Picasa Web Album - From Google

Picture...is part of our life now. Most of us have at least 1 digital camera. Gone the day that we have to take picture carefully, afraid that we are going to run out of film (Old camera)

Now when we take picture using digital camera, we dont hesitate, we just keep pressing click..click..click. and you only need to worry about "battery" he he he.

If you do not like the picture, you can immediately deleted it :). Especially with the dropping price of SD card, CF card. Ouwwww...Even my CF card is very old now. I only have 512 MB CF card. I know its still big enough, but now CF card has already had size > 4 GB. But since I am not really crazy taking picture, so 512 MB should be enough for me *At least for now*.

Anyway, enough with the introduction, lets get back with this web album. Where do you store all your Photos after you download it from your camera?

Your computer ???
CD ?? DVDs ??
Print it out ???

If the only option that you have is "your computer", you are in trouble babe.
When your computer's hard-disk is spoilt, you will cry :). All your beautiful picture will be gone.

If you backup to CD or DVD's that sounds better :) at least, you can still hope that you have a backup, whether the CD or DVD's spoilt and could not be be read due to "CRC failed" *sigh*, thats another story :) he he he he.

Anyway, here is alternative solution, you can use Web Album / Photo Gallery. Some web sites offer it free of charge

One of them is Google, they just launch a Picasa Web Album. *Test mode only for now*, you can see from the screenshot, there is a mark "TEST"

Whats the catch:
1. Free for Google User for a limited storage
2. 250 MB size *Do you think this is big???, *Sigh*, my CF Card is even bigger
3. Easy to use, since its only using a web broswer or you can use Picasa to upload
4. You can create private or public gallery. *Standard feature*
5. You can invite your friend to see your Gallery
6. Registered user with US$25.00 will get a bigger storage i.e. 6 GB storage

Whats the bad thing:
1. Your picture will be resize by Google, so its no longer in High Quality mode. (*Means you no longer can print in poster size if you had a 5M Digital Camera*)
2. No option for printing yet, currently I did not see the option to print the High Quality mode.
3. There is no option for you to download your HQ picture again. *Arrrghhh*

Conclution: I am a little bit dissapointed with this Picasa Web Album, they could not beat the one that is already in the market i.e. from Yahoo or Kodak.

I will blog separately for those Web Album Products :).

For now, you can try it out, but I will not make it as my personal Web Album :). Its not the right time yet, since the capacity is very small for me.

Final thinking: For your email, Google gives you 2.7GB free, and for Photos only 250MB ????
Errr..........I will pass :)

More Info: http://picasaweb.google.com

cya