Picasa web albums is up and live and accepted limited testers.
I entered my name and it said my account was ready.

http://picasaweb.google.com/

Honestly, I'm not a fan of the switch away from Atom feeds. Bad move.

I can see it Philipp – a face of someone I don't know. :-)

Hopefully Google's intention is to show web album results in google image search.

As a start this feature is not too bad either.

But sure it can improve a lot.

What I like a lot are the experimental things. I did mention before that a search feature would be great in which pictures can be searched for on certain properties of that picture. The experimental thing is already a great start. It should be integrated in the web application too now.

The geo stuff seems to me great too but I'm not that experienced in this kind of matter.

>Hopefully Google's intention is to show web album results in google image search.--Photricity
Why?A private album is better than that. Furthermore, you can also move some of your pics into the public area.

I've posted this thread to Google Picasa suggestion form. Let's hope again that they provide some feedback...

For those complaining about the controls on the slideshow: leave your mouse still for a few seconds and they go away

"You've been invited to create web albums using Picasa"
Got it, yay! =D

theres a security bug, relating to picasa and firefox, that i'm first going to report to google

Well InsaneNinja, as we all use both, what should we care about?

Seeing as your all the ones using picasaweb, your the ones at risk, but i guess it will be fixed in a matter of hours anyway...

I click "web albums" on the new Picasa program, while logged into another name on firefox, and this screen comes up.

---------------------------

You are trying to access LH2 with the following Google Account:
   Username1gmail.com

However, you are already logged in with a different Google Account:
   Username2gmail.com

You can either cancel this request, or switch to a new Google Account to access LH2.

[Switch Accounts] [Cancel]

---------------------------

No password entry, full access to gmail and other services.

No idea if this works with IE as well.

Has anyone noticed this already? When you go to "Settings" – http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/settings – under "What is your Public Gallery URL?" you can click the "Want to add a new Google username?" link to add another username to your account. It says:

<< Create a new username and change your URL.
Once you create a new Google username you will be directed back to the Web Albums Settings page where you can select your new username to be your URL. >>

I tried adding some of my existing usernames in there, but that didn't work, so I made one up and it added it as an option. After changing to that option, not only could you view my photos on both URLs, but that username also now appears as "taken" when you try to registered it as a Gmail account.

Since there's no password associated with the username, you can't even login as that user – so the sole purpose for that username is for your Picasa Web Albums Public Gallery URL.

Isn't that a bit weird? I don't know if there's a limit to the number of "Google usernames" you can add to your account, but it's a bit of a waste to just use up Google usernames like that – I mean, they don't even let you do that in Gmail! (Trying to send an email to the new username gets a "No such user" error message returned.)

-Tony

i fully agree, they should prepend created names with a google "illegal character", such as an underscore

Philipp Lenssen said earlier:

> Side-note... Google displays two different 404 sometimes
> when you play around with user names. Adrian Graham
> is the Google Picasa guy:
>
> picasaweb.google.com/adrian.gr ... Adrian Graham
> picasaweb.google.com/adrian.gr ... Adrian GrahamX

And what I've said above seems to be the reason behind this. If the username exists as a username linked to Picasa, you get the standard "Not Found – Error 404" error. However, if the gallery never even existed, you get Google's more colorful "404 NOT_FOUND: Unable to process request." error.

My usual username:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyruscoe

An additional username I've selected as my Public Gallery URL:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyruscoe2

Another additional username I've created but haven't got selected:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyruscoe3

Another username that doesn't exist:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyruscoe4

Tony: it seems like real security amateurs. What should we think of that? Nice research BTW, you too Ninja...

