Therefore I was surprised, when researching my previous post, to discover another resource.

I learned that Bear Grylls has an outstanding photo gallery on Google’s British Picasa Web at:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/beargryllsphotos

Picasa and Picasa Web

Picasa Web is a free service, which provides one gigabyte of public, or private, photo storage, to anyone with a Google account. It was originally designed to work with Picasa software, which can be freely downloaded from Google.

Basically, you just install Picasa, and it creates a searchable catalog, of all the images on your computer. Then select photos, and click once, to upload to Gmail or Picasa Web.

My favorite feature was collage which Google describes as:

“Select a group of pictures, choose one of the beautiful templates, and Picasa will create a collage that expands your creative horizons.”

When I still had Windows, I used to use collage to make “instant greeting cards” by selecting a few photos, and setting it to print on half a page. Fold the paper in half, and Voila! you have a blank card. The same process can also be used to make a screensaver.

Unfortunately, Google does not offer a native Linux version. Linux users must install WINE, a Windows emulator, to use Picasa, which seems silly to me, because my Linux system never crashes, and I want to keep it that way.

Getting Started

Indeed, Google only recommends Picasa for use with Microsoft Windows. Be sure to check out known issues before downloading Picasa, or signing up for Picasa Web.

Incidentally, my tests with Firefox 2 and User Agent Switcher showed that Picasa Web does not work with Opera either.