So how do you share your photos with me? Well first of all you need an account. I have created one for Mum – which I will send her the details for. But heres how to do it from a high level:

• Get an invite from me for gmail
• Login to your email and click on the link in the invite I send you
• Setup a new gmail account (which you will only use for picasa) by filling in the form displayed

Now you have a gmail account, you can use the picasa client to upload your photos:

• [click here](http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasaweb-setup-beta.exe) to download the picasa application
• Save it somewhere you will remember and once complete, run it (if your firewall software gives asks for permissions – grant it)
• Click “I agree” on the license agreement
• Accept the default program location, click “Install”
• Desect *ALL* the checkboxes except for “Run Picasa2″
• Click “Finish”
• Click “Continue” for the “initial Picture scan”
• Wait for aaaages while it scans your computer for all pictures
• Picasa itself is a pretty nice application to play with – so I recommend trying out some of its functionality at this point while it finds all your pictures.

Now you are all set…its time to add some pictures to the internet!!!

SCENARIO: You have your camera full of pictures and you now want to upload them onto the internet.

• Plug your camera into the computer. You should be prompted with “what do you want windows to do?” dialog, if so, select “Copy Pictures to your computer and view them using picasa2″ and click OK
• You can now pick which photos you wish to import to your computer – click “exclude” on any that you dont want to keep
• When you are done selecting photos click on the “finish” button
• Name your collection (e.g. Holiday 2006) and give it a description
• Select if you want the card to be wiped or not
• Click finish
• Once all the photos are are imported you will see them in Picasa. They are now also on your hard drive (in your “my pictures” folder)
• You can upload them to the internet now really easily:
• Click the “login to web albums” link at the top right of the application
• enter your new gmail.com address and password, click “remember me” and “signin”
• Click on the Folder (or individual pictures) that you want to upload to the internet
• Click on “Web Album”
• You will probably be asked
• Select if you want a new album or to add to an existing one
• Click “unlisted” – this way the pictures will only be seen by people we give the web address to
• Select “optimized”
• Click OK
• The photos should upload pretty quickly. When complete – click “View online”

From there you should easily figure your way around the web albums.

Let me know when you add some photos and i’ll get them included on this blog.