Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) software engineer Elvin Lee announced today that the company has dropped the price of 20GB storage between GMail and Picasa to $5 per year. Google currently gives 7.27GB of free storage for GMail and 1GB of free storage for Picasa. Before Google was offering 10GB of storage for $20 per year. For $20 per year now you can buy 80GB worth of storage. I’m highly considering the 80GB option because I have 27GB worth of photos and do not like the way that Facebook decreases the resolution quality when hosting my photos. To add more storage to your account, visit https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage.

Its about time Google! Mac users can finally download, install, and use Picasa.  Picasa is Google’s free photo editing software.  However there’s a catch.  It only works for Mac OS X version 10.4 and is made for Intel-powered Macs.  The download is available at http://picasa.google.com/mac.

Picasa is especially useful for those who want to upload their digital camera pictures to the Internet.  Every Picasa user gets 1024MB free.  Per year additional space costs $20 for 10GB, $75 for 40GB, $250 for 150GB, and $500 for 400GB.  Features include image importing, editing, and web syncing.  There is a facial recognition feature and a collage maker.  Picasa for Mac also recognizes the camera on the iPhone.  Privacy features for each individual picture is available.

The release of Picasa for Mac became available now to coincide with the timing of Macworld.  Macworld officially begins tomorrow.  Google’s booth will have some people representing Picasa there.  Google wants people to download the application today and bring them questions and feedback during the conference.

[via Wired and the Google Blog]

Microsoft Research has unleashed a new application called AutoCollage 2008. AutoCollage allows users to take a photos from hard drives and websites, then create a collage. The software is Picasa-like and the features are Slide.com-like. This is the first incubation software that came from Microsoft’s Research Lab in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

The software is available free for 30 days or $19.95 for the non-trial version (£19.90 in the U.K). The service was announced on The Windows Vista Blog. While Picasa already allows this feature

Picasa already has a collage feature built-in for free, but Microsoft is charging for software that only focuses on the collage feature. Why? If anyone uses the AutoCollage, comment here and let us know if it is worth the price.

“They have a whole market that they are missing out on, and they need to make sure that the market is aware there is a Photoshop solution for them. As that market grows and becomes more sophisticated, hopefully it will generate money,” stated Ron Glaz, an analyst at IDC, a market intelligence firm.

Adobe Systems Inc. has made another dramatic move. After making at least 9 versions of their popular software, Photoshop, the San Jose, Calif.-based company decided to make their well-known software available to the web for free. This effort poses a threat to some of the other popular online photo editing companies such as Picnik, Picasa, and SnipShot.

This is not the first time that Adobe has made a huge contribution to the web. A few years ago, Adobe acquired Macromedia, the makers of Flash. Today Adobe Flash is the foundation for all online video sharing web sites like YouTube and DailyMotion.

With Photoshop Express, users can crop/rotate/tweak/resize/edit photos. Adobe is also providing users 2GB of space to host their photos for free. After editing photos, Adobe Photoshop Express users can build galleries in a grid or 3D format.

Photoshop Express is available at: http://www.photoshop.com/express/

Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch: Adobe Unveils Webtop Version of Photoshop. Picnik Is Not Scared by Erick Schonfeld