Philipp,

I added you as a favorite. Then you uploaded the unlisted test album, which appears in my Recent Activity pane. This makes it even easier to find unlisted albums:

http://andrewhitchcock.org/images/picasarecentactivity.png

One downside that I usaully get from all new Google products is that they are gmail accounts only. Not all Google Accounts end with @gmail.com such as mine. So this is a downside as I hate switching back and forth between different accounts when my main one is not ending with @gmail.com :(

> I added you as a favorite. Then you
> uploaded the unlisted test album, which
> appears in my Recent Activity pane. This
   makes it even easier to find unlisted albums:

I had the "Just a test" album public before I made it unlisted. However, my album named "private" was always unlisted (of course, it's nothing really private, just a test). Does it show in your activity pane as well?

[moved from new thread. -Philipp]

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/v/1b37/img/lh.jpg

Picasa Web Albums TEST?

what happen to Beta?!
Google is trying new names to theyre products? first, Google Labs, now Test?:/

Yes, this is quite strange. What's the point behind that?

I think they don't want to imply picasa is a beta, only that they're "test"ing a new feature of it

>Does it show in your activity pane as well?
Yes it shows on mine. So if anyone adds you as a favorite they can see ALL your albums

Isn't it a bit weird that they're passing messages around using the query string?

i.e. http://picasaweb.google.com/home?msg=Check%20out%20Google%20Blogoscoped%20for%20the%20latest%20udpates%20on%20Google%21

Click the link and read the message at the top of the page.

(No harm done really. At least HTML injection doesn't work...)

That is a bit odd. I have finally got access to the service, and I have mixed feelings overall. It is not too good right now, but I think it has the potential to be pretty nice. Upload times are brilliant.

>Isn't it a bit weird that they're passing messages around using the query string?

Lycos (e-mail atleast) does the same thing. I made my sister think the site was giving a personalised error message, even though it wasn't logged in.

Havn't seen it from google before though

> Isn't it a bit weird that they're passing messages
> around using the query string?

That's bad for Google to allow this. While you can't inject HTML you can create misleading "system alerts" like this one:
http://picasaweb.google.com/home?msg=Please%20send%20your%20password%20to%20hackerAtNicedomainbutspamOrg%20to%20reactivate%20your%20account

I got invited, but I run Linux. It gave me the strangest login: a box with two prompts: "Login to LH2" then on the next line "Login to Picasa Web Albums" then the usual email/password boxes.

When I logged in it told me that only Windows was supported, but would I like to continue anyway? I clicked "Yes", then it allowed me to browse my disk to identify the images to upload (I don't have Picasa installed).

When I clicked "OK" to upload the images, nothing happened. I guess we will see upload-from-disk working without needing Picasa at some stage.

Ron,

You don't need Picasa now to upload. From Google's Help page:"

"I don't have Picasa. Are there any other ways to upload photos into my Picasa Web Albums?

Although this feature is designed and optimized for easy web upload via Picasa, you can also upload photos into a web album using your browser. Just follow these steps:

Visit picasaweb.google.com and click "New Album" or select the album you want to upload photos. You will need to logged in.
Click "Upload Photos" on the left side of the page. If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer, this will open an HTML upload control that lets you upload multiple photos at once. The first time you use this feature, you'll need to install the Active X plug-in when prompted. If you're not using IE, you will still be able to upload photos individually.
Click "Add Photos..."
Select the photos you want to upload and click "Upload."

Philipp, I can't see the private album. Could it have been made before I favorited you, or did you make it after the test?

My "private" album (actually, only "unlisted") is here, I made it after the "Just a test" album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/philipp.lenssen/Private

Okay, that one didn't show up.

I noted that in your blog article you stated . . .

"Another feature is that you can order prints from photos through providers such as Kodak or Walmart."

I have searched and searched . . . would you mind pointing that out?

I think that was meant for the client soft. There is a big button down right: Order prints... (It is not meant for the web version I think.)

Yeah, that is a bummer . . . in order for me to share with my daughter (who has yucky dial-up) she has to download the pics to Picasa, then order and upload them again. Of course, photo-quality pics are about 2MB each! Hopefully, they will add the prints feature to the web soon . . . it would be great business!

You could make Google a suggestion through
http://picasaweb.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=feedback&submit=Continue