Google Friend Connect is now open for everyone, allowing you to add certain social gadgets to your site. The set-up requires you to upload two files to your root (called "canvas.html" and "rpc_relay.html"), and then you can pick embed code for different gadgets. I've embedded gadgets below, and may update and edit this post during the testing...

Here's a game where your goal is to click as often as you can:

And this is a comments area:

[Thanks WebSonic.nl and Hebbet!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Testing Google Friend Connect | Comments]

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Google added an option to their photo gallery app Picasa Web Albums offering you to lock albums. The option is named “Sign-in required to view,” meaning only people you share the album with are meant to access it, after signing in with their Google account. The pictures themselves – like this image from a sign-in album – are still technically public, though the URLs are probably cryptic enough to stop people from simply guessing them (it might still be better to password-protect even the image URL itself).

In the past, Google already offered (and continues to offer) what they call “unlisted” albums, but those were troubled with privacy issues from time to time. For instance, in the beginning you could simply try guessing the album title (say, a title like “Private”) to get to the unlisted album. Recently, Google fixed a vulnerability with how outgoing links were potentially passing on the unlisted album URL’s authentication key to third-party sites due to the referrer field. Also, sometimes sharing just a single photo caused you to potentially share access to the whole album. In fact, this issue remains even for “sign-in” albums: when you select “Share Photo" for a single photo in a sign-in album, the recipient will be able to view your full album.

In other news, Google Picasa software product manager Mike Horowitz has left Google to join Fetch Technologies.

[Hat tip to Brinke, Wonder and Louis Gray!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Locked Picasa Web Albums | Comments]

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The template of Google-owned YouTube got an overhaul. The page is now stretched wider, with the former top tabs being more like a single-element navigation bar, integrating the search box at the same horizontal position. Just recently, YouTube rolled out wider video boxes (causing a black left and right margin on a portion of the videos).

On the one hand, the recent YouTube changes might cause a more cinematic, higher quality feel for YouTube, optimizing the layout for those with bigger resolutions. On the other hand, the videos might convey less of a home made, quirky, embeddable, I-can-do-that-too mood – it’s hard to tell.

In other recent “YouTube growing up” news, the video site’s official blog published a post detailing stricter standards on adult-ish content and video still choices. You can still pick a still from several options, but “but they will no longer be auto-generated from the 25/50/75 points in the video index”, YouTube says. Also not too long ago, YouTube launched a feature which would allow a commenter to read their comment back to them (using text-to-speech) before posting, perhaps aimed at cutting down on the more casual, throw-away or rude comments. And by now, even the US president-to-be uses YouTube as his own communication channel.

[Thanks Jérôme!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: A New YouTube Template | Comments]

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Google Image search now includes a search box in the top frame when you click on a result. This means you can perform another search without hitting the back button (or closing a new window if you opened one).

If you want to know what Google images looked like in 2006, check out the WMV video from the video museum.

[Thanks Jérôme!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Image Search Bar | Comments]

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