google photos

Google adds high-res photo zoom to Google+

Two days ago, I griped that the new photo zoom feature in Google+ didn't work with high-resolution images. But today, it does.

"The blurriness issue you mention has already been fixed," said Dave Cohen, a photographer and Google+ team leader, in response to my experiments posting images ranging from 22 to 80 megapixels.

If you want to take advantage of the full-immersion view that's now available, I uploaded a batch of high-resolution photos from a trip to New Mexico and some even higher-resolution 60- and 80-megapixel shots taken with medium-format Phase One cameras of San Francisco … Read more

Google+ one-ups rivals with zoomable photos

Google, which found early success for Google+ among photographers and has been working to keep them happily sharing on its social network, has added the ability to zoom into pictures.

Flickr, Facebook, and other photo-sharing sites offer a larger view of photos, but it's usually at least one click away from the smaller photo that shows by default. Google offers that ability, and last night went one step further by letting people use the mouse scroll wheel to dive further into a photo.

Once zoomed in, clicking and dragging lets people pan around to explore the photo at the … Read more

Google+ users can now view photo albums as slide shows

Google has added two new features to Google+ in response to user requests.

The first feature lets you view another person's photo albums as a slideshow. To check this out, surf to this album set up by a manager at Google+ Photos. Click on the Slideshow button in the upper right corner. Then just sit back and enjoy the show.

Hovering your mouse over any photo displays forward and backward buttons so you can quickly move to the next or previous photo. You can also pause the show or click the X button to stop it and return to … Read more

Apps that can access Google+ photos, videos may not be far off

Google is apparently almost ready to launch its first application programming interface (API) for developing new features on Google+ using photos and videos--at least, according to a Google blog post that surfaced on RSS readers before being pulled again earlier today.

Mike Elgan, a Computerworld columnist, posted a screenshot of the post on his Google+ feed and said it was "accidentally made public for a few moments," which allowed time for distribution via RSS Readers. The post also shows up in a targeted Google search, but displays the "Page not found" message when the result is … Read more

Facebook set to launch something 'awesome'

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Facebook set to launch "something awesome"later today

Google to drop Blogger and Picasa brands

Adobe and Avid offer deals to switchers

Steve Jobs biography gets title

iPad 2 jailbreak is live

CNET infringement case dropped

Photobucket, Picasa bring photo-sharing to TiVo

Apparently, fast-forwarding through commercials just isn't enough. TiVo announced on Monday that users of select photo-sharing services are now able to access their image collections through its set-top boxes.

The digital video recorder manufacturer has partnered with two photo-sharing services--the Google-owned Picasa Web Albums and Fox Interactive Media-owned Photobucket--in order to enable users to surf through their photo albums as well as their friends' and family members', provided that their TiVo boxes are broadband-connected.

A release from the company emphasized the fact that photos are viewable in the highest resolution possible, which on the TiVo Series 3 and … Read more