Picasa Web Albums Via Gmail Skins

 

I previously posted about my surprise at seeing a link towards Picasa Web Albums within my Gmail account. After testing this out in several browsers, it became clear that this was only appearing within Firefox.

I was able to narrow it down to a Firefox extension called Gmail Skins which enables you to post emoticons, images, and even change your Gmail background.

You need Firefox in order to use it, so if you are an IE fan, I pity you right now. 

Picasa Web Albums In Gmail?

Update Three: Apparently people are not noticing the updates below, so I'll post this up here. This is NOT a roll out by Google or Picasa but rather a Firefox hack. See this post for details.

(Note: Hopefully next week I'll be able to post some tips about Picasa, instead of the randomness that I find within it).

I am not sure if everyone is seeing this, but after signing up with Picasa Web Albums, I came across this in my Gmail account.



If you look closely, you can see the Picasa symbol underneath. I have no clue why it appeared here, (as I had no photo's in the email that I recall) but after clicking on it I soon received a link towards my photo albums asking me if I wanted to send photo's to my friend.



This is interesting as Picasa Web Albums is similar to Flickr.com (owned by Yahoo) in the affect that it allows you to comment, rate, etc. In order for you to access it, you need a Google Account (which Gmail creates by default).

Perhaps the search engine giant is tying all of its features together to create a Google portal after all. ;) 

Update: Corrected image html links.

Update Two: I finally discovered where everyone is coming from!

This is not a new feature from Picasa but rather a Gmail Skins hack. Please visit this post for details.

Sorry for the fuss.