Hackville: Smugmug and Picasa

luke_church

So I have a concept demonstrator kicking around for uploading from Picasa. It's not a tight integration and it involves exporting galleries -> Web as XML files (Picasa's end). Then parsing the XML files (which my bit does) and throwing them up to Smugmug (which my bit also does).

The question is...

It's not going to be pretty enough for Grandma, Picasa does have a plugin interface, in some akward format that I'm not going to reverse engineer. So until they feel like telling the world about it, the usage process would be either

-> Setup uploader to monitor a directory
-> Export a gallery to that directory, the program catches the change, comes to the forefront and asks where you want to put it
-> Program then uploads to Smugmug in the background and tells you when it's finished

Or

-> Export from Picasa to arbitrary directory
-> Load my uploader and point it at the directory
-> Options then upload

From an engineering perspective no2 is nicer for many reasons.

However, if it isn't pretty enough for Grandma, does anyone care? If it isn't going to be useful, I'll spend my time doing other things...

Oh yes, and if Google break their XML, it might break...

I won't be able to release anything until the API bugs are fixed (and I understand that that isn't likely to be a priority given the Smugmug world-end issue this mornng), so don't hold your breath..

But what do you think guys? Useful or not?

Thanks,

Luke

Mike Lane

luke_church wrote:

So I have a concept demonstrator kicking around for uploading from Picasa. It's not a tight integration and it involves exporting galleries -> Web as XML files (Picasa's end). Then parsing the XML files (which my bit does) and throwing them up to Smugmug (which my bit also does).

The question is...

It's not going to be pretty enough for Grandma, Picasa does have a plugin interface, in some akward format that I'm not going to reverse engineer. So until they feel like telling the world about it, the usage process would be either

-> Setup uploader to monitor a directory
-> Export a gallery to that directory, the program catches the change, comes to the forefront and asks where you want to put it
-> Program then uploads to Smugmug in the background and tells you when it's finished

Or

-> Export from Picasa to arbitrary directory
-> Load my uploader and point it at the directory
-> Options then upload

From an engineering perspective no2 is nicer for many reasons.

However, if it isn't pretty enough for Grandma, does anyone care? If it isn't going to be useful, I'll spend my time doing other things...

Oh yes, and if Google break their XML, it might break...

I won't be able to release anything until the API bugs are fixed (and I understand that that isn't likely to be a priority given the Smugmug world-end issue this mornng), so don't hold your breath..

But what do you think guys? Useful or not?

Thanks,

Luke

IMHO...

Picassa to smugmug would be super handy for the can't-quite-figure-out-the-internet crowd. But really, there are all kinds of free and otherwise (hi Nik!) uploaders out there for the rest of us (including the beta java uploader and others) that I don't really see the point in a Picassa one if it isn't super easy to figure out.

Like "click here to upload these photos to smugmug" type easy. Or something with instructions like "Step 1) click here, Step 2) -- there is no step 2."

Again, just one guy's opinion.

luke_church

Hi Mike,

Mike Lane wrote:

Picassa to smugmug would be super handy for the can't-quite-figure-out-the-internet crowd.

That's precisely what I was thinking as well, hence why I asked rather than just doing it.

I guess the only other possible reason is if someone has put a lot of time into Picasa MetaData.

Thanks for your opinion,

Luke