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.
DPhoto's slide show might look a little familiar to Flickr's newly updated one, but DPhoto's does full-screen, too.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Locr is a new photo hosting service that promises to make geo-tagging your photos a little easier. After uploading photos, users need to simply add a zip code or city name to set a longitude and latitude for their shots. Users can then browse other geo-tagged photos by click-dragging a Google Map.
Is this different from what Flickr offers? Yes, but without a Web-based batch uploader or a way to tag landmarks, Locr comes up short.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Locr's Web interface is really easy to use for individual uploading and geo-tagging, but it just doesn't work with multiple photos. That requires installing the Locr upload client on your Windows PC. The software is a little buggy and gave me a few error messages on my way to uploading just two photos. If Locr could employ an browser-based Java batch-uploader like Facebook or Fotki, it would be much easier than installing software (especially for Mac or Linux users).
Locr does do a few nice things for you, like including information about surrounding landmarks. My test photo of the London Eye pulled in tidbits of information about Westminster and Vauxhall Bridge, both of which are nearby. It's also really cool to drag around the browse map, as corresponding geo-tagged thumbnails will pop up below. This is reminiscent of and even faster than Tag Maps, which I took a look at a couple weeks ago.
Locr is missing a few things, but its map-based photo browser is really well done. If it's gunning for other photo-hosting services, it needs to step up its upload and photo management tools. Geo-tagging is a really cool feature. If Locr can find a way to make it even simpler by letting you search for landmarks while geo-tagging, I think they'd have something that their competitors don't.
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