Google Plus misses the boat...

Okay, so I got an invite to G+ from a friend and signed up.  I use Gmail / Picasa / Docs, why not?

Today I try to share an album in Picasa to some family members who are in a nice group in my gmail contacts address book.  Guess what?  You can't use it! They changed the whole dialog for sharing.  I start typing in a name in the "Add circles or people" box, it shows a dozen names - none of whom I've ever heard of and they are definitely not in my gmail contacts!  What's up with that?  I used to be able to pick people from my contacts list - no more!  Where's the button to reset back to the old, more user friendly way?

But wait - it gets better!  So I go to G+ to create a circle for this group, and guess what?  It's the same dialog, looking up names I have no connection to, like "AnDrEwS GuNtHeR ZsNaRdEr TELEFONICA"  - who the heck is that?  Where's the button to limit the search to my contacts list?!

Oh and it has no knowledge of my gmail groups either.

Makes me think "design by auteur" results in better designs...

Update - well I had to manually enter the people in my new circle and it seems it puts people from your contacts at the top of the list so maybe it's not so bad.

But...in the share dialog in picassa web, it shows the 1st photo, not the selected album cover photo and there's no place to enter a message for the email - so it's essentially useless for me.  I have commentary I need to add to the email, so I'll have to do it the old fashioned way.