Say Goodbye to Picasa, Get Used To Google Photos

Google announced on Friday that it will be retiring Picasa over the coming months as it commits its focus to Google Photos. Perhaps the only thing surprising about this is that it hasn’t already happened. “We believe we can create…

Select Google Software Now Available In Syria

Did you know that U.S. sanctions also applies to software downloads? Generally, a country uses economic sanctions to prevent food and much needed supplies from reaching a rival country to coerce them into cooperation. The sanctions can also apply to…

Google Maps Offers Up 3D Photo Tours Via User Photos

If you’re a regular user of Google Maps, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that photos contributed by other Google Maps users are showing up on the map whenever you hunt down a location. In the Map view, they appear as blue dots…

Flickr Hits 6 Billion Photos

Flickr, the photo sharing site owned by Yahoo, announced today that it has uploaded its 6 billionth photo. “Over the last 5 years uploads have been increasing 20% year-over-year and we love hitting a milestone like this,” says Flickr’s Kay…

Does Picasa Tagging Violate Your Google+ Privacy?

Google+ is really concerned about privacy, or at least, that’s the approach Google takes. When new users sign up, Google has a number of “are you sure” responses when privacy settings are adjusted. Clearly, they are trying to pick up…

RUMOR: Google Rebranding Blogger and Picasa

In an effort to unify its brand, Google plans to rebrand some of their non-Google names, for the public launch of Google+. Two of the biggest properties reportedly getting a new name are Picasa and Blogger. Mashable is reporting that…

Google Creates Big Picasa Storage Loophole

“It’s just a little bit; it doesn’t matter” is a common thought.  People say it to themselves all the time before purchasing or eating something.  And now Google’s said it with respect to Picasa storage space, giving members a lot…

Google Cloud Picker Feature Discovered Prematurely

It has been revealed that Google is testing something called "Google Cloud Picker". It’s apparently not something we’re supposed to know about yet. 

According to those who spotted it, it appeared when they tried to insert files and images into Google Sites and Blogger. A screenshot is now making the rounds, showing that it is tied to Picasa, Maps, Google Docs, and YouTube. 

Share Private Picasa Web Albums Privately with Buzz Followers

Google Buzz now lets you share private Picasa Web Albums privately. When you create a private album, the people you choose to share with will see a notification in Google Buzz.

Google Shows Off New Face Movies Feature in Latest Picasa Release

Google launched a new version of Picasa today. It comes with several new features, but a cool facial recognition feature for slideshows is sure to get the most attention, and is certainly the one Google is putting front and center. It’s called "Face Movies".

Google Integrates Picnik with Picasa Web Albums

Today, Google started integrating some features from Picnik (acquired earlier this year) into Picasa Web Albums. The features allow users to edit photos.

Picasa Web Albums users using English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese versions will be able to use Picnik photo editing.

Add a Background Photo to Google’s Home Page

It looks like Google is trying to attract some of the Bing users who use the search engine for the background images on its homepage. Google has now introduced the ability to personalize your Google home page with a photo of your choosing.

Facebook Photo Tagging Goes Web-wide

Face.com, the developers of the facial recognition technology behind Facebook apps like Photo Tagger and Photo Finder announced that it is opening up its API, which will allow developers to take advantage of this technology anywhere on the web. We had a chat with Face.com founder Gil Hirsch, who talked about the technology, the API, Facebook’s Open Graph, and what kind of apps we can expect to see around this API.

Google Improves Picasa Sharing Options

Google’s photo-sharing site got a fair degree more social this afternoon.  Now, users should find the process of sharing their pictures to be simpler, although Google’s choice of products to feature is perhaps a little on the odd side.

Google Ups Limit On Picasa Albums

To some people, 1,000 photo albums sounds like a lot; a handful each for pets, cars, significant others, and vacations would about cover it.  But serious photographers take lots of pictures, and for the sake of not stifling them, Google’s raised the per-Picasa-account limit on albums to a whopping 10,000.

Google Integrates Panoramio, Picasa

Google Earth, Google Maps, and regular Google search results may sport some more geographically relevant photos in the future.  Today, Google announced that it’s linked Panoramio and Picasa in order to make it easier for people to share pictures.

Panoramio is the geolocation-centric photo-sharing site that Google acquired in 2007.  Picasa is the more traditional photo-sharing site Google’s owned since 2004.  Bringing them together makes sense, even if it’s not the timeliest move Google’s ever made.

Looking at Different Functionalities of Google Buzz

This day will go down in history as the day of Google Buzz. After Google’s press event (which we live-blogged and discussed here) Google put up several posts explaining more about the "buzzworthy" new product.

Gmail and Picasa Storage Can Be Used for Any File

Google recently announced that it was launching a new feature for Google Docs, which would allow users to upload and store any kind of file. What may not have been clear, however, is that this new storage from Google isn’t limited to just Google Docs.

The company is saying that Gmail and Picasa storage can also be used. Google Docs Product Marketing Manager Peter Harbison writes: