Nice coincidence. Last night, I was trying to show my mother how to use Olympus's Camedia photo software. As anyone who has used it knows, the interface is very clumsy. Well, try teaching it to someone who is technophobic about new software applications.

Enter Picasa, which has just been purchased by Google and can be freely downloaded. From the Picasa download page:

Picasa. Everything you need to enjoy your digital photos in a single software product:

• Auto-transfer photos from your digital camera.
• Organize and find pictures in seconds.
• Edit, print, and share photos with ease.
• Create slideshows, order prints and more!

So after downloading and trying it, I would firmly recommend Picasa over Camedia and some other digital camera/image handling software packages I have used. Granted, it offers fewer filtering/effects options for transforming images than Camedia, but I love the rest of the interface, and it will automatically populate the photo album view with all of the images on your hard drive in a easy to surf display. So even though I use Photoshop for my image editing, I'll keep this one on my hard drive. :)