I’m getting reacquainted with PicasaWeb, Google’s online version of it’s photo-organizing software Picasa. I tried Picasa out a long time ago, but when Flickr came along and gave me all that space online, I ditched it. Now that Flickr is forcing users to login with a Yahoo! ID, I thought I would try out my own PicasaWeb album.

This isn’t a hateful or rebellious move, it’s a convenience move. I’ve been a Flickr faithful since mid 2004, and I understand Flickr’s points about consolidating their technologies. I just don’t need or want another email address to maintain. Not to mention all the junk Yahoo sends to you (though you can unsubscribe to their ‘offers’ in your account profile). So while this change is going on, I leave myself free to explore other tools.

So far, PicasaWeb is ok. Flickr has great community tools, and those alone could make me switch to the Yahoo! login. I also miss the quick method for grabbing URLs to the jpg or gif directly rather than the photo page. You can get at them in PicasaWeb, but they are not a quick click and paste (you have to dig through their html snippet for embedding images). I also haven’t seen the email-photos-to-your-account option which I loved in Flickr. A lot.

Sidenote – regarding the picture shown here, I finally had some of my favorite prints framed and hung up in my home this weekend!