The best Internet service for sharing photos from a camera phone
12 April 2006
There are so many fabulous photos saved on our megapixel camera phone that we simply have to share some of them with the world. Fortunately, photo-sharing services on the Internet provide us with exactly what we want. But what if we wanted to post photos, view, and comment on them using our camera phone alone - without using a PC or a Mac? Which online photo album provides the best service for a camera phone?
In the early days of camera phone photo-sharing services, when new moblogs (mobile blogs) were springing up faster than new camera phone models, we reviewed the available services. The best ones are still around and have built up active communities of photo bloggers.
Today, there are even more free services on the Internet for photo sharing and printing. We took a look at the following services for this round-up:
Fotojive (http://www.fotojive.com/) provides a free photo-sharing application for your phone.
Kodak Mobile (http://www.kodakmobile.com/).
PhotoBox (http://www.photobox.co.uk/) offers a wide range of photo printing options.
Photosite (http://www.photosite.com/).
PictureTrail (http://www.picturetrail.com/) can animate your photo album.
Webshots (http://www.webshots.com/).
The listed services did a fine job with our photos, but our goal was to, at a minimum, upload, view, login, and add comments to photos - using our phone alone. We wanted to achieve all this functionality on a phone that doesn't necessarily have to be a high-end product, but that comes with email and Internet browser software. In the end, we had two finalists for this review: Buzznet and Flickr.
Buzznet www.buzznet.com
Buzznet provides plenty of tools for managing your photos online. You can email photos from the phone to your Buzznet album and login, view, and comment on pictures. We couldn't complete the Buzznet registration process or order prints of photos. Although the web page shows an option to upload photos, it won't work. Email your photos to your album; it is easier, anyway. When we used the Internet Explorer browser on a Windows Mobile device, we couldn't add a comment on a photo on Buzznet, but we could do it with the Opera Mini browser.
Flickr www.flickr.com
If you don't already have a Yahoo or Flickr user id, you have to sit down by a computer and register for the service. It's a long process where Yahoo wants to know all kind of information about you. After you've completed registering, Flickr offers extensive functionality for phones. You have to post new photos by email. You can login, view, and comment on photos using the phone alone. We couldn't place orders for prints from the phone.
For this review, we used Symbian OS S60 and Windows Mobile smartphones that were running Microsoft Internet Explorer and Opera Mini browsers, and used the email applications that were included with the phones. The Internet Explorer only runs on phones powered by Windows Mobile. You can download Opera Mini browser for free from mini.opera.com. It is compatible with a wide range of phones that can run Java software.
Although it is not yet possible to do everything you might want, the daily tasks of posting, viewing, and adding comments to photos are easy to manage on a phone. In summary, here's how you can make maximum use of your camera phone with Buzznet or Flickr service:
- Use a computer to register for the service. When you sign up, choose a user id and password that are easy to type in on a phone keypad.
- You will get an address for your personal album. Bookmark this address on your phone's Internet browser. Flickr requires you to reserve the address separately. Do it right after you have registered your profile.
- You need to find out the email address where you will send your photos. Buzznet automatically assigns you an email address, which you can find with your profile information. You have to request that Flickr (in your profile) gives you an email address for posting photos. Save the email address on your phone's contact list. For advice on sending email from the phone, read this article.
- Send your pictures by email from the camera phone to your online album.
- View photos on your camera phone, using the Internet browser software.
- When viewing photos, you can login if you want to add comments on photos.
- For ordering prints of photos, you have to use a computer.
Which is the best photo-sharing service for camera phone users?
Both Buzznet and Flickr provide so much functionality for computer users that we can't think of any essential features that were missing from either one. They provide similar levels of functionality for phone users, including the following: you can post photos by email, login to the service, view albums, manage your own photos, and add comments to photos. Buzznet, however, runs smoother when you access it on a phone. Its web pages are more user-friendly on small camera phone screens.
You can get involved in communities where people actively interact with photos, comments, and email messages. You can contribute to albums where a group of people are allowed to post and add comments to photos. You can search for photos or people, and display slide shows - just to name a few features.
There are some differences in the two sites - for example, how they assign keywords to your photos. Keywords are called Buzzwords in Buzznet, while Flickr calls them Tags. All in all, both are very comprehensive services.
Buzznet's free account lets you upload 120 photos a month to your album. The premium package costs USD 36 a year and lets you store up to 400 photos each month.
The free Flickr account allows you to save 20MB worth of images on your album a month. That's roughly about 100 one-megapixel images (200KB per photo) or 50 two-megapixel images (400KB per photo). The Flickr premium account lets you post 2GB worth of pictures each month on your album for USD24.95 a year.
The true cost for photo sharing maybe the cost you see on your phone bill. Remember to check your data communication plan before you start heavy photo-blogging. Often, data plans include a number of megabytes of network data traffic (email messages, photo uploads, browsing sessions) per month. Alternatively, you pay separately for all data traffic you send and receive over the network.
Related stories:
Product reviews:
