I want to use Picasa desktop app instead of the tedious & clunky web interface to share a couple of photos.

Every time I launch Picasa it proceeds to open an annoying pop-up/tool-tip which flicks through every file on my HD using <=95% of CPU. I don't want this so I click the X. It appears again. I try to drag it somewhere less annoying onscreen but it pings back. I look in prefs for an option to turn it off. I give up and quit app until a new build comes out, which I download and repeat the above.

WTF?! I understand Google can't be as cool as Apple - iPhoto isn't perfect by any means but at least it looks nice and 'just works'.

I want to launch Picasa, not have it go through everything, not have 1000's of random pics and HD cruft on display in the list, and then perhaps drag in a few photos and upload them.

Any idea of if that is possible? </rant>