Picasa Web Albums data API - Now with geo support!

The latest release of Picasa Web Albums now includes support for geotagging your photos and albums, so you can show friends where you took your favorite pictures. We've also added API support for this functionality so that you can easily integrate geotagging into your applications!

What's it look like? We've implemented geo support using the GeoRSS and Geography Markup Language (GML) formats. The location of each photo and album can be described using a point-- represented by a latitude and longitude.

For instance, here's GeoRSS representing a picture taking in Tokyo, Japan:

<georss:where>
  <gml:Point>
    <gml:pos>35.669998 139.770004</gml:pos>
  </gml:Point>
</georss:where>

Of course, the Java Client Library also has support for retrieving and setting the location on an album or photo. Here's an example of setting the location on a PhotoEntry object, after using a custom getString helper method to prompt and get a string from standard input:

String latitude = getString("Latitude");
String longitude = getString("Longitude");
photoEntry.setGeoLocation(Double.valueOf(latitude), Double.valueOf(longitude));

Here's an example of retrieving the photo location:

Point photoLocation = photoEntry.getGeoLocation();
System.out.println("Longitude: " + point.getLongitude());
System.out.println("Latitude: " + point.getLatitude());

We look forward to all the great applications you create using the new geo functionality of Picasa Web Albums. Please be sure to share them using the Share Your Project page in the Picasa Web Albums data API Developer Forum.

Happy coding,

Ryan Boyd - The Google data APIs team