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Google launched Picasa Web Albums last week which allows you to publish your Picasa managed photo’s easily to the web. I was interested as I use Flickr for my web albums and my local photo management is poor - would Picasa sort out my local and web needs?

Even though Picasa is beta software the Picasa Web Albums are officially a ‘test’. Already trying to differentiate from Flickr Beta and Gamma. Once you sign up it’s then easy to publish photo’s from Picasa. Select a photo or album and load it into the Photo Tray. Then select Web Album to load whatever has been added to the Photo Tray.

The options on uploading are fairly limited. You can create a new album or add photo’s to an existing album. You can add a description or add location (for Google Earth integration which is really smart). You select the quality of the picture you want to upload and then finally whether the pictures are public or private. The uploading then takes place in the background allowing you to continue using Picasa.

Once uploaded you can easily see your gallery at picasaweb.google.com/username (mine’s here). Compared to Flickr there are some obvious disadvantages. No concept of tagging or groups and hence a real lack of community unlike Flickr which uses these features to drive the website and share your photo’s with other like minded groups. Picasa album functionality is also basic - can view a slideshow and change order but that’s about it - feels very old school compared to Flickr but that’s really just styling that could be addressed through time. There is nothing similar to the Flickr Organize features at all.

For free Picasa will allow for 250Meg of storage - if you take a lot of photo’s this will go quickly. For $25 a year you get access to 6Gig of storage. It’s not clear if that is the maximum amount of storage or whether you get an additional 6Gig every year. Flickr doesn’t limit storage but upload bandwidth. For free you are allowed to upload 20Meg per month and are limited in the amount of sets (albums you can create). There are also adverts. For $25 a year you get a 2Gig per month upload limit, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth and sets. No adverts either. For my requirements Flickr wins hands down.

Flickr also allows 3rd party access via API’s which means external apps and companies can access your photo’s (with your permission) to create print albums, allow for easy access from phones and other applications etc. Google doesn’t have anything like that at the moment although you can order prints from Picasa with ease.

If you use and love Picasa for local photo management then Picasa Web Albums will be a good solution as like most Google online offerings it is simple to publish and easy to use. Flickr is far more feature rich though and makes sharing and also finding photos easy. I also like the number of apps that now link to Flickr. Picasa Web Albums looks to be more expensive than Flickr while offering less. It’s a shame there is no way to use Picasa and publish to Flickr instead as on this showing I can’t see anyone wanting to move from Flickr to Picasa Web Albums.

• Visit flickr - notice anything different? Some updates to the styling and some new functionality. It’s also officially moved out of beta…to gamma. It would be so wrong of any web app to officially move out of beta - just wouldn’t be web 2.0. I’m liking the changes to the search and organisation links. Organizing photo’s is a bit easier to - made the whole site easier to use.
• Google Trends. Nice app for stat whores and info gatherers. Compare search patterns for up to five search terms and see some pretty graphs and also how that search term is used locally and across the world. For example, look at the increase in the term Edinburgh around festival time. Also links to related news items if available. Great app.
• Google Notebook. Another Google app which has just been launched - this allows you to link and clip web sites. Online research tool basically. Download an extension for Firefox to allow easy access to your one or many notebooks from the browser (IE also). From what I’ve used it’s fine - no rss or xml sharing of list though so it’s not yet a del.ici.ous rival. Wasn’t there a Google Bookmarks app as well? There was - which has tagging of sorts but not much sharing. Combine the two and you’ve got a far better app.
• Google Calendar. Has become my full time calendar replacing 30boxes and Outlook. Easy to use, search and is integrated nicely with Google Mail. There are other more feature rich apps on the web but this meets all my needs.
• If Google integrates mail, calendar, notebook and some sort of to-do then it would be a perfect online organiser. Hopefully it’s only a matter of time. The apps (apart from to-do) are all there but have the feel of separate applications that are not well integrated. A wee bit of Ajax magic would soon sort that.

3d modelling…for free. If you want to create some nice simple 3d models then grab it here. The pro version still costs but there is a 3d warehouse that allows you to download and share 3d models. Nice.

Another Google app, this time Calendar. After a quick play today I think this is easier to use than 30boxes so if you are after a calendar that you can use at anytime this is recommended. Easy to share (RSS, ical, xml) with others if that’s your bag too.

I want integration with Outlook though - a nice button within the app to synchronise my offline and online calendar or even better an option so that it syncs on start up. Maybe it’s time to make the switch to using online e-mail, calendars and to-do as I could get most of my functionality from Google except that it’s blocked from work. There’s always a fly in the ointment.

Google Page Creator has just launched. You get 100Meg of space, a basic web page creator and a page manager to arrange your site. No mention of bandwidth restrictions either. Not a replacement for having your own web host but if you setting up a smallish site, say for a local group, it’s not too shabby especially as it’s free although you do need a GMail account (I’ve 100 invites just in case someone still doesn’t have one). Crashed once though while I knocked this up.