I have a central server, running a RAID5 array. I store all my important files here including my pictures. The server is backed up in addition to the RAID5 array.
Now we also have a number of laptops in the house, including my wifes. I wanted to keep all the pictures central, but allowing my wife to view them all from her laptop.
Easy I thought, I’ll just add a UNC to folder manager in picasa… lol. Nope Picasa does not support UNCs, after traipsing the net and trying to modify the watchedfolders.txt file for picasa (with limited success). Something reminded me of what I did to share a USB drive from within a existing local folder (its in another blog post). I used mklink.
mklink comes with Vista and 7. It allows to create file and folder links within existing folders, and as a bonus it allows for uncs to be used.
So with Picasa running on the laptop looking at the local pictures folder, I then created a directory junction using mklink that pointed to the server share.
Picasa now sees that folder as nothing more than a subfolder and as such just scans through the folders. 
C:\Users\<username>\Pictures>mklink /d <~NewFolderName> \\<Servername>\<servershare>
Now I use ~ at the beginning of files and folders to ensure they appear at the top of any listing. Just reminds me that the folders/files have special significance. (So is you don’t want a tilde on the folder name just leave it out here.
I hope that helps someone.. I am currently sitting here waiting for picasa to finish cycling through the folders…. 
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