This might be of help to many people who have Picasa and non-US regional settings, but it is hard to find on the net. Maybe somebody should publish it on this blog, so we can reach more users of Picasa, and possibly even tell Google what is the problem (there is a strong clue they still don't know exactly).

Since 2 days ago, when a Picasa user clicks "Upload to web album" button, Picasa tries to connect to "local" version of picasaweb (in my case, in Croatia, picasaweb.google.hr), which, as far as I can see, doesn't exist yet.

The possible solution (on Windows at least, but might work on Linux also because it really is a Unix method) is to find an IP for picasaweb.google.com (72.14.255.91, I got it via ping), and manually associate it with your local version via /etc/hosts file (on Windows, usually in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\ hosts.). So in my case, I'd press Windows+R for Run box, then write in it

cmd /k echo 72.14.255.91 picasaweb.google.hr >> C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

in one line, and press Enter (change hr to your local version of Google, and C with your drive on which Windows is installed). After that, you should be able to connect to picasa web albums via Picasa normally.

The whole procedure is described on http://groups.google.com/group/PicasaSomethingBroken/browse_thread/thread/edca694060e9dbce/7c3dea0739ea7e00#7c3dea0739ea7e00, but Google has buried it (probably unintentionally) with their "pinned" post http://groups.google.com/group/PicasaSomethingBroken/browse_thread/thread/f4f305aaafa71df5/8efc0c33b2b9e59d#8efc0c33b2b9e59d, which unfortunately shows they still have no clue about what's wrong.

I hope this will help.

Croation isn't in the list of supported languages for Picasaweb, but I guess this means that it will be very shortly.

Hm... but if I can't upload pictures from Picasa to web for three days already, I'd say it is a serious bug. Especially because it worked just fine (via picasaweb.google.com) a few days before. And especially because in their official troubleshooter Google doesn't seem to see that detail.

And of course, it's not only Croatian. Try picasaweb.google.si, .cz, .co.th... it's hard to find any that work. (.pl for example, though it is not localized in any visible way for me.)

(Thanks Veky, I'll move to the frontpage if this persists, and sorry for the backslash troubles with the forum software!)