Picasa Web Albums

I am on vacation now and just in time Google has released the Picasa Web Albums. Picasa has been the application of choice for managing the personal library of digital photos. Web Albums is just another great sharing concept from Google. Sergey and Larry and the team really do understand what the Internet is about. Simplicity is first. If you already have Picasa, uploading your pictures to a web gallery is a matter of pressing a single button. The pictures are by default optimized for Web viewing (resolution / file size). Sharing is second. Sharing pictures uploaded to the Web Gallery is a snap. As with the Google Spreadsheets, it is a matter of entering email addresses of people you would like to send a link to your picture galleries to.

During just a few days away from home I have shared many pictures with my family and fiends using the service. It is not perfect yet, missing a few functionalities, but the ease of use just blows me away. Looking forward I would love to have the service working directly with digital cameras. As I wrote in Wireless Home, I have yet to buy a WiFi camera. But would do that immediately if there was one working as a direct Picasa Web Albums client. Imagine taking a picture and pressing a Share With Picasa button and having the picture land immediately in your web gallery for others to view...

Now let us guess the name of the first camera manufacturer to implement this feature. Kodak? They were the first with a WiFi snapper, so why would not they want to maintain the lead?