After the whole Chrome launch from Google there was around the same period another launch which I was expecting for quite some time, namely the launch of Picasa 3 and the new Picasa Web Album.

First I installed the Picasa Web Album which had many new features but one seems special at first sight, the picture preview which runs smooth as hell and looks good.

Other features like the print screen, the movies and other stuff are more updates but still usefully.

Much more impressive are the name tags, on your web album you can easily tag all the persons that are on your pictures. You just activate the feature, it scans trough all your pictures and everybody is almost immediately recognized, one last check and tagging and it’s done. You can now browse trough your pictures with just a name and when you hover over a picture you can see the nick names on the picture. Again really impressive work from Google Labs, they keep on surprising me …

One thing I can say, if you got lots of pictures and you want an easy way of looking at them, categorizing them and even create a web album, I can only say one thing. Just install it and you’ll see you won’t be able to work without it anymore.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a great initiative from Antwerp FotoMuseum and Getty Images called FACE ON. I immediately liked the site and the idea to allow people to post images on those walls and to see them (maybe) printed in an exhibition. The quote in the "About Face On" said "Everybody is invited to place their work in the exhibition, which is a first for a public photography museum exhibition". So I immediately uploaded a picture in the family section of my kids, it appeared on the wall so till there I was really enthusiastic about it, I event invited some people to come and see the picture. A few hours after I've uploaded and communicated my picture I received a mail with no title and with the message;

Sorry, your picture does not meet the requirements for this exhibition. We have removed the picture from the online exhibition.

I was really bedazzled and of course I asked why my picture had been refused .... but no answer!!!

It's not that I estimate myself to be an absolute top photographer but if you want to make a public exhibit you have to allow people to contribute. What's the use of User Generated content if you ban what they are uploading???

It's really too bad that such a great initiative gets screwed up by the way it works.