Did you hear that long collective sigh from all the webDotWizards? Yes, they're all pleased because webDotWiz can't get grumpy when they've made a new photo album on their Live Spaces website and haven't the time to add a blog entry.

In fact, as a result of the latest updates to Live Spaces, there's no need to make a special blog entry to announce a new album on your Live Space. Now when your friends sign in to their Space, their What's New page will not only show any blog entries you've made but they'll see the latest photos you've uploaded (as recently as five minutes ago).

Apart from seeing the latest photos uploaded by your friends, we can now lots more with our own photos. When you open one of your albums, there are several new options (shaded in the screenshot below):

We'll return to a bit later to show you how some of these options work but for now webDotWiz will show you how you can set permissions on who can view your photos. So click on Edit album and you'll see where to set the level of permission:

If you choose to Change permissions for an album, the window below opens from which you can decide who is to view the album:

Returning to one of your albums, let's look more closely at the new options: Send a link, Order prints, Download, Embed, Blog It, Share on Facebook, Full view.

Choosing Order prints prints will send off your photos to the Snapfish service for printing (19c per print). Download enables your friends to either download individual photos or a complete album. Embed gives you some code to copy and paste into your own web site (webDotWizard webMasters, please note) either to display an individual photo or a slide show of an album. This is a real boon for the webDotWizard webMasters because now photos only need be uploaded to photo albums on Live Spaces instead of requiring two uploads as has been the case in the past. <Sidenote:> The screenshots in this article all come from an album on webDotWiz Online has a Space.</Sidenote>

Blog It adds a photo to a new blog entry on your own Live Space (you could use the Embed code and Windows Live Writer to accomplish the same end):

As an aside, webDotWiz was able to click on the photo and resize it by carefully dragging a handle on one of the corners so he kept the photo in proportion.

If you want to obtain the codes to copy and paste either a single photo or a slideshow on your own site (or into Live Writer), click on Embed and they'll be displayed below the photo:

Aside from being able to get much more from your photos and photo albums, you'll notice some cosmetic changes to the navigation buttons at the top of each page on your Space - those big buttons to What's New and Your Space have disappeared and been replaced by more sensible options. As well, you'll see a new button named Events:

What happens if you click on that Events button? Well, that'll take another post.

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