photo-sharing

DPhoto is a photo-hosting and sharing service that uses a Flash interface for both organizing and sharing photos. It's no Flickr-killer in terms of price or community features, but it's got a really easy to use uploader, and the slide shows look great. Give it a look if you want to make a cool-looking slide show or gallery with a few of your photos.

Adding your shots to DPhoto is very user friendly. The uploader tool lets you pick out your photos one at a time or select entire folders on your hard drive. There's also a custom e-mail address that lets you send pictures from your phone.

The free version of DPhoto is limited to 100 photos, and also limits individual file size to 3MB, which is about the size of most people's photos, assuming they're shooting in something around the 5-megapixel range. DPhoto charges $2 a month to upgrade to their Lite account (and $7 for Pro), which is on the steep side. Both premium-level accounts net you the option to upload more shots. The Pro level account increases the cap on individual photo-file uploads from 3MB to 20MB, and lets users download entire photo albums as .ZIP files, which is handy if you intend on using DPhoto as a business tool.

I can't wholly recommend using DPhoto over some of the more established photo-hosting services, especially since at $84 a year, the Pro subscription is a hard sell over typical mainstream photo services (Flickr, Fotki, SmugMug) that come in at about $25 to $50 a year. I'd like to see them build on the looks with a little more backing on the community and support. The service is a still a little rough around the edges and certainly is capable of improving its offerings in both departments. Either way, the site navigation and photo browsing are very well designed, making it a joy to use.

For more shots of the interface, keep reading, or give DPhoto's sample gallery a look.… Read more

Zooomr Mark III Take 2 will arrive in three weeks, but at the same time, the photo-sharing site may enter a "hiatus."

In March, glitches forced the photo-sharing site to back off a redesign that would permit Zooomr users to sell their own photos and would lift storage limits, among other changes. The new version now is scheduled to arrive in three weeks--May 21--said lead programmer Kristopher Tate on his blog Monday.

Tate also said the company is looking for new investors.

"I have some breaking news to share that may create a period of hiatus for … Read more

Slidez is a new photo slide show tool for showing off photos on blogs, Web sites, and social networking profiles. Slidez pulls double duty as a hosting service and presentation tool, allowing users to upload and organize their photo library online. It's not a substitute for photo-hosting services like Flickr, Photobucket, or Yahoo Photos, but its embeddable slide shows are good-looking, and easy to put together.

Basic photo management is kept simple with a batch uploader that allows you to select multiple photos from your hard drive. As a test batch I uploaded 20 shots without a problem. Your … Read more

When your tech-clueless relatives ask you how to send a digital photo to friends, you can walk them through signing up for an account on a major photo site such as Yahoo Photos or Webshots, or you can talk them through attaching a photo to an e-mail--or you can send them to the simplest photo site in the whole world, Picupine.

Picupine lets you upload a few pictures, give them titles, and then it sends you a private link to a slide show that you can then forward to anyone.

It's really easy. It's also really limited: The … Read more

XMG Image launched its public beta yesterday. The photo hosting and editing service gives you 200MB of free storage, with a bigger pro plan on the way. XMG Image offers the standard fare of individual and batch photo uploading, but adds extensive album and tag creation and management. There's also customized sharing for forums, Web sites, and blogs.

What differentiates XMG Image from other photo hosting sites is its use of new Web technologies like Ajax. Ajax pop-up dialogs are quickly overtaking regular old pop-up messages on sites, and XMG is no exception as nearly all the command options … Read more

PreClick announced its photo-messaging service last week at the Demo conference. The free app, called Instant Photo Messenger (or IPM) lets you share photos with others using a simple drag-and-drop interface. On the receiving end, users with the IPM software installed get a taskbar notification letting them know photos have been sent their way. They can then view the shots without leaving the program.

IPM doubles as an e-mail program of sorts, letting you send photo messages to any e-mail address. You also have a contact list, as you would on any other instant-messenging client. Contacts are added automatically after … Read more

SplashCast, launched today at Demo 07, is a free service that allows users to combine all sorts of media into one master playlist. That playlist can then be embedded on Web sites and blogs or sent directly to friends and family with a simple URL. It's basically the online equivalent of a mix tape. It's similar to YouTube's playlist maker, but with SplashCast, you can also throw pictures, text, and audio into the mix.

What's really cool about SplashCast is that your already-shared media doesn't need to be uploaded again. Pulling videos or pictures from … Read more

If you upload pictures, video or illustrations to iStockphoto or are a customer who uses the site to buy that content, you could have some new options soon for using the site.

The company has released some details of its interface so that outsiders can create Web sites or software that tap into the site's abilities, according to a company forum posting earlier this month. The objective: "to allow the iStockphoto community to expand the functionality of istockphoto.com, provide useful tools for community members, and attract new members."

Some users already are coming up with ideas … Read more

When I talk about niches of the "new Internet" that are pretty much totally saturated, usually I mention social networking sites or online video portals. Here's another one: Photo sharing! I'm inherently going to be pretty skeptical of any start-up that comes around and decides to take on the Flickrs and Photobuckets of the world. In order for me to be optimistic about a new photo-sharing site, it's going to have to offer something really new. The subject of this post, Radar, thankfully does. It's designed specifically for swapping camera-phone photos around with your … Read more