Review: Picasa Hello

Hello

Hello is just as well designed as Picasa, with lots of neat touches that show the developers have really thought things through.

The most impressive thing that strikes you when you first use Hello is the sheer speed that it transfers photos from you to your friends, or vice versa. It is configured by default to send smaller versions of your photos, and is a lot quicker and much more instantaneous than emailing them or using something like MSN Messenger. It's also a lot safer, using a private, secure peer-to-peer connection which is only open to people that you invite.

On the left of the main screen is a list of all your Friends. You can add a friend if you know what their Hello login name is, or you can click Invite to send them an email inviting them to download Hello and signup.

On the right is the Chat area, which functions much like any other instant message application, albeit without any Smilies at this point in time (although entering : ) causes a smiley face to fall across your screen!).

Hello integrates pretty seamlessly with Picasa. Click the Send Pictures button, select the photos that you want to share in Picasa, make sure that you select Hold, then click the Send Hello button, and Hello automatically sends those photos to the people that you are currently talking to. You do have to change between the two separate programs as you chat and send photos. I guess that this is because Hello is available separately and you don't have to own Picasa to be able to use it.