14 DAY TRIAL // Google has always been about the web, web apps are just better than native ones, it argues. Recently it's been heavily focused on the mobile front as well, especially since Android has taken off. Yet even the might Google seems to be playing catch-up at times.
Thankfully, it's getting better, for example the mobile version of Picasa Web Albums has finally removed a limit preventing users from accessing all of their photos on their phones.
"Picasa Web for mobile lets you view and share your photos, browse photos from people you follow, or search public photos from our Picasa Web community. All on the go," Tammy McLeod, Software engineer at Google, writes.
"Until now, there was a limit to how many photos you could view, but that limit has lifted and you can view all your photos right from your phone. Browse multiple pages of albums and photos by clicking Next and Prev. Just visit https://picasaweb.google.com from the browser on your smartphone and enjoy photos anywhere," he announced.
The new 'feature' is actually just the inclusion of a "Next" and a "Prev" button on the mobile version so you can browse through multiple pages of Picasa albums.
The limitation before was that users only got to see their most recent albums with no way of navigating to the older ones. If this seems like a bit of an arbitrary limitation it's because it is.
There doesn't seem to have been any technical reason for cutting off mobile users. While it's definitely a move forward, the mobile version of the photo sharing site doesn't seem to be getting a lot of attention.
In fact, the entire Picasa project seems to have taken a back seat and new features are few and far between. It may very well be that Facebook now dominates the space and most people are happy uploading their photos on the social network and calling it a day.
But there are those that still want and need a decent photo sharing and management web app and it's beginning to look like Google could do a lot more in this department. Not that Flickr is fairing any better, so maybe the lack of interest is general.