New main screen design in Picasa Mobile 3.5.4

Starting with version 3..5.4, Picasa Mobile allows you to choose between two main screen designs: "Classic" and "Colorful".

You can switch between the two designs by going to Settings -> Main menu theme:



Here are the two designs side-by-side:

It would be extremely useful to know which one you like best, so please do not hesitate to leave your feedback here.

So, which design looks better?

Other enhancements in this release:

• Added 2048 px resize before upload. This is only available for devices running Android 4.0 and above and should be considered experimental.
• Fixed random crash when user exits a long loading task.

Optional resizing before upload in Picasa Mobile

A new version of Picasa Mobile, 3.1.5, has just been released. The highlights of this update:

• Optional resizing of photos before upload. This can be enabled from Settings -> Uploads -> Resizing, as shown in the screenshots below. When resizing is activated, the available photo sizes are 1280, 1024 and 800 pixels. This means that the photos will be scaled down to have the largest edge equal to the selected size, while preserving the aspect ratio. (Note: if a photo is smaller than the selected size, no scaling will be applied.)
• We fixed an issue in the embedded camera  occurring on some low-end devices when the application would go into pause mode.

"Select All" button and improved zoom

We have just released a new version of Picasa Mobile, 3.1.2, including the following new features / improvements:

• We added a "Select all" button when uploading local photos (see screenshot at the end of the post)
• We improved the zooming and panning functionality

For a long time, we tried to resist to the idea of a "Select all" button in upload mode. This was mainly in order to avoid very long and bandwith-intensive upload operations. In other words, to protect the users from themselves...

However, due to the overwhelming demand, we finally caved in and added the long-awaited "Select all" button. We can only hope that you will use it wisely...

To be on the safe side, we also built in some protections mechanisms: "select all" will not select more than 1000 photos and the user will be warned and prompted to confirm before starting heavy uploads. 

Upload/download queue management in Picasa Mobile 3.1.0

Starting with Picasa Mobile 3.1.0, users have now the option of viewing the pending items in the upload/download queue.
For this purpose, we added two queue management screens that can be accessed by dragging-down the upload or download notification icon and then tapping on the notification text, as shown in the screenshots below.

Larger Thumbnails (optional)

We just published a new version of Picasa Mobile, 3.0.7. The major highlight of this version is allowing the users to see larger thumbnails.
This option can be activated from Settings -> Photo Browsing -> Viewing, as shown below.

Picasa Mobile now includes a Quick Launch widget

We have just published a major release of Picasa Mobile, version 3.0.1, which includes a Quick Launch widget.
On most Android models, to add the widget to one of your home screens, you have to do the following:

• Long press on the targeted home screen
• From the context menu that appears, select "Widgets"
• Find the "Picasa Mobile Quick Launch" widget and tap on it. This will add the widget to your home screen.

Please note that on some Honeycomb and ICS models, the widget may not appear right-away in the list of available widgets. If you encounter this issue, all you need to to is a fast reboot of your device.

Please note that the widget will not work if you move the app to the SD Card (this is an Android limitation).

Many thanks to Steven and James for suggesting this enhancement!

Optional hiding of Google+ and Blogger albums

We have just released a new version of Picasa Mobile, 2.8.4, with some more optional features:

• Optional hiding of albums created by Google+ and Blogger. This can be activated from Settings - Photo Browsing - Viewing - Hide Google+ albums.
• Optional prompting for target album before manual uploads. This can be activated from Settings - Uploads - Manual uploads - Prompt for album.

Also, the Prompt for caption setting has been split into two: one for the embedded camera and one for manual uploads. Starting with this version, Prompt for caption also applies to batch uploads (if entered, all photos in a batch will share the same caption).

