Playing Games with Google Picasa Web Albums (Discontinued)

Most people are undoubtedly familiar with Google, but perhaps less than one-tenth know about the software Picasa (Note 1).

Simply put, Picasa is a web album service provided by Google (offering 1 GB of free storage) and a versatile image software suite featuring powerful photo library management, fast image viewing, adequate image editing capabilities, and diverse special applications (such as photo collage design).

The best part is that Picasa Web Albums and the Picasa desktop software integrate almost seamlessly.

Furthermore, likely due to Google’s strategic incentives (laughs), anyone with a Gmail account can sign up directly for Picasa Web Albums using their existing account credentials.

The Picasa desktop software features extensive multi-language localization. Those interested can download it directly from the official website (I personally find it easier to use than many traditional image viewers). This article focuses primarily on Picasa’s entertainment features.

Assuming you have already signed up and logged into Picasa Web Albums, clicking the “Explore” tab at the top of the album interface will bring up a page like the one shown in Figure 1.

The Explore page comprises five main sections: the top navigation bar allows users to return to their personal albums (“My Photos”) or enter keywords into the search box; the “Featured Photos” on the left showcases user uploads (the selection algorithm remains unclear, though I will share once my photos are selected—laughs); the text section at the lower left lists popular trending tags for users to explore topics of interest; the upper right section highlights recently uploaded photos, meaning frequent uploaders have more chances to get their work discovered.

The bottom-right section of the Explore page is our main focus today. There, you will find a prominent button labeled "**Start Game**". Let’s give it a click.

When playing the game, after clicking a spot in area B, Picasa presents a screen as shown in Figure 3. This view displays the selected location, the photo’s actual geotagged location, and a line connecting the two points. It calculates the distance between the two coordinates and awards points accordingly.

Completing the initial prompt leads into the page shown in Figure 2. This is the main game interface we will be exploring today. That bald avatar in Figure 2 is certainly not the protagonist of the game (laughs).

The layout in Figure 2 consists of four main areas: the top info bar (D, F, and G), the left photo question area (A), the lower-left control panel (C, E, and H), and the large interactive map area on the right (B).

In detail: A displays photos sequentially during a round according to game progress, with five photos per round randomly selected from the vast Picasa Web Albums library; B serves as the primary playing field, where users examine clues in A and drop a pin on the map B—or simply take a wild guess. C indicates how many photos have been displayed in the current round; D tracks cumulative score; E advances to the next photo after submitting a guess; F records the all-time high score for a single round; G denotes the current round number; and H exits the game back to the Explore page.

Naturally, the shorter the distance, the more accurate the guess, and the higher the score awarded. However, guessing beyond a certain distance threshold results in zero points (that bald gentleman earned me 0 points).

In Figure 4, because my guess was only 290.5 kilometers away from the actual location, I secured a solid 507 points.

Figure 5 was even more remarkable: the photo showed what appeared to be a concert, and the singer looked familiar. I arbitrarily dropped a pin right in Taipei City, only to find the actual location was merely 4 kilometers away! That lucky guess landed an impressive 916 points. Not bad at all.

Note 1: When searching for "GOOGLE" and "PICASA" on the Google search engine, the query results returned 2,010,000,000 and 80,800,000 hits respectively—a roughly 25-fold difference. Deducting an assumed baseline and taking an approximate ratio served as the context for that earlier statement.

Conclusion on Google Picasa

Guessing locations from photographs has long been a favorite pastime of mine. For instance, when traveling, picking up scenic postcards and tracking down the exact vantage points where they were shot often yields fantastic photography results.

Whether or not one can guess accurately in this game, simply browsing photos from every corner of the globe while playing an interactive guessing game with automatic score calculation makes it a delightful little diversion. Let’s explore the map together!