Google just released Picasa 3.5! You can download the software here at http://picasa.google.com/
The two most important improvements are Facial Recognition and Geo-Tagging. I also suggest you to try digikam (which I use since two years). Let me know if you find it usefull!
(UPDATE) Picasa reads RAW file but it works in 8bit only! But the main advantage of raw sensor data is that it contains 12 bit or even 14 bit depth and it contains much more room for shadows and highlights. That’s why I suggest you to use digikam.