Flickr's Got A Friend (Or Foe)

Flickr is a very popular photo sharing site. Yahoo bought it last year and it currently serves up millions of personal and professional photos. It lets users upload digital photos from computers and camera phones, put together photo albums, and post photos to blogs, and of course tag them.

And here comes Google. Just this evening the Internet Goliath launched a new feature in its Picasa photo app that will - guess what - let people organize and share photos over the Web.

Picasa Web Album is available to a limited number of Gmail users. I was able to get "invited" on my first attempt so if you hurry you may sneak in before the waiting list. Uploaded albums can be public and available to anyone who knows the Gmail account under which they're listed, or private ("unlisted") and available only by way of a special link Picasa users can send to whomever they wish.

I like the fact that viewers don't need to sign in or have a Gmail account to see the photos. Photos automatically resize to fit the screen and I have not yet seen ads next to them.

We'll probably see many more similar services from other sites but I expect to take full advantage of all my photos already stored in Picasa.