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By Michael Herf, Photos TeamIf you've ever wanted to make your favorite software or website work with Google's Picasa software, there's a new
Picasa Button API that lets you add your own buttons to the desktop interface.
The BlogThis! button in Picasa uses these APIs.These buttons can send files to other applications on your PC, --
this tutorial (.zip) shows how to send files to Adobe Photoshop CS3 -- and they can also upload photos and movies to websites of your choice.
I'm most excited about our
Web Uploader API. It uses a protocol we developed for posting photos to Blogger a couple years ago, and it shows a web-based preview of what you're going to upload before you send it. Using the web uploader, you can make user interfaces that feel more like sending an email and less like "Wait an hour to upload..." Picasa can also resize files before sending, saving time. There's some
sample PHP code (.zip) to try out.
Also because these new buttons can be made by anyone, it means that there's no job too small for a Picasa button. You could make a button for your personal blog or for your major photo hosting service. See our
demo video, which features Smugmug.
If you live near Mountain View, California, come out for Thursday's
Youtube/Picasa Hackathon. We'll be showing off examples of these APIs, and answering questions to help you get started with them.
