Mashable reports that they have exclusive information from Google: Picasa and Blogger will be renamed Google Photos and Google Blogs. Google is making definite efforts to unify their brand identity, and the independently named products are getting a makeover that will integrate both platforms with Google+. Google has previously renamed other acquired services, rebranding JotSpot into Google Sites and GrandCentral into Google Voice.

Google+ has taken over the tech news world! Here’s a list of all the recent updates, including the iPhone app, an invite scam, Tom from Myspace’s opinion, Zuckerberg’s stake, benefits for journalists, formatting tips and more.

Sanyo announced a new Xacti camera that is perfect for social media video enthusiasts. The Xacti VPC-GH4 is a full HD 1080 video recording camera that supports Facebook, YouTube, and Picasa uploads. You can also send out Twitter notifications through the camera. Still photos are running at 10 megapixels. The retail price of this new camera is $200. It will be available on the shelves later this month. Full press release below.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has integrated online photo editing service Picnik into Picasa Web Albums. This means that Picasa Web Albums users will be able to quickly edit photos without leaving the photo page. This is Google’s first step in integrating Picnik’s service into one of their products since buying them out three months ago. “You will see that theme moving forward in time,” stated former Picnik CEO and current Google lead product manager of photos Jonathan Sposato. “Things will become more rationalized, more consistent.”

[CNET]

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) added a new feature that lets people add your favorite photos to the background of Google.com. Google has set up collaborations with artists, photographers, and sculptors to create a background image gallery. You can also choose an image or photo from your own computer or Picasa Web Album. Marissa Mayer announced the new feature on the Google Blog.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Picasa has upped the number of photo albums to 10,000 from 1,000. The photo storage space has not changed, it is still roughly around 7.76GB. The storage space is shared between Google Docs, GMail, and Picasa Web Albums. By default about 100 albums are shown, but to see the rest click on “show more albums” at the bottom. [Mashable]

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs wrote an e-mail to a consumer saying that Picasa will not be available on the iPad.  A UK reader of 9to5Mac.com wrote the following e-mail to Steve Jobs:

“The iPad photo app looks incredible.  Are there any plans to support Picasa’s faces and albums in iTunes, so I can take full advantage of the Photos application, since Photo Album is long discontinued.  If not, please can you look into supporting the Picasa library format?”

Jobs wrote back saying: “No, but iPhone on the Mac has much better Faces and Places features.” [9to5Mac]

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.