Picasa Web Albums gets an API

Finally, Picasa Web Albums is maturing into a fully featured web application.

Recently it filled the inexplicable hole (for Google, a search company) by adding the "Search Community photos" feature, and now it's added another vital ingredient for a modern web based application by introducing an API.

As might have been guessed, the API is GData based.

The API documentation was announced via a post on the Google Code Blog.  There's a Google Group to support it, but there still the rather inexplicable fact that Picasa (on the Desktop), and Picasa Web Albums are still without their own official blog.

The API docs list 3 web applications that are already making use of the API:

• Picnik
• Booksmart
• ShoZu

I'm sure I'll be writing more on this as get time to explore it more.

Update: As well as the sample web applications, there are also a couple of Google Homepage Gadgets using the API.

• Slideshow gadget
• Public Albums gadget

There are also some other resources from Google:

• Developer Knowledge Base