1. danielbigham's Avatar
    UPDATE: I have since made an app for doing this:
    Picasa Sync

    The PlayBook is a great platform for showing other people your photos... the screen is beautiful, and it works well to sit on a couch together and flip through photos.

    But this use case is limited for me because I rarely have my recently taken photos on my PlayBook. That's what the BlackBerry Desktop software is for, but I also don't want *all* of my photos on my PlayBook, I only want the best ones, ones that I'd like to share with other people. Since I've already gone to the effort of starring my favorite photos in Picasa, I don't want to go through this process all over again when using the BlackBerry Desktop software, choosing which photos to sync. And my PC that has the BlackBerry Desktop software happens not to be the family PC that photos get put on. Ugh.

    Can anyone else relate to this dilemma?

    In an ideal world, I could just fire up a program on my PlayBook, from anywhere in the world, click Sync, and have it copy all of my starred Picasa photos onto my PlayBook.

    Does this sound appealing to anyone else?
    Last edited by danielbigham; 11-03-11 at 04:06 PM.
    10-15-11 02:50 PM
  2. danielbigham's Avatar
    hmph... I figured this would be something other people were struggling with too. If not, do you guys have recommendations on how to keep your PlayBook up-do-date with your recently taken photos?

    What existing methods are there for doing this quickly and easily? Do people generally feel that using the BlackBerry Desktop software is good enough?
    10-16-11 02:46 PM
  3. jeffcrn's Avatar
    I just had a OCD day of photo storing and moving. I use Picasa for the Mac and just uploaded everything from the folder on my PB after I connected it. What I do is upload into a Album I call "Sort-PB" or "Sort-BB" etc. Then I sit down and do all my organizing at my Mac.

    I have not tried with iPhoto yet, it will basically import from anything that you connect that has photos in it, and when it is finished, it ask if you want to keep or delete the pics on the device. I'll probably go that route once I get some time to fool around with it, I just haven't had the time to sit down and take a few hours for it.

    A good Picasa app would be awesome though, I'm trying to move out of the Apple ecosystem a little more and I like the integration with Picasa and G+ and other Google goodies.
    10-18-11 01:04 AM
  4. rickgainsmith's Avatar
    Funny you bring this up, I was doing the same thing today!

    Picasa Web works well via the browser, you could have a folder of favs... Download album whenever you want to 'sync'.

    Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com
    10-18-11 02:51 AM
  5. danielbigham's Avatar
    Cool... thanks for the feedback guys. I think I'm going to create the app... it will be simple, the goal being to allow you to get your starred Picasa photos onto your PlayBook with as little fuss as possible. My current thinking is to have:

    1. A way to log into your Google account.
    2. Basically one button that you press any time you want it to sync, and it does the rest for you, copying all of your albums from Picasa Web onto your PB. (and as mentioned, getting your Picasa starred photos from your PC to Picasa Web is as simple as flipping the "Sync to Web" switch in Picasa)

    Is that an ideal solution or does it need more features than that to be useful? Is it reasonable to sync all Picasa Web folders onto the PlayBook, or must it have a way to exclude folders?
    10-18-11 09:30 PM
  6. danielbigham's Avatar
    I coded this app and submitted it to app world... went live today:

    Buy Picasa Sync - Download Picasa Sync - Buy Apps from BlackBerry App World

    I think it turned out very nicely!

    If you try it out let me know what you think.
    11-01-11 06:45 PM
  7. anon(3641385)'s Avatar
    Daniel I'm interested but what I'm unsure about is what you mean by:

    'NOTE: This application is not intended to publish your BlackBerry� PlayBook™ photos to Picasa Web Albums.'

    Can you upload your pics into Picasa from this app as well? Or just download?

    PS: It's $1.25 in Australian, and yet our $ is worth more than USD .... not your issue .... but not fair, lol.
    11-01-11 09:14 PM
  8. danielbigham's Avatar
    Right... there are two meanings of "sync":

    1. Download
    2. Upload

    The purpose of this app is to *download* photos from Picasa (running on your computer) to your PlayBook.

    It is *not* to upload photos from your PlayBook to your computer and/or to the web.

