Saw this article the other day, about the release of Google's picture management utility, Picasa 2.0.

I've been running it since I read the article, and rate it a solid O.M.G. This bit of software is one of the best utilities for managing images I have come across. And timely as well, as I have just started getting back into my digital photography.

Taken from the google site...

Ever since we launched the first version of Picasa back in October, 2002, all of us on the Picasa team have been making lists of features we'd like to add. Now, six months after we joined Google, Picasa 2 is ready, and we're dying to show you all the cool new stuff you can do with your digital pictures. At the top of the list are the things our users have been asking for: more editing features and organizing options, CD burning, picture captioning, and integration with online photo services. But there are little touches, too.

Of course, Picasa 2 works great with other Google services; you can post pictures to your own blog with the Blogger button, order print supplies through Froogle, and send pictures using Gmail. And somehow our engineering team made Picasa 2 run just as fast, even on slower machines.

It's been an amazing experience to become part of Google and have all of their resources behind us. But at the core, it's the same group of Picasa engineers and designers who've been hard at work for more than a year to bring you this major new release. I'm incredibly proud of their accomplishment and I hope you'll share my excitement when you give Picasa 2 a try.

Download it here -- it's still totally free and it'll only take a minute because it's still only 3 megabytes (how do they do that?).

If you're into full editing, this aint the best tool (you'll be needing The Gimp for that). But if sorting and viewing and then actioning your images is what you need, this is the tool for you!

this is deadset awesome, irfanview gone in its place is picasa

Yeah it's really good, but Irfanview will still have a place on my PC.

I'm very impressed with it too for managing my photos, but ACDSee still has a place on my computer