You'll need a few tools to get started here, and luckily they are
available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This method uses Dropbox and
Picasa3 to keep things synced up, and a side benefit is that photos
are available from anywhere -- not just the device that took them.
To get started, you need to install the Dropbox client on your home
computer. If you already have a Dropbox account, you can use the same
login and you'll find that having Dropbox installed on your computer
is a good thing anyway. Just visit this link and download the correct
version for your computer platform. Install it, and you're done with
the first step.
Next, you'll need to install the Picasa3 program from Google. It's a
pretty good photo organizer and viewer, but what we're interested in
is the way it can sync a folder to your Google+ photos. This is where
the magic will happen. Visit this link and download the appropriate
version, and install it. Windows and Mac users have it easy, but if
you're running Linux you'll need to install Wine 1.3 or higher, and
use winetools to install the bits from ie6 to get the account Oauth
working. There's plenty of tutorials on the net for this, and if you
hit a snag, holler at me.
Got those installed? Good. You're just about finished. The next step
is to visit Instadrop and setup the Instagram to Dropbox sync.
Instadrop is a web-app, running on Google's appspot engine, and is
what makes this all work. You'll link the Instadrop app to both your
Instagram account and your Dropbox account, and anytime you post a
picture to Instagram it will get copied to a folder named "Instagram
photos". All you need to do is link your accounts, and the app does
the rest. You can do that here, and if you're the suspicious type, you
can inspect the source code on Github and see exactly what's going on.
A couple final steps setting up Picasa and your Google+ album. Open
the Picasa program, and click File > Add folder to Picasa. In your
Dropbox folder, find the Instagram photo directory (if it's not there,
upload a picture to Instagram to create it) in the tree and mark it to
"Scan Always" (the blue circular arrow). This means that Picasa will
hit that folder each time it scans for new content, and automagically
import any pictures it finds. Click the OK button.
Now in the Picasa program, look in the upper right. You'll see a spot
to sign-in with your Google account. Do that, and make sure the Sync
to Web switch for the Instagram photos folder is set to on. Open your
Google+ page, and make sure the Instagram photos album is set up to be
shared with the folks you want to share it with, and that's it.
What's happening is that anytime you post a picture to your Instagram
stream, the Instadrop web-app pushes it to the Instagram photos folder
in your Dropbox. When your computer is on, Picasa uploads it to your
Google+ album. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot. But it's a way to
get that content merged without waiting for Google to have a public
API for content posting and sharing on G+ from third party apps.
Note that these pictures aren't shared to your Google+ stream be
default. Until we get some sort of G+ API from Google, that's not
going to happen (at least not easily). But if you share your album,
people can visit and check them out, and of course you can easily
share a photo from the album yourself. Click on it and hit the Share
button in the bottom right.
