Flickr vs. Picasa - which one to choose?

I'm wanting to do more photography. I've dusted off my FujiFilm A201. I've recently taken some photos of where we live, for a future post. I'm now thinking, what's the best way to store them online to use them.

I reckon my choice is between Flickr - part of Yahoo!, and Picasa - owned by Google.

I've had a Flickr account for some time, and a several dozen photos uploaded. I've liked being able to upload my photos into sets. Most, of all, though - I love that Flickr is a photographer's website. The quality of photos on their is fantastic.

Picasa is different, it that it seems to be aimed at people who want to organise the photos on their hard drive, and maybe publish them online to share with others.

The software indexes all you photos, and then helps you to upload them. You can then use the photos directly in conjunction with Blogger - nice.

However, the site itself is pretty underwhelming.

Choice

So, I'm thinking - which service do I want to go for in the longer term? To increase storage, one has to pay for both:

• Flickr Pro is $25
• Picasa - 10Gb of storage (i.e. up from the 1Gb that's free) is $20

Apart from the increase in storage for Picasa's $20, I'm not sure what extras I get. I was checking out http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/15730/?search=pro+features, where Brenda Anderson says:

"Upgrade to a Pro Account for just US$24.95 a year. Here's what you'll get with a Pro Account:
* 2 GB monthly upload limit
* Unlimited storage
* Unlimited bandwidth
* Unlimited photosets
* Permanent archiving of high-resolution original images
* The ability to replace a photo
* Ad-free browsing and sharing

Compare that to what you get with a Free Account:
* 20 MB monthly upload limit
* 3 photosets
* Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
* Storage of smaller (resized) images"

Call to Action

I'd like some feedback from you, what experiences have you had?

Which would you recommend and why?

Am I missing another service which is even better?

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Espléndido Hotel

Quick post to celebrate this fantastic hotel we stayed at in Mallorca.

It's on the seafront in Port de Sóller / Puerto Sóller - depending on whether you speak the Mallorcan dialect of Catalan, or Spanish.

Things to note:

• Fantastic staff
• Funky decor and ambiance, we loved it
• Good facilities - we both had excellent massages, a real indulgence
• Restaurant was v. good - I had a top entrecote steak on the night we arrived
• Just a really good vibe.
  

It's owned by a Swedish couple, who have another hotel in Palma. Therefore, there was a mix of staff - Swedes, Mallorquin, Spanish etc. The guests were mainly professional people, with & without children. Swedes, Dutch, Brits, some Germans.

Wholeheartedly recommended. Not cheap, but fantastic value. We had a Seaview balcony, which was just the job.

We were really lucky with the weather, but there seemed to be quite a lot to do in the hotel if the elements weren't favourable.

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