Picasa Mobile 2.8.2 is now availble

We just published a new version of Picasa Mobile, 2.8.2. Among the highlights of the new version:

•  Local media grouping by folder (optional)
• "About" screen 
• Non-uploaded local photo filter 
• Smoother scrolling for local media

Thumbnail refresh in Picasa Mobile

We just published a new version of Picasa Mobile, 2.7.7, which includes a "Rescan" feature for the local media.
When used, the "rescan" feature will force the Android OS to create new thumbnails for the selected photos.
This was needed because, in certain situations, some thumbnails generated by Android are getting out of sync with their corresponding photos.

A more technical explanation: if the thumbnail information is not properly deleted when deleting a photo, Android OS reuses the thumbnail IDs (instead of generating new ones). Then, when taking a new photo, Android "thinks" that the thumbnail already exists for that photo and it inadvertently reuses the thumbnail of a deleted photo.

Many thanks to Corin for reporting the issue.

Picasa Mobile - Other Platforms

Yes, we were thinking big and we named it Picasa Mobile, but so far, it only runs on Android phones and tablets.
Do we intend to make it available on other mobile platforms, like iPhone and Blackberry? Of course we do! But there are some challenges...
While the Android SDK and its tools make mobile development a breeze, the same cannot be said about other platforms. Here's why.


1. iPhone / iPad
Developing apps for iPhone makes sense from a market share standpoint. The iPhone's market share is estimated at about 30% (slightly below Android's) and it would make business sense developing for its platform.
However, developing for iPhone is highly restrictive.

First off, you absolutely have to develop on an Apple device. Since a Mac laptop sells for about 1,200 CAD, this begs the question: do I really want to spend that kind of money to develop 99 cent apps?

Secondly, publishing on Apple's App Store seems quite painful. The apps are subject to a review process and only the approved apps make it to the App Store. And when it's finally published, if a user asks for a refund, Apple gets to keep its 30% and the developer has to refund the whole cost out of her pocket.

In terms of coding, Objective-C (the development language for iOS and most things Apple), although arguably faster, seems somewhat antiquated (think header files) and uses non-mainstream development paradigms (ex.: messages instead of method calls).
In my opinion, Java seems a lot more natural, intuitive and productive.

2. Blackberry / PlayBook
The transition from Android to Blackberry development seems less steep, since both of them are Java-based. Also, with RIM (the creator of Blackberry) being a Canadian company, it gives us even more incentive to try it out.

There's a big downside, though: the Blackberry development tools only run on Windows! Yes, you heard it right, although it is Java-based and in the form of an Eclipse plug-in, you need Windows to run it...
This presents a big challenge for us, since all our development is done on Ubuntu.

The PlayBook development seems a bit more accessible and it is available for Linux; however its market share has to pick up and RIM has to fix some of the problems with its tablet before it becomes really interesting for developers.
On the bright side, RIM has gotten the message that it cannot survive without a thriving development community. Although it may be a bit late for the existing Blackberry devices, the new direction seems to favor Adobe's Air platform for app development - in my opinion, a very good step forward.
Another good step: apparently RIM has waived the developer fee. (I'm using the word apparently since the said fee is still mentioned a few times on their website, I guess they haven't updated their whole site yet.)

Rumor has it that they also intend to support Android apps, which kind of begs the question: why build a different OS to run Android apps, when you can use the Android OS?

3. Windows Phone
At this time, we find developing for Windows Phone very unlikely. As mentioned before, all our development is done on Ubuntu.
Moreover, Windows Phone's market share and prospects are quite dim and we don't like betting on a loosing horse.
But, while we're on the subject, I can't stop wondering, what was in Nokia executives' heads when they forged an alliance with Microsoft? I understand that their Symbian OS had become quite outdated, but they could easily have adopted the Android platform without any strings attached.

Conclusion
For the foreseeable future, I think we'll stick with the Android framework. Although not perfect, it is, in our opinion, the best mobile framework available.
And you cannot help but be amazed at the stroke of genius Google showed here: release an open-source framework to be used and improved by the most handset manufacturers out there. And, while at it, trying to keep the mobile universe free...