Wednesday, August 16, 2006

 

Picasa Web Albums adds email digests

There is a new feature just appeared on the Picasa Web Albums settings page. Between the existing Public Gallery URL, and the Content Controls, there is now a section that allows you to set up an Email Digest.

It looks like Google are defaulting this to a weekly digest, to get the news out to people, and then giving them an option in the email to turn it off. The 4 choices given are no digest, or at a frequency of daily, weekly, or monthly. The description alongside explains:

What is an Email Digest?

When people you have marked as favorites create new albums, upload more photos, or comment on your photos, we send you a summary of these activities to your email address at the interval you specify.

The digest email itself is an HTML formatted email as follows:

The links in the email for changing settings are generic - they just take you to the main Picasa Web page, where you can then log in if needed. This means that you can forward the email to someone else without security issues.

The images do of course link through to the album that has changed. The thumbnails shown are embedded in the email, not just links to the Picasa Web site, so they can be seen when offline, or when external images are turned off (as is the case with most email programs these days).

I didn't have any new comments for this example to notify me about, but the source of the email indicates that they would follow after the list of changed albums.

(This should have appeared on my Documenting Picasa blog, but I'm having a few publishing issues at the moment).


Update:It did eventually make it to the Documenting Picasa Blog.

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Sunday, August 13, 2006

 

Most popular tags on flickr

Whilst thinking about Searching Picasa Web Albums I did a bit of investigation into the most popular tags on flickr.

flickr provide a tag cloud, but that is just a visualization of the data, and I couldn't see that they provide the data in a direct form anywhere on the site. However, with the aid of the flickr API I was able to take all the words in the tag cloud, and feed them to the API, to get a count of how many matching tags there were for each word. In addition, I also fed those same words to the "free text" search API call, which looks for the word in more than just the tag field - considereing comments and descriptions for example.

The table below shows 3 columns - the tag I searched for, the number of tags of that word found, and the number of photos found using a free text search. The table is ordered by popularity of tags.

wedding16974552269471
party14756812350563
family11600571557739
travel11135761275557
friends10939971649955
japan10742811167494
vacation10204231162147
london9271721100791
beach8647281493985
california837012960129
birthday8296701371859
trip8173241786838
nyc774884879161
summer7323871122946
nature728059816467
italy686976776812
france669406759215
me6641112886782
paris662024786996
art6435631104574
flowers6278301439335
sanfrancisco618604620523
europe610237708284
china604334707039
flower5968911439327
newyork572049575557
water565749973599
people552582975146
music551493740282
cameraphone544369634883
australia543923611789
christmas537883834827
usa531563619628
sky527376756538
germany526931595724
new5265492723772
canada512067612492
night5104661210035
cat504840852699
holiday501819703551
park4981781820673
bw495568514618
dog486692859611
food478691684164
snow478068643189
baby463882837637
sunset462862752411
city4468661294211
chicago445639529140
spain441158491290
taiwan437633461265
july4350571033708
blue431367862404
tokyo427181505507
england425920510575
mexico406752535804
winter403827579849
portrait396759644632
green394571671410
red393719848593
fun392680688356
india386409446473
architecture383526423993
garden382303981077
macro380663428872
spring373441759260
thailand368331411644
uk362555468979
seattle357614421000
festival357137658357
concert350224471579
canon349327580369
house3474041236984
berlin343694403534
hawaii340744384573
street3395031036943
lake324783937873
zoo324442460997
florida322534387322
june321243729667
may316693903231
white313703867135
vancouver312657383569
kids312551635702
tree3125421019630
clouds307407479446
toronto304648359194
barcelona293035341533
geotagged292631294655
home291227778635
sea288469546365
day2872872136618
texas284851360478
scotland284615309559
car281730788266
light281436909673
halloween280515362042
camping279238654077
church273001535265
animals270757542946
trees2700981019628
washington266921470046
river266128668903
nikon265291393117
april262835581807
boston261935330032
girl258663857847
ireland258647305876
graffiti257081283560
amsterdam256794307304
rock256142795001
landscape254799343825
blackandwhite252987253364
cats252971852700
newyorkcity250213250430
san2477391271943
rome246027286082
roadtrip245326255484
urban244511321849
honeymoon241904271611
ocean240941359337
dc235053363788
newzealand232776233573
march231491532229
black231180708269
museum230643562979
york230193868773
hiking226067398781
island224110844505
mountains223030759360
yellow221515347290
sydney221447278644
sun218685503464
hongkong216193222298
show216155850535
graduation214681306454
color213967579521
film210509351853
mountain210046759360
animal208416542946
losangeles207932208309
school205891550486
moblog205613210954
photo2050472308835
dogs203610859613

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Monday, August 07, 2006

 

Documenting Picasa

I've mentioned Picasa, the photo software from Google, a number of times on this blog.

Of all the Google services, this is perhaps the worst documented (with no API, and a tendency from Google of making the old forum / groups support postings unavailable), so I'm looking to do something about that. I've created a website called Documenting Picasa, together with the Documenting Picasa blog, which both look to cover the downloadable Picasa client software, and also Picasa Web Albums.

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