David Kendall

Hello fellow Pix Casa users!

I have decided that I will be ending support for Pix Casa and taking it off the marketplace. The app should still be "usable" for those of you that are currently using it for the time being, but no new users will be able to download it. I will no longer be providing updates or assist with any issues that are caused by the application. I suggest that you find alternative methods for viewing and backing up your photos.

This decision comes as the automatic backups have been less stable than they once were, and other users are also reporting similar issues. Without this key feature along with the reduced functionality of the app due to Google retiring Picasa, I don't see the same value the app once provided.

Thank you for supporting the app over the last two and a half years, which outperformed my initial expectations. I hope to see similar support for my current and any future projects I may release.

I've just released a new update for Picasa Photo Hub, bringing the app to version 2.1. This update was meant to be a small update to fix the notifications raised by Picasa Photo Hub that resulted in app crashes.

Unfortunately, Microsoft decided again that it didn't like the name of my app. After attempting several times to submit the update and contacting Microsoft support, I was finally told that the name having Picasa was the problem. This is due to the name being copyrighted by Google. Their naming conventions for app names (from what I can understand) allows you to use copyrighted names, but they can't be the prominent part. Meaning you can have names like "Client for Picasa", but not "Picasa Client". After a few days of brainstorming I decided on the new name of Pix Casa. Hopefully I won't be hit by the certification team again.

While I was waiting for the response on why the app was failing certification, I thought I would make the app a bit more meaty and add a feature that several users were asking for that was omitted in the transition to Windows 10. You can now once again save photos to your local device and share them with other installed apps. Why wasn't this in the original update? Originally, this was not provided by my app but instead the native photo app. So when I was doing the update, I didn't have any code that prompted me of these missing features. Maybe a good example of some needed BDD?

The app also now features in app notifications about updates from myself relating to the app. You may have even made your way to this post from these notifications :) Like with search, this new feature is only available in the Windows 10 version of the app.

Now that this update has been released, an update for My Daily Wallpaper is in the works...

After months of gruelling work, Picasa Photo Hub is now ready and released for Windows 10 Desktop and Mobile!

This has taken a long time as while the last update for Picasa Photo Hub laid the ground work for this upgrade, the UI has been re-written from the ground up. This means that the Windows 10 version of the app now includes:

- Viewing photos and albums from within the app itself
- Sharing photos manually makes use of the background transfer service so you don't have to wait around for them to be uploaded.
- Drag and Drop photos into the app to start uploading them into your collection (Desktop Only)
- Search your photos within the app like you can on other platforms. Try searching for "food" and see what photos come up :)

But unfortunately, with this update some features are going away. Not because I didn't have time to implement them, but because Google have announced that they are retiring the Picasa services in favour of Google Photos. This happened smack bang in the middle of development and I was torn whether to carry on with the update, or to just leave Picasa Photo Hub to die. I decided that even though the service was being retired, what I was learning during development could be used in future applications. I also felt like the users of the app deserved it to work as well as possible on Windows 10. This announcement is also the reason why the UI for the Windows Phone 8.1 version has remained untouched, and will largely be the same app you already know.

However, along with Google's announcement, they have also removed the following features which have been reflected in the application:

- Commenting on photos
- Replacing photos
- Deleting Photos

So what does the future hold for Picasa Photo Hub? If a public way for interacting with Google Photos arrives, which could happen with I/O development conference just around the corner, then the app may evolve into a Google Photos application. But for now, I have decided that development on Picasa Photo Hub will be limited to bug fixes going forward.

It's been a great ride for the app, and who knows, the application may live on in some form in the future...

Well, it's been a long time coming, but I've finally done it. I've hit the publish button and Picasa Photo Hub should be updating on your phone soon.

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been spending the last couple of months upgrading Picasa Photo Hub in preparation for where development on Windows is heading. It look a lot longer than anticipated, but I feel it's been worth it. I feel a little better with the shape the code is in, but more stuff needs to be done. But those changes can wait for the moment.

The main objective of this update was to migrate how background backups were managed within the application, from an old mechanism that's no longer supported (LINQ to SQL) to a mechanism that's more widely supported (SQLite). However, I wanted to achieve this while preserving your data which meant I needed an update that contained both the old existing mechanism (LINQ to SQL) and the new mechanism (SQLite) and provide a way to migrate the data.

I'm happy to confirm that this is in place :) Which means the first time you run the application or when a background backup occurs, your data will be migrated. If the first scenario is encountered, you will be greeted with the below screen.


This shouldn't take too long to complete. If you don't see this screen don't worry, it's probably just done the process in the background.

But that's not all! I also managed to squeeze the following additions in the update:

• Re-written backup engine - This has been built from the ground up in a more re-usable form. From a Picasa Photo Hub perspective, this hopefully means you'll get less errors (both in backups and the requesting of sending error logs). From a more general perspective, it means I could provide the same backup features for other services in new apps...
• Replace functionality - As teased in the last update, for all of you people who like to edit your photos and add filters, touch ups, etc, you can now replace the content of any photo that can be viewed within the photo hub. This means while I don't provide out of the box photo editing features, you can use one of the many apps available on Windows Phone and then upload the results via Picasa Photo Hub.
• New logging in mechanism - As part of the migration, I'm using a more standard\secure Windows Phone ability to log you into your Picasa account. I've also updated how your authenticated details are stored. This unfortunately means that you'll need to log into the application again once you receive the update. You'll get a notification to do this if you forget :)
• Higher Resolution Photos in Photo app - I've improved the resolution that photos are downloaded at when accessed via the photo hub. This should have happened all along, but due to a bug in the Photo app these were never downloaded. Hopefully this will improve your experience.
• Updated rating prompt - I've heard your cries that this is too aggressive. It was never meant to be, and for that I'm sorry. I've increased the time before you'll see this.
• Slight UI Changes - I've made some subtle changes to the UI mainly in the font to be more subtle and updated the image size selector to be hopefully more pleasing to see and use.

I hope you enjoy the update. If you have any comments, don't forget to email or tweet me or leave a comment below.

In the mean time, I'm going to take a little breather then start working on some new features for the application. Hopefully the next update won't take so long :)

Thought it was about time for another Picasa Photo Hub update!

The upgrading in preparation for the next Windows is coming along nicely. I've upgraded most of it so that it's now using my unified portable library, along with using portable class libraries within the application itself as much as possible. This means that when the time comes to upgrade it to use all of the nice new unannounced features of Windows 10, the upgrade will be easier. It also means I don't have to maintain two internal libraries for my apps (one for Silverlight and one "Universal" apps).

This upgrade is also necessary to ensure that all of your personal data is kept in tact when the upgrade happens, as it's using some technology that has been basically deprecated (LINQ to SQL). In doing the upgrade however, I've managed to get a dormant feature working which will help with all of you guys that love tweaking your photos...


In the meantime though, I thought I would release an update to tide you over until then. This update fixes some errors reported by you as well as adding some extra debugging information to try and fix some of the other issues. They include:

• Updated background task to check if the user is authenticated, and report issue to user if they're not.
• Updated error logging of album picker to provide more information.
• Made enhancements to improve background resizing of images.
• Fixed issue where background task wasn't getting rescheduled.
• Fixed issue where pending upload page wasn't displaying items when navigated from toast.
• Fixed misc reported defects.

The update is live now, so grab it while it's hot!

Another month, another update to Picasa Hub + Backup. While only a small update, fixes include:

• Fix to the background backup facility which caused it to get stuck in certain situations.
• UI fix which prevents users from having their albums sorted in creation descending order
• Fixed issue that prevented users from manually uploading a picture from the "View Pending Uploads" page - I'm very sorry this has been present for so long. Took a while to realise what was the problem but thank you to everyone who sent error logs.

You might also notice that the application has had a change of name to Picasa Photo Hub. Don't worry, I haven't dropped the back up facility.

Unfortunately, Microsoft insisted on me updating the name of the application because the metadata data didn't "represent its source, functionality, or features". After contacting Microsoft about this vague failure, they pointed me to the app naming section of a blog post that someone had posted 3 months before the first version of my application even hit the store. Turns out, I wasn't the only victim of this either. Unlike them however, I fought and lost with a name that had as little departure as possible. But, for now, they're happy with the new name. All I can say is, I think for a company that is struggling to keep developers, things like this don't help. I would understand the failure if the application was new, but as it had been on the store for ~5 months with an average rating of just under 4 stars, I don't think people had a problem with the name. Hopefully with the next update I won't get this problem again.

Speaking of the next update, I'm about to start the next update which will include some more bug fixes, along with some plumbing work in preparation for the future of the application and platform. Hopefully this update will be out by the beginning of march.

In addition, to keep my creative juices flowing, I'm also currently working on some new applications, some of which I'll hopefully be able to share in the future...

If you have downloaded my Picasa Hub + Backup application, then you'll would have hopefully received the 1.1.0 update for the application. If not, then visit the application store page on your phone and click the "Update" button. This update fixes a lot of reported bugs by users, as well as improving the Picasa experience. An overview of the update includes:

• Added ability to delete an image from your Picasa account when vieing an image within the application
• Added ability to see your Picasa account storage availability via the settings page.
• Fixed rating prompt to be less aggressive
• Fixed photo hub integration to download high resolution version of images
• and much more...

For more information, you can see the full change log by launching the application, going to the "About" section on the settings page and clicking the latest version.


I hope you enjoy the new features the application brings, and if you have any suggestions on what future releases could bring, please don't hestiate to contact me via the app or post a comment below.

Well I've done it. If you're a long time reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I have had tendencies to start projects without ever finishing them. Sometimes due to the size of the project being far to big for me, or because the concept has never panned out. And sometimes, the project never had the intention of being released in the first place.

Well today, I've reached a new milestone. My app, Picasa Hub + Backup, has now been released to the masses for the low low price of FREE. If you are an active Picasa user, or have just come over from competing platforms, then Picasa Hub + Backup should provide you with everything you need to keep enjoying the service. At the moment the application is ad-supported to (hopefully) help pay for my Windows Phone Store membership, but there will be an option in the near future to remove ads for a small price in select countries.

If you're a member of the press and I have failed to contact you, please download the press-kit from the website and let me know if you write a review (good or bad). And of course, everyone should go out and download it now for FREE.

So what's next? Well I will be working on a new app, which will hopefully be released a lot sooner, along with an update to Picasa Hub + Backup to bring new features (which may be related to the new app).

So go download Picasa Hub + Backup, tell your friends and family and write positive reviews...

Once I released the beta of the first version of Picasa Hub + Backup, I started work on the next update. As teased in the previous post, I was working on the following features:

• View and add comments for a photo
• Configure your target album for your backups and shared photos
• Configurable ordering of photos albums in photo hub.

As you can see below, these features were successfully added into the update:



Unfortunately, the feature that allowed the user to select the order in which albums were ordered when viewed within the photo hub resulted in me having to get a little creative. The API that Microsoft have provided only allows the albums to be displayed in ascending order of title. This proves to be problematic if you want your most recent albums first as there's no way of doing this.

To accomplish this, I looked into ordering my albums and then prefixing the titles within the photo hub to have a set number of non-printable characters that came before the standard alphabet. My thinking was that the sorting would take these characters into account and would force the albums into a given order while preserving the original album name, due to the ascii version of the non-printable characters coming before the standard alphabet. However, this resulted in the entire album name not being rendered. In the end I resulted in prefixing the titles with numeric values (as seen in the screenshot above). It's not brilliant, but at least the photo hub is more usable. I just wish the photo hub itself was updated to support sorting of different criteria.

I also updated my "about" screen so that it includes an inbuilt change log which is downloaded from a remote source. My intention is that users can then see easily when updates are available (if they're not updating automatically) and see what features (and possible bug fixes) are awaiting them in the update.

I also encountered a lovely issue with the certification process when I released this new update to the marketplace. The build worked on both the emulators and devices I had tested, passed certification but failed to install when downloaded from the store. The culprit? A reference to the splashscreen file which didn't exist within the resources in one of the manifest files. Hopefully Microsoft will catch this issue in an update to the certification process or an update when deploying packages locally in the near future. That would be very embarrassing had it happened on a public listing.

I'm now working on a third (and hopefully) final update before I release the application publically  where I'm investigating (and hopefully implementing):

• Fixing a bug where web requests aren't returning
• Backing up files at a reduced resolution so that it falls within the users free allowance
• Rendering issues with comments
• Advertisements on select screens (with in app purchase to remove them)

Here's to the next couple of weeks...

Recently a colleague of mine switched from Android to Windows Phone. From the switch he jumped straight into the Windows Phone 8.1 preview and has managed to find decent alternatives to the applications he used while on Android. Like many Android users, he used the Picasa services (or Google+ photos as I think it's now known as) to store and backup his pictures, for which he has a backlog of a few years. But he has failed to find a decent Picasa app that satisfies his cravings. This is showcased event more with the introductions of new features in 8.1 that the existing apps haven't embraced like photo hub integration.

This sounded interesting to me and so I've been developing "Picasa Hub + Backup" for the past month.



At first, my main goals were simple:

• OAuth authentication - No applications on the market appears to offer this
• Photo Hub Integration - No applications on the market appears to offer this
• Automatic Backups
• Share photos from other sources to Picasa service - Other applications appear to be limited to the photo hub as a source for the upload.

These features have been implemented and I've since released a preview\beta of the application which at the moment only has a single participant, my colleague.

I'm now working on a second release which will include:

• View and add comments for a photo
• Configure your target album for your backups and shared photos
• Configurable ordering of photos in photo hub.

If this seems interesting to you, you are on the 8.1 developer preview and you would like to be involved in my preview\beta, then let me know by sending the Microsoft account associated with your windows phone(s) via either twitter (via private message) or via email at apps [@] davidskendall [.] co [.] uk.