Ah, that's not a good thing. They'll probably know about this since everyone is looking at Larry's album tho. =P

I'm sure they'll fix that soon enough

The same problem exists with Flickr the url is just a bit more difficult to guess

>The same problem exists with Flickr the url is just a bit more difficult to guess

Well not only that if you find yourself typing in the series of random letters that makes an album ("set") address in Flickr then the page will tell you that you need to be signed in to see the page. If you sign in with an account that isn't permitted to see the photos you will subsequently be told you don't have access to the page.

A system like that would be better for Picasa.

Sergey Brin’s Picasa homepage http://picasaweb.google.com/Sergey.Brin
:)

Well isn't he quite the world traveller? How long do you think it'll take before those albums are made private?

Sergey actually made these albums public, really public... not unlisted...

*Is picasaweb like blogger?, i mean.. when i upload my pix to blogger servers the remain on there even after i delete them.

*What about this image?

http://lh6.google.com/sergey.brin/RI3V9_BVABI/AAAAAAAABNM/L1uhuhGaUB0/

Try to delete it and tell us.

You are right. I just deleted this image, and it still shows:
http://lh4.google.com/philipp.lenssen/RI_5YnjyABI/AAAAAAAAABo/iaC6OcZKk_g/search-wars.jpg

I can't see that image Philipp. You sure it isn't your cache? I have a 403 Forbidden Error.

Anyone know if Nathan (aka Nano) Woodward is a Googler? The tester who created this screenshot has him in their contacts...

http://picasa.google.com/web/sharegallery.jpg

And these are his albums:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nanowoodward/

(The only Nathan Woodward I can find much about on the web is a saxophonist... are they his photos?)

I can't see the image anymore either. I suspect it takes some minutes to become deleted....

Well this is the worst feature this cool tool has. I hope it will be fixed realy quick otherwise the tool would only be usefull for pictures you want to be public.

You'd better save your private pictures elsewhere...

i can see that image of search wars.

i´ll do my own test when i get the invite, i think is a big problem for me.

same with blogger.

Sergey's photo album is like National Geographic magazine. It even has appropriately informative captions! It is also quite possibly the most boring online photo album I've ever come across. :P

Unlisted albums do have a use; say you want to let others view certain albums without anyone knowing that they're there. Although a better way would be to impliment share controls like with calendar, where you can specify certain people to share with. I also agree that they need truly private albums

you can only store 1000 photos? I have over 2,400 on Y! photos and it's free.

but Picas is working off 8:1 compression ratios. So a person 250MB is equal to approx 2GB storage!!

where do they say that?
You know what else they need: an API allowing you to embed this in your existing web page (or something like site-flavored search letting you "skin" it to fit your site). Because clicking upload from picasa would be a lot easier than exporting at web resolution, ftp to my website, create an album, and batch add into coppermine

Found this in the help section of picasa web. Pay close attention to the last line. It's pretty clear that Google isn't intending this to be "private" in anyway.

Quote from http://picasa.google.com/web/user_faq.html

What's the difference between public albums and those that are unlisted?

When you upload photos to Picasa Web Albums, you can mark your albums as public or unlisted.

   * Public albums appear on your "My Photos" and "My Public Gallery" pages. These albums can be viewed by anyone who knows the URL for your public gallery. This URL is easy to share – it's short and based on your Gmail username: http://picasaweb.google.com/GmailUsername
   * Unlisted albums do not appear in your public gallery; only you can see them on your My Photos page. Since they don't appear publicly, they're accessible much like an unlisted phone number – anyone who knows the specific URL of an album can view its contents, but there's no directory for finding them.

You can change this setting at any time by selecting an album, then clicking "Edit Album Properties" under the album photo on the left. Please remember, however, that this is a photo-sharing service; in general, we recommend that you don't post any photos on Picasa Web Albums that you prefer not to share with anyone.

Update: the photo in Larry Page's unlisted album has been removed.

I'm not sure I like the sound of this legal disclaimer:
--
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Picasa Web Albums, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content through Picasa Web Albums, including RSS or other content feeds offered through Picasa Web Albums, and other Google services. In addition, by submitting, posting or displaying Content which is intended to be available to the general public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. Google will discontinue this licensed use within a commercially reasonable period after such Content is removed from Picasa Web Albums.

--

What's a commercially reasonable period? So essentially, even though prior to this, they say you (or the party who owns the rights) still hold the copyright, but they can use your work for free throughout Google.

They probably have that to avoid some of the legal issues that arise from their displaying thumbnails in image search; maybe someday picasa web albums will be integrated with image search. The promotional bit is probably so that they can take a screenshot of your album and use it to promote picasa web (although why they couldn't just do it with larry's album I don't know).
By commercially reasonable they probably are trying to cover the fact that due to load balancing and such they can't immediately remove stuff after you delete it (as people observed above; pictures take a couple minutes to delete). But I wish they'd give a more specific time frame as this could be reinterpreted at will

now they use the term unlisted :
[quote]
Unlisted – Not listed in my public gallery (but may still be viewable
if someone knows the album’s name)
[/quote]

Just go my invitation, and Simon you are right.. they now say..

<Unlisted – Not listed in my public gallery (but may still be viewable
if someone knows the album’s name) >

> now they use the term unlisted

They always called this unlisted and "not in public gallery." But besides being confusing, it's also plain wrong:
- Larry Page's album judging by its title on the Picasa page was sorted in the "public" section
- even private albums are listed on some places, like when friends subscribe to updates

Even if they fix those minor details, I still think they need to clarify the interface, unless they want to risk an unusually high amount of accidental publications.

Nathan is also used for all the Gmail POP3 access tutorials. I guess it is a Googler.

A little off subject, but I'm trying to grab the thumbnail image from the RSS feed through php to incorporate this onto my blog. For some reason, it's not grabbing the photo, but the code is rendering properly. Anyone else having this same problem? And yes, I think they need to incorporate more privacy features for the individual albums instead of just "hiding" it.

NateDawg: Are you a Googler? And if so, could you tell us what you do with all the suggestions that are made in this forum? How do you screen all the suggestion that are posted through the Google help pages?

Yeah i am having the same issue with the rss feed. I get the URL for the thumbnail, but the image won't even show in the browser. I get the full rss feed. I can load the regular picture, but not the thumbnail.

You can change the "account name", so I simply changed the account from my gmail account name to a long string of random characters. I agree that true privacy (flickr style) would be preferred, but security thru obscurity is ok for now.

Apologies if anyone has mentioned this already.

I have found that unlisted albums appear in the RSS feed link that is shown in the bottom right corner of the public albums screen.

If you dont want people to see a list including apparently 'unlisted' albums then disable the RSS link in the options.

The RSS feed that you see, when you are logged into your Picasa Web Albums account, is different to the one that everyone else sees.

Only you get to have unlisted albums appearing in the RSS – try logging out, and getting the same feed agaian – all the unlisted albums will have disappeared.

Wayne, you only seem to be able to see the public albums, unless you're logged in as account owner.