Google Blog reports on Picasa Web, a new beta version of Picasa, the excellent free photo management software acquired and improved by Google. The new version allows you to seamlessly upload photos from Picasa to personal web albums hosted by Google. Initially, you are allowed 250MB of space, with the option to upgrade to 6GB for $25 a year. One of my favorite new features is the ability to easily geocode photos via a direct link to Google Earth, which then collects all of your geocoded pictures in a group in Google Earth. More details about the release are available at the Picasa Web: Learn More page.

I'm not sure that I'll necessarily take advantage of the web album feature, as I'm pretty happy with my personal gallery the way it is. However, I'll be trying this out to see if it's worth it. The fact that it will probably be integrated better into Google products and searches could mean more visibility for my photos, which is always a good thing. :-)

I believe that this beta test is by invitation only, but it's possible that I can invite you to download the application (I haven't verified this for sure). Let me know if you're interested and I'll attempt to send you an invitation, although it might just be an invitation to view my public galleries, which are of the decidedly mundane feline variety at the moment (a running joke at flickr is that there are way too many pictures of people's cats). ;-)