been updated to add support for Picasa Web Albums, as well as code search.  The announcement blog post also lists a number of other notable features that are new in this 1.0.10 release.

The Picasa Web Albums support was actually written outside Google, by Håvard Gulldahl as a part of his picasapush project.  That project now focuses on PicasaFS (which serves up Picasa Albums as a local file system), and PicasaPush itself (a general Picasa Web Albums client).

Picasa 2.7 Beta for Linux

The current version of Picasa for Linux (version 2.2) has fallen behind the features offered on Windows, so a new beta has been provided that brings the Picasa for Linux version up to 2.7.

The step from 2.2 to 2.7 provides the following new features:

• Upload to Picasa Web Albums
• Saving edits back to disk if desired
• Folder hierarchy view
• Better RAW support

and of course plenty of other improvements to existing features.

iPhone version of Picasa Web Albums

Karen Groenink, User Experience Designer at Picasa, announced on the Google Photos blog that there is now an iPhone optimized version of Picasa Web Albums.

There is an iPhone only slideshow feature, but also the whole Picasa Web Albums mobile experience has been optimized for the iPhone - "Pictures are proportioned to fit the iPhone's screen dimensions, and we've tweaked the key buttons so they're easier to navigate with your fingertips".

Picasa team finally have a blog

It's been a rather low key launch (I track Picasa news closely, and I missed it for 2 months!), but the Picasa team finally have an official Picasa blog.

Actually it carries the tagline "The Official Google Photos Blog: News, tips and tricks from the Picasa team at Google", and as the first post "Ready for our close-up" explained, the Picasa team

"works on more than just Picasa and Picasa Web Albums -- we're responsible for a variety of photo-related technology here at Google, such as hosting Blogger's image-uploading infrastructure, developing Orkut's photo picker, and creating Mapplets for browsing geotagged photos inside Google Maps."

So far there been a low number of posts, in order

• Ready for our close-up - the introductory post, by Jason Cook
• Lesser-known (and secret) Picasa features - a useful run down by Mike Herf on some special syntax you can use when searching within Picasa
• Lesser-known (and secret) Picasa features, cont'd - the continuation of Mike Herf's article, where he talks about backup being a way to transfer Picasa setup between machines, and also mentions the otherwise undocumented Radial Tint filter.
• New Mac Uploaders released - as the title says
• New languages & new features for international users - Pam Benjatanaporn mentions the new languages that Picasa supports, and also that various Picasa Web Albums features gained
• Better connections with Picasa Web Albums - Mark Geller talks about 5 companies who use the Picasa Web Albums API
• Tune into Picasa Web Albums on Tivo® - Derek Collison announces the tie up with Tivo to show off Picasa Web Albums on your living room TV
• Fixing common photography problems - a reminder by Chris Mysen about how to use the "I'm feeling lucky" and other Picasa tuning controls to improve photo appearances.

Upload from Picasa to Facebook

The Facebook PicasaUploader gives the ability to upload images to Facebook directly from the Picasa desktop application.

The application is a plugin for Picasa, which adds a new button to Picasa's button tray.  It's apparently written by a third party developer, neither affiliated with Google nor Facebook, but appears well executed.

Version 1 was released in June 2007, with a number of bug fix releases appearing since.