Saturday, July 3, 2010

Blogging Made Easier

If there is one thing that drives me absolutely crazy about Blogger, it's how incredibly long it takes to upload pictures and videos, pictures and videos being absolutely essential for this blog (this blog being mainly intended to keep family (most of whom live 1000 miles away) and friends updated on our lives and on Griffin). I found myself feeling like blogging was a chore, and this led to long gaps between posts. Recently, I started doing a bit of research here and there into the world of online photo and video sharing, and came across a couple gems that I thought I would share.

Picasa - I am a Mac user, and I really do love iPhoto; however, iPhoto has its limitations. Because Mac has its own blogger site (MobileMe.com), it doesn't have any way to upload photos directly from iPhoto to Blogger...and that probably isn't going to change anytime soon. So, I started digging and found a free program (available to both PC and Mac users) called Picasa, which is a great and well-organized program for storing, editing, and exporting your photos (similar to iPhoto...and I think even better!) [I was worried that Picasa would duplicate all the photos from iPhoto in order to import them, thereby taking up precious memory space...but ALAS, it did not! It loads all the photos on your computer into the program without duplicating them or changing them or their location. The only drawback is that you aren't able to do any editing of the photos unless you do have Picasa load them into its own files...if that makes sense.] So, here is the great, amazing, wonderful thing about Picasa.... Once all your files are loaded into the program, you simply highlight the ones you want to include in a blog post and click the button that says "Blog This!" It pulls up a dialogue box that looks almost exactly like Blogger's "New Post" screen, and you enter in the info and click "Post!" It is seriously SO EASY! Ok, so I'm clearly super excited about this... All I can say is that it has made blogging fun again. Here is a screenshot of Picasa (notice the Blogger icon on the bottom that says "Blog This" under it:

Photobucket.com - perfect for uploading videos and pictures in bulk. Once you upload the pictures and/or videos you want to blog about, you just copy the HTML code and paste it into your blog post! This is a serious time-saver because you don't have to hang around your computer waiting for Blogger to upload video and pictures for every single separate blog post. I now mainly use Photobucket as a place to upload all my video. From there, I copy and paste the HTML code into blog posts and/or Facebook posts. The only drawback to Photobucket is that there is a storage limit, so I'll eventually run out of storage space with all the videos I upload...And that is when I'll switch to YouTube, which is so fantastic!

YouTube - perfect for storing all your videos, slideshows, etc. Upload them all to YouTube (which is SO MUCH faster than Blogger) and just copy and paste the HTML code to embed the videos into your blog posts. Uploading videos to YouTube is easier, faster, and more versatile than uploading them to Blogger (more versatile because you can use the HTML code it generates to post your video anywhere else...other blogging sites, Facebook, etc.)

MeJuba.com - I'm not currently using MeJuba, but I have tested it out. It is similar to Photobucket, in that it is a great place for uploading your photos and videos in bulk and storing them for use in blogs, Facebook, etc. MeJuba might even trump Photobucket, because there are no storage limits; you can literally upload as many pictures and videos as your heart desires without worrying about running out of space on your account. The reason I'm not using it: The uploading dialogue box doesn't let me see my iPhoto albums like they are in iPhoto. It makes me select them from their actual location in file folders. Those of you who have iPhoto will know how frustrating that can be, trying to figure out which photos you want to upload and which files they are stored in...."Now, would that be in the 'Originals' file or the 'Modified' file?" This is not for me, but it would be perfect for PC users, for those who have a Mac and don't use iPhoto, and for those who use iPhoto but never edit their photos.

1 comment:

  1. Sweet! I tried Picasa but thought it was duplicating my photo's so I deleted it, I think I will give it another go - uploading my photos on blogger is one of the biggest pains! Also I love Griffin's 6 month photo's! Great Job!

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