Picasa Web Albums has just been launched by Google, and on a lot of accounts, beats the hell out of Yahoo Photos, Flickr, Kodak Gallery.
Check out that clean Google-style design. Slick, baby.
Photos can be uploaded thru the browser. But you haven’t seen anything yet if you haven’t tried uploading thru the Picasa software. Perfect.
It also supports user comments (nothing like a good AJAX to get those responses coming), captions, RSS, and most of the features available in your favorite online gallery.
But wait! Did you know that you can upload videos, too? I love YouTube & everything, but sharing a private video is a real pain in the [bleep].
The most amazing thing about Picasa Web Album, however, is how easy it is to share private photos (called “unlisted” photos).
The usual galleries only allow you to give permissions to existing users. Ergo, if your friends don’t have an account in your gallery service, they actually have to sign up first before they can view your private photos. I blame Yahoo for popularizing this idiocy.
Picasa Web Album, thankfully, bulldozed that. Just click on Share Album, and your friends will be sent the “secret URL” of your private photos. All they have to do is go to this URL to view your private photos.
That’s it. Seriously.
Their “embed in blog” is pretty cool, too. Hopefully, other options will be available, such as the display of the latest image in an album.
The bad: A measly 250MB of storage (c’mon Google, you gave us 2 gigs in Gmail). Additional storage can be purchased for a yearly fee. Cheaper than Pbase, true, but not too attractive to those who already pay for their own hosting services. Maybe next time.
Leave a Reply