Google offers iPhone-friendly Picasa photo sharing

Google today continued its Web service optimizations for Apple's iPhone with the release of a new iPhone interface for Picasa, the company's photo-sharing site. According to the company's blog, one Google developed decided to revamp the site for the popular device when found that it had "some very cool AJAXy features," which unfortunately were designed with a "desktop web-browsing experience in mind." On the heels of its homepage revamp for the iPhone, the new Picasa interface offers easy access to albums, displays pictures with comments, and includes an easy search feature. The iPhone-friendly interface offers slideshow options as well as both landscape and portrait support (like all webpages).

"Today, I'm happy to tell you that we've just released this new iPhone interface for Picasa. After you go to Picasa on your iPhone and log in, you can quickly see all your albums that you've uploaded to Picasa Web," the London-based software engineer wrote in the Google Mobile Blog. "If you click on any of the albums, you can get a full view of your picture with comments from your friends. Or you can click on Slideshow, sit back and watch the pictures scroll."

Users also can view their friends' albums through favorites.

The interface is currently only available in English, thus users will have to change their language preference if they are located in an non-English-speaking country.

Google's Picasa has an iPhoto plugin that automatically uploads photos to the free photo sharing service. It works with iPhoto 4/5/6/'08 and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.