January 19, 2007 1:52 PM PST

Share your mobile phone photos with Radar

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Using Radar on a cell phone.

(Credit: Radar)

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 friends, an activity which is growing more and more common in today's world. (I'm even ditching my "vintage" LG handset soon so that I can quickly snap and swap photos.)

Radar's user interface.

(Credit: Radar)

Radar, which is not affiliated with the pop-culture magazine of the same name, is not a mobile blogging platform. Your photos aren't public. Rather, it's a way for you to quickly and instantly share mobile photos with a select group of friends. Much like Twango, one of the most promising media-sharing start-ups these days (in my opinion), Radar assigns you a unique e-mail address that you can use from your computer or your mobile phone to send pictures to the service. Your photos are then shared with all your Radar "friends," who can access their accounts from either their computers or their cell phones. One interesting aspect is that Radar is completely private. There are no social networking features so that other users can find you: it's solely so that you can share photos with people you already know. Which, in a MySpace-driven Internet, is pretty cool and quite refreshing.

Plus, Radar claims that its service--including mobile browsing--will work on any phone, not just smartphones. You'll need a data plan, of course.

Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline.