Recently I upgraded my Verizon Wireless cellphone from a Motorola W755 to a Motorola Droid X.
Droid X Upload to Picasa Capabilities
After exploring the Droid X for few hours, I was very impressed with the tight integration between the Droid X camera and Picasa - especially how simple it is to upload pictures from the phone to my Picasa albums, even selecting which folder to upload it to. There are other options too:
- Selecting Picasa as the "Quick Upload" option - though I am not able to select which folder to upload and in my experience it only uploads only to the Picasa Web "Drop Box"; it also automatically adds an annoying caption: "Uploaded by Droid X" - they even include a trademark sing, how droll!
- Emailing to a Picasa Web email address, again, I have not been able to select a folder to upload to
Can I View My Picasa Web Galleries on my Droid X?
A few weeks go by and now I find myself wondering which pictures I have and have not uploaded to Picasa. I thought: "Why is it so easy to upload pictures to my Picasa account, but seemingly impossible to browse my pictures and folders that I have uploaded to Picasa Web?"
After researching Droid X and the Picasa application features included with the Droid X, I discovered an interesting rumor / allegation that Motorola (even perhaps Verizon Wireless) removed a native Droid 2.0 app of the same name: Gallery! Many websites refer to it as "3D Gallery" or "gallery3dmt.apk", which I believe refers to 3D multi-touch, so the app has pinch and zoom capabilities. There are a bunch of websites that offer this app as a download. Cool! Or is it...?
Why isn't "3D Gallery" in the Android Marketplace?
To install "3D Gallery", I had to allow applications from unknown sources. To do so, I went into Settings -> Applications and checked the top box. When I did, I received a spooky warning:
"Your phone and personal data are more vulnerable to attack by applications from unknown sources. You agree that you are solely responsible for any damage to your phone or los of data that may result from using these applications."
Ugh... that's no fun! So I searched and searched the Android marketplace but absolutely could not find the "3D Gallery" app. Why not? What's worse is the absolute crapware that does show up!!
Argh. Well I took a risk and installed the 3D Gallery app I randomly found on the web. It installed fine and there were no wacky terms of use I had to agree to. It actually works really well! So again, I have to ask, WHY ISN'T THIS APP AVAILABLE THROUGH THE ANDROID MARKETPLACE?!!?
Cooliris
I did some more digging and the application is actually totally legitimate, but really who knows about the downloads? The "Gallery3D" application was built by a company called Cooliris and was contributed to the Android 2.1 source code! I found the source for it here and created a copy of it here:
Cooliris Gallery3D for Android Source Code
Now I finally have an excuse to build an android app!
UPDATE: I actually went ahead and compiled the Cooliris Gallery 3D using Eclipse on Ubuntu. It took about an hour to get setup, but from there is was actually quite simple. I'm not sure if I'll have time, but it would be very cool to develop some Droid apps in the future!
