Picasa Tip: A Picasa Plug-In for Live-Writer

This is actually a Picasa tip and a Blogging tip.  Many travelers have blogs (simple, instant, websites used as journals, photo albums, or opinion pages) to share their travels with friends and family.  Two very popular (and free) blogging platforms are Blogger, and Wordpress.  I use them both.  Blogger is the easier of the two.  Microsoft Live also offers a blogging platform on Windows Live and Microsoft offers a blog-writing tool called Live Writer.  See this video on Live Writer(member tutorial video).  The beauty of Live Writer is that it works for all the popular blogging platforms, not just Windows Live.

Although I like Live Writer a lot, I haven’t been using it for my personal blog (on Blogger) because I use a lot of pictures and the pictures come from my Picasa Web Album.  I use Picasa Web Album’s ‘link to this picture’ feature, and it just seems easier to do that while working in Blogger than with Live Writer.

UNTIL …

I discovered the Picasa Web Album plug-in for Live Writer!  How cool!  Now all my Picasa Web Album photos are available to me with just a couple clicks.  I am using Live Writer for all my blog posts now.

If you use Live Writer, you’re familiar with the Insert section of the sidebar.  This contains all the basic tools for creating links, photos, and maps.  If you look at the bottom of the list, you’ll see the option to Add a plug-in.  Click on that and you can spend hours perusing all the possibilities.  The one I’m talking about is called Picasa Image Plugin.  If you don’t see it in browsing around, you can search for Picasa.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, you will see ‘Picasa Link…’ in your Insert bar.  Click on that, enter your username and password for your Picasa Web Album, and in a couple seconds, you should see a list of all your albums.

Select the album to work with and you’ll see all the photos.  Adding a photo to your blog is as simple as clicking on the little left arrow next to the photo you want.  The picture will be inserted exactly at the point where your cursor is in your text.

You must be online

In my previous article about Live Writer, I promoted the fact that you can create your blog entries while you are offline.  This is a big reason to use Live Writer for travelers who don’t always have a good Internet connection.  But, to use this Picasa plug-in, you must have an Internet connection to your Web Albums.  You can always use the ‘Insert Picture …’ button to get photos from your My Pictures folder on your computer.  Then Live Writer will upload them to Blogger (or whatever Blog system you’re using.)

If you don’t have a blog now, then just stow this tip away.  The point to learn is that Picasa has gained support from lots of directions.  It’s good to be popular!

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Embedding Web Album Photos Elsewhere on the Web


• Upload Photos to the Web

 

 

 

Picasa Tip: Synchronized Web Albums

If you haven't made a Web Album yet, you really need to. It is just the best way to share photos with friends and family. Picasa Web Albumsis actually a separate program.(Member Tutorial Video.Upload Photos to the Web)

It's a website that anyone can use whether they have Picasa on their computers or not. But, if you do have Picasa on your computer, it makes it so much easier to make a Web Album. The two programs are partners, if you will. In Picasa, you just select the photos you want in a web album and click the Upload button. See this previous article for more.

A new feature in Picasa 3 is the ability to Synchronize a folder or Album on your computer with an album on the Web. What that means is that you don't even have to click the Upload button! All you have to do is add a photo to the folder or album in Picasa, and as long as you're online, Picasa will automatically upload that photo to the Web Album.

Here's how I use it. We have a membership to Thousand Trails (TT) and Resorts of Distinction (ROD), so we like to stay in those parks whenever we can. If we stay in a TT park in January, the pictures will go in my January folder, stay in an ROD in June and those go in my June folder. Then, I will add the best ones to my TT-ROD Album. This is just to have them all together for organization. You can see the web album at this link.  I have another one for State Signs.

With the Album selected in Picasa, all I have to do is to click on the 'Sync to Web' button. It will pop up a dialog box, but if you don't want to make any special settings, you can just click Yes. From now on, any picture in the album on my computer will be automatically uploaded to the one on the Web.



Not only will it upload the picture once, but, if you change the picture on your computer, it will re-upload the picture to the Web.

It truly boggles my mind how easy this is. Try it. You'll like it

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Sync Photo Sort Order