Five Star Simple Software: #2 Picasa.

I'm a Google fanboy, sure I admit it. Regardless though, this software deserves a major mention.Picasa is a Photo and Movie manager and does so much I just couldn't cover it all here, but it's good enough that even Microsoft & Adobe have tried [in vain] to bring similar offerings to the table, such as Windows Vista's Photo Manager [Make that 'Photo Mangler'-try it, you'll see what I mean] & the utterly pointless, severely hobbled, nagging at every turn, Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition. What a spectacular train wreck of software that is.

Both Microsoft & Adobe's efforts are a pale comparison though to Picasa and make managing your media a turgid, complex, enthusiasm zapping experience from start to finish, and will nag you to pay to upgrade the software regularly, or buy photos from their sources online [and normally only in the USA] at most turns. Both are clunky, overly complex and no fun at all.

All praise then to Picasa then which from the word go, is simply, simple. The install is clean and informative enough for all levels, and intuitive enough to find and catalogue your photos & movie media automatically should you let it. From there on in you have support for TIF, JPG, GIF, PSD, MPG, AVI, ASF, WMV, MOV & more. [As if you'll need more]

The usability of it really stands out, and I've met people from 14 to 65 who've all said they love it. And it's the easiest way to share photos with friends and family out there, because aside from the numerous photo touch up tools, slide shows, wallpaper makers, gift cd's, back up facilities and more, the most recent addition to Picasa is what makes it stand out from the crowd.

Free 1Gigabyte Web albums.

Previously even a fairly awkward thing to do for many, even with web skills, and so for most people it was nigh on impossible to get their photos up on the web. With Picasa it's two or three clicks. Literally. Everything else is automated. And before you know it, your photos you want to share are on the web on your own clear, memorable and useful web address such as: http://picasaweb.google.com/yourname

Now try doing this in Microsoft's offerings and your on to an unusable, almost never ending, indecipherable web address. Not friendly at all. [Adobe have no web offering as yet]. Another hidden Picasa gem is to get your friends to add you as a Picasa favourite [one simple click on your Picasa web page] and then every time they add a photo or album you get an email to let you know. All of which is fully editable and controllable. You can even have the option to allow people to download the entire set of your photos' to their Picasa in one click. Now thats sharing. And incredibly simple to do.

I could spend all day on how good this software is, as many of my my friends and family will testify, but if you haven't tried it, get on it, you wont regret it. After all taking photo's is great, but sharing them is half the fun.

Picasa is 100% free, Web Albums have 1Gigabyte of free online storage.