Thursday, September 6, 2007

Review of Free Internet Photo Albums

This month ends the free photo album feature at Yahoo.com. For several years I have posted pictures to two Yahoo albums, one for each of my two Yahoo accounts. I linked the albums to my personal web page, this blog, and also to a couple of genealogical web sites I maintain. A nice feature at Yahoo Photos was that visitors did not have to register a user name or password to access my Albums, and thus, guests could link to my pictures directly. Now, I must move my photos from Yahoo to another Internet photo service by the end of the month and visitors will probably have to go through the hassle of registering to see my photos. Realize that most of these sites gather their revenue by on-site advertisements or by selling reprints and other photo products to the user. So, I have been shopping at some of the more popular sites to see the basic features of each. Most sites require registration- which is free. Also, one can do the most common edits of their photos: crop, red-eye fix, rotate, flip, instant fix, and add captions and borders. Also, one can tag and organize photos and albums Other unique features or information include:

Flickr.com is partnered with Yahoo. One can use the same user name and password for both accounts.

Kodakgallery.com is the site for Kodak EasyShare. Up to sixty images can be uploaded at a time. More marketing than other sites. One can invite friends without having them register.

Shutterfly.com is partnered with Target Stores. Users can order and go to their local Target stores and obtain "shopping cart" items, such as prints, calendars, and photo books.

Snapfish.com is a service of Hewlett Packard and is powered by Earthlink (whew!). Users can order and pickup photos at Walgreen Drug stores. Uploading photos from my MOBILE phone was an easy set-up, but there is a time lag of a day or two between uploading photos and their actual appearance on-line. On the other hand, I can upload photos from my computer almost instantly

Photobucket.com I haven't registered here yet. Can anybody add comments?

Picasa.com I registered at this site with the same user name and password that I use for my travelstwo.blogspot.com The site is sponsored by Google. I have a choice of keeping my photo albums private or opening them to the pubic (at http://picasaweb.google.com/bobkramp ). Visitors do NOT have to register. Also, I can view my Picasa Alums on my mobile phone but can't upload them. Images are automatically resized to fit my phone's screen.

Snapgenie.com is great for creating slide shows with a running commentary which the user can add by dialing up on the phone. The site is supported by MyFamily.com- one of the largest Internet sites for genealogical research- by subscription.

Footnote.com and Geni.com are good sites for presenting one's genealogy and family photos. Footnote is partnered with the National Archives and is being used as a public reference and resource site. Geni is private for the user but can be shared with selected family members.

I will be adding more sites and comments as I do more shopping.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

you might want to try http://fotki.com

Unknown said...

I share on Pixamo (www.pixamo.com). They are a smaller player, but offer features that I find way superior to the other sites you mentioned. It is a great site to get family on because it lets you tag by peoples’ names, places, and events and then it links different friends’ accounts via common tags. For example, as long as we agree, my photos and your photos of our 28th High School reunion can be linked to form one joint album. This makes sharing so much more convenient because you can share and browse by relevant tag (no need to send out invitation e-mails all the time and no need to look through every photo in your friends’ collection unless you really want to).

Bob Kramp said...

Thanks for the reference Stewart. I will check out Pixamo in a few days. I have just arrived home after 2 week trip and getting ready to hit the road for 5 more weeks- I'm a little swamped. I believe your suggestion of "sharing our 28th HS reunion" was an example only and does not mean that we are old classmates, right? I can't get to your profile to respond.

Unknown said...

I don't think you are my old classmate--unless you graduated high school in Europe 30 years ago!! I think you will like Pixamo- it is the best photo album site I have tried yet!