    Does that answer your question?

    I'm curious too whether people are looking for something that does #2 instead of #1.
    anon(3641385) likes this.
    11-01-11 09:45 PM
  9. anon(3641385)'s Avatar
    Thank you for clarifying.

    Yes - I'm interested in numbers 1 and 2.
    11-01-11 09:53 PM
  10. danielbigham's Avatar
    Cool, that's good to know that people also want to do #2... makes sense. That probably wouldn't be that hard, perhaps just another couple hours of work.

    Would it make sense to have the feature upload all photo folders to Picasa Web Albums, creating one album per folder?
    anon(3641385) likes this.
    11-02-11 09:35 AM
  11. snoozininsomniac's Avatar
    hi daniel, i was wondering, does the sync allow for viewing other members' albums that you follow?

    i use my picasa lightly but i do follow several friends and their albums...it would be nice to be able to view their albums as well as my own.

    and as for upload, i think being able to choose which picture in which folder to upload to (like the desktop client) is important. by that i mean if i want to upload an album there may be some pictures i dont want to upload....at the same time, if i want to upload specific pictures in different folders, being able to add to an upload queue would be lovely
    Last edited by snoozininsomniac; 11-02-11 at 11:37 AM.
    danielbigham likes this.
    11-02-11 11:35 AM
  12. anon(3641385)'s Avatar
    Cool, that's good to know that people also want to do #2... makes sense. That probably wouldn't be that hard, perhaps just another couple hours of work.

    Would it make sense to have the feature upload all photo folders to Picasa Web Albums, creating one album per folder?
    Daniel thanks for taking a continued interest!!!

    I usually choose specific pics to upload - I don't upload all to Picasa.

    And I wouldn't want to upload all from playbook cause of the data volume involved.

    If I want to do a bulk upload I'll side load back into desktop. For me it's more when I want to send a pic then and there and I'm not near to the desktop or lap top. Make sense?
    danielbigham likes this.
    11-02-11 05:48 PM
  13. danielbigham's Avatar
    Hey snooz,

    The sync app doesn't allow viewing other members albums. I think there are possibly some existing PlayBook apps for that...

    Good point about selecting pictures being an important feature for an uploader. I'm the same way. For me, I only want to upload "starred" photos -- problem there is that the photo client on the PlayBook doesn't support starring photos, and even if it did, apps probably wouldn't have access to that meta data. (doh)

    Having the need for UI to see the list of albums, and UI to see pictures and add them to a queue means that it's a bigger project than my simple Picasa Sync app, but it probably wouldn't be too hard. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks!
    11-02-11 08:25 PM
  14. danielbigham's Avatar
    Hey Heavens1,

    Sounds like your thoughts are very similar to snooz's thoughts. Thanks for clarifying! I'll keep that app idea in mind.

    Actually, if one goes to the trouble of building UI for browsing photos and selecting a bunch to upload, it would make sense to not only allow uploading to a Picasa Web Album, but a variety of places:

    - Picasa Web Albums
    - Facebook (although that's already covered reasonably well by the Facebook app)
    - Twitter (although again, there are probably apps for that (?))
    - Email (that would be tricky though)
    - Google +
    - Smug Mug
    - flickr (are there PlayBook apps for that?)

    So yeah, come to think of it, it would be pretty powerful to have a slick app where you could look through your photos, add them to a queue, and from there, share to a variety of places.

    I'm just realizing that that is exactly one of the key features of Picasa on the desktop... lol...

    So, if one were to do this uploading, given that you can already do that on the desktop, what is the real use case? Is it for sharing photos that you've taken on the PlayBook? I suppose, ... that's probably the main use case.

    Cool. This is a good app idea. How much would you be willing to pay for it???
    11-02-11 08:31 PM
  15. anon(3641385)'s Avatar
    Lol, Daniel, I like being invited into your thinking!!!

    I can tell you re Twitter, it's very easy from within BB Twitter to send a pic from your phone.

    Yeah - the only reason that I would use the Picasa type app on the pb is to share pics that I've taken with the pb AND I'm not in a position to side load onto the pc/laptop.

    So, as to the concept of sharing - my guess is that the pb os2 will allow for pics to be attached to a number of native apps within the pb like bridge email, and bbm and bbm groups when that happens.

    As to Picasa's use then - it's to send the pic from pb to Picasa Web albums as a deposit - but not necessarily to send on from there.

    In other words, it is also like a back up of the pics if they're sent to Picasa. As well as the fact that the account that they're sent to may be able to be accessed by permitted others.
    Ittles likes this.
    11-03-11 12:46 AM
  16. danielbigham's Avatar
    Good point about OS2 probably allowing pics to be attached to native apps... that might open up some decent functionality.

    Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
    11-03-11 04:05 PM
  17. morrsn's Avatar
    You. Are. Awesome.

    Now this is the kind of app that should be featured or atleast in the "newest" section instead of all that digi media apps bullsh*t.

    Simple yet so usefull

    I'd also like to be able to upload albums to my picasa account.

    Thanks for the app!
    11-03-11 04:59 PM
  18. kunamvahees's Avatar
    Daniel Bigham:

    Thank you for writing an app for a needed feature, instead of complaining that is not available. Also I love your Slideshow app idea. That is amazing. Its too bad, I have no one with Playbook to share album over chat and other party should have that app also an issue. I understand its a must to make it work. Good ideas.

    1. Can you please add more screen shots to the app in appworld please?
    2. Can we download from more than one Picasa user accounts? i have 3 user accounts, can I sign out and sign back to different one to download?
    3. When downloading again, will that only download pictures not already downloaded? Some way to sync so no duplicates exist? Could you add this if it doesnt exist yet?
    4. Any one confirming it works on OS2?
    11-04-11 03:04 PM
  19. danielbigham's Avatar
    I submitted version 2.0 of Picasa Sync to App World this evening which additionally allows you to select which albums to download. The default is that all albums are selected, so if you want the app to behave as it does now, there's no additional work, but if you want to deselect albums, you can do that, and the next time you sync, those deselected albums will stay deselected unless you re-select them.
    11-23-11 09:08 PM
  20. rickgainsmith's Avatar
    Can wait to download it! Thanks so much for adding this feature!
    danielbigham likes this.
    11-24-11 05:18 AM
  21. danielbigham's Avatar
    Can wait to download it! Thanks so much for adding this feature!
    You're welcome!
    11-24-11 07:20 AM
  22. rickgainsmith's Avatar
    Daniel,

    Quick thanks again for your software! Adding the ability to select folders is fantastic! Great piece of software. I will now try out your iTunes Sync! :-)

    Cheers!
    danielbigham likes this.
    11-25-11 10:58 PM
  23. danielbigham's Avatar
    Daniel,

    Quick thanks again for your software! Adding the ability to select folders is fantastic! Great piece of software. I will now try out your iTunes Sync! :-)

    Cheers!
    Thanks!! It's very thoughtful of you to pass along your kind thoughts.
    11-26-11 05:16 AM
  24. dgwebb's Avatar
    Hi Daniel,

    I love the Picasa Sync app but there are two things I am wondering about:

    1. When I uncheck a web album, it does not remove it from my PB. How do I go about removing an album?

    2. The photos in the albums I have sync'd are not in the same order as they are in my Picasa album. Can this be fixed?

    Thanks!
    01-20-12 07:31 PM
  25. coolrat33's Avatar
    Hi Daniel
    Thanks for creating this very useful app. It was one of the first I purchased for the Playbook.

    However, I am having a lot of trouble getting it to download my albums. It always downloads for a while, then stalls and stops working. I'm not sure if this is related to the device going into standby or not. I've not been able to figure it out. My PB's "Application Behavior" is set to Default (app stays active in background).

    Any ideas why this is happening to me? I'm located in China (with very crappy internet connections here monitored and blocked constantly), where Picasa (and nearly everything else) is blocked. Your app Picasa Sync can connect to Picasa for some unknown reason. I usually run my Playbook on a VPN, but even then, I still experience these problems.

    PS. Also, please issue an updated version that allows us to upload pictures from Playbook directly to Picasa.
    02-10-12 11:32 PM
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