Google has swept the world with new ways to do basically everything that we do on the Internet. Its photo-sharing website Picasa has been, and continues to be, an excellent resource for uploading and sharing images to your friends, family and the world. Picasa Photo Albums Lite (free) by Yunhe Shi for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (iOS 3.0 or later) is an excellent bridge to the Picasa website on your mobile device.
Despite being ad-supported, this free application has everything you need to browse your Picasa photo albums right on your iPhone, or to browse the community albums and featured pictures on the Picasa site. The app is straightforward. Upon loading, the app will prompt you to log in using your Google username and password, and it will automatically load all of your Picasa photo albums under the “Albums” section of the app. Next to the albums tab, you’ll find the “Featured” tab and the “Community” tab. Within these sections, you can browse pictures that the community has uploaded to Picasa, and also the photos that Picasa selected to be featured on the website.
The photo albums are laid out very similarly to the photo albums within your own iPhone. The browsing process is the same, except for the fact that the photos take a moment to buffer from the web. While browsing, tap a photo to either download it to your iPhone photo album, make a comment, or view the comments that people have left. Once again, the navigation of the photo albums is very simple. If it wasn’t for the fact the application is ad-supported, the process of interacting with the photo album would be seamless. The only hitch within the free version is the ad at the bottom of each picture. When viewing the pictures in portrait, or you rotate your phone to view in landscape, it feels as though the experience of the picture is tainted.
If you use Picasa Web albums there is no reason not to have this app. You’ll have access to your photos wherever you are, and can also enjoy browsing excellent photography from the Picasa web community. This is a great app, and well worth it. If you like Picasa Photo Albums Lite for iPhone, you might consider investing $1.99 in the full version of the app. It’s put together well, easy-to-use, and would be a great addition to your iPhone app library.
