Facebook Connect syncs up with iPhoto

Now, this is kind of neat: Facebook Connect, the sprawling social network's universal-login project, has started to come to desktop software. Namely, it's been hooked up to the Apple photo-management software iPhoto, per a post on the company developer blog.

"We are excited that sharing your photos with the people you care about has become even easier with iLife '09, Apple's new suite of applications that includes iPhoto '09," the post by Facebook platform manager Dave Morin said. "Users of iPhoto '09 can easily share and tag photos from iPhoto directly to Facebook. With help from Facebook Connect, photo tags from iPhoto '09 can be added to Facebook and generate Facebook notifications. Additionally, Mac users can update Facebook News Feed and alert friends anytime they update their websites using Apple's iWeb '09 application."

Basically, this means that if you're a Mac user running the latest edition of its iLife package, which started shipping earlier this week, you can hook up your Facebook account for easy uploading right from iPhoto. If you use the iWeb site creation tool, you can set it up to post a message to your Facebook profile (and your friends' news feeds) if you make some kind of edit. That's pretty similar to what a number of Web-based blogging services have already set up using Facebook's platform.

I haven't actually checked it out yet, so I can't provide a thumbs up or down, but the concept itself is pretty cool. Facebook rolled out its Facebook Connect product, which lets third-party sites (and now desktop apps, apparently) use Facebook usernames and passwords for user accounts, over the second half of last year. The reception, so far, has been generally positive.

What'll be really interesting is to see the further implications of Web-based login standards like Facebook Connect as they're synced up to more desktop applications. Not that you'd really want to share all your Microsoft Word edits in your news feed or anything.

[billmcdavid]

The only problem here is that when you upload your photos to Facebook you are thereby giving them full copyright usage of your photos... this applies to videos too. Basically, they own your content! They need to change their fine print asap!

[rbtlowe]

Are you sure? Can you supply any additional info on this? This seems outrageous!

[Riquez-001]

There's ALWAYS been a facebook plugin for iPhoto. Just about from the launch of facebook.
So you can easily upload to your account by selecting images & clicking go.
I wonder how this one is better? Selecting photos & clicking go can't get any simpler, can it?

[pcfish]

But this one is a two-way sync, not just an simple export feature. If someone tag your facebook photo, the tag is suppose to sync back to iPhoto automatically. Again, I haven't bought the new iLife 09 yet, that just my understand from Apple's keynote.

[krioni--2008]

Big difference - no syncing in the old version. During the upload, you could tag faces, but iPhoto knew nothing about it. Now, you can tag individual faces in iPhoto or facebook, and the tagging syncs (at least back down to iPhoto, even when friends tag your photos, but I think both ways).

This is huge - uploading to Facebook used to be such a dumb, labor-intensive process. I can't wait to use the new feature! Tagging Faces in iPhoto '09 right now.

[manualfunky]

yup, um facebook exporter for iphoto has been around for ages and is up to version 1.4 now...

[lordmorgul]

iPhoto '09 adds face/person tagging to iPhoto which wasn't there before, which is really the feature that makes this interesting to know. The old exporter is great and I use it, but if your photos were already tagged in iPhoto it would be even easier.

I just wish it wouldn't cost as much as it does to upgrade.

[Courtdotorg]

It's sooooo worth it!

[Courtdotorg]

The reason it's better is because of Apple's new faces function. Say you have a photo with five people in it and you only know who four of those people are... so one of your other friends (or maybe even someone you don't know i suppose...) sees this photo on your facebook page and they know who the fifth person is. They can click on the photo and name the face. I believe this updates your iPhoto cork board with the name and the faces feature then goes through all your pictures and finds the fifth face in any other photo in your library and names them.

The faces and places function of the new iLife 09 iPhoto is really what makes the suite a must have. Check out Apple's site for demos on the new iPhoto and iMovie... and Garageband... if you don't say wow at least three times- I'm not sure anything could impress you.

[frankwick]

FYI: You can also do this with Windows Live Photo Gallery and the facebook plugin. You've always been able to upload from WLPG to FB, but the newest version of the plugin keeps your people tags. Very smooth. Very cool.