Just when I’ve become more and more frustrated with KimDaBa, or KPhotoAlbum as it’s now called, Google comes to rescue and releases Picasa for Linux (For some reason or other they don’t let any ISP outside the US access that page, but the fine people filling up the comments on Digg have found direct download links. Just scroll down a bit on this page.)

Picasa was bought by Google a while ago, and then released for free, but they didn’t bother releasing it for anything else than Windows. Well, they have now. The Picasa version for Linux comes bundled with WINE, so it’s not a Linux native. It does integrate with Gnome and KDE, but it doesn’t adopt any of the font settings, which is due to above mentioned use of WINE instead of native libraries. Unfortunately, that makes for some pretty awful fonts and window UI, especially compared to the rest of the app, which is designed to be extra-smooth.

Note the dark-grey background and the jagged font, then compare it to this overall design of Picasa:

Apart from this, Picasa works fine. It installed without any problems on my Kubuntu Breezy Badger system, using the Ubuntu package. It is a bit slow right now, but I’m quite sure that’s due to my antiquated computer.

All in all, I’m delighted the fine people at Google are reaching out at their Linux clientele as well.

By the way, a few hot-headed people are getting all bent out of shape because Google is actually releasing a product for Linux and has not open-sourced it. I think it’s a really good idea to bitch about efforts like the Google Picasa one, if you’re trying to keep Linux behind Windows for all times. The 225 patches the Picasa team has submitted to the current WINE code alone show how much of a win-win situation this is for everyone.

While there are a number of photo-sharing websites out there, most notably Flickr, there has apparently been a dire need for a service that lets you create static photobooks with all sorts of text.

Massachusetts based Tabblo has decided to fill that scandalous void.

I had a look at the service.

The first pleasant surprise was their integration with Flickr, which means you don’t actually have to upload any photos yourself, because they’ll simply copy all of your Flickr ones over to Tabblo.

Importing takes a while, but I took the service for a spin with a few already imported photos.

The organizer is quite basic, but it works nicely with drag and drop:

So I dragged and dropped a few pictures and off I went to selecting a layout:

It’s really quite versatile, because it has layouts that are more suitable for a big bunch of pictures as well as for just a few.

Finally I went on to edit the text for the final tabblo. There’s a floating sidebar which holds all sorts of valuable tools, but it kept getting on my nerves by jumping up and down when trying to use the scrollbar:

I managed to tame the sidebar beast, and created my first tabblo. Click here to look at it.

In the end, Tabblo is quite a well-done app, and while it’s not exactly as revolutionary as they made it out to be in their initial press-release, I can see it is a nice little tool for people who just need a quick and easy way to showcase their stuff.

Along with Yahoo’s new design, Flickr has been getting a major overhaul as well.
What I like best? The new organizr:

It’s not as bulky as the old one, and it looks much better too.

There are many more improvements, including new ways of searching and sorting. Your photostream finally has two columns of photos, thus displaying 18 photos instead of 10 up there:

I never really understood why they had the one column look on the first page. Well, I’m glad it’s gone.

I’m happy the people at Flickr show that they still care about what’s to become of the service, even though they could easily let it rot and spend the rest of their days in little bamboo huts slurping cocktails served by scantily clad women (or men, respectively).

By the way, instead of Flickr Beta, they now call it Flickr Gamma, showing off not only their mad Greek alphabet skillz, but also their sense of humour.