Photo-Sharing Pathfinder

The following links may be useful in helping you to quickly learn how to share your photos with friends, co-workers, students, etc. A majority of these links were used in a Web 2.0 workshop on photo sharing, which was given in the Eli M. Oboler Library on December 11, 2007. A brief description and or title accompany each hyperlink.

What is photo sharing?

· Quick Online Tips says: “Flickr is a revolution in photo storage, sharing and organization, making image management an easy, natural and collaborative process. Get comments, notes, and tags on your photos, post to any blog, share and chat live and more! Flickr claims to be the best online image management and photo sharing application.

“If you are a Flickr newbie, read How to get the most out of Flickr, Tips for Flickr Beginners and the Official FAQ. You can also combine Picassa and Gmail to upload photos to Flickr, turn your blog into a moblog and listen to the Flickr Song. Did you know the most popular camera on Flickr was the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT.”

The rest of the page offers links to official Flickr tools and third-party tools for Flickr.

· Notice the link above titled, "How to Get the Most Out of Flickr." It tells you some of the potential uses for Flickr. It can tell you how to use Flickr with your blog, cameraphone, RSS feeds, etc. Also, the page gives instructions on how to organize your photos, create a group for a wedding, reunion, or event, and share private photos with family and friends.

Which photo-sharing services are the best?

· Many like their Flickr.com accounts: Webware Article. This link points to an article written November 13, 2007 and announces the fact that 2 billion photos had been uploaded to Flickr.com. They mention that Photobucket and Facebook sites had already reached that milestone months ago.

· Some prefer Picasa Web Albums: Picasa vs Flickr. Rob Neville shares his opinion that Picasaweb surpasses Flickr in its ease of use, user-friendly features, and its off-line editing program.

· Still, others choose different services: Web Photo Sharing Site Faceoff. While this article is rather dated as far as technology and Web2.0 are concerned (Sept. 5, 2005), it does name 14 photo-sharing services one can choose from. A couple of graphs lay out the data, showing the capabilities of each service for easy comparison.

· There are lots to choose from: Online photo sharing for snapshot photographers. Here you can look at a graph that rates 21 photo-sharing services, while also detailing storage space, fees, viewer experience, uploading management, file types, resolution, and special features. After checking the links for each service I discovered that three no longer work: AGFAPHOTO, Image Station, and Yahoo! Photo. The AGFA link would not load. Image Station will no longer accept new members; its site officially closes February 1, 2008. Yahoo! Photo died, because Yahoo! decided to devote all its photo-sharing energies to Flickr—it’s more popular and successful service.

· In this YouTube video (requires high-speed internet to view) a young, computer-savvy person discusses the question of which photo-sharing service is the best. He ventures to say that it depends on what you want to do with your photos and where your friends are. Additionally, he recommends that you save your digital photos on several photo-sharing websites, since one site may vanish at any given time: Best Photo Sharing Site. [Chances are that Picasa and Flickr will be around for a long time, as well as photo-sharing sites backed by large corporations.] Length of time: 1:31.

Getting started with photo-sharing services, or how is it done?

· Note: high-speed internet may be necessary to access and view the following video clips.

· See YouTube clip title “ Using Picasa – Part 1”: Picasa 2 (newest verion) can be downloaded at the following website: http://picasa.google.com/download/index.html. The video lasts seven minutes fifteen seconds (7:15), and it shows you how to get started with the Picasa desktop program for working with digital photos.

· “ Using Picasa – Part 2”: In this second video, you can learn how to create web albums, email photos, print photos, order photos, select photos, and transfer photos from your camera. It is well-done and focused on the task at hand. Length of time: 8:33.

· This YouTube video clip stars a young man who explains how to use Picasa in very straightforward terms: Jasonthenerd. Length of time: 9:13.

Future impact of Social Networking:

· This blog includes the comments of a panel of experts on the future of social networking. It does focus more on the relationship between this phenomenon and libraries than on society as a whole.

RSS Feeds, Websites, and Blogs:

· It is possible to upload photos to your Flickr.com account and create an RSS feed that updates photos on your website or blog in real time. This could potentially save on staff time by circumnavigating the webmaster; whether your administration trusts you enough to do that may be another matter.

On resizing photos:

Learning how to resize photos has been a real challenge for me, and I confess that I still am not sure exactly how to do this. It may be necessary to purchase or download an editing program in addition to Picasa to resize photos. The first link below includes some programs with reviews that can edit photos and potentially resize them.

1. Edit photos and resize them with these programs.

2. Discussion on Picasa-Help page regarding resizing photos and how many pixels to keep for optimal resolution.

3. More on resizing within Picasa Web Albums.

4. Picasa-Help links about how to resize photos using Picasa Web Albums.

Please offer me any feedback you have regarding the content in this post, my workshop, information-literacy topic, or social networking issue.