Microsoft has announced the addition of new features and a couple of improvements to its online storage service, OneDrive. These include a richer photo experience; a new UI for viewing photos titled "Albums" which will allow users to view, manage, and share their photos in a brand new way and a "Search" feature to curate these photos.
In their blog post, Microsoft stated:
Unlike traditional folders, Albums let your photos stand front and center. Thumbnails are larger, photos are edge-to-edge, and everything is arranged together into a beautiful collage. When you open a photo, it now fills up the whole screen. Information details are still available, but from a pop-up menu, so now your photos stand out like they were always meant to!
Albums also let you bring photos and videos together from anywhere in your OneDrive. You don’t need to copy files from other folders. That means you can easily create an album using photos from your phone in your camera roll folder, your camera in your “European Vacation 2012” folder, or from your email, with the photos you saved to your attachments folder. And even more, you can also add to your albums after they’ve been created and shared.
Additionally, the OneDrive team has partnered with Bing to help users quickly find what they"re searching for. Users will now be able to search for Office documents and PDFs by the text in the respective files as well as through photos based on tags, time, location or text which is acquired from the images themselves:
Our users will have access to automatically grouped collections of photos and they can easily search for specific ones. You’ll be able to quickly find things such as “people,” “dogs,” “whiteboard,” “beach,” “sunsets,” and dozens of other terms. This makes it even easier to add your photos in to presentations for school, to relive a specific memory, or to share something important with all of your friends on Facebook.
Currently, these features are rolling out for the OneDrive on the web and the iOS app with Android and Windows Phone apps soon to follow.
Microsoft states that future updates will include Weekend Recap emails in which OneDrive will automatically select relevant photos from your weekend and then send them to you via email so you relive the moments again.
Source: Microsoft