Just recently, Google Picasa was updated with a new client and web interface.  Unfortunately, they hate Mac users so I stopped using the client in lieu of Apple iPhoto with the Picasa upload client.  Good enough.

The coolest new feature is their support for Name Tags.  Basically, they scan through your photos, do some sort of face recognition and group faces that are similar. After that, you’re able to tag the similar faces all at once.

Why do I think this is interesting?

It provides you with different lens on the same data.  I love that as an innovative concept.  Instead of just viewing the photos by event or chronological order, the photos can be viewed by the most important element, the people.

• View all photos of …
• View all photos with the following people …
• Create slide show with the following people …
• Share photos with the people tagged …

Best of all, its integrated with their GMail contacts which I just standardized to being my primary rolodex.

The scanning took about an hour on my 750+ MB collection of photos and it did a pretty good job.  The tagging is super easy and view the photos grouped by person is very cool.

It is very cool. You should try it out.