All posts tagged ‘picasaweb’

File Under: Software & Tools
Aug
20
2008

Flickr Shows Off Upgraded Slideshow

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Yahoo’s online photo sharing site Flickr showed off its upgraded slideshow Wednesday. It’s just like the old slideshow, but this one plays video seamlessly with your still photographs and can be embedded into HTML pages.

The slideshow can be launched from pretty much any page from the self-titled link. Embed or link to the slideshow and video from the Share link. The ability to upload and share video is limited to Flickr Pro users. Embedding the slideshow also requires viewers to have Flash installed, which isn’t much of a roadblock for desktop browsers these days. Mobile browsers don’t benefit, though.

The other embeddable slideshow option available is Picasa Web Albums’. Picasa Web Albums is the web version of Google’s Picasa image editor/manager. Poor Picasa Web Albums. Its embeddable slideshow function was one of its only advantages over Flickr. Now Flickr has it and has included video display too? Flickr’s new slideshow not only blows away Picasa Web Albums (again), it’s embeddable short videos rival YouTube’s as well — that is, if you don’t count Flickr’s 90 second and 150 megabyte restriction.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
27
2008

Google Desktop Media Server is Online

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Google Desktop became more than just a hard drive search tool and widget provider Thursday when it included a Media Server plug-in to its software offering.

The Media Server software allows you to choose which of your media files already indexed by Google Desktop to stream. It also allows you to tie in your online photos from your Picasaweb account and any videos that appear in your YouTube channel. The media can then be streamed directly within your network to your media playing device.

Google Media Server is for Windows only and works as an add-on, or gadget, to the Google Desktop application. The gadget appears as a small window with only an on/off switch and a preference button. The admin interface is run through a local web host and can be controlled through your primary browser. Turn it on and Google will host a local server on your computer for access by any Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) device. UPnP devices include media players, picture frames and game systems including Playstation 3.

Xbox 360 is excluded in the list because of a unfriendly restriction it has with non-Microsoft products. Hackers have already described how you can trick Google’s Media Player to show up on the game system.

You can download the media player online, from Google Desktop’s gadget libray or from Google’s website.

Google’s previous foray into streaming online content to the TV was a deal with DVR manufacturer and software provider Tivo. The deal allowed Picasaweb users to stream their online photos through Tivo’s DVR interface.

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