How to let another person load pictures to your Picasa-web-album

This article shows how to let another person (Google account) upload pictures to your Picasa-web-albums:   this is one possible way to work around the issues with Google's photo auto-enhance feature.

Picasa-web-albums and your Google account

Previously I've described Picasa desktop vs Picasa-web-albums, and noted that you can upload pictures to your PWA folders using either of the two pieces of software.

Each album and folder in Picasa-web-albums belongs to one Google account (which may or may not have an associated Google+ account).

Google now provide a tool to transfer Picasa-web albums from one account to another - but only once ever in the life-time of the album.   You cannot transfer ownership to one person now, and to another person in  a year's time (which is quite different to the way you can easily transfer other aspects of your blog to a new owners).

And Google also provide a way for an account owner to let another Google account add photos to the owners albums.

How to let another Google account add photos to one of your  Picasa-web-albums.

Log in to Picasa-web-albums using the Google account that owns the photo-albums and other related things (eg blogger administration rights), and which you want to be the main owner/administrator of your photos.
(See Stop being automatically redirected from PWA to Google+ Photos if you have difficulty staying in Picasa-web-albums.)

View the  individual album that you want to allow someone else to add photos to.

Click the Share button in the right-hand panel.

If your account does not have a Google+ Profile, then clicking the Share button opens the basic Picasa-web-sharing invitation.   In it:

• Enter the email address of the Google account that you want to give upload permissions to, and any message that you want to send them., 
• Tick "Let people I share with contribute photos".   
• Then click Share Via Email.

Standard Picasa-web-albums album sharing settings screen

If your account has a Google+ Profile, then clicking the share button open a "Share on Google+" window.  To use this to give someone permission to upload to the album:

• Remove any suggested circles
• Enter the Google account name(s) that you want go give upload permissions to.
• Click Share
• When you return to the standard Picasa-web-screen, in the right-hand-panel, click the "allow uploads" icon to the right of the name that you entered.

Google+ Profile photo-album sharing request screen

Allow shared-with users to upload pictures to your album

What the people you have invited will see

The people who you have invited to contribute pictures to your Picasa-web-albums will get either an email message or a Google+ notification telling them about the permission you have given them.

When they go into Picasa-web-albums, they will see the album that you have shared listed as an album that they can see - and they will have an Add Photos link where they can upload pictures in the same way they would add photos to their own albums.

Sharing several or all your albums at once

Picasa does not seem to provide any options for this at the moment.

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Related Articles:

Understanding Picasa vs Picasa-web-albums

How to set up a Google+ Profile for an existing Blogger account - and why you might not want to

Transferring ownership of your blog to someone else

Stop being automatically redirected from PWA to Google+ Photos

Redirect Blogger 404 Error (Page Not Found) To Homepage

A 404 error page tells you and search engines that a page is not found by displaying a text similar to "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist.". This may happen because you have changed your URLs over time, either removed a few pages when you overhauled your design, or a visitor may have accidentally misspelled an URL nonexistent in your blog, so it automatically redirects to the 404 error page (page not found).

Most likely, this will not make a good impression on the potential users of our blog. So, before the visitor clicks the back button or close the window/browser's tab, thus leaving our site forever, we may want to redirect 404 error in Blogger to a page, so that the visitor will continue reading our blog.

One of the most used methods is the "meta refresh" but the problem with this method is that it breaks navigation (doesn't allow to return back). In this case, the best method is to use JavaScript about which I will go into more detail below.

Redirect Blogger 404 Error with JavaScript

Go to your Blogger dashboard, select your blog and click the Settings menu item > Search preferences > Custom Page Not Found.

Copy and paste the following code inside the empty box:

Sorry, the page you're looking for in this blog does not exist.
You will be redirected to homepage shortly.
<script type = "text/javascript">
PNF_redirect = setTimeout(function() {
location.pathname= "/"
}, 5000);
</script>

The text which is going to be displayed can be modified as you want. If you are willing to redirect the 404 error page to another page other than home page, just replace pathname to href and / with the url of your page. Finally, the number 5000 which is the delay expressed in milliseconds, can be changed to other value if this is more convenient.

Next thing to do is to 'Save changes' and do a little test to check if the code works well. You can verify the 404 error page functionality by adding a random text at the end of your blog address - after pressing Enter, you should see the error page followed by a redirection after 5 seconds. That's it!

How to Copy Filenames from Folder to Excel, Text or Word File

Have you ever felt this need ? Today i was preparing a database of files in a folder in an Excel Sheet. It is a hectic job if i right click on each file, go to rename, copy its file name and then paste it in excel. I found an easier way to do it. This trick will work on Windows platform by using command prompt.Follow the following steps to copy filenames from a folder to a text file:

• Copy the folder to C Drive. However it can be done in any folder but as now we will work in DOS and it will be easier to write a shorter path.
• Run DOS (Command Prompt). You can do it by typing "cmd" in Run.
• Now type the following command

              dir "C:\folder_name" > C:\folder_name\output.txt /b /o   

• Now Close DOS (Command Prompt).
• Go to the folder. There you will find a next file in it named "output.txt". Open it. It will have a complete list of files present in that folder (including output.txt).

Now you can use the content in that text file anywhere you need. You can paste it in excel. Each filename will be pasted in next cell. You can easily use this information in Word file as well and any text editing software.

If you need complete file names including path then you can also do it using some text editing softwares or excel. I am big fan of MS Excel and like to play with it. However there are ways to get filenames (including path) in a folder using command prompt. Will Get it for you very soon. 

4 Alternatives to Google AdWords

Many think that Google AdWords is the only tool dedicated and available to perform a study such as a keyword search, but it isn't so, today I refute this idea by collecting some alternatives that, although are not equal to Google AdWords, at least encourage us to make good keyword analysis for the SEO of our website.

Going back a bit, for those unfamiliar with the main features and tools of Google AdWords, we can find a very simple interface yet complete in every sense.

- AdWords appearance has changed, however there is a chance of returning to the old design;
- allows you to place a phrase or keyword, a web site and use the categories;
- for a better keywords search, you can apply filters such as location, language and add custom fields (competition, local or global monthly searches, CPC, Ad share, etc.);
- displays keyword ideas in columns with the amount of local and global monthly searches and approximate CPC;
- you can download keyword ideas, search results in a format to open with Excel.

Having recalled and refreshed the memory a little with the characteristics of AdWords, now it is time to learn about other options both free and paid.

Google AdWords Alternatives

Bing Webmaster Tools: Bing may not be the tool that we had first thought of, however it wants to provide the best conditions for studying keywords.

After we register, to access the tool, go to Diagnostics & Tools and click on the second option on the list: Keyword Research.

SEMRush: Other freemium alternative that displays a very complete report of a particular keyword or website. However, it has limitations and if you opt for a PRO recurring plan you need to pay a monthly membership from $69.95 per month.

Ubersuggest: This nice and simple online tool searches keywords suggestion as well as potential titles for an article. Personally, I recommend it 100%.

Keyword Eye: If you are looking to perform a keyword research on a particular region, Keyword Eye will be your help. It also has the option of requesting the display of search volume or AdWords competition and a full report of anchor text, keywords and domain.

At first it offers a free plan with limitations and to enjoy all other benefits, we have to pay $9.99 per month.

How to Add Google Analytics to Blogger

Google Analytics is a platform created with the purpose of helping us to track the number of visits and page views on our blog, which also uses several filters to check exactly from where the visitors are coming via standard or custom reports.

Google Analytics is the leading free tool that has a good relationship with the internet marketing and offers suggestions and improvements or benefits for our website.

As Analytics is part of the variety of Google tools like Blogger, many bloggers still don't know if it is possible to add the tracking code in Blogger. Implementing analytics in Blogger is very quick and easy, so you don't need to be experts or web developers. Here's a small guide for placing the Google Analytics tracking ID on our blog.

Implementing Google Analytics on Blogger

1. Do you have a Google Analytics account? Then it's perfect. If you don't have one, please Register.
2. Within the account, we'll go to Admin and in the Property column, click the menu, then click Create new property, where we enter the information from the website.

3. Click on "Get Tracking ID" and it will provide a box with a code, select and copy the code (CTRL + C).

4. Now let's go to our Blogger account.
5. Look for your blog and click on it, then go to Template > click the Edit HTML button and paste the code previously generated in Analytics before the </head> tag (CTRL + F in order to find it).

And this would be the entire procedure. Within about 24 hours, we shall see the first statistics of our blog in Google Analytics, otherwise check the following:

- Double check that the code has no spaces or characters.
- Doesn't have errors in the configuration
- There are no poor implementation of the filters.
- The Flash plugin is working or javascript is enabled.
- You will have minor issues if you are receiving visits from China (this conflict is not yet solved, according to